Multi-day site outage: back on line again
The power supply in my web server failed last week. The old chassis was a "compact" Antec case with a specialized power supply that I couldn't find a replacement for.…
It’s full of post_content…
My site has been plagued by odd characters in some of my old posts for a rather long time. The most common is the seemingly random appearance of  characters in the midst of some of my posts.
I know the basic cause: one of my WordPress / MySQL updates in ancient times (circa 2008) ended up producing a character set mismatch. I long ago fixed the cause, but all the existing bad characters persisted. Until today… I hope
Remembrance
Each year we are supposed to be reminded by a particular day on the calendar of the sacrifices that have been made for us. Take two minutes today to remember those who fought so that you and I don’t have to.
The loss of a friend in a grey and white coat
I lost a dear friend on Wednesday, November 5. We lived under the same roof for over two decades, and the fact that he wore fur and occasionally killed and ate rodents in his youth did nothing to detract from our bond. I’m talking about my cat, Tuxedo.
The Spring
I first met Tuxedo when he was six months old, and I was thirty. Irene and I had been living on our acreage East of Sherwood Park for a couple of years, and decided it was time to add to our furry family. We went to the SPCA in Edmonton, and Irene had already picked out a funny-looking, emaciated female cat who had recently given birth (Sasha). I was still wandering about, and walked past several cat kennels when I felt a tug on my arm. A small grey and white paw was reaching out between the bars and had caught my shirt: I looked in this child-cat’s eyes and couldn’t walk away. I unlocked the bars of the cage and took him in my arms, and that was that. Tuxedo, née Sylvester, was mine, and I was his.
There is some debate in our household regarding whether we adopted Tuxedo in the October of 1994, or April of 1995. Either way, he was born in 1994, and to say we met 20 years ago is sufficiently accurate at this point.
Getting quantified: Fitbit Flex
Two weeks ago I purchased and started using a Fitbit Flex. It is basically a set of accelerometers, some computing, and a Bluetooth wireless connection bundled into something you can wear on your wrist. This little gadget won’t turn me into an athlete, but I’m hoping it might make me a little more aware of my astounding lack of activity. And in the process, possibly shame me into moving a bit.
Stupid spam robots…
You may notice that the “furballs coughed up… #### today alone!” number in the header of this blog seems oddly inflated. Your observation would be correct: I suspect no more than a couple hundred humans visit this site in a given day. However, the spam robots visit in vast, unending waves.
Cat allergies: Elcee gets track marks…
Today we started on the first dose of immunotherapy injections for our cat, Elcee. She’s had problems with strange acne-like skin eruptions on her face and chin for years, but the last three years (Elcee is ten years old) they’ve gotten progressively worse.
During her last episode, the rash got into her ears and around her neck and shoulders: she licked her hair completely off in those areas, and ended up with secondary (bacterial) skin and ear infections. It took weeks of treatment to get that cleared up, and the vet advised that we consider allergy tests. As it turns out, Elcee is allergic to a lot of things…
My theory as to why some guys are threatened by “Geek Girls”
I’ve been a geek since before I knew the term existed. I would say it probably started when I was about four or five years old, when my sister started reading me The Hobbit. I didn’t truly “identify” as a geek until I was about 14 or 15, and it was part of a process of realizing I wasn’t alone. I discovered that other people liked Star Trek, perhaps a bit too passionately. There were folks out there like me that read Asimov, Tolkien, Pohl, McCaffrey, Niven, Lackey, Heinlein, and the rest of the pantheon like a form of alternate truth. People who saw the world through a slightly different lens, intensely, with a quiet (or sometimes not so quiet) passion.
Given my long-standing sense of myself as a “geek”, my ears perk up when I see discussions of what the term means. Of who is “in” or “out”. Apparently there is some sort of brouhaha in progress of late regarding whether female geeks exist. Some guys claim they don’t, or that many of those of the feminine persuasion who claim to be geeks are lying. One recent article I read on the topic gave me much food for thought. For that I thank the author, Sarah Kuhn: thinking is something I like to do 😉
Parushta and Samira
We adopted two Abyssinian kittens in July of 2011. Samira is the ruddy (reddish-brown) girl, and Parushta is her blue (grey coloured) half-brother:
First month of 2012
Christmas is a distant speck in my rear-view mirror, and we are already most of a month into 2012. I wouldn’t really say I have any “resolutions” for the New Year, but I do have some goals. It is odd how the completely arbitrary change over of a calendar causes me to re-examine my life, but I will take advantage of it. It is time to give some thought to what I want to focus on in the next year.