Binary, Armadillos, &c.

Those Slicers who enjoyed my now rather lengthy hiatus are welcomed, but will no doubt be disappointed to learn that I believe I have compiled enough material to write effectively and hilariously for at least the remainder of the week.

You may recall that from time to time I like to mess around with binary code (computer language consisting of only 1's and 0's). No surprise then that today while dating some paperwork I noticed that the six digit rendering of today's date is 011111. In binary this means: Error: Malformed binary. Your binary code must be divisible by 8. Who knew?

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Remember when I found that dead opossum behind my office? I wrote about it here: Varmint Disposal. Thought you might like to know that my skills are not limited to the dearly departed. A week or two before Christmas, as I pulled into my driveway, I noticed an armadillo was attempting to destroy my carefully tended flower beds. This was the 2nd time I ran across the beast. The first time was about 11:30 at night and not wanting to interact on a personal basis with the creature, I chased him around the neighborhood with my Range Rover. Despite tearing up mine and my neighbors yard, I did no damage to the armadillo. Luckily, I think my neighbors have already accepted the fact that I'm a strange guy and so weren't overly surprised to see me doing donuts in their yard, at midnight, blaring the horn and cursing the critter.

Not wanting to let him get away again, I decided to pursue him on foot this time. Keep in mind I'd just left work and was wearing a suit and tie. I jumped out of the car, grabbed a baseball bat out of the garage, and gave chase to the armadillo, who by this time was about 50 yards away and headed full speed towards the perceived sanctuary of my neighbors yard. Sadly, video evidence of the episode does not exist. I sprinted 200 yards (in black dress shoes) which in my physical condition left me basically useless when I finally caught up to him. Nonetheless, I, on a dead run, crushed him with the bat.

While celebrating over his corpse, I was able to take these 2 (somewhat graphic) photos:


Not until the following morning, when my breathing returned to its normal state, was I was able to take my neighbor's phone call. He wanted to know if I knew why his backyard was overrun with buzzards. It seems that in my excitement, I'd forgotten to properly dispose of the carcass, allowing nature to take its course...

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I notice that the quality of the writing above is not up to my usual standards. It might take me a few days to get into the swing of things. So I'll quit before I get further behind.