Stephanie Chung

I have read in a lot of places that your rats should always have food available for when it’s hungry. I used to do that but Ratacus started to gain a lot of weight really fast. Then I also read that obesity is a common thing in a lot of rats. So I came up with this eating schedule:

a) Every morning before work, I go by their cage and feed them 1 lab block each. That’s all they have during the day until 6:30pm when I get home. Why not leave food out? They spend all day sleeping (I’ve seen it on my days off). They won’t burn all the calories they ate anyways and rarely wake up and say “HEY WHERE’S FOOD?!”

b) 6:30pm I come home. “Boys! Dinner!” and they rush to their cage door and wait for me to open it and let them out. They each get 1 lab block (for now). They scurry back into their cage and sometimes eats it right then and there (again proof that not all the time, they’re hungry).

c) If they’re done eating or just stored their food for later, I usually take them out to play around 7:30pm. Gives me the hour to myself and boyfriend if needed to just unwind and relax. Once they’re out, they run about a little. Sometimes I give them little treats here and there of dry cereal. This is also how I taught Splinter the word “ball” as a command to run and touch his plastic ball toy. Ratacus comes up on to me and licks my lips when I say “kissie kiss” and that is how he earns his treats. They both get treats for coming when called and random treats because I love them.

c) The bone. Yes, I feed my rats dog bones. I bought milk bones for medium sized dogs and I break it in half and each gets half a bone. They gobble that up. :)

d) Goodnight boys. Before bed, I fill their little food bowl with 6-8 lab blocks in case they want to eat during the night. I usually take them back out in the morning and then start the cycle over again. My rats have been on this sort of schedule for over a month and they’re perfectly filled and happy.

So someone was curious about how to get the_time to work in Wordpress. Here’s an example (taken from this theme I customized) on how to use the_time:

This is the basic way to show the month, day and year like shown in my posts:

the_time('F j, Y');

However if you want to do something with the actual timestamp (such as showing time you posted), you can use this:

the_time('g:i a');

Refer to the chart below to know what character to use in to customize the display (You’d just change the F j, Y in the_time(‘F j, Y) ).

read more…

I bought one of those hay-weaved boxes for the rats and some cheesecloth to put in it. I didn’t know how much they’d take to it but last night after playtime, I stuck it in there for them to explore more (it used to sit on the couch since the two couches are their play areas).

This morning, I found both my rats cuddled up inside their hay box, sleeping. It looked so comfortable from the way they looked so relaxed. I walked by their cage and they woke up and just looked up at me knowing it was time for breakfast and a little petting before I went off to work. I was happy that they used the box though because I like watching them sleep, which I wasn’t able to do with the sleeping house they already had in there. :)

Today I got quite a bit of comment spam. In researching a possible solution, I have learned how to block IP addresses in the .htaccess file. I never had much experience working with that file but I’m starting to explore what can be done. Here’s an example. Each line containing an IP address can be changed accordingly.

order allow,deny
deny from 123.456.78.901	
deny from 123.456.78.901
deny from 123.456.78.901
deny from 123.456.78.901
allow from all

We all struggle with some sort of balance. Whether it’s school and work. Work and games. Sleep and work. Working and not working. Games and girlfriend. Games and boyfriend. You can probably think “I spend way too much time doing this and not enough to this” and you got a balance issue. And if you don’t, I seriously applaud you.

I was an avid World of Warcraft player for a while. And for a while I quit the game because I got too wrapped up in it and it basically just wrecked everything I was working towards. I was obsessed with getting the highest gear to be in raids. I lost my job. I went into debt. I was unemployed for 2 years. Then I quit, I got tired of the bullshit in the gaming world.

Recently I started up again, probably two months ago at most. And recently, my interest in the game has been dying. When you live with your boyfriend and you go from spending time doing things and going out or watching movies together to just playing WoW every evening, it gets mundane. I miss watching movies with my boyfriend. I miss the dating life. Now I feel like I’ve gotten to the point where most evenings, I watch him raid or queue for random instances and stuff without even giving a thought about dinner or doing anything else. He’s becoming the WoW schmuck and I’m trying to not. I learned my lesson.

I guess this is to say, it’s not that I mind him playing. I watch him play at times. Hell, if he needed a healer, I’d log on and play with him. It’s just, I miss doing the quality things of actually spending time with him. The moments where it’s not just before he falls asleep or not before he leaves for work or in between raids or instances. Sometimes I want hugs without him holding onto the mouse. Augh.

How do I say it? I miss dating him.

For my birthday, I got a Splinter, which is a rat. He was bought because a) I wanted a 2nd pet rat and b) Ratacus (my first rat) needed someone to keep him company.

The first day, Splinter was really timid and scared. I thought after a few days, he’ll get used to the new environment and come out of his shell a bit. That was how Ratacus reacted after all. A week or two passed and there was no such luck.

Then I read about this technique called “Force Socialization” where basically, you force the rat to be in your hands for a certain amount of time. He can be in your lap but he just has to be in contact with you. I decided to give this method a try. I set Splinter out to play on the couch just to see what he’d do. He huddled into a little corner and just stood there.

I picked up Splinter and rested him on my lap, telling him that he’s going to spend the next 20 minutes getting use to me. He tried to run back into his corner but I kept putting him back on my lap. Eventually he calmed down and sat there with me. Ratacus came to visit (like he often does) and I kept talking to both of them softly telling Splinter “see, Ratacus isn’t scared. You shouldn’t be either…”

After 20 minutes of “good behavior”, I set Splinter back down and gave him space for 5 minutes. After that, I reached out and tried to pet him and he cowered away. I saw that he was still scared and avoiding contact so I picked him back up for another long while.

Things didn’t change overnight but within a few days, he certainly did make tremendous improvements. Another thing I did was limit the amount of food they have in their cage so that they’re forced to look to me for food. I have a set schedule for when they eat and how much they eat.

Nowadays (about 3 weeks later), Splinter is really outgoing and looks for trouble more so than Ratacus. Both are very curious and loves running around on the couch. I usually spend 15 minutes with them just training them to come when I call them. Ratacus has it down but Splinter still need some encouragement with treats. However, I would say, yes, this method has certainly worked for my two rats. :)

Taming a rat really forces the bond between the two of you. Splinter is way more comfortable around me than most people that come around and handle him. He knows I won’t hurt him and that I’m probably loaded with treats. The important thing to remember is to be gentle and patient. There were times when he wouldn’t sit still with me and there were times where he looked to huddle with me for safety. It’s important to talk to your rats and your tone really does matter. Be soothing. Be friendly (not familiar). And tell them when they’re being good.

I just had my face-to-desk moment this morning. I had a little side gig and while working, I’m answering this guy’s email about his new Wordpress site. I start asking some questions of my own and the stupidest answer I’ve ever gotten: I have no content for my site.

So here folks, this is what you should have when you begin a serious blog (as in not something you’re going to ignore for months on end). Whether or not is personal use or professional use, that is irrelevant. However, if you’re planning on reaching out to someone to help you design and get your blog started, you should have at least this much.

1) An idea of what you want to put on that site.
Is it going to be a personal blog like this one where you talk about anything and everything from life to your interests to the coin that fell out of your pocket and went down the storm drain? Is it going to be a niche blog focusing on one topic that you amazingly know a lot about? Is it going to be a photos blog?

2) What categories do you want to have?
Categories are key to site organization if you’re using Wordpress (I cannot vouch for a whole lot of other blogging platforms). If everything is thrown into “Uncategorized,” do you have an alternate way to organize your content?

3) Design. How do you want your blog to look?
Are you going to go with a default blog and just overshadowed the design a billion other people have with amazing content? Are you going to want your design custom made? Are you going to find someone to do it or are you going to make it yourself?

4) Resources. What do you need to make this blog run?
Do you have hosting? Do you have a domain name or someone that can provide you with a web address? Are you going to use video? If so, do you have enough resource to store those videos somewhere?

5) Your own concept.
There are a billion blogs out there probably playing copycat of another blog. There are a million sites out there that does the same thing YouTube does and yet Youtube still probably is the most used video site ever (not based on any research). Have your own concept and your own niche. There’s a lot of “Been there, done that” so if you have a fresh idea not a lot of people have tapped into, use it!