The Silent Desk

The past few months have been awfully eventful in my life. Perhaps too eventful. I had barely been able to keep up with this site due to having two jobs, and Herschel has left us late October. It was a horribly short life that it lived, much like the other two goldfish. Despite my experience and confidence in being able to keep the goldfish, the lack of cooperation of the members of this household has had me delay my plans for getting a better living quarter for Herschel until it was too late. It was an unfortunate loss...

However, it didn't occur to me that Herschel wasn't the only one in need of attention...

How U Mine 4 Fish?

A few days ago, Vicki dragged me to a carnival when I was still tired from work, and had work the next morning as well. You already know how THAT is. But what's more, I found out that she is awfully loose with her money if she knows she has money. That rule also extends to money that isn't her's as well. Why? Because her friend Jamie wanted to play one of the carnival games where you try to throw table tennis balls into jars to win a goldfish, and despite my objections to winning a goldfish that I would have to get a tank, air pump, and filter for to take care of properly, she had me give her a dollar, a grown woman who's older than me and has had a job (albeit a low paying one) for a very long time, just because I would be the one keeping (and ultimately stuck with the responsibilities of) the fish. Well, guess what? I won a fish.

Feesh! - Firion 5

So just as I've wanted, here are some more pictures of Firion. This time on a 5 MegaPixel camera as opposed to 3. Not the 8.0 MP I wanted originally, but this should do for now.  

Edit: It seems like uploading pictures directly from the phone using the Blogger App automatically resizes the pictures to the "Medium" size setting it seems. Sounds like a reasonable feature, but not sure if I like it entirely. I will re-upload them in the original size if I get some requests.

Feesh! - Firion 4

It certainly has been a long time since I've talked about Firion on the blog. Mostly because I STILL don't have a new cell phone or any device that I can take better quality pictures or videos with. Otherwise, I'd probably be posting a video of him every once in a while, I'm sure. Of course, I still don't have an external hard drive either to save all the footages in either.

Regardless, there are some new, neat things I've noticed about Firion, so I figured why not talk about him some more?

Pet Mastry +1 - Fish

So I've seen quite a lot of things with pet fish lately, mostly with goldfish. I kind of passed the image on the left off as a possible Photoshop image, but I did feel that I wish I had a little floating plastic ball like that for Firion to play with or something. Good chance he wouldn't be interested, but it'd be something to do other than to make bubble nests all the time.

Then my little brother posted this link on my Facebook, telling me to teach Firion to do tricks like this. For those of you not familiar with Nico Nico Douga videos, to turn off the scrolling comments, click on the icon on the bottom right corner. This isn't on the direct site, so there's also no need to log in to view this video. Anyway, the video shows this person's pet goldfish that can do this pretty interesting trick. When the person drops a ring into the fish tank, the goldfish will swim down to it, stick its head in so that it's sort of wearing the ring around itself, and bring it back up to the surface to the person's finger. Definitely an interesting trick to witness. Of course, Firion is so much sleeker than the goldfish in the video, so I kind of doubt that I could find a ring of the right size for him to attempt that trick. But even more importantly, how do I train a fish to do tricks like that? Well, I happened to stumble across the solution.

Feesh! - Firion 3

Today certainly is a lot of things. My birthday, the release date of Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and also Firion's anniversary since he arrived here on my birthday! =D So today's entry will be about Firion, although I still never got that LED light. This post will also double as a guide for keeping betta fish as a pet.

Feesh! - Firion 2

So the results are in for the first poll.

What do you want to see on this blog?
Firion: 3 votes
Vicki's troll posts: 3 votes
More pictures: 1 vote
My life: 0 votes
Girls: 0 votes
Stock market (LoL): 0 votes
Other: 0 votes

Didn't get anywhere near as many votes as I was expecting, sure, but this poll was mostly here for me to learn how these polls work. Anyway, the next poll will be up in a bit, this time regarding how I should handle content that contains spoilers for games, stories, and anything else that should be hidden from some people's eyes that would ruin the experience. Anyway, my readers have spoken, so I'll continue talking about Firion.

The thermometer on the right

It's gotten a lot more chilly compared to a week or two ago now, even here in Florida. And one of the concerns I've had last year was whether if Firion's water is warm enough for him, since apparently bettas' natural habitat is in tropial areas of Asia. Because of this, I decided to get a thermometer for him, although it's mainly for tanks rather than fishbowls. ._. PetSmart didn't have any thermometers for fishbowls, so I got one that floats in the water instead of the colored strip thing where you stick it on the inner surface of the tank.

So during these cold days, I put Firion to my left, which Pugyuu, my laptop, vents out its heat towards. I put something in the way so that it isn't too hot though. Otherwise, the bowl goes to my right where it's a bit further away since I need room for my mouse on my right as well. Doing so has definitely allowed me to maintain a pretty consistent temperature between 70 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm hoping this trick will work throughout the winter, since I didn't have the thermometer last winter, so I don't know how effective it was then.

Also, I still haven't gotten the LED light for Firion yet, since I don't think I've been to PetSmart since I posted about it. Kind of surprising, considering how often I got dragged there before, but Vicki's schedule has been ridiculously filled lately too. I'm not sure if she's even reading my blog either because of the amount of work she's getting swamped with, which is sort of disappointing. She did print out a coupon for small pet stuff, but it's for purchases of over $30 something I believe, and the light I want is only $16. >_>; Might be just better to just wait for the light itself to go on sale rather than to force myself to use a coupon.

Also, while writing this, it dawned upon me that I haven't talked about Pugyuu on here yet. There's quite a story with this laptop too, along with my previous one, so it'll be another topic to post about for sure.

Feesh! - Firion 1

 It was on my birthday last year, when I got my own pet again. It's been several years since I've had my 4 goldfish; 2 of which I had won from a carnival that lived for about a decade, the other two from petstores after that, which only lived for about 5 to 7 years at most. I was rather young, unoriginal, and not-as-creative with names at the time, so I ended up naming them Gold and Silver, due to them being colored that way when I won them from the ping pong toss game. I hadn't given the game much thought at the time either. I just tossed the balls at the jars, and out of three balls, two of them somehow fell in the same jar after bouncing off the rims of many in the middle. When I got the two, little goldfish in the plastic bags, I was in awe of what I had happened to win. They were sleek and simple looking fish, but gave me the impression that they were fast swimmers. As I watched them swim around in the water in the plastic bags, they sparkled with their bright, shiny scales as the sunlight brightly lit their colors.

After getting home, we put them in a traditional fishbowl that we had after keeping several other fish I had, although they didn't live for very long. At the time, I hadn't really understood why. After several days, they would be floating at the top, lifeless, which even now makes me sad to think about them. =( But when we learned that they needed oxygen in their water, we decided to get them an air pump, then a bigger fish tank, then decorations. We eventually had a fairly complete set of an aquarium and was happy to see that Gold and Silver were living healthy in the tank. Feeding them every day brought a smile on my face as they swam up to eat the flakes that I would drop in the water.

After a few years, my parents decided to get some more fish for the aquarium, and brought home two goldfish, of different variety. I can't name what type of fish they were at the moment, but they were definitely fatter. One was large, bulky, and had a big head. The other was one of those goldfish that have bulging eyes. I ended up naming them Platinum and Copper, just because it went together with Gold and Silver to some extent. >_> Mom was worried that Gold and Silver might fight with them since they were in the tank longer and such, but they never did anything of the sort. They all went about with their fishy business and kept to themselves, which is good.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about Firion, my current pet, which also happens to be my first betta fish. After thinking about all that what my parents have done and said about my goldfish though, I guess they were thinking more about betta fish than goldfish, since bettas don't need oxygenated water, fight each other, and thus better kept in a traditional fishbowl.

Two of my friends I met through Vicki, Rachel and Nebby, came to my birthday party, although I hadn't planned any sort of fun event aside from getting together and having fun playing video games, it was what worked best for most of us, especially me. I don't care much for rides and attractions as much as more interactive activities like bowling and video games. However, I'm still unemployed, and so are several others around me. Even if some people do have some form of income, some are rather hesitant about spending money at events as well, much like myself. I hate being as stingy as I am, but without income, what can I say? Just because I have some cash on me at the time, doesn't mean that it's money that I can mindlessly spend immediately without considering the consequences in the future. I constantly wait for sales and other money saving opportunities for anything I spend on. Even now, I'm waiting for a LED light to light up your fishbowl to go on sale at PetSmart so that I can see Firion better, as well as take better photos of him.

Firion lit by a flashlight

Anyway, back to my birthday, Rachel and Nebby arrived with the capped, plastic cup with a Crowntail Betta inside. Now, he's staring at me from inside his dark fishbowl. ._. A slightly crowded fishbowl with a floating, hollow log for him to sit in, a plastic plant, a thermometer, and a rock inside. Good thing the light that I plan on getting for him can be placed outside of the bowl to light it up.

It's also nearing my 25th birthday as well as the first anniversary since Firion and I became buddies. o_o I'll be posting more about him another time, I'm sure. Maybe I'll have the light for him by then.