Goodbye, Sammy

It is so hard to watch my little four-footed friends pass on. Poor Sammy passed on the 13^th.

Sorry I haven't written about it before, but it was just hard to face.

Sammy was the most truly "conservative" cat I've seen. He hated changes of any type; changes in the place, changes in the way you held him, changes in the location of his bowls. I loved him, but he was always somewhat stand-offish, it just wasn't in him to be a personal-contact kind of cat. He put up with it, but I don't think he ever really enjoyed it.

After Amy died, he pined for a long time; he didn't eat well and lost weight. Finally he came down sick. Amy's loss was a change he couldn't accept, I guess.

Adobe Play-not

Today's pet peeve: Adobe wanted to install an upgraded Flash Player on my work machine. While they were downloading, they of course had the usual advertising blurb, which includes this bullet: "Most of the top video sites on the web use Flash Player"

I have an ASUS Pad, which runs Android. Flash Player is not supported on Android...Adobe discontinued it. So I translate their ad as:

"'Most of the top video sites on the web use Flash Player'...and we also take pride in having prevented all Android users (even those with pads) from viewing those same top video sites."

Color me annoyed: Nothing like advertising the broad use of your technology to those who can't use it.

Good bye, Amy

Poor Amy finally passed on today, after a long-drawn-out and, I think, painful decline. Rest in peace, Amy.

Beth's "Duck" Warning

This is long overdue, but my sister Beth did this "Duck" warning for me. We were visiting my Mom's place together, her, her son Paul, and baby Dante. Naturally, the house was a bit full and I was staying in the attic.

I am 6'4" and the attic is, well, short. And I learn slowly. As a result, I repeatedly banged my head on the door sill, which is 6' in that attic. (It's not quite as lame as it sounds; with things at a certain height, just between 6' and 6'6", they are just high enough to be out of my vision, and not high enough to clear.)

Worried about my continued health, Beth made this sign for me to hang on the door sill. She thought it was just a lame little joke reminder; I think it is art.

So here, years later, is that art for others to enjoy. I've posted in two formats: The original that she did (which was not in color) and a PDF version you can print if you need your own warning. I've cleaned that up a bit, put in text in font, rather than her original drawing, and added colors.

Enjoy.

• The PDF version. Print this one-sided and fold it to hang by the open edge; or print it double-sided and cut it down the center, if you need two signs. Either way, you will be able to see it from both sides.
• My scan of her original sign.

Up-Goer Five

It started with this xkcd comic, which is an overview of the Saturn V rocket using strictly words from the list of the 1,000 most common English words.

Using that list makes technical descriptions hard, if you stick strictly to the list.

So then someone created the The Up-Goer Five text editor, which checks your effort to see if you've used any improper words. (Though if you read closely, it does permit technical terms surrounded by apostrophes and proper names like Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton.)

So, of course, I had to try it. Here's my effort, which is on the topic of stellar evolution:

Being one of a kind

There's a commercial now (Fisher-Price) that contains a line promoting, "...being one of a kind..." I've used that phrase from time-to-time and heard it many times.

But I was thinking about it more carefully the other day and concluded that it doesn't mean what most people think it means:  It doesn't mean that you are unique.

According to Google, "kind" is defined as, "A group of people or things having similar characteristics".  So being "one of a kind" basically is like saying you are "one person in a bunch of similar people"...and what's unique about that?

So I was wondering: Did this phrase start as, "You are a kind of one?"

More Friends Gone

This week, I had to take Fluff and Tommy to be put down. On the same day. I think I felt as sick as they did.