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Category: The Paper

  • Choose chocolate or plush – not live animals this Easter!

    Choose chocolate or plush – not live animals this Easter!

    DID YOU KNOW….bunnies can live for 8-12 years? If you get a tiny, cute baby bunny for your 8 year old, the bunny will still be with you when said child heads off to college. Not tiny anymore, maybe not cute1 and chances are, with a lot more attitude. Think teenagers that never grow up.

    1Okok, I might be biased, but I think bunnies are cute at any age. 😅 I tend to favor the older ones especially.

    They need to be spayed or neutered by a rabbit-savvy vet

    Even if you have a non-breeding pair or a single rabbit, you will have a lot of problems on your hands.

    • Unaltered rabbits tend to be a lot more aggressive and territorial. The Monty Python bunny is not too far from reality (though with less flying leaps).
    • 80% of unaltered female rabbits end up getting cancer (uterine and/or ovarian) and end up dying at an early age. (Poor Daisy is one example. 😢)
      More info: Spaying and Neutering

    Rabbits poop A LOOOOT.

    Their digestive systems are always turned on and need to be constantly going 24/7. They accomplish by eating boatloads of hay. So if a bunny stops eating after 24 hours, they’re already at death’s door.

    And the chickens…

    I’m not too familiar with chickens, so I won’t give chicken trivia. Though it’s the same as bunnies. You think you’re getting a cute, baby animal then a year later, you have a full-grown chicken. D:

    Now if you’re actually interested committing to 8-12 years as a bunny/chicken parent, you’ll need to do some research. There are some good resources online that can help. Check rabbit.org for bunnies, and on Facebook. There are some local rescue groups–the Bunny Brigade who I linked to in the Daisy story above is also really good.

    As for finding a rabbit, the months following Easter is a good time to start looking at shelters and rescues for unwanted, “throw-away” pets. This is usually when people bought these critters start to think “what have I gotten myself into?” and will want to get rid of them.

    (I always support adopting rather buying rabbits. They are the 3rd most euthanized animal in shelters.)

    Source: a bunny volunteer of almost 4 years at the local animal shelter here. We’re no-kill and more often than not, overcrowded, so I’ve seen hundreds of bunnies of different ages, temperaments and health conditions go in and out of the shelter.

  • I now use a VPN for all my devices

    All because of this. Earlier I was using the built-in VPN that came with Opera, but since I sometimes use browsers for other things, I wanted a VPN to cover all web browsing activity (and I am a bit leery of free VPNs). So I bit the bullet and got a year of Private Internet Access. So far so good, though I’m noticing some problems…

    Windows 10 only:

    • On startup, after Windows fully boots, it takes a REALLY long time for it to load and start. The first 5 times or so I tried to get it running manually (even though it’s supposed to start automatically), it would take a while to connect, then disconnect. And other times, the software/launcher thing just wouldn’t start. I eventually got it running and connected.

    Android (not sure about iOS):

    • Pokemon Go does not work with a VPN. :/ Each time I tried to get it running, it would say “Cannot login”, and the retry button would loop back to the “Cannot login” error message. Turning off the VPN lets me in the game. (Ingress, PoGo’s predecessor has no problems with a VPN, but it also runs on older code.)
      • There is a setting in the PIA app where you can exclude certain apps like PoGo from the VPN. I tried it, and it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. Not sure if it’s a VPN issue or what.

    Windows 10 Mobile:

    • There is no PIA app for W10M, so I had to enter the settings in manually under Settings > Network & Wireless > VPN. One of the biggest problems is that after a few minutes, the VPN disconnects. I found that the VPN can stay connected much longer if I turn off wi-fi (and leave it running on data), and then turn it back on. But it only stays connected for less than 8 hours. It seems to me to be more of a W10M thing than a PIA thing. I don’t think people should have to do these workarounds for something so simple as keeping their VPN connected, so hopefully MS will fix this soon.

    iOS only:

    • Just after I put PIA on my iPad Mini, and let it go into sleep mode, I woke it up and saw that the VPN had disconnected. Lolwut. I turned it back on, and haven’t had problems with it disconnecting since.

    (FYI, I didn’t link to PIA’s site, since I didn’t want it to seem like I was endorsing them, though you can find them by Googling them. They seem to work the best for me, but might not be the case for everyone else–ex. they don’t have a trial version available, and only a 7 day window where you can get a refund if you don’t like it. So you only have 7 days to decide if it’s what you really want. If you’re looking for a VPN, check out this chart that someone made, with a detailed breakdown of each VPN’s strengths and weaknesses. Also you can check out r/VPN for more info on VPNs.)

  • A Time Traveler’s Dream (Two Parts)

    This entire dream had some form of time travel as a theme, broken up into a couple smaller dreams.

    Dream #1

    I found an article online that supposedly came from the far future, claiming that there was a conspiracy that the US president (in the future) had somehow manipulated asteroids into hitting Earth to test our planetary defenses. I then wondered if a super mystical warrior type (like a Jedi, one of the guys from Dragonball Z or someone like an Earthbender from Avatar) could reflect the rocks back into space or at least destroy them to keep them from hitting the ground and causing damage (and imagined an action sequence where the scenes involving the Jedi/Z Warrior/Earthbender using super reflexes to catch the rocks, sped up and when it got to the more suspenseful parts, slowed down like a lot of action movies).

    I feel like Obama actually did send for some Z Warrior-type guys to deflect the rocks.

    Dream #2

    (This was a very animeish-looking dream, in art style, music, pacing, story, etc.)

    There was a secret order dedicated to maintaining the balance of the Earth. The ones who had the power to maintain it were called the Guardians (a group of girls, which I was a part of). Everyone else protected the Guardians and were basically people like scientists, engineers, boss people, guards or assistants. Despite their status, the Guardians were actually subordinates of the boss people and had strict rules laid down for them.

    There was one moment where the scientists were trying out time travel and managed to open a portal into the very far future. We only saw a giant redwood tree in a forest, and realized that there was an apocalypse, which had wiped out most of mankind. While one of the scientists tried climbing the tree to leave a marker there (so when our time caught up with this future, we would be able to find the marker on the tree to tell if this really was the future we were seeing). He ended up falling and was greeted by a post-apocalyptic survivor, a plucky 12 year old girl. Upon finding out that they were from the past, she explained that  after the apocalypse, the surviving humans wound up living in trees, since all the buildings had been destroyed.  When the scientist tried climbing the tree again, I noticed the girl staring into the stream, with an almost sad look on her face.

    Later on, one of the Guardians (who looked a little like Tieve in her oracle outfit) noticed her cat wasn’t feeling well. The head guard, a young 20ish to early 30s sighed and ordered two of his guards to follow him, so they could escort the Guardian to the vet. When they got back, the other Guardians could tell that the cat was feeling a little better, but his owner was looking a little depressed.

  • I saw the live-action Ghost in the Shell movie today

    I saw the live-action Ghost in the Shell movie today

    I think I might be one of 20 or so Asians outside of Japan who is ok with the Major’s casting. (Then again, I also never saw the anime or read the manga, so not sure if my opinion would change.)

    [EDIT] I was reading comments on this on Kotaku (sorry, I don’t remember the actual article). People were saying things like, well you probably should be Japanese American for your opinion to count. But I am Japanese American (4th generation). 🤔 I guess my opinion still doesn’t count.