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Chronicles INDEX :: Chronicles 2 :: Chronicles 3 :: Chronicles 4 :: Chronicles 5 :: Chronicles 6 :: Chronicles 7 :: Chronicles 8 :: Chronicles 9 :: Chronicles 10 :: Chronicles 11 :: Chronicles 12 :: Chronicles 13 :: Chronicles 14 :: Chronicles 15 :: Chronicles 16 :: Chronicles 17 |
Weezil Cam is BACK Online After what seems like months, the Extreme Weezils' Weezil Cam is back online, hopefully for good ...
Briefly, this is what we had to go through for success:   drill a hole in the ceiling of the ferret room where the cam cord exits from the atticbefore that could happen, we had to FIND the place to drill the hole, no easy feat!purchase five long USB Extension cables, camera mounting unit, and labor timetwo complete hard drive reformats for my husband's computer due to software conflictsa lot of dissapointing false startsFor better or worse, right now we only have the one camera going. I think this way works out just fine, as the camera has a wide angle shot that can capture almost the entire room. We try to keep it running most of the day, and shut the Weezil Room light off around 7 or 8pm Pacific Time. Even with the light off, the camera is so light sensitive that any light from the hallway or nearby rooms is sometimes alone sufficient to be able to see what the Extreme Weezils are up to. Disaster Strikes and Foils Our Weezil Cam Setup ... Just For Now ... After spending yesterday afternoon drilling, measuring, cord snaking, wire hangering, and watching the ferrets try their hands at power tools, we are still without Weezil Cam. No one is more dissapointed than myself, I assure you all ...
A family friend, Garrett, came over to our house with his professional tool assortment. Things like board detectors, electric cord threader, and an assortment of unbelievably long drill bits to go in his power drill decorated the Weezil Room. Not missing a chance for mischef, the six ferrets were swarming all the new stuff in their room. After all, it is their room, so that means they can do whatever they want to whatever is in there. I call it the "In The Room Rule."Raven spent the entire time trying to climb up Garrett's pant leg, inside the bottom of his pant leg, and even managed to get her cold wet nose on his back when he had to lift his arms up to measure, causing his t-shirt to rise just enough to make room for a little Raven nose ... After I apologized many times for the ferrets' behavior [and also explained that they were, after all, just being ferrets] the deed was done. We had USB Extention cables running from the front living room [our computer room] to the Weezil Room, emerging from the ceiling in the far corner. The camera mounted to give a perfect angle for the web cam to capture, and we were good to go. We slipped Garrett some money and he was on his way. My exitement mounted as the software for the Weezil Cam was being setup. I heard various swears and frustrated outbursts coming from the direction of my husbands computer, but wisely chose to ignore them. After a couple of hours of this, I found out that the installation process was at a stalemate. After dinner, we attacked the problem again. This time, I heard much more swearing and outbursts, followed by the dreaded head-in-hands pose that means disaster. Somehow my husband had deleted a USB Port connector, rendering his mouse and keyboard completely useless. He tinkered with this problem for another couple of hours, before retiring for the night with a promise to start anew the next morning. THE NEXT MORNING .... Sometime It's WEEZIL CAM Day All Over Again Due to unforseen complications, the reemergence of Weezil Cam has been far overdue, I know. Today, however, this household is putting it's all into getting Weezil Cam up and running. This is the plan: Instead of going UNDER the house, we are going OVER it. The attic space, which is simply the area between the roof and the ceiling of the house with slats laid for walking it's length, will be the route that the many USB Extention cables will lay.
Starting from the far corner of the computer room, we will drill a small hole in the ceiling to feed the initial USB cable up from my husband's computer and into the attic.Following a straight line, the USB cables will emerge back into the house via the back corner of the ferret room's ceiling. The resulting camera angle with the really cool web cam we got a deal on last year will make for a near perfect shot of all the Extreme Weezils... Cross your fingers, paws, claws, or anything you got to wish us luck in this endeavor! Despite an almost flawless plan, we were yet again foiled by circumstances beyond our control in getting Weezil Cam back up and running. After waiting two weeks for the USB extension cables to arrive, we were notified that the company we had ordered them from was suddenly 'out of stock'. That set us back a ways, but we recovered quickly and soon had the cables delivered to our front door ... The entire premise was based on the sketchy knowledge of what lies underneath the house. There is a cement foundation riddled with insulation, piping, mazes of ventilation, and other nameless horrors than are too awful for me to contemplate. However, my husband assured me that he would have no problem running the USB extension cables from underneath the computer room to the ferret room.My husband was under the house for what seemed like quite a long time. I started to feel quite guilty about asking him to help me set up Weezil Cam and sending him under the house, into the realm of the unknown. After what seemed like hours, he reappeared at the back door, covered in fiberglass, dust, and thankfully unidentifiable stuff all over his clothes and hair. The look on his face told me that Weezil Cam would NOT be on schedule by going online that day, and his detailed explanation about the obstacles he faced made the entire idea look hopeless indeed. Hours later, we finally came up with an alternative way to hook up Weezil Cam : instead of going through the FLOOR and underneath the house, we will be going through the CEILING, up through the attic. STAY TUNED, EITHER MONDAY OR TUESDAY NEXT WEEK WILL BE ONLINE TIME FOR THE NEW AND IMPROVED WEEZIL CAM ... December 7, 2001 1:11pm PST The Extreme Weezils' Ferret Cam - Weezil Cam is being worked on RIGHT NOW
December 4, 2001 One of the most precious things in my life is the joy I get from being around my fuzzies, all eight of them - six ferrets and two cats. It is not all that often, much to my regret, that I spend time with the fuzzies by myself without trying to multi-task. It is my nature to try to take advantage of every spare moment I have to do two or more things simultaneously, a nature I hope to change for the better now that I don't have to distract myself from the fact that we are all crammed in a tiny apartment ... Dusty has always been the more eccentric of our two cats, of course taking a strong liking to myself as a kindred spirit. She is usually within earshot, and never misses a chance to follow me into the bathroom. This morning I noticed that Dusty was playing with ... well ... nothing. She was in the kitchen, right after the rug from the computer room ends, pawing at the floor like she was playing with something. I looked long and hard, but could not find even a remnant of the object of her enjoyment. However, if Dusty wants to paw at a crack in the hardwood floor in the kitchen while acting like she is having the best time all week, she can do so with my blessing ... See - ferrets aren't the ONLY species that can be silly! This past week has been one of change, loss and gain, adjustments, and new ways of thinking for man and beast living under our roof. For better or worse, I have been unable to sit at this computer for more than a few moments at a time for over a week, creating a gap between what is actually happening with the Extreme Weezils and what is found among these web pages. I hope to remedy that in the weeks to come. Here is what I will be working on for this month: The Extreme Weezil Cam WILL be up and running within the next week to ten days New photos, videos, and stories will be added Redesign of the Extreme Weezils Site Award and You've Been WEEZILIZED icons Various site enhancements redesigned or added A planned total redesign of the look and feel of the entire Extreme Weezils site ... much more that I probably will not be able to get to before the year has ended thus will not be listed here yet |
Preparing to Move ... Impact on Our Fuzzies and Beyond In yet another way our six ferrets have had a significant impact on our lives. My husband and I jumped at a rare opportunity to purchase our first house - from HIS parents - during a whirlwind time of change. My father-in-law was laid off early in the summer and used that as a reason to look elsewhere in the country for a place to settle down and retire.
Suddenly, the only family that I had for 3,000 miles around, were leaving. It seemed to be so sudden and I considered it a rash decision, until my husband and I somehow came up with the idea of offering to buy his parents house. 
After living in this apartment for five years, both my husband and myself were ready to expand our domestic horizons. If not for the difficulties of moving all the way across the country with six ferrets and two cats in tow, we may have already been heading east - towards a future in my homeland of the New England area. Several best-case scenarios presented themselves, resulting in my father-in-law already in Alabama working his dream job and my mother-in-law wrapping things up here in Western Washington State to join him soon. She is preparing their stuff to be moved to AL while preparing her house to be occupied by her son and his wife [that would be ME as the wife....] We spent more time discussing how we want to set up the new ferret room than in trying to decide on whether to buy the house. It was almost a gimmie, since we have both been anxious to move into a house, even though we weren't quite financially ready for it just yet. Buying from my in-laws seemed to create the perfect balance needed for both parties - they can take their time moving to Alabama and we can gradually shift on up Interstate-5 to the house... When preparing to move, start looking for potential ferret-proofing issues immediately. I have looked around my in-laws house recently as if I had never seen it before, watching for potential hiding places, escape hatches, and other possible dangers to our Extreme Weezils. It has taken us over a year and a half to feel even remotely comfortable that we have adequately ferret proofed where we are living now. I hope that we are now prepared to do so again, but much quicker this time. |
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