Hamster attack

You might recall that immediately after we had arrived home from buying her at the pet store we found that Bumble, Daughter's hamster, was accompanied by a number of unwanted guests: blood-sucking mites. Now it appears that she brought along another set of unexpected guests. She's pregnant! Daughter and I looked up various hamster sites (like YouHamster, iHamster, MyHamsterSpace, etc.) to see what we'd need to know. First of all it appears that the number of hamsterettes per litter is going to run upward of 40 or so. So we're looking for a new apartment with a couple of additional bedrooms. And "a very young mother hamster, typically one that was born in a pet store and became pregnant there before being sold, has a tendency to destroy its young". Note that "destroy" is a less unpleasant way to say that the kids might get eaten. Daughter does not like this scenario at all.

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Huangyangtan? Not much new. About 4,000 people have read the post over in the Google Earth forum since it hit the 100,000 mark a week ago. But there have been no actual developments in discovering what the facility is for.

Huangyangtan hits 100,000

It's a slow day HYT-wise, but one noteable thing happened: the Google Earth forum post about the Huangyangtan site was read for the 100,000th time. At that rate [Editor's note: KenGrok just left to get his calculator] it will hit the 200.000 mark in March 2008, though it's hard to say whether the world will still be around at that time, what with all the possible dangers lurking about Huangyangtan.

Huangyangtan - Bipolar disorder

A week ago 2,000 people a day were looking up the Google Earth forum post. Now it's more like 200. I never did determine the reason for the surge in interest. My mom wrote me an email and reported that, besides being busy processing apples from the neighbor's trees, she is still a faithful reader of this blog. Now clarifies the matter of who the person is that results in my blog not being read by zero readers per day.

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Wife gave me some time the other day to look around in Google Earth. I'm browsing around Beijing at the moment. There are a number of things outside of the city that hadn't yet been commented on in the forums. That surprizes me, because I thought that Beijing would be one the most heavily explored areas. Perhaps a bunch of new high-res photos have been added and people are just now getting around to checking them out. In any case, if you want have a look at these things that are kind of interesting:

Giant (70 meters wide) crab in a frozen lake:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/640038

A colorful 125-meter wide map of China set in a park:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/640185

Some facility with 23 large dish antennae:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/639831

Giant hairs clogging the Moselle River (not near Beijing):
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/636618

Huangyangtan in our hearts and in our minds

Oh, yeah, the surge of activity at the Google Earth forum has continued. About 2,000 people a day are reading the Huangyangtan post. Let me check [KenGrok opens another browser window, goes to the forum]. Yup, it has been read 93,594 times. I think it's mostly people in the U.S. who are looking into this. You can figure that out by clicking on "Who's Online" at the top of the forum page. Right now, for example, only two anonymous readers are looking at the post. All through the week that number would increase to 20 or 30 during the afternoon and into the late evening (Germany time). That would be the morning and afternoon in the U.S., when people are getting into their office and hopping onto the internet for a few hours of "work".

A smaller set of those people ended up visiting Found in China; about 700 people have stopped by during the past 3 days. And, as indicated earlier, one of them actually donated to The Cause! Wow.

Beetles vs The Hamster vs the Loud Family

Faithful Found in China readers have asked me what's the latest on the animal life within the KenGrok family. So I asked Daughter and her friend. Seems they were so excited about The Hamster that they forgot to feed the beetles, which were in a container on the friend's balcony. They walked next door and looked in on Edelstein and Blümchen. If anybody can use two dried-out dung beetles, just post a comment here.

El Hamster is doing fine. It seems to have quickly become hand-tame and enjoys the attention of Daughter. I had to reengineer its excercise wheel so that it would be less noisy during the night. I searched the internet for an answer as to why hamsters like their wheel so much. Seems there's no certain explanation. One theory is that as a nocturnal animal, they are used to covering up to 8 km / 5 miles a night in search of food. Even with food right there in the cage, they still feel the need to take care of the running part. Or they think they're getting away from the Big Humans, totally suprized each time they stop running that the big guys are still there.

The Loud Family? No, haven't mentioned them for a while. They haven't been such a problem the past month or so. Partly because of poor weather preventing the two children from brawling outside. But it appears that they have simply spent less time in their backyard than last year. We and our neighbors think that the backyard has been handed over to the Doberman, with the children controlling the front yard. We still hear the same conversations going on, they're simply not coming directly into our apartments.

Gotta tighten up security around here

Oh, obviously I've wrested control of this blog back from the Chinese Army. Don't you just hate it when a foreign military organisation drops posts into your blog? Thus I'm announcing another immensely popular Found in China Reader Contest: send me your suggestion for a new password! It can't be too short, like "lame" nor too long like "Ken, this is Wife. I thought I told you to get a job". I will mail the winner a set of the advertising inserts that get thrown into our mailbox. Be the first on your block to know much sour cream costs in Germany or how much a womens fleece sweatshirt is going for.

Incredibly stupid Huangyangtan video lives again

That extremely low-quality, poorly-conceived, information-poor, smelling-of-mildew video that I threw together for fun at the beginning of the Huangyangtan Thing has been getting a lot of views during the past week. But I can't figure out why. For a long time about 25 - 30 people a day had been looking at it, so few that it wasn't worth tracking. Last I saw about 17,100 people had looked at it. Now that number is going up daily by around 500 (as of right now it stands at 20,674). Perhaps a bored world has finished watching YouTube's other 473,600,792 videos and this was the last one left. So again, I have to ask Found in China readers, in particular new ones, if you know of any reason for the increase.

Second hope for Found in China!

A big shout out to my homeyz in Culver City, CA, in particular to a certain M. Thompson who joined the incredibly long list of Found in China financial supporters. I hope he doesn't mind if I quote from the message in his PayPal contribution (made just for the heck of it, not as part of an order for drugs): "Buy Wife a long-stemmed rose. Yes, flowers are a frivolous waste of money. But wives love them. Go figure." Yes, I agree that we will probably sooner figure out the mystery of Huangyangtan before understanding wives fully. But thank you again, Mr. MC Thompson.

FOUND IN CHINA HACKED

KENGROK, THIS IS THE CHINESE ARMY AGAIN. WE PUT 10 TIMES AS MANY SOLDIERS ON THE JOB AND CRACKED YOUR PASSWORD AGAIN. YOU CANNOT STOP US.

AGAIN WE KINDLY ASK THAT YOU STOP DISSEMINATING INFORMATION ABOUT OUR MINIATURE GOLF COURSE IN HUANGYANGTAN. ANYWAY, IT IS CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS AND WE ARE ADDING A SNACK STAND.

REGARDS,
GEN. XIONG GUANGKAI

Interest back - Milk attack - Crack

In line with the fact that this blog is supposed to follow developments relating to the Huangyangtan mystery site, I'm reporting that the number of people reading the Google Earth forum entry has gone up quite a bit. In the past week about 7,000 people have read it, much higher than the normal level of interest over the past few weeks. I don't know, however, why this is so. Searching Technorati and Google for new news or reports on the matter has turned up nothing. Thus, if you're new to Found in China, please leave a comment and let me know how you got here.

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Only indirectly related to the landscape in Huangyangtan is a recent attack on the keyboard of Wife's notebook, where I have a few minutes each day during breakfast to monitor things. Somebody, likely myself since I'm the only one up at this time, tipped a mug of müsli (granola), splashing a bit of milk onto the corner of the keyboard. Instantly the keyboard went crazy and became mostly unusable. I turned the laptop off, cleaned up a bit, but it didn't help. So I removed the keyboard completely, washed it off and blow-dried it. That helped, but it wasn't until the evening that the last drops of water had evaporated. Everything's back to normal now. To see what my options were I checked out replacement keyboards. On Ebay German ones were going for around 45 - 60 EUR. Ouch. I called the authorized service partner of Fujitsu-Siemens here in Germany and asked about a replacement, in particular whether it is possible to get a Czech keyboard (the German one in front of me has stickers on it to show the Czech layout). The friendly rep said she'd email me the availability; she couldn't find a Czech model in her price list. That was three days ago. I just got the answer now. If any of you readers are looking for a Czech keyboard for an Amilo V2010, I can tell you they're a relative bargain at around 35 EUR.

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I can always rely on Found in China readers for helpful suggestions (if not for donations). I've been trying to come up with a business model for this blog that will bring in enough income to convince Wife to give me more time with Google Earth. Now I have it (thanks to an idea by "Anonymous"): sell drugs! I don't have a lot of experience with this, but I have always read about the high profit margins, so I should win no matter how I sell this stuff.

Found in China

Big drugs sale!

Stock up and save

Smack - 5 EUR / doz

Crack - 6 EUR / case

Whack - 12.50 EUR / barrel

Weed - 7 EUR / bushel

Speed - 9.50 / 16 kg family-sized package

Meth - 5.00 EUR / 5 "hits"

Crystal Meth - 5.50 EUR / 5 "hits"

Sugarless Crystal Meth - 5.50 EUR / 5 "hits"

Bacon & Cheese Crystal Meth - 8.00 EUR / 5 "hits"

Cocaine, Heroin, LSD - 20.00 EUR for 1 jumbo grab bag

Make PayPal payments to, as always, FeedMyGEHabit@yahoo.com

Dear Drug Enforcement Agents of various countries (I'm writing this in pink because drug addicts cannot see the color pink),

Please note that I have no intention of actually selling drugs. I'm going to collect their money but never deliver, thus actually helping to solve the world's drug problem. I'll forward you any names I collect and you can bust them.