Psst.

Live feeding isn't evil.

Live feeding isn't inhumane.

Live feeding is stupid, but that's all. Letting your $.99 mouse kill your $100+ snake is just silly. (And they CAN kill the snake. Even if the mouse doesn't kill it right away, a badly mouse bitten snake often has to be put down.)

*evil grin* If you differ, feel free, but I'm going to think you're a bleeding heart, fluffy, PETA-like person. Dead mouse is dead mouse, whether it arrived frozen, or I twisted its little neck after I bought it or the snake strangled it. It's just as dead. If you think the way it dies matters to the mouse... well, please be prepared to offer up a darn good explanation, I've yet to hear one that didn't amount to "but the poor fluffy little thing suffered! *sniffsniff*" Because you know what's the funny thing? One way they kill feeder mice is by suffocating them. Yep. It's quite possible it'll get strangled either way. And when it boils right down to it, it's a mouse. Maybe it's the cat in me, but I don't think there's anything wrong with a mouse suffering a little bit, if that's what it takes to feed something else.

There's your FYI for the day, courtesy of stupid strangers who invade my lj and take issue with my opinions on feeder rodents.

Nagware

I like Mahjongg solitare. It is one of those mindless pleasures. And feeling rather like being vegetative on Sunday, I went hunting for a shareware copy of it. I found a rather nice one, with lovely graphics, good mellow background music, and a few alternate games that are pretty fun. However, it has the most annoying "buy me!" nag I have ever encountered. Argh. Not content with popping up a little "buy me" when you start the program, not even content with going "buy me!" when you begin a new game, this thing pops up with "buy me!" every ten moves while you are playing. Literally. Every. Freaking. Ten. Moves. As I play fairly fast (current reccord game time just under 5 minutes) this means I'm getting a nag every few seconds! It even nags you when you're playing the little vaguely tetris-like block dropping game, so it can bollox up your game play while you try frantically to click on the thing and get it to go away before your little batch of tiles hits the ground in the wrong spot.

So I rolled my eyes, and went to look at how much this thing costs, thinking that paying a couple of bucks to get rid of the Nag Of Doom would be all right. Couple of bucks, thought I! But no, this thing is $22.95!!!!!

Now I understand that a lot of work went into this. Making all those pretty tilesets and getting all that pseudo-oriental music took time and effort, not to mention coding the gameplay itself. I know this. I don't mind paying a little money for somebody's hard work. But for crying out loud! I can go to a physical brick and mortar game store and find a copy of Mahjongg that's just as pretty for five bucks! Maybe ten! Mahjongg is not Halo. Mahjongg is not even Battlechess. Mahjongg is available perfectly free in literally thousands of places. YOUR Mahjongg, annoying person with the Nag Of Doom, is available for free, and there are cracks out there for it! Could you not be sane and sensible and charge a going market rate for this thing, rather than twice that? I am betting that you would make more money in the long run if you did so. Gah! I am not paying twenty-three bucks to somebody who has already annoyed the heck out of me by begging for my money every couple of seconds!

Musings

It is strange to think, but at one point I tuned out guitar solos when listening to music. I was from a vocal background, and vocals were what I listened to music for. This is why I used to not enjoy classic rock. Too much guitar, not enough voice, and I was just tuning out the guitar as background noise, waiting impatiently for all this flailing about with strings to get over with and the singing to start again.

Then a song got me to notice a guitar solo, and realise that hey! This is music! Real music. Great music, even. It was, in fact, a Pink Floyd song (Hey You, to be specific. Comfortably Numb was the first song to get me to really like Floyd, but the guitar solo still didn't register properly with me until after I heard Hey You) and Floyd is probably still my favorite guitar sound out there. I have enough Floyd music that I've been listening to it all day and haven't repeated any yet.

But it is funny to think that at one point I listened to the entirety of the Wish You Were Here album, and didn't think it was that great. Too much guitar noise, not enough music, I thought. Tastes change.