Well MySonTheGenius flew in to visit for Father's Day and is staying a coupla days. It turned out this was a very well-timed visit:
The Beautiful Witch had gotten me a total whizzer of a game camera to put in the back yard to see what goes on in the dark.
BZZZZZZZZZTTT
Game cameras have changed slightly in the last 25 years (last time I had a game camera, it was coal-fired, and had a crank).
The destructions that came with this new-gen, satellite-connected magic lantern were ambiguous, arcane, complicated, confusing, cryptic, opaque, and recondite. Possibly occult.
In sum, I got it out of the box OK... but progress had stopped right there. First off, it required me to scan the square squiggle thing with my fargin phone. My phone is a fargin land line. Looks like a bitchin' problem, donnit?
But it went way down from there. Apparently, I was susposed to set up an account somewhere called Spypoint (camera company site). How to do this was not mentioned.
It turns out the concept (when Scooter 'splained it to me) was that every time the camera tooken a pic, it would send it to your phone via your account at the Spypoint nexus. Aha.
Annnnd... When I pointed out the slight difficulty of how I would not be using HIS phone while he was back in Oregon, and that is the phone that was used to follow the destructions (unscrutable, enigmatic)...
That's when I had the IDEA!! What a concept (I oughta tell the stupid bastages at the camera company -- it'd double their sales).
"Scooter: I have my own wi-fi, right? Can you rig my 'puter so I have an icon that just pulls up my daily pictures?"
So he did. Took him (genius IQ, if I never mentioned it before) two full hours. This moanin' I pulled up the pictures taken during the night:
One ring-tailed cat, one bobcat being watched by the pussycat, a really chubby mama possum, and either a raccoon and cat facing off, or two raccoons. <-- The pics are horribobble becuz I had just laid the camera on the grass facing a bit of chicken leftover about ten feet away. So all the pictures (31 yikes!) are sooper bright at short range blanking out the action in the distance.
That's OK, this was just a test. I'm gonna make a setup so I can run it at night only. During the day, the activity back there is pandemonium with wildies -- the camera would go nuts taking pics of birds and squiddels.
It has a fargin solar charger built in to it. <-- Amazing. So I can leave it out in the Floriduh sun to get it full of cramps and jolts to take a blue gazillion pics each night of the Sneakydicker Wildlife Promenade.
I am rather perturbed at the feral cat out there. Peafowl babies make a tasty snack, and they do not breed often, since they live so long. If it is savvy enough to only show up at night, it is safe from me. Otherwise, it will join its cousins.