Saturday, July 30, 2016

I was overdue.



For most of the year I've been having to really limit my weekend trips. The traffic in the Bay Area is brain bleedingly horrible. Pre-recessionary horrible. Times a million. Gas is cheap so people are spending all their money there. Apparently..

But I haven't been to the beach in a while. It's been 100 degrees for maybe a week. And those fires have just been caving our area with smoke. So I really wanted to get to the edge of the world. Which is basically a place with no cell coverage.

I have this obsession with glass beaches. Okay, maybe obsession is too strong, but if you are going to go to the beach - finding glass doesn't hurt. Obviously nothing is as spectacular as the beach in Fort Bragg. But I've been there twice now and it's four hours away. I'd started reading about a beach in Davenport just outside of Santa Cruz. This is a really common beach, but there is a unicorn rumor out there that every now and then you can find some really unique glass because in the 70's a high end glass blower got flooded and their tailing's got washed down the creek and out to sea. I think it's more likely they were just dumping their tailing's into to sea. Sort of like the dump that created the Fort Bragg glass beach. These glass beaches have a lot of rumors that go with them.

I figured this place would be picked over by now. But as I said I've heard a lot of rumors and I hoped to at least watch some of the hardcore people beat each other to death trying to find glass. People wear wetsuits and the whole thing.

The traffic was way more horrible than I expected. It took us like three hours just to get out of Los Gatos. We did stop for lunch there, but still. I was not going to make low tide by any stretch. I'm nervous about the ocean when the tide is coming up. When we finally arrived it was clear this beach was super picked and I was pretty bored. I like beaches with tide pools to explore. This beach didn't really have that. So we decided to walk the cliff and ran across this old pier.

You had to work to get down to this beach. So I was a little bummed that by the time I got to the bottom the people had pulled their hammock. It was a beautiful moment. At last the pier was photographically interesting, and people will graffiti practically anything so that was a bonus.






This is basically a drain pipe.





It was nice to see Lexington Reservoir almost full. Even the over spill side. Last year this time you could almost walk across this thing it was so dry. Normally I can't get any shots unless I stop there, but traffic was savage even on the way back too.



And the smoke we were trying to get away from got way worse. I think this is from the fire in Big Sur.



Friday, July 29, 2016

You know it be crazy when.....

Poor people can't even get money from collecting bottles and cans.

About 20% of California recycling centers have closed in the past year. (roughly 200) I'm not even sure that happened during the depths of the recession. Recycling has never been profitable, but materials have been in a very deflationary situation since at least December 2015 as the price of oil dropped so did the price of commodities. For example - The price of plastic has fallen from $400 a ton 18 months ago to about $190 today, according to Mark Oldfield of the state's recycling program, CalRecycle. Source.

California has a very large homeless population, and you have to wonder how this will filter through. Probably with more crime.

"The value of the material has been dropping. As the price of oil drops, the price of plastic drops, so it is less valuable, and the state's redemption value that it gives people to run these stores has dropped,” said Worrell. " Source.

If the price of oil goes down more......

On the flip side..... a lot of old building are being torn down. Which is good. I've never seen it this way though. It's almost less expensive to bulldoze them than fix that crapshack up.

She might be low energy, but she lets me dress her up.



My other girl was quite shitty about the camera.

Holy moly. That is a lot of percent.

ExxonMobil earnings badly miss expectations as profits sink 59%.

Chevron earnings surprise with loss on $2.8 billion in charges.

"Revenues were $29.3 billion, down about 27 percent from $40.4 billion in the second quarter of 2015."

well... isn't that interesting.

On the heels of the my last post about dollar I found it pretty amusing to see articles this morning about how how the dollar has "crashed". To which I rolled my eyes. One penny is NOT a crash! The dollar is down two cents in the last two or three days. In contrast, from Dec to May the dollar was down eight cents. It was down one cent-ish before GDP was even released. The GDP report is only responsible for a ONE CENT move. Technically not even  a full cent. Previous close was 96.66, and right now it's at 95.70. Yeah I can't believe I watch this shit either. And yes I'm cussing a lot more in my posts because things are just so frustrating.

The other thing I found fascinating was how people are reporting the GDP. When I heard the numbers before reading anything - I thought it was better than last quarter. Which is was. Last quarter we only grew at .09%. Or a revised .08%. Take your pick.

So naturally I expected the cacophony of articles telling me that GDP had surged. Which is what has been going on for the past couple of years. If a country was growing at .01 percent, and the next read was .03% - that was the most amazing news previously and worthy of exclamatory headlines about GDP surging. I'm not numb to it now, but it used to really drive me crazy. If you are only growing at .03%, you basically aren't growing.

I think dollar strength continues no matter what the idiots are saying.

Thursday, July 28, 2016

The dollar is back to make everyone butthurt.

The election is distracting everyone from the real things going on in the world.  The oil market right now is a wee bit frightening. Record levels of oil - otherwise known as "the glut" didn't matter when the dollar was weakening from January to May. During that time the price of a barrel of oil increased about 40%.

Around the beginning of July the dollar reversed and is now getting quite strong again putting pressure on everything. Oil is bought in petrodollars, and when the dollar goes up - other countries can not buy as much of it. Or if they do it takes more of their resources to do so. A strong dollar also makes it harder for US exports. That means our companies sell less. Rinse lather repeat.

So - the dollar gets strong which makes the price of oil go down. A lot of drillers that were holding onto their fingernails won't make it. I read a couple of days ago that a record 23% of high yield energy bonds were under threat of defaulting. That is a lot of percent.

With the way the world looks - no one can predict how strong the dollar will get because no one can predict how horrible the economies of the rest of the world will get.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Another one for the great vapor wear dust bin.

A couple of years ago I saw an HUD helmet for motorcyclists called Skully. Here. One of the videos has been taken down I guess. I thought this product was really promising. Or else I would have never blogged about it.

Sadly, it looks like the founders basically looted the company. And about 3000 people who pre-ordered will not get their helmets. At a price of 1500 bucks a pop, this is roughly 4 million dollars? Don't pre-order things people! This is the nice spin on the whole thing. Reddit seems to have a few threads that go more into detail on what happened. Bad management, and a Marissa Mayer style of running a company. Throw lavish parties. You get the idea.

To tell you the truth I don't remember a time ever that Silicon Valley put out as much complete shit for products as they have these last 10 years. You used to actually have a product to sell. Not a crowd funded product that doesn't exist at all. Everyday I wonder when crowd funding will die. But I guess people are still losing money lending other people money on Prosper. People just have a deep seated need to gamble I guess.

I am a little bitchy about this right now because I bought a lot of Nest products and I basically live in fear of them now. My smoke alarms try to go off randomly. Which is so frustrating because my family's house burned down and we lost my cousin in the fire. So I'm super twitchy about this whole thing. And just yesterday people were reporting that they couldn't get to the nest thermostat server. The whole country is in a heatwave. And I have a pet again - so keeping the house cool is super important to me. Not to mention they disabled the feature that made me buy them in the first place.

Also yesterday I was reading about the failure of Makerbot. The whole 3D printing sector is in a wipe out. Sometimes Silicon Valley just disappoints me. Crowd funding is definitely not helping. It's only enabling all of this bullshit. There is almost nothing to show for the past 10 years of effort.

Last night I was actually at a talk at a LIDAR company. I wont name them because while it was an open talk, I don't know how public the information is. They said they were going IPO. I've been watching them forever and wondering why they hadn't already. But it was so refreshing for a company that is many years old(not a startup), and actually has a product, go IPO. It's like the old days. Instead of stupid companies selling social media "likes".  That whole sector is like a dumpster fire to me. Sure it can make money... but when the kids turn.....

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

I was having a failure to bond.



The new girl has been in the house for a little more than a week now. She has yet to get a name. Naming convention around the snarkolepsy household is pretty contentious. Mr S. wants to name them after food or old people names. I want to name them after strippers. Our last girl Jasmine took two months to name. You see who won there with the name... right?

I'd been in a fairly consistent funk because the first few years with a rabbit...... it's not the greatest. If they weren't cute and all I might not do it. They are like puppies for like 4 years. They chew everything. They can sometimes be a challenge to potty train. And it can take them a while to start spitting out the kisses. It just sucks having to start over because we'd just gotten our last girl to 5. Which means she was past the terrible twos, threes, and fours. They are nothing but love at that point. But it's a little rough to get there. In the beginning they don't even care if you exist.

When the new girl arrived she didn't act anything like a baby. She was acting a lot more like a veal rabbit. And I was pretty bummed about it because our last girl was a little like a tank in size and personality. The new girl had absolutely no personality.  Which was a new experience. Every time we gave her a chance to run around she wouldn't. She was really low energy. Remember I didn't chose her, I was bequeathed her. This time I went to a particular breeder for the best chance of a healthy rabbit and she gave me one with no choice to see it's personality. For three days she was like that and I was freaked and bummed. We actually brought her home a week earlier than they usually let to go. She was 7 weeks not 8. So we thought maybe that was the reason why.

Velveteens are known for being a really chill breed, but she was being ridiculous. Now after about a week we have been able to stuff some personality into her. You never know how much is them, or you rubbing off on them. In her case - it's all us baby. But she is about as opposite of our last girl as you can get. She is more like our first Velveteen Paisley. She was delicate, but this new girl takes delicate to a whole new level. (I'd link pictures, but That part of my blog is still broken. Maybe I will get to that tomorrow)

Next week after the 100 degree heat clears I'm going to get blood from her. All new bunnies get blood draws now because they can harbor landmine viruses that explode later in life. You don't even know until they get sick. So right now I'm calling her Turnip. But that name of course is not going to stick. You never see a stripper names Turnip.

Monday, July 25, 2016

Up until Bernie said the following, I felt kinda bad for the Bernie Bros. I was in that Bernie crowd in San Jose. I thought they were really nice people. I mean - really nice people. Then Bernie said this and I was like - nope. You people pound sand.

"A government based on the principles of economic, social, racial, and environmental justice - that struggle continues."
There is just something freeing about going to someone elses' house and seeing their family have a knock down brawl. Makes your own family look way less fucked up.

Seriously - you have to admit the Democratic convention is the best show on earth right now. The whole election really. It's just really funny for like the first time....... ever. I'm sure I'm going to be really pissed off later. But for now it makes me laugh.

Maybe the long con pays off this time.

Today I'm feeling pretty happy I voted for Bernie Sanders even though I hate everything he stands for.

When I threw my vote away for him it was because I wanted to piss off the Bernie dudes enough to come over to the Trump side. After all - the more votes he got, the more I felt they would feel disenfranchised. At the time I thought it was a slim chance this would pay off, but now.........I secretly giggle inside.

I didn't think it would pay off at all! But Trump had already won the nomination by the time California got to vote. So I took a chance. You can see I posted about it right after I voted.

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Look at me spreading rumors.



The world has been pretty boring lately. So no posts. Thankfully today something interesting popped up.

This morning Mr S. were driving to the city next to us for lunch, and we saw this helicopter over these huge buildings on the edge of town. The rumor in town is that some of these buildings are Tesla warehouses. We thought they were going to be parts distribution centers.

On the way out of town they had some of the road closed off and I couldn't get shots. So when the heli was still there on the way back into town - Mr S. was able to tuck away in a place to park so I could hop out and take pictures. Since the place was still cordoned off I decided to talk to some of the construction dudes who were making sure people didn't get too close. They said they had been out there since 6 in the morning, and by the time I was there is must have been around 1:00. That is a lot of helicopter time.

Anyway, I asked them if it was the Tesla building they were lifting duct work onto. They seemed surprised. They said they heard is was a new bus manufacturing plant. Which doesn't rule out Tesla. I told them, oh - it could still be Tesla then because they just announced they were making a bus. They were like - Tesla...... the car company?

I honestly didn't pay that much attention to the presser. But everyone in town thinks Tesla is moving into some of these buildings. And if those guys think it's going to be a bus manufacturing plant, I'm sticking those two things together.

The bigger news is my town is all of a sudden going to do manufacturing apparently! That is crazy! Our town is just a burb. It's the kind of town that didn't even want a super Walmart. Which oddly is the exact spot these warehouses reside. Walmart spent a ton of money improving that spot. It used to just be a field and Walmart put in streets, and lights and infrastructure, and the townies said pound sand. Now manufacturing is a-okay? The world is really changing which makes me happy. My city is the king of not in my backyard. The Walmart footprint was much smaller than these warehouses. Especially if it is manufacturing.

If what the construction dudes said was true. I'd give it a 90% chance. I don't know if Elon is going to make it, but he is going to die trying.





Friday, July 22, 2016

Boy - that Trump speech last night really got under Obamas skin.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Circling the drain.



I've hated every moment of the Wearables trend. I try to go to as few conferences as possible because I think it's mostly bullshit. Which is why you get photos of a cockroach today. It is a Texas sized cockroach after all. We don't normally get them this big. But apparently San Jose does! I don't even want to park my car in the parking garage now.

Also, this is not my badge so don't go thinking you've figured out my name.





Sunday, July 17, 2016

She's a bandaid.



So I didn't make it all the way to Palmdale. My breeder decided to meet me in Lancaster. Which I was pretty excited about because I was having a hard time trying to figure Palmdale out. Every single time I searched for a burger joint I got pictures of burritos. And not even authentic Mexican. TExmex. What is that about? I don't understand a city that doesn't have at least one amazing burger place that does only burgers. I'd decided on a restaurant in Lancaster, but after I actually got my hands on the baby I completely forgot about getting food there. Which I honestly regret. I don't really like to pop in and out of towns without eating there and looking around. It's fun checking out new cities. And it was too hot to explore. Bunnies don't take near 100 degree heat well, and babies especially have a hard time. Chances are I might get back down that way in Octoberish though.

It turns out my new breeder didn't really want to get rid of this girl like we suspected. I think she relented to finally shut Mr S. up. The only reason she did was because this girl was too big.  Thankfully she was not defective in some way. She wanted her enough that she still wanted to breed her and would love to have her babies. So I guess eventually I might be doing that. Since she really didn't want to give her up it was a relief to her that we were long time bunny owners. Not newbies. We met on the net so she only knew we were slightly annoying. Good breeders care about where their animals end up. Especially ARBA breeders.

When they are these size they are pretty cute, but most people get tired of them through the terrible twos, and threes, and fours. So they wind up in pounds.  I think she was super happy to know that would never happen to this girl. She's already a kisser. ON DAY 1.



Trump has a surprising new demo.

When you drive inland to farmland country you always see all these signs along the freeway telling people to  reject the delta water tunnels. Or in the case of central California they just snarkily ask - is growing food wasting water? 

The farmers in California are not a happy bunch. Our state would rather save a tiny minnow over growing food for people. Then we suffered a four year drought, and the government told the farmers to pound sand. We'd rather let the water run to the sea than give you any to grow crops. They even suspended water right for a while. Which is irritating because it is not known if any of those ridiculous minnows survived the drought. 

So I found it interesting that all along highway 99 to L.A. a lot of farms had giant signs that said: build water storage now - ANOTHER FARMER FOR TRUMP.  Makes it sound like it could be a bunch of them banding together doesn't it? 

I didn't get any pictures because I was driving and I didn't want to pull off on the burm of the freeway. But I found it super interesting.




Friday, July 15, 2016

Well, I have been bequeathed a baby bunny. Note, I didn't get to pick a baby.  All I know is it better not suck.  It's the first time I've ever done that. This woman gave the real impression she didn't want to get rid of any of the babies she had. Which I guess is a good sign? Or some new strange breeder con. She is the sherpa of breeders though. She is the source where a lot of other breeders get their stock.

And it looks like I will be driving to Palmdale solo because Mr S. has some code monkey emergency this weekend. I've never driven to L.A. by myself before.

If I'd been given more notice I'd have tried to see if any of my SoCAl readers wanted to meetup. But she relented only last night, and I'm leaving in the morning.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

This is how desperate we have become.

I think the stagnation is pretty palpable right now because PokemanGo is all of a sudden the saviour of the economy. Apparently.

Take these headlines. It's sad really. In the old days a hit game would be awesome. But it would only be a hit game. Not all of this other crap. It says a lot about the economy really.

How 'Pokemon Go' could help you sell your house.

'Pokemon Go' has the power to transform retail, analyst says.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

At least the government will take care of you.

Said in the most sarcastic way.

I start to get nervous when some of the biggest insider traders in the world start losing money. In this case CALPERS. The California public retirement system. A couple of days ago they announced they lost 2% of the their portfolio value. Remember CALPERS makes all of it's assumptions on funding based on a 7.5% gain in their portfolio. That is almost a 10% miss. No one can estimate they will make 7.5% a year unless they have insider knowledge.

Frankly, I'm shocked it's only 2% because last year while oil was falling like a rock I started reading about the CALPERS portfolio losing 28% on their oil investments. And this article was from August. Oil didn't really bottom until about Christmas.

After the real estate crash it looks like they are almost the worst investors in the world. I shudder to think what will happen when the market eventually crashes. Markets don't go up forever. But hey - bright side - oil has already been caved, so their isn't much more damage that sector  can do to them.
There has been a lot of talk of "helicopter money" lately. If they won't give you  tax holiday - why would you expect them to give out helicopter money?

I'm dying to have their babies.

For the past 5 weeks I've been trying to replace my girl Jasmine. And the breeders about to drive me nuts. You'd think I was trying to adopt REAL babies with how hard it been.

I've been hedging my bets with two breeders. One in Southern California and one in Oregon. The one in Southern California is basically the highest on the food chain for Velveteens. And she works for a vet. So I have to suck it up because presumably those are the healthiest babies I can find on the planet. She also puts on the shows for ARBA. So she is really well respected.

It's like neither one of these two wants to give any of them up. I've never seen anything like it.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

When my chiropractor wants me to explain how Pokeman Go works to him - I know it's the best week ever for augmented reality. Do you know how hard it is to explain something like Pokeman Go to non technology people? And then in one weekend - everyone just gets it. It's amazing.
Obama does what he does best - hijacks a funeral for his own agenda.

Monday, July 11, 2016

It just isn't summer until we've had a creek fire.



Brought to you by the homeless. They are always burning stuff up.

I almost always chase these down because my rental is about 5 blocks off the creek. I have to go see how close the fire is to it.







I have to admit - I'd given up hope that Augmented Reality would ever gain traction. I've been going to conferences for like six years!

Then over the weekend my twitter feel was crammed with Pokeman Go stuff. And inside I smiled. I could tell how popular it was just by how many tweets I was seeing.

You just really do never know what is going to make a product catch on. There have been a bunch of Augmented Games already. It's just nice to see something take hold in that sector. I always thought it was going to be virtual dressing rooms.

Sunday, July 10, 2016

The death of malls were greatly exaggerated.



Silicon Valley is changing so fast right now that it's kind of blowing my mind. No matter what part of a city I roll into - they are knocking things down and putting up condo's. It astonishing frankly. It has to be a historic building boom. I've lived here almost all my life, and I've never seen anything like it. Every time I turn around, an empty lot lot is being snapped up. It doesn't even have to be empty really.

I hadn't been into old downtown Fremont for a while. Mr S. and I decided to go have dutch baby pancakes today at my favorite place for that. We roll into the parking lot and I was immediately shocked that they had torn down a Nations Hamburger joint that had been there forever. Just last week I saw a that a developer had bought the parcel that a church was on, just to knock it down and put up condos'. Which I thought was crazy. These guys have to be getting pretty desperate now.

Since we've known the owners and staff of the restaurant for a really long time I was super curious what they were doing with that parcel.And when I found out - it was the same story I've heard in 2 other cities. They are putting a wildly popular upscale Santana Row type mall. This is the type of mall where stores are at the bottom, housing is up top. Santana Row is also the place that hosts that fancy car show every month. It's actually a really cute mall all year round. and they have some pretty decent restaurants.

It's sort of ironic because Santana Row was built to replace an Old Town and Country mall. Those were the strip malls we had when I was growing up. And in the distance on the right, you can see some old buildings from Fremonts' Town and Country mall in the distance. It might be the last one alive. But I'm not sure.

I know of three cities that are revitalizing their down towns this way right now. Cupertino's old Valco Mall. Santa Clara is allegedly doing this out in the old marshland by 237. And now Fremont.

The picture below is more near Milpitas. There used to be an old dead mall here with a Mervyns anchor store.. You can see in the right of the shot they are starting to build. From the shape of the construction I would not be surprised at all if this had shops on the bottom, housing up top.

So, there will kinda still be malls, they are just evolving into something a little more livable.

Put a little differently. Thank gawd for old dead malls. They pretty much hold the biggest land parcels available. They ~are~ sort of putting the malls back, but as multi use malls. I think it's a pretty clever say to solve a housing problem really.



Saturday, July 09, 2016

Because cars were boring me.



Well, honestly everything is boring me right now. It feels like that period in 08/09 when just nothing new was coming out of the Valley. So I had to find something entertaining and the Speeders were in Niles Canyon today.

They let you ride in them. I guess they take these all over the country. There is an enthusiast group. I think they come through Fremont only a few times a year, and not every year apparently. It's much funner than a train. And you can spin them around right on the tracks. You have to admit that's super cool.















Friday, July 08, 2016

What else can you say?

Our nation is just a giant tire fire right now.

Thursday, July 07, 2016

Wednesday, July 06, 2016

All of a sudden the left cares about dictators?

It's sort of irritating today (well last night) to see the internet explode about Trumps comments on Saddam Hussein. They bitched every second of the Iraq war that we shouldn't have gone in. And they have given exactly no fucks about Syria. I'm pretty sure Syria has made Saddams' people shredders look like Disneyland. There is no depths to the depravity there.

Now all of a sudden since Trump said we should have left Hussein in power, they completely freak out. He's just saying what the left has been saying the whole freaking time. And is currently saying about Syria!

I supported the Iraq war at the time, but now even I think it was a huge waste of time and money. I've always felt like people wanted to be free, but Iraq has made me rethink my position. You shouldn't have to drag people kicking and screaming into freedom.

It sort of makes you feel like sometimes people really don't want to be free. And that just sucks. I'm super happy to kick down the door, but if they don't want to flood out why should we help them if they don't want help? It's been like 15 years and no signs they want to be free or care about being free so far.

Promising new camera technology.



I have not seen this camera IRL, but I have been following them. Note: the first vid is about 8 mins.

If you own any cameras at all, you know there is no one solution that fits all. When I bought my huge DSLR I said - I don't want to be one of those people who has a million lens's. But I think I have 5 (begrudgingly). There is no one lens that does short range and long range shots. So by default you wind up with a few lens's. Long range, short range. Portrait and in between. And it really is a lot to lug around. Even with just my two favorite lens's. 17-55mm. and 70-300mm.

Plus, using a huge DSLR does get you a lot of unwanted attention. A lot, and I mean a lot, of trade show people will shut you down if you try to take shots with a large camera. For some reason with a little point and shoot you get exactly no static at all. It's confusing because some of those little point and shoots can get close to 150mm zoom. You do have to trade off image quality though.

So, I don't really carry my large gear anymore. And honestly the little point and shoots do a pretty good job these days, but sometimes even I carry two of those.  One that does really good image quality, and one for long range where you trade off image quality. Those two cameras basically do a good enough job I don't have to lug around 10 pounds in camera gear. And I'm not even exaggerating.  I don't actually take many photographs on my phone because I've had to do a factory reset a couple of times. And honestly with NFC I send more photo's to my phone than I take with it. I just don't find the image quality to be that great with my phone.

This is why this camera ~if it does what it says~ is really exciting. It's a 52 megapixel camera which goes from 35-150mm. That is almost the whole range of my five lens's. It looks pretty odd. But I can't wait to see what images this produces.

Light home page.

Tuesday, July 05, 2016

Found i8.



I8's are apparently not chase worthy in the Snarkolepsy household anymore. Meaning that we see them often enough that when we do we won't follow it to get some photos. I will apparently stop if I see one on the road I'm on. So, I guess I'm not completely over them.





Sunday, July 03, 2016

Saturday, July 02, 2016

It's been a roller coaster ride.

Owning rabbits as pets is a little like putting a puzzle together without all the pieces. The vets have of one set of pieces. The breeders have another. And sometimes your own control group holds more pieces than both of them apparently. But you can't have all the pieces at once.

The past three weeks have been sucking on this blog because all my energy has been focused on figuring out what happened to my girl, and how to get the healthiest new bunny I can find on the planet. And as much credit I give the breeders, they can sometimes be a really difficult bunch to deal with. They are fairly uncommunicative, and I've been without a pet for the first time in half my life.  This has been super frustrating.

It turns out my girl inhaled food which caused her lungs to fill with fluid and die. Secondarily she also had e. cuniculi. Which is a disease that I have tried with all my fiber to avoid. I mean, I can't even explain to you how hard I try to get a rabbit without this disease. But I guess some things you don't learn until one dies and you have to get them cut open to find out what happened. Most people will not do a necropsy because it's expensive. And even I have only had two rabbits where I paid to have this done. They were very sudden and bizarre deaths. Both had e. cuniculi. As I have found out - I likely have a "one and three" chance of having a rabbit with it.

The woman who did the necropsy is apparently a legend in the house rabbit world. I guess at one point they started testing all the rabbits that came through their shelter and 33% were hot for this protozoan. The last time this swept through my house I had everyone in the house tested. I had one negative in a sea of positives. And fully 90% of the rabbits tested in my control group had been exposed to varying degrees. Also note - I have only tested roughly half of the rabbits I've ever owned. Likely my control group infection was much higher.

People will give you conflicting stories about how long this bacteria survives and how it can be transmitted. Some people say it can stay alive forever. Others only in the contagion period. I wasn't sure if I could bring a new rabbit into my house until the spores had died. As I said - I am at 0 rabbits right now.

Also, at a 33% positive hot rate, I wasn't sure how I was going to find a healthy rabbit. That is a lot of percent. The only comfort came when I read one of my old posts. I had that negative living right in the middle of bunnies with varying positive titers. I also had a positive that later tested negative. And most of those lived into old age. the 9-11 year range. I thought just being exposed to e. cuniculi was a death sentence. But now I think I'm going to have everyone tested and take a different approach.. Which is also something most people won't do. It's expensive. I'm still trying with all my might to avoid this disease, but that might not actually be a realistic expectation.

So... right now I could be driving to Oregon and Southern California in a couple of weeks to restock my brood. Yes, I'm probably getting two from different breeders because if you've lived with pets, and all of a sudden you have no pets - it really kinda sucks. You have no backup to cry on. Preliminarily I'm going to name them Time Bomb, and Insurance.

I don't really like to blog this stuff because it makes everyone sad. But I need to so other people can see you can really have bunnies that live to normal old age with this bacteria inside them because even I had forgotten. Or in case I need to search my own blog when another one caves.