Pictures With My New Camera

So I broke down a couple of weeks ago and bought myself a new camera. I decided on a Nikon Coolpix and so far I'm pretty happy with it. My old camera, while it would take ok pictures as long as there was enough lighting, it didn't have a flash so indoor pictures were a bit harder to keep from being blurry. 

This camera seems to take great indoor pictures of my rats, which is what I was hoping for. Too many times pictures of the rats are blurry and I have to take 30 pictures to get one good one. Not any more. Here are some of the pictures I've taken with the new camera.

Here's Marbles my 4 year old rat. It may look like he's got some hair loss going on by his ears but he's a rex so his hair is sparse and completely missing in some places. 

Marbles hangs out on the bottom shelf of the cage because he has hind leg degeneration and can no longer walk up the ladder. But he's getting around slowly there on the bottom. He likes to move from the plastic igloo to the box and back again. In the morning I find him in the igloo and at night he goes over to the box. He's a bit anti social and doesn't like to be petted and when I try he will grab my finger with his teeth and push me out of his house. lol Poor grumpy old man. 

Here's one of the pictures I took for Easter. 

Lucky always gives me this look when I open the cage door. he's either thinking, "food or treat? or pet me?" lol 

Lucky looks a bit cross eyed in this picture. 

I really like my new camera. No more blurry pictures. 

Book Reviews

Hey guys, I have a few books reviews up for you to read if you feel so inclined. Just click the links to go to the review. 

The first one is Half Off Ragnarok by Seanan McGuire. 

Second one is The Witch Who Cried Wolf by Sarah Makela. 

Third one is Lone Wolf's Captive by Sherilee Gray. 

Have you read any of these? After reading the reviews do they sound like a book you'd like?

Happy Raturday!

Welcome to a new weekly blog post I'm calling, Raturday! I've seen Caturday and while that's really cute, I think the rats needs some photo time so everyone can see how cute these little animals are. I've gotten permission from Rat Logic's fb page to share their pictures on my blog. So get ready to smile because these are cute. 

Why I Will Never Do Business With Hewlett Packard *HP*

I want to share something with you all. My brother, Bill bought a color and a black ink cartridge from Walmart and brought them home. The color ink cartridge worked just fine but the black ink cartridge did not work at all because there was no ink in it or the ink was dry. He took it back to Walmart but they said because he had opened the package he would have to call HP.

He did that and the operator would not help him unless he gave the operator remote access to his computer to run a diagnostic on it, as well as the serial number to his printer. Now what they needed a serial number for I have no idea but he did give it to them and they said that his printer wasn't in their computer system so he must not have sent in the warranty card. What that had to do with the faulty ink cartridge, I have no idea.

Thankfully he was smart enough not to give them remote access to his computer. The operator had a distinct accent so Bill asked him where he was located and wouldn't you know the operator was in India. He wasn't even dealing with a US operator. After getting no satisfaction on the phone my brother asked me to write to HP and see if they would send him a coupon for a replacement cartridge or just send him a replacement cartridge. It's really very simple. They sold a faulty ink cartridge and all he was asking for was an ink cartridge that worked. So I sent HP an email and this is the response they sent back to my brother.....

"Hello Bil,

Thank you for contacting HP Total Care.

I greatly appreciate that you have forwarded your concern and have given us a chance to assist you in this matter.

Bil as you have already opened the cartridge thus we would not be able to provide you the refund or replacement for the same. I do apologize for the inconvenience you have faced and I do understand the value of money but as from our end we do have our limitations for the replacement. I hope you do understand our part and accept my sincere apologies for the same.

I understand the inconvenience that you may have faced during this transaction. Had I been in your place, I would most certainly have felt the same.

I would also like to provide you the web link for the compatible ink cartridges with your printer.

I would request you to please order ink from our website to get the genune product for your printer:

www.shopping.hp.com

If you need further assistance, please reply to this message and we will be happy to assist you further.

For information on keeping your HP and Compaq products up and running, please visit our website
at:
http://www.hp.com/go/totalcare

Sincerely,

Arnold
HP Total Care"

Now please read the entire email and first off you will see that not only are they NOT willing to do the right thing and send him a replacement ink cartridge for the faulty one they had on store shelves but they want him to buy a new one right from their website. I have also read this email a few times and the language is just...strange. " I hope you do understand our part and accept my sincere apologies for the same." Who talks like that?

They got my brother's first name wrong, It's Bill not bil. And they spelled genuine "genune". I call foul on this email. Sure looks to me that someone not in the US probably responded to the email and that's why this email looks and sounds strange. Probably the same guy that wanted remote access to my brothers computer. O.o

So as you can see, there's a very good reason for not doing business with HP. If you happen to have a problem with one of their products, even a simple ink cartridge...they WILL NOT help you.

Do Not buy Hewlett Packard *HP*, I know I won't be.

Weekly Rat Facts: Rats Like To Chew

So this is what Lucky's Space pod looked like after he was done chewing on it. This was new about 3 months ago. It's made of hard plastic, so it took him a while to chew in into submission. Every time he laid in it his butt stuck out the bottom but he didn't care. lol 

I bought him a new one and put it in his cage this morning when I cleaned it. He thanked me by chewing on it right away. lol 

Little stinker. 

Rats like to chew. They will chew on anything and everything so if you put them on the floor for free range time you have to make sure they don't get a hold of any wires because they will chew on them. 

Rats chew all the time to wear down their teeth. Since their teeth constantly grow then need to wear them down or else they will grow right down through their jaw. Some rats have misaligned jaws and their teeth don't wear down evenly and in those cases, their humans have to cut their teeth with clippers. A vet will give you the right clippers to get the job done right. To do that you have to wrap the rat up in a small hand towel or cotton blanket like a burrito and train them to let you open their moth and trim their teeth. You can also take them to the vet's office and let them do it. 

I give my boys hard dog biscuits, wooden bird toys and other hard toys for them to chew on to keep their teeth worn down. But Lucky loves to chew on his space pods. I might as well just buy another one right now because I know I'll need another one in about 3 months. lol 

Lucky chews on things more than any other rat I've ever had. He's pulling on my shirt here. Most of my shirts have holes in them because he's fast.

He can chew a hole in my couch cushions in 5 seconds flat. I just sewed another hole up on this couch. looks like I need that needle and thread again. 

Freebie Friday!

Welcome to another edition of Freebie Friday, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a 'Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

  You can find links to samples like these at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.

This week  received: 

3 coupons for a FREE snickers bar from their fb promotion. 

2 samples of Pantene shampoo and conditioner. 

I also received this book from Shelley Munro and she has a great blog, Adventure Into Romance with Shelley Munro. Thank you Shelley. :)

Review: Prego Bacon and Provolone Pasta Sauce

As you can see from the thumbs down sign my hubby, Ken is giving this jar of pasta sauce, we didn't like it. 

Let me give you a mental image of what this tasted like...

Imagine if you will the foul, acidic taste of vomit mixed with a bit of vinegar and tomato. Now blend that with a little imitation bacon flavor, some meat-like granules and the scent of dirty socks and you might understand what this pasta sauce is like. 

The people who made this must be non meat eaters or they would have understood that this tastes NOTHING like bacon. As soon as you pop the lid off of this jar, your senses are assaulted with the acrid aroma of dirty feet and liquid smoke. 

Never in my life have I tasted something so putrid that I wanted to spit the first mouthful back in the bowl. 

If you see this product on shelves, turn around and run away. Don't just walk, run!

Scary Dolls

My daughter brought me a couple of String Dolls because I like this sort of thing and I thought they were pretty cool. Have you seen them? Here's one of the String Dolls she gave me, it's Pumpkin Head. My daughter said she can get them for as little as .50 in the candy machines inside the grocery stores. They are great for keychains. 

And here's a little green string doll my daughter gave to me. It really reminds me of some kind of voodoo doll. But cute..o.O

String Dolls- What Are They?

Now how about Living Dead Dolls? I bought this one for my daughter when she turned 16. She loved it even though it freaked out my mom. lol Have you ever seen these? I think the dolls that are really popular right now are Monster High Dolls. 

Living Dead Dolls 

Happy Raturday!

Welcome to a new weekly blog post I'm calling, Raturday! I've seen Caturday and while that's really cute, I think the rats needs some photo time so everyone can see how cute these little animals are. I've gotten permission from Rat Logic's fb page to share their pictures on my blog. So get ready to smile because these are cute. 

Does Your Child Have A Favorite Stuffed Animal?

Because Easter is coming up next month and a lot of kids will be getting stuffed animals, I thought this would be an appropriate time for this blog post. When my daughter was little, she had an obsession passion for all thing ducks. When she was just a couple of year old she was given her first stuffed duck and she carried it around for a couple of years. It started getting really dirty and even though I washed it and sewed it back together I don't even remember how many times, she loved it. But once it was no longer going to stand up to another round in the washing machine and it started smelling like something that just came out of the garbage dump, we knew we were going to have to do something. 

So we made it a game. The new duck game. We bought her a new duck at easter and told her that the old duck had to go in a box that we would put in the closet. And believe it or not, she went for that. I guess she liked the idea of a new duck surprise. It got to be the 'thing' we did every year at Easter. We would go looking for just the right duck to replace the old one with and we put the old one in the dirty duck box. When my daughter turned 21, I gave her that box of dirty ducks and she thought it was the coolest thing. 

You could always tell which one was her favorite because it was the dirtiest one. lol That little one in the right front corner was her favorite that year. This was her duck collection. Like I said, she loved her ducks. 

She even got me in on her duck shenanigans. 

Everyone knew to give her some sort of duck for easter so she had a lot of them. She even got a duck umbrella one year. It was so cute. 

She thought it was hilarious to pile them on me and takes pictures. 

Romi, our first rat even got to play with the ducks. 

Di you have a special stuffed animal, does your child?

Weekly Rat Facts: Magazines

*Lucky's Birthday, he's 1 year old*

I don't have a subscription to any magazines because they don't usually have articles in them that I can 1.) relate too or 2.) find interesting. That is until recently. Just last month I signed up for a monthly subscription to It's A Rats World Magazine. 

Did you know that if you take cute pictures like the one above, you might be able to have it published in a magazine about rats? One such magazine is It's A Rats World and not only can you subscribe to the monthly  magazine and get loads of cute rat pictures but they accept pictures and stories for their magazine too. 

They also have a fb page.

There's also AFRMA *American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association*. When you sign up for a membership you also get their magazine style newsletter called Rat and Mouse Tales. 

You can also find Critter magazine that features different animals, including rats. And you can sign up for their free newsletter. 

So are these magazines something you would ever think about getting?

Where You Can Find My Articles

It's been a while since I posted a link to my Freelance Writing profile page and since I have about a dozen new followers I thought now would be a good time. For my new followers that may not know, I'm a freelance writer who mostly writes about small animal care but I have written about other subjects as well. Just click the link and scroll down through the different articles. 

My Articles

Freebie Friday: How To Get Free Author Swag

*click on pictures to enlarge*

Today I wanted to tell you about a site that you probably don't know about but should, Author Island. You can get a big box of author swag for the price of shipping, *inside the US $12.35 or if using Paypal $13.35* but she also sends to outside the US all you have to do is email her and she'll tell you how much the shipping fee would be, other than that everything is FREE! That's right, all you pay is the shipping charge and I had so much stuff inside my box that I had to use my couch and coffee table to spread it all out so you could see it. 

In my box was, 6 books, 2 tote bags, 3 sampler CD's, 40 refrigerator magnets, a butt load of bookmarks, cover flats, candy, pens, key chains, nail files, a ruler, a stuffed dragon, rubber duckie, post cards, magnetic buttons and notepads. 

There was so much stuff that Ken helped me spread it all out on the couch and coffee table so I could take a picture of it. 

And all you have to do in order to get this is pay $12.35 shipping *or $13.35 if using Paypal*

Some of the cover flats and book marks are autographed and one of my books was autographed by the author. The tan book bag was also autographed by Cheryl Dragon. 

So if you've been wondering how to get more author swag, here's your chance to load up on the stuff, plus get some great extras. Just visit Author Island and check out how to get a box of goodies for yourself.