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  • The Ballad of Butter’s Nose Battles

    The Ballad of Butter’s Nose Battles

    Written November 25, 2017

    Some call them “nose-offs”. I call them “nose battles”. It’s where guinea pigs living together might have a dispute and will try to solve it by raising their noses in the air, and the highest nose wins the battle.

    Butter has always been a fairly dominant pig, so nose battles were like one of his favorite ways of making sure everyone knew who was the boss pig. But that didn’t mean he always won his nose battles. :O (Luckily, he’s also a graceful loser, otherwise things could’ve been pretty bad.) There are a few of them that stuck out to me, and here they are:

    Attempt #1

    Soon after I introduced Bianca to the team, B^3 (Butter, Belle, Bianca) moved into their cage together for the first time as a trio. Both Butter and Belle spent a decent amount of time during intros making sure Bianca knew where her place was (at the bottom of the totem pole), but Butter wanted to be extra sure, so he went up to her to and initiated a nose battle (by swiping his nose upward at her nose). She didn’t get it and stared at him for a couple of seconds before finally raising her nose as well…and won. Butter walked away, disappointed. 😐

    (There have a been few other attempts by Butter, but Bianca won each time. Judging by how long it took her to raise her nose, I’m not sure she even knew what was going on.)

    Attempt #2

    This time, Butter was determined to win, so when he initiated another nose battle with Bianca, he waited for her to move her face. When she did, Butter was SOOOO EXCITED THAT HE RAISED HIS NOSE UPUPUP!!! INTOTHEAIR!!!!!!!! (As in, pointed STRAAAAIGHT up toward the ceiling at a 90 degree angle.) And waited a few seconds to give Bianca enough time to raise her nose as well. After what he thought was a sufficient amount of time, he looked back to Bianca to see if he won…only to find her looking straight at him in confusion.

    -______-;;; -Butter probably

    Butter pointing his nose at the camera
    Butter showing off his famous nose

    Attempt #3

    Butter initiated the nose battle as usual. This time, Bianca didn’t waste time raising her nose BUT OH GUESS WHAT? Butter won!! He was soo happy he popcorned*!!

    * Bunny people might recognize this as a binky.

    But What About Belle?

    So why doesn’t he ever challenge Belle to a nose battle. Well, uhhhhh…you see, he does actually, but she HAAATES nose battles and will just sit there and scream at him in whispery tones (it sounds like a screech almost), until he just gives up.

    Butter, The Mediator

    In a lot of cases, neutered males can act as the mediator between two girls bitching at each other. More often than not, Belle and Bianca will have some sort of dispute. One day, while this was happening as usual, Butter decided to take up his destiny as The Mediator Pig! (Being the sole neutered male in their cage.) Nose battles as we know are his favorite way of solving problems, so when he saw that Belle and Bianca were arguing over something, he happened to nearby (just a few inches away), and raised his nose, like “Oh ohh, I know! What about–?” But Belle just crabbed at him like “No, we’re not doing that!” Then he just walked away like “ohh .___.”

    (Butter recently, has been reduced from boss pig to henpecked husband, btw.)

    11.25.17

    As of writing this, I’ve had to move Bianca from their cage (16 square feet) to a much much smaller cage, following her spay. Her recheck is Monday, so I’m sure (hopefully) Butter will welcome her back with open arms, just so he can have someone to nose battle with again. He’s trying with Belle lately, and well….yeah.

  • Loads and Loads of Inodes

    Loads and Loads of Inodes

    Ever log into your cPanel (/whatever backend interface your host gave you for managing your websites) and noticed you had high inode usage?

    For me, I found an abnormal number of inodes in…

    • my default email account (the one that never gets used except for server info like cron jobs, etc)
    • ~/tmp directory

    Cleaning both of them out brought the % of inodes from 90% to…9%. Ayup, big difference.

    What are inodes? 🤔

    Inodes are defined here:

    An inode represents each file stored from your account. Every email, website page, image, etc. is one inode and that reflects the total number of files you can store on your hosting service.

    Hawkhost Help Center
  • FINALLY…The Impossible Whopper

    FINALLY…The Impossible Whopper

    Waaaay back in March last year, I decided to switch to being vegan. I won’t go into too much detail, but the main reasons were for animal welfare and for the environment. And hearing that Burger King just recently introduced the Impossible Whopper to the world made me go 😱.

    When my meat-eating peers decided to journey out to get a hold of Popeye’s recently introduced, much hyped chicken sandwich, I decided I would go out with them and get BK’s recently introduced, much hyped Impossible Whopper.

    It normally comes with mayo and (I’m assuming like most cheeseburgers) cheese, which I ordered without. When we got home, I added my own Follow Your Heart vegenaise and the last bit of (ancient) Violife block cheese I bought a long time ago.

    The taste was juuuust like a regular fast food burger. Depending on your view of fast food burgers, this may be a good or bad thing. But there you go. The Cheesecake Factory sells Impossible burgers, but you can tell they’re just black bean burgers. The only other place I know of that can cook Impossible burgers to taste like fast food burgers is the food truck, Vuture Food. 🥺❤️ So yeah, it’s pretty darn awesome.

    And oh yesss, I remember when it was first introduced, there was a lot of banter on both sides of various issues.

    The Impossible Whopper Is Cooked On The Same Surface As Meat!

    (Ye gods, the lawsuits involving this. 😑)

    Unless if it’s actually stated it’s cooked on a separate surface (or if it’s from a vegan/vegetarian-only restaurant), expect your meat substitute to be cooked on the same surface as meat.

    Take these into consideration:

    • Places like BK didn’t originally have anywhere to cook non-meat meat, sooo suddenly expecting them to have a separate area is unreasonable.
    • Having your veggie burger cooked on a surface that was previously used for meat doesn’t change the fact that someone ahead of you ordered meat.
    • Also making a big fuss like this just discourages more restaurants from wanting to serve non-meat eating people, which in turn will mean there are less people who will want to try veggie foods. When you think about the above bullet point, this actually hurts animals more.

    There are some non-meat eating people who can’t even digest the slightest amount of meat juices (I thankfully, might not be one of them). If you’re one of these people, you might want to try veg-only restaurants. Burger King will also microwave your Impossible Whopper for you if you ask.

    (But really….microwaved Impossible burgers…? 🤔)

    Burger King Profits Off Of Animal Cruelty And Exploitation! Why Are You OK With Supporting This Company?

    Ohhhhkay, unless you actually grow your own food, you’re always going to be supporting a company that sells meat, eggs or dairy–usually all three. Trader Joe’s, Sprouts, Whole Foods?

    Also by buying veggie foods from companies that also sell animal products tells said company that there is a market for veggie foods and that they should make more! And more animals win!

    *insert major healthy concern here like soy, the fact that it’s junk food, etc*

    No, it’s not healthy. But neither are regular cheeseburgers. Unless if you’re eating an Impossible Whopper (and other processed veggie junk foods) a lot, I wouldn’t worry about it. Pretend it’s a meated cheeseburger and have it as a treat. 🤷‍♀️ I’m actually excited meat eaters are willing to give veggie foods a try.

  • Star Wars: The End of an Era (No Spoilers)

    Star Wars: The End of an Era (No Spoilers)

    I’m probably being overly dramatic, but I finally saw Rise of Skywalker. 🥺 I’ve heard a lot of people were disappointed, that it didn’t answer all the questions or it created more questions. But you know, I kinda don’t care! I think it was a great end to the “main” Star Wars movies.

    It scored a lot of nostalgia points for me. In particular seeing returning characters we haven’t seen for a while aaand had a few callbacks from the prequels1. (And Rebels and Clone Wars but I didn’t watch Rebels till after, still finishing Clone Wars after a giant hiatus.) Which was 🥺 complete nostalgia fuel for me.

    If you’re uber into Star Wars2, you might enjoy it just because of those reasons.

    1. Being one of few, probably about…20? people on the planet who actually liked the prequels.
    2. As in, Wookieepedia is your Bible, you know the backstories or at least the names of even the background characters who are seen for 10 seconds, etc