Daughter came home from school keen on writing a story. In art class they’d drawn covers for books they’d like to write, and she drew Cat Detectives solving a crime. This led not only to the desire to write their exploits, but write a series on the Cat Detectives, publish it, animate it and put it up on YouTube. She asked me if I could get the book published for real with real hard covers. I said that might be hard, and she said that was what she meant. I rephrased the response: it might be difficult, but we can certainly make our own book out of it. Thus assured there was a future in the project, she sat down to write.

Five hours later, she was still at it. She admitted that she borrowed some elements of the plot from something she’d seen, and said she had borrowed the names of the cats from the Warriors book. “I think I should change them, because Erin Hunter might sue me.” I said this was wise.

Here’s a happy fellow:

You can’t help but smile when you see these guys, even if he’s banging his head repeatedly on a hard surface. He keeps his positive attitude, and there’s a lesson for us all. It helps to be firmly anchored, hollow, plastic, and full of hot air.

He’s located across the street from the Strib building. I was looking for a webcam to give you a view, but A) didn’t find one, and B) the whole webcam thing seems to have become passe but came across a page, with this listing:

View of live malformed frogs cared for by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Refreshed once each minute.

The image, or the frogs? Because I'd hate to think there are malformed frogs out there in need of refreshing. Tried to access it, but “The server is not responding.” Pity the fellow who comes to work tomorrow and finds it full of mutated superfrogs, staring at him with pitiless eyes.  Anyway, no webcam. Too bad. Yes, I remember the boingboing post about the dancing blowerman set to some boomer-beloved song I didn't like, and yes, I did take some footage of the fellow with the flip camera, and yes, it will be up later. For no particular reason.

Sorry to sound curt & peevish, I had some other things to post, and the scanner doesn’t work, which is a bit of a problem. It might be a relief, if I had “Scanner’s Elbow” and wanted a break from leaning over, putting something on the plate, wading into the HP monkey-designed software, this would be a good excuse to put my feet up. Except that I often put my feet up on the scanner to flatten a book against the glass, so that figure of speech doesn’t work. In any case, something snapped in the machine, and it won’t work with any computer, thinks it’s not connected, and gives me a warning that says “This program may be unstable,” which is very helpful. And the man banging on the door with the knife in his teeth and the swastika carved in his forehead may not be delivering flowers.

Yes, I turned it off, turned it on, reseated the cables, reinstalled the software, restarted the computer, ran the setup assistant, checked the site for drivers, aligned the unit to face true north, painted the room a soothing grey, daubed lamb’s blood on the top and chanted blessings to Ra, and all the other rote things we do. It’s worked fine for a year or so, even though it drinks print with a thirst that brings to mind Dracula in a convent, and wouldn’t remember my preferences if I engraved them on the motherboard with a woodburning tool in three languages, and occasionally makes scanning noises for no reason like a dog sighing in the next room. It was only seventy dollars. Nine hundred, counting the ink. I hate it.

(Yes, I know, there’s VueScan software. It costs money. I don’t feel like paying for scanning software, even if the stuff that comes with the machine requires me to jump through six flaming hoops.)

So. Did I save the old scanner? Because I seem to recall I took the gigantic old scanner into the basement and put it up on a shelf, just in case. Let’s go look. It goes without saying that if I had that level of foresight, I’ve lost the power supply and the drivers, but what the hell. Oh, you can download the drivers from the internet! Possibly, but it’s an old scanner. How old? It’s Bondi blue with a translucent ribbed cover. That old.

UPDATE: Old scanner found. Software disk located.

UPDATE: Old scanner has a non-standard power cord; can't find the brick.

UPDATE: Having wasted an hour of my time, the broken scanner came to life with no explanation. It's stable. Me, less so.

Well, it’s a column night, so I can’t muck around with this anyway. Today’s update: the second batch of restaurant interiors. Have a fine day! See you off and on at buzz.mn, and all day on Twitter.