I really am remiss, but then nothing has been happening worth mentioning.

Except, sometime between 3 and 7AM Sunday morning my time, my cat, Furball, crossed the Rainbow Bridge. When he didn't come purring to chow down when I was filling his food dish, I went looking for him, and found him stretched out on the living room floor.

I had him not quite 11 years, he was 4 when I got him, so he was nearly 15 (positively geriatric for a feline) at the time of his passing.

Dang, I'm gonna miss him.

It's been almost a year and a half since I posted anything here, mainly because I didn't feel there was anything going on of interest to post. In that time, what's happened? Well, I got laid off from my part time job in February (Happy valentine's day, here's your pink slip), and haven't much luck finding work since.

Had to miss WorldCon this year.

Reached a milestone age so I could get into my Individual Retirement Accounting without any penalties (59.5), which is the only thing that's kept me going this far.

That's about it.

I first met Jerry Perkins in November 1993 at a local science fiction convention, where he was part of a local writer's group that included Gerald (G. David) Nordley, Kent Brewster, Sandy Saidak, Chuq von Rospach, and Sasha Miller. I already knew Kent, Chuq, and Sasha from the science fiction forums on CompuServe, so it wasn't much of a stretch to extend acquaintance to the others in this group.

I didn't talk to Jerry again until the following spring, though, when we ran into each other at BayCon. Back in those days, right after I'd made my first sale, I was working as an ISO 9000 documentation specialist, and the gentleman for whom I subcontracted was looking for other people to assist. Jerry let drop in conversation that he was looking for work, as he’d recently been let go from a job he'd had for years.

I already knew Jerry knew how to write, as he'd had enough sales to qualify as an active member of SFWA, so I innocently asked him, "Do you know anything about Quality Assurance?"

"Do I know anything about QA!" he replied, and whipped out a copy of his resume. We had a good laugh about it at the time, but I did forward his resume on to my boss, and within a week Jerry joined me on the ISO contracts I was working on.

We worked both as a team and as parallel solo contractors for the next few years for the same man, until Jerry finally got a regular paying gig again at Onizuka Air Force Base, which is fondly known as the Blue Cube here in Silicon Valley, but in the meantime, Jerry had also introduced me to first one, then a second of two different writers groups he worked with after he left the original group I'd met him through, and we saw and talked regularly until he moved to Sequim, Washington, a few years ago after his final retirement.

I last saw him just over a month ago when he visited the San Francisco Bay area, where he joined the one writer's group I still work with regularly, the Whensday People, and showed off photos of his new home and the country surrounding where he moved to on the Olympic Peninisula.

I’m sorry Jerry didn't get to live more years so he could enjoy his new home and life so much more, or to finish the novel he'd been working on for years, as he’d told us when he visited he’d managed to work out the problem that had been frustrating him the last time many of us had seen the manuscript.

A few of my favorite memories having to do with Jerry include:

The first time he visited my home and I went over the various ISO projects in process with him, and introduced him to my then-resident feline, the Brat. I asked him, from the far end of the house, "Are you an ailurophobe?" He replied, "On the contrary. I’m an ailurophile!" When he met Ms Brat, he did indeed fall in love with her, and she allowed him to hold her for a lot longer than she tolerated the same from even me.

When I finally visited Jerry’s then-house in San Jose, I found he had an extensive collection of furry art – feline furry art. 'Nuff said.

When Jerry was going through the background checks for his job at the Onizuka STC, I was one of the people he’d given as a possible contact for the Army (or was it Air Force?) investigator to interview about my knowledge regarding Jerry. During the interview, which was conducted at the site of one of our ISO 9000 clients that was less than 2 blocks from Onizuka and the Lockheed complex in Sunnyvale, CA, the investigator didn't blink an eye when I mentioned Jerry as a writer of science fiction and fantasy. He didn’t blink an eye when I mentioned Jerry's involvement in furry fandom (strange, but mostly harmless). When the investigator did freak was when I warned him about the company he was going to meet me at: "Don't be surprised if you hear lots of eastern European accents. The owners are Bulgarian, half the staff is Bulgarian, the chief accountant is Russian, and one of the most trusted engineers is Czech." The investigator’s shocked "What!" could be heard three miles away. Jerry and I were still laughing over that the last time we talked earlier this year.

Jerry had a good eye for telling details in a story, at noticing the things that sat wrong as well as those little touches that would give a story a bit of zing. That’s one of the things I missed about not having him here in California, although I'm sure his new friends in Washington reaped the benefits of his keen eye.

Hasta la vista, Jerry, amigo. Maybe we'll meet again someday, the other side of the Rainbow Bridge.

And thanks to dsmoen for alerting me to Jerry's passing so I could get the notices about Jerry's condition that my email spam filters had blocked.

I follow a handful of comics on line, and this one popped up today:

http://www.comics.com/comics/raisingduncan/archive/raisingduncan-20070312.html

For the writers who might be reading this, I'm sure you can all sympathise.

Okay. In another note I just posted, I mentioned that I seem to have a fairly good day when the first thing I hear when I wake up is Rod Stewart's "Rhythm of My Heart."

Is there anything you hear at the beginning of your day, music-wise, that helps set a mood for you and helps you face the day better?


Minor postscript: For years, Rod Stewart was one of those people I could take or leave. I never went out of my way to listen to him, but I never changed the station when I heard him, either.

Until I finally encountered the above-named song, and for some reason, I fell absolutely and instantly in love with it.

So nothing much has been going on.

Spent a lot of time today, though, working on layout for my final project for my HTML class.

Got the look and feel just where I want it, and know roughly what I want to do for content.

Tomorrow I organize the content, then start filling in the pages; it's a 5-page site, and I have the site template done (cannot use linked style sheets, alas, or it'd be TONS easier), which is the most time-consuming part.

And I have a lab assignment to turn in as well, having to do with forms.

Whee.

Furball kitty is stable, still haven't isolated the trigger for his high blood pressure, but the options left are extremely rare, and vet said as long as he's stable with existing meds, we won't go looking.

I"m also in recovery from a mini-crisis at one of my two "day" jobs, but that's since been resolved. It was getting it resolved that sucked me away from doing much for several days....

And I've learned that, if the first thing I hear on the radio when I wake up in the morning is Rod Stewart's "Rhythm of My Heart", I tend to have a good day overall. So anymore I look forward to those gravelly tones on my clock radio.

I was driving home from work and the DJ reported, in a conversational spot, the names of a few celebrities who are celebrating their birthdays today (ones still living), and by "today", I mean Feb 22.

Elton John, who turned 60 (although it's the 23rd in the UK right now).

But the one that tickled my fancy, when I was told she turned 44 today was....


........drum roll..........



Pebbles Flintstone!!!

Yes, that red-haired moppet with the bone in her ponytail.

I wonder if an artist has done up what she'd look like today?

Local and online friend dsmoen posted a link to this in her Journal, so I tested it out.

You Are A Hornbeam Tree

You are a reserved person, looking in from the outside. Naturally attractive, you take good care of your looks. You are not egoistic, and you make life as comfortable as possible. You look for kindness in others - though you are seldom happy with yourself. A bit mistrusting and unsure, you dream of being swept away by someone unusual.

Stopped at the pharmacy on the way home to get Furball's Rx for his blood pressure meds refilled, or I'll be running out Sunday.

The girls in the pharmacy loved his name, and assumed he was a furry cat, based on the name, and wondered what he looked like.

So I got out my cell, where i have the Furboy with his google-eyed "feed me I'm starving" face on, and showed them.

The melted into puddles. :)

My midterm for my online HTML class was supposed to take place between 8 AM Friday and 10 PM Sat. Except the flaming genius at the fhda computer services group scheduled a regular system outage from 10 PM Friday to some similar time Sunday.

So, instructor extended the window for the exam (which was two parts) to bracket the outage period, and warned everybody about the issue.

Took exam, sank same.

It came in two parts: 10-question multiple guess (I got 10/10)
Coding a 2-page website with the images and text instructor gave us, so it matched screen captured images of same two pages.

I did this on my desktop computer (because it's wired, not wireless, and I didn't want to risk losing completely by my wifi hiccuping), so I didn't have my code validation utilities installed there. Still, I did a visual scan of my html and it looked good, and if I lose any points, it'll probably be only a few.

I'm chuffed.

Things are getting back to quasi-normal here.

Furball had a two-week checkup, and his blood pressure is finally down into the normal range.

He now gets the prednisone tablets only 3x per week, and no eyedrops at all, so most of the time he only gets his BP meds 2x per day. Except MWF, he gets the pred at night as well.

Still, they took more blood and other smaples, and plan to do some followup tests and a search for a potential hidden thyroid problem.

He goes back the first week of March.

He's also turning into one expensive cat.....


Meanwhile, my HTML/XHTML class goes apace, and I'm chomping at the bit. For those of you who know about HTML and styling with CSS, let me put it this way:

You can do a lot more, and faster, with a style sheet that's either linked or embedded.

But for this class, we have to use "in=line" styles, which makes it just as clunky as the old way of formatting HTML with attributes that are now "deprecated" (as in, they're no longer valid in the current implementation of XHTML).

I want to run.

Doing inline styles is forcing me to plod.

I am chomping at the bit, and often frustrated.

But, I'm making it through...

Weekends are for relaxing, right?

Not when one is taking classes beyond work, and doing contract work with website maintenance for someone beyond the two regular jobs.

And since the class is in HTML/XHTML, I got my fill of same this weekend.

I completed the mods to my class home page that were required for Wk 3

I put together the working with images and text page that is our lab for week 3

(and it's driving my nuts, because we have to use CSS styling, but inline styles and not embedded styles). Long explanation for that.

Did the website updates for the lit agency, both on the existing site AND the redesigned site which hasn't yet been released yet. The agents are co-founders of the San Francisco Writer's Conference, and are gearing up for that. If you can go, do so; it's a really cool event, but they're probably sold out by now; they're limited to only a few hundred attendees.

Furball the cat is still getting medicated, although he's down to only 3 meds from the six he was on at one point.

1. Prednisone acetate eyedrop is 1/day, but the antibiotic eyedrop is gone.
2. Pred pills are 1/day, will probably go to 1 in 2 days after his next appt.

3. Unfortunately, the Norvasc, for his blood pressure, is up to 1/2 pill 2x per day, because although his BP improved (from 240-270 range down to 195-210), it's still not good enough.

Poor kitty is getting paranoid, too, thinking that every time I call him, it's to give him drugs. It isn't, but he goes and hides, anyway. I'll be so glad when I don't have to give him either type of Prednisone again, and he gets the BP medicine in liquid suspension (they promised me we could try tuna or chicken flavors, to make it easier for the cat to take).

We'll see.

So, I'm finishing up my 2nd week lab assignment as well as the home page basic that are needed for this HTML class. And I discover that my 1st week lab assignment never got uploaded into the online system. Teacher says she never received it; all I can figure is that I must have left out one step in the upload process, as this was the first time I'd ever used it.

Anyway, got assignment to teacher in another way, and am caught up pretty much to date, except for some tutorials which are super basic.

Furball progresseth apace.

He's now on only 1 pill per day of Pred, although he gets his blood pressure meds 2x per day. Got a pill cutter, coz I have to give him a 1/4 tablet at a time. This wouldnn't be such a pain, if the pills weren't diamond-shaped.

You know:

   /\
   \/

So much fun quartering that, especially since they don't cut cleanly

Things are calming down here. I get to hunt down Furball and give him his last meds of the day yet, but it's also a milestone medication, because his dose of Pred goes down to 1/day instead of 2 after this.

In other news, I asked dsmoen just a bit ago about a typeface I've been looking for off and on, including an hour cruising font download sites yesterday afternoon. She didn't exactly find it, from my off-the-wall description (a cursive/script font, but with Embellishments sorta on the order of what you see in Old English type, but the embellishments are rather simple and look like the feather bobbers on the head of a quail). Yeah, I know it sounds weird.

But she got me pointed in the right direction; I finally found it (
ITC Isadora Std, named after dancer Isadora Duncan). Now all I need to do is justify the cost of downloading the font family :)

Went to vet's again yesterday afternoon, this time the partner of the eye specialist I saw on Saturday. Dr. McCallum is, um, shall we say, quite PRESENTABLE. Ask Erin or Deirdre the exact wording I used in IRC :) Also, he's a nice guy. He did chuckle at Erin's caution about having to deal with "kitty 'roid rage".

Anyway. Going in to this visit, Furball was taking several medications:

1. 1 pill for his blood pressure (actually 1/4 tablet Norvasc 2x/day).
2. 1 tablet of Prednisolone 2x/day
3. An eye ointment that relaxed the nerves/muscles around said eye, 2x/day.
4. 1 drop 3x/day of Pred liquid
5. 1 drop 3x/day of Gentamicin (antibiotic).

Good news in the health arena:

His blood and urine analyses showed nothing that could pinpoint the underlying cause of his hypertension, so it may be something we can't find yet that may have to do with his heart. This qualifies as good news, as it eliminated about 90% of the probable causes of the blood in his eye and the hypertension.

His blood pressure is dropping; even after a tense warm up to get him to the vet (cornering him with a vacuum cleaner; bad mommy), his systolic was down to 195. Th is isn't good, but it's better than the initial readings of 270 and 240 from his first visit.

The eensy blisters that were on the retina in his good eye are healing up; now he just has eensy scars :/ And the right eye had cleared up enough that the vet could see his retina.

Good news in the drug arena:

The eye ointment isn't needed anymore.
and....
He'll be weaned off the Pred tablets over the next week. 2/day for 3 days (so 2 days left, yay), then 1 a day until his next vet visit.

More good news:

Most kitty hypertension isn't caught until the cat actually goes BLIND. We caught the Furboy in time. And he can see out of his bad eye.

Bad news:

Whatever else happens, he'll be on Norvasc for his kitty hypertension for the rest of his life.

Mr. Furball Cat's blood in the eye problem worsened dramatically from 10:30 last night until Midnight. Deirdre and Erin were present in IRD when I noticed this, and decided he was going to the emergency clinic right then.

So I got dressed (I was ready for bed), packed him up, and drove off in the 28 degree (F) night, reaching the vet clinic at 1AM. 28 is frigging cold for this area, where we seldom get sub-freezing weather.

The clinic was already checking in a puppy, approx. 3 months old, a Brussels Griffon, who in his short life has almost died several times due to being infested with just about every worm that exists out there, poor pup. In fact, as I was being checked in, there was a CPR order out for the poor little guy :(

Anyway, Furball's eye got noticeably worse in the 4 hours we were there (we didn't leave until after 5 AM). His eyes had to be dilated, his blood pressure was checked (which would have been a comedy of errors in itself if it hadn't been so serious), and then the vet examined both eyes ... including the "good" one...which was a good thing, as she noticed anomalies there that are helping toward the final diagnosis.

Dr. Szucs (pronounced Zooch, in case you're curious), actually showed me two different lists of possible causes in her reference books, and the potential treatments for all of them. She started Furball on treatment the most likely causes, plus treatment for the eye itself, and said she'd arrange with an ophthomalogist colleague who's in a specialist clinic two doors away to see him later.

I came home, finished off a banana and a quickly-nuked burrito, and went to bed ... all by 6:30.

And the phone woke me up at 9:15. It was Dr. Szucs saying that the specialist could see Furball at 11. Rather than try to get back to sleep and miss waking up in time, I stayed up, then at 10 got dressed, gathered up Mr Furboy (who protested loudly, once), and headed off. Got there a bit early, but no problem; I'd stopped at Jack for coffee and a sandwich on the way, so we sat in the parking lot and shared chicken fajita pita chicken :)

End result of the ophtho exam and an additional blood pressure check, Furball has hypertension. Normal for a cat is 130/something; he tested out as 240/210. And the pill he took for hypertension at 5 AM hadn't made much change yet, so he's going to get a dose 2X per day instead of 1X.

He also got blood and urine samples taken (another adventure; they couldn't find his bladder by feel, so they had to do ultrasound to locate it) :S , and then Dr. Burling (the ophtho) gave me a copy of the revised treatment plan. She's faxing the results of both of these exams to Furball's regular vet, and I go back to see the specialists on Tuesday afternoon, where I"ll learn the results of the bloodwork and urine tests.

According to Dr. Burling, hypertension in cats, unlike dogs and humans where the tendency to same can be hereditary), is usually triggered by some other problem. And the trigger for the hypertension check is the eye whose sclera suddenly fills up with blood.

Thus the tests; there are 3-4 they're looking at now that could trigger the hypertension; the hypertension diagnosis ruled out about 8-12 of the possible causes that Dr. Szucs had showed me at 4 AM.

Anyway, I'm beat, and don't know what work I'll get done today. I have to finish up a few items on a lit agency website redesign and then upload it for preview/ok from the clients .... and crosschecking my first lab assignment for my XHTML class and uploading THAT.

Color me exhausted.

I'm working a bit now. In December I started the seasonal tech support job, which will be driving me nucking futz come mid-February, and will die off enough I'll be out of work again my Mar 31.

The year round job has increased from 5 to 12 hours a week, though, which is a nice break.

I'm also almost done with a website conversion to a new layout using Cascading Style sheets.

And, I'm taking web design classes (Computers on the Internet, aka COIN) at a local community college.

As if this isn't enough to keep me going crazy, sometime this afternoon or early evening, Furball D Cat's right eye got something done to it that's making it look full of blood in the sclera, and his pupils aren't the same size in both eyes.

So I've left a message with the vet, describing what i saw, and left my phone #s if they want to call me back.

Color me worried.

Al right; all right; after Deirdre and Erin twisted my arm, I succumbed to the evil side of the force and signed up here.

It may take me some time to get used to posting here, though.