Black Friday, Eden Prairie mall at 1am, originally uploaded by benjaminhigginbotham.

Cariann is nuts and I’m the best huband ever. The above shot is what
our local mall looked like at 1:00 am CST when they opened for Black
Friday. Yes you read that right, one in the morning!!!

Personally, I think Amazon Prime is the way to go.

Apple store southdale lost power, originally uploaded by benjaminhigginbotham.

Most of the mall lost power. The Apple Store Southdale has two
phantom lights that stay on, but otherwise everything else is
offline. Now I wonder how long it will take for them to get to me, I
was next in line at the Genius bar.

Think for a moment that this would slow them down? Nope, any request
for service for laptops or mobile devices that had their own power
source they kept working on. Kudos genius bar, kudos.

Dinner, originally uploaded by benjaminhigginbotham.

I’ll let you guys make captions…

Madison wants nothing to do with anybody, originally uploaded by benjaminhigginbotham.

Madison is done at the U of M for now. They did some tests and have found that she may need surgery. For now they are going to try a much less invasive procedure.

The current theory that Madison’s vagina is not tight enough which is allowing bacteria in. While it’s easy to crack jokes at this point, the reality of it is that this is very serious. Doing some quick Mahalo searches revealed a couple pages talking about Feline Urinary Syndrome or FUS. The symptoms seem to fit but the doctors are unsure right now. The theories they have won’t be proven until the cultures come back. It could be one thing, it could be multiple things (they are looking for kidney stones too) they simply don’t know. She has been sick long enough for us to know that something is really not right.

Hopefully the doctors are on the right track and she will be OK. We’re running out of options. This is the same cat that jumped off our 9th story balcony and survived (which is apparently so common that the vets have it as a separate category in their system.) She’s a fighter and while she hates going in for any work (as seen in the above picture) she won’t just let a silly infection get to her.You know I must love this cat very much as her total medical bills are now well over $10,000 (most of that was for her 9 story fall). I may be crazy, but I refuse to give up. She is one of my all time favorite cats and as long as she won’t give up, neither will we.More updates as Cariann gets them to me, but I have a feeling that this is about all we’ll have for today. Need some time for the test results to come back.

A pissed off Madison, originally uploaded by benjaminhigginbotham.

This is a quick shot that my Wife got of my favorite cat, Madison.

Our little Madison has been having urinary tract infections for about a year now. The vets have been unable to get them under control. This shot was taken as my wife was taking Madison to the U of M for additional research to see if they can figure out what is going on.

Why is it that I always seem to want items that I simply can’t have?  My latest tech toy lust is for an Optimus Maximus keyboard.  This is the perfect keyboard for anyone that works in creative computing.  The keys change based on the application that one is in.  When I’m in Photoshop all of my keys will display Photoshop shortcuts, when I’m in Final Cut Pro my FCP shortcuts will be seen.  I can switch between layouts as well.  I actually trained myself how to use a Dvorak layout and miss it.  With the simple press of a button I can have the keyboard switch from QWERTY to Dvorak and back again.

Each key is an independent OLED screen that can be a 48×48px still image/icon or it can be a 10fps movie.  Imagine productivity climbing as keys are removed from the layout and simply go black to not get in your way as you try and work in a specific tool on a pro app.  Of course it’s the ultimate gamers keyboard too.  

Sound cool?  You know it is!  And you better know by now that if *I* want one it will be scary expensive.  Right now the keyboard is a wee over $1,500 USD as a pre-order only.  The first batch will begin shipping this December and they are already sold out.  The second batch is slated to ship February of 2008.

Oh, I can’t have just any keyboard.  No, no.  I need a keyboard that costs as much as a good laptop. Yeah, that’s what I need.

Admit it though, you want one too.  To get you through this you may want to follow their blog.  Careful though, the more you read about it, the more you’ll want one.

I have *finally* gotten around to hanging my really cool dragon triptych in my office.  In addition to that I wanted to post as to blow The Deets’ very own Ed out of his mind.  Woah.Check it out, but you really should just visit my office to see it in all its glory.