A neat trick to view any webpage, including Slashdot, over IPv6. For all the bad mojo it gets, Slashdot is one of the few sites where the comments will make me involuntarily burst out laughing, sometimes if they aren’t even that funny. I don’t know why.
“And in other news, Slashdot managed to bring down the entire IPv6 network today…”
Well the good news is that Helsa is home now, and is getting more care and attention than she could ever receive at vet. Like I said before, the main problem right now is that she lost so much weight and her body has been using her fat for nutrition, and the lipids have overwhelmed her liver. The solution for this is for her to eat and give her liver a break, but the problem is that she really doesn’t want to eat. For several days they did force feeding, which is basically where you squirt the food in the cat’s mouth and even though they don’t want to eat they swallow it because, well, it’s there. Needless to say the cat in question generally doesn’t like this.
It became harder and harder to feed Helsa until the decision was reached that the only way to get her the nutrition she needs was to do a short surgery and set her up with a feeding tube, which is exactly what it sounds like. So many times a day she gets food, water, and medicine through the tube, and after 2–6 weeks her liver will finally recover and she can begin eating on her own again. The time range is uncomfortably big, but there’s no way to predict when she’s going to recover.
The photos from last Thursday’s meetup at Brasil’s with the some other H-Town Bloggers are finally up on the photolog, as are some others. It was great to see Elaine, Kathy, Christine, Katie, Robert, and Mike again. There are so more thorough photos (like with people) up at the H-Town Blogs Gallery. Remember when something is updated it’s emphasized in the navigation menu on the right.
Added the first of what will be many visitor statistics to the Zeitgeist. Thanks to PowerPhlogger I have very rich data in SQL which is easy to access. Plus it already does so much itself there is no need to reinvent the wheel in many cases. Right now there’s just visual goodies up, mostly because I’m struggling with getting tables to look the way I want using XHTML 1.1. Apparently ease of use was one of the things they depreciated.
The Carnival of Vanities #21 is up and looks really great this week. I’ve only made it through about half on the links so far but I’ll go through the rest tonight. This is my first time participating in the carnival and I’m kinda excited about it. Check it out.
I think I’m going to send some money to one of those Nigerian scam people so they can fix the caps-lock key on their keyboard.
Auto-imported from old gallery:
A little Tuesday humor from Mike:
Bubba and Billy Ray are from Arkansas visiting a relative in Texas. Walking along Sam Houston Street, they see a sign which reads, “Suits $5.00 each, shirts $2.00 each, trousers $2.50 per pair.”
Bubba says to his pal, “Billy Ray, Look! We could buy a whole lot of those, and when we get back to Arkansas, we could make a fortune. Now when we go into the shop, you be quiet, okay? Just let me do all the talking cause if they hear our accent,they might not serve us. I’ll speak in my best Texas drawl.”
They go in and Bubba says, “I’ll take 50 suits at $5.00 each, 100 shirts at $2.00 each and 50 pairs of trousers at $2.50 each. I’ll back up my pickup and …..”
The owner of the shop interrupts, “You’re from Arkansas, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” says a surprised Bubba. “How come you know that?”
The owner says, “This is a dry-cleaners.”
What happens when three friends are very bored one night and decide to reenact fight scenes from various movies in stop time in a public park? Good question.
The design here is like the weather in Texas, if you don’t like it, wait five minutes for it to change again. Comments are appreciated! RSS users yawn and don’t even notice…
Update: I’ve gotten some comments that it looks a lot like Metafilter, and I see the similarities, mainly with the background color and story titles. The actual inspiration for this was that I ran across a page I did last year for a scholarship contest. I liked the way the black and blue looked, and as soon as I got some time I whipped this up. On second examination, the similarities are really superficial, and I think I’m going to stick with this design for a while. I’m going to try and tweak it though so the date/title to text offset isn’t so similar to Mefi. Any thoughts? The reactions so far have been positive.
I think effectively banning users by blocking IP ranges is going to become very difficult once IPv6 is rolled out.
Well we transferred Helsa from the hospital to her regular vet today. She was perfectly behaved the entire way over and she acted very normal. The vet said they’ll probably leave her on IV the rest of today, but they’re going to keep feeding her with a syringe (as opposed to a feeding tube) and if she keeps it down then she might be able to come home as soon as tomorrow or Wednesday! I couldn’t be happier. Thank you to everyone who sent kind words of support.
This had me rolling:
Dear Mr. Architect:
Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of
what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).
As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)
Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.
To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year. Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.
Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of
the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.
While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers.
Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the
75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for
construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of
later design changes.You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often. Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.
PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.
PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.
Just saw this interesting snippet:
During a trip to Microsoft’s Redmond campus this week, I had the opportunity to meet with Mark Lucovsky, one of the original architects of Windows NT. We had a long discussion about NT’s development and evolution; one of the more fascinating tidbits he revealed was that NT doesn’t, in fact, stand for New Technology, as documented in books such as “Showstoppers” and “Inside Windows NT” (Microsoft Press, 1992). Instead, the name comes from the earliest days of the product’s development, when Microsoft designed NT to use the Intel i860, a RISC processor. In those days, Intel’s chip was behind schedule, so Microsoft had to use an i860 emulator called the N10. NT was so named because it worked on the “N-Ten.”
My effort to integrate Amazon-like features into this website: If you enjoyed the excellent dialogue between Mike and I, then you may be interested in this excellent set of best practices concerning HTTP implementation, as many of the same issues are brought up. It’s really a great read if you’re into that sort of thing. Hat tip: Zeldman.
Interesting day, woke up early (for me) to head to Fry’s and pick up some computer parts, then headed straight to HPUG. Once I got to HAL-PC by luck Cheryl (leader of the Web-Tech SIG) was giving away a 1.4GHz Athlon box and I nabbed that; there’s something wrong but I suspect it’s just the power supply. It has a really nice motherboard with RAID too so this will be perfect for my Linux file-server box.
Later tonight I took Joe his new Athlon XP box I built for him, and it’s running really great. When the sound card comes in he’s going to have a very nice setup. It’s surprisingly fast and it reminded me that I really need to upgrade my processor on my desktop, more so now that I’m doing .NET development stuff on it. (More on that later.)
Tonight after some testing I finally upgraded the server to PHP 4.3 and MySQL 4.0.10, and things are running beautifully.
What I’ve been avoiding writing about (and thinking about) is the part of today that wasn’t technology related. Helsa had to be taken to the Vet Hospital because she started throwing up several times and also apparently sometime between last night and this morning her skin got this yellow tint. The doctor said that she isn’t in any pain, but because she lost weight so fast her liver is probably overloaded with fat. They don’t know why she stopped eating in the first place, and we have no clue. They did blood tests, an ultrasound, and x-rays, and hopefully we’ll have some better data to know what’s going on. The doctor was very optimistic, so I’m feeling better about things, but it was still painful to se Helsa like that. They’re going to get some fluids and food in her through IV so that should help as far as the liver is concerned. It sounds like if they can get her body some nutrients so it stops trying to process the fat, that will help the liver. The only problem is that “fatty liver” is generally symptomatic of something else, and we haven’t determined the deeper cause.
Last night got started late, and went even later. We got to watch one of my all-time favorite movies, Zoolander. I think it’s a very underappreciated film, as it works on a lot of levels and people are apt to dismiss it as a shallow movie without giving it a chance. The DVD had some neat features too that I think made it worth it. Which brings me to the question of the day: Does anyone ever watch the director’s commentary?
Well I’ve got to go get ready for the HPUG meeting today, and also I’ve got to try to fix my Dad’s m505 which is currently sufferinf from Sudden USB Death Syndrome. The battery has been draining all night so it should be good to go now.
Out of the blue, my Mom asked me what was that strange mark on my neck, and I had no clue. A quick trip to the mirror revealed what looks like a large bite right on my adam’s apple, which is quite conspicious. Mom examined it, and said it looked like a spider bite or something similar. Great. Is this sweet revenge on the part of spiders? When did this spider bite me? Why didn’t I notice? Will it make me buff? So many unanswered questions.
All around blogspace, blogrolls are down as it seems rpc.blogrolling.com isn’t responding to requests, even though the main site is still working. All I had to do was increase the $cacheminutes variable in my script to a high number and now it’s returning the cache from the last time it was up. I need to make it so it does that automatically, but that’s a task for when I have more juice left in my laptop.
Well I am proud to announce that the photolog has reached a great milestone: over 5,000 publicly viewable photos are now online. The champagne is flowing freely at the photomatt.net world headquarters. If you haven’t been in a while, I just put up two portrait series, some fun stuff, and some narratives. I’m looking forward to the H-Town Blog get-together tonight.