I was in the office on Thursday—a more or less weekly occurrence for me—working on some computer problems when someone got off the phone and sighed.

“Has that order for – – – – – – – – – gone out yet?”

“No, it’s still waiting to be packed.”

“Well, don’t bother. He called to cancel it.”

Steve, with whom I was discussing the aforementioned computer problems, chuckled.

“What?” I asked.

“That guy has canceled every single order he’s ever placed with us,” he explained. “We’re just lucky this one didn’t go out yet. It’s like he’s a compulsive shopper who can’t afford the credit card bills, so he returns everything after he’s bought it.”

I got into the spirit of it. “Yeah,” I said, “Binge and purge, like an eating disorder.”

Then it hit me. “Oh my God, he’s buylimic!”

Maybe you had to be there.

….all eight of you. 😉

Sorry it took so long for me to post another entry, but I’ve been busy setting up my newest toy, The Birdie Cam, which lives in the left column of my blog, just above the weather reports. By popular request (i.e., Margaret, the most popular person in the world, to me at least), I have gone and erected a Web cam pointed at our back yard bird feeder. Here you are likely to see house finches, chickadees, starlings, flickers and others, depending on the time of day and season. The suet feeder will occasionally be completely covered with a swarm of bush tits (if you should catch one of these events, feel free to shout out “Whoah, look at the bush tits on that one!”)

I managed to pick up an Intellinet 550710 IP Camera for a song at my favorite local computer store, Computersonics. It’s a wonderful camera, capable of hosting up to 100 simultaneous users, with a lot of nice bells and whistles not normally found in a camera in its price range. Among other things, it streams images via both and ActiveX (read: Microsoft plugin, Microsoft browser, probably only compatible with Microsoft eyeballs), and Java, which is fairly unusual. A lot of cheaper cameras only offer ActiveX, which makes them unavailable to Macintosh users. It even supports Power Over Ethernet (POE), and has a CS lens mount, compatible with a wide range of closed-circuit television/security cameras.

I upgraded the lens to a Computar 12–75 Zoom Lens, which brought the bird feeder to a zoom where you could actually identify the birds. Hell, at this zoom you can practically see up their little nostrils. (Do birds have nostrils? Have to check with my wife on that. Of course, she’ll probably say “How the hell should I know?” which is what she usually says when I ask her an animal-type question, despite the fact that she’s a veterinarian.)

Anyway, I hope to enjoy many hours streaming the video while I work, and I hope you find some mild amusement in it as well. The bird traffic should be much higher during the summer, so check back as often or as rarely as you see fit.

Postscript: turns out I’m using the wrong lens, which explains some focus problems I’ve been having. Have to get a spacer to make this lens fully compatible with the camera. Yippie, more to tinker with! I may make a hobby out of this.