The phrase that pops into my head at this moment is “to sleep, perchance to dream”. This is part of the famous soliloquy from Hamlet – Hamlet begins with “To be or not to be, that is the question”. This particular soliloquy addresses Hamlet’s thoughts on the mortality of man; it comes to me here not because of that, but because of the capacity of a writer to rest in order to better understand and revisit his craft.

A lot has happened in (literally) the last month, and I will likely blog a bunch of stuff individually. I’ve been spending the week since Evergreen’s graduation collecting my thoughts and resting from the large amounts of work that I undertook right at the end of last quarter. Suffice it to say, I am now an Evergreen graduate, though I have not yet officially been awarded a degree. I’m waiting for my last 48 credits to post, but I know I got at least 44 of them from Student Originated Software, and I expect that the remaining four from Senior Seminar will post with no problems. It will likely be a couple weeks before I actually see a degree or final evaluations in the mail.

I actually have two happy birthday wishes – one belated, one not.  A happy 50th as of yesterday to my friend Jeff Fisher, who apparently celebrated in style (Jeff, I only have one question – how the hell are you celebrating your 60th?).  A happy 21st birthday as of today to my girlfriend, Amanda, and congratulations to both!

This is apparently significant enough that I feel the need to post about it. I’ve turned on commenting for pretty much everything, as well as the Akismet plugin for spam filtering. We’ll see how well this works (and whether it’s actually worthwhile to remove the requirement that people register before commenting).

Fire away!

Libby has arrived in her new home as of about 4:30 or so today, completely knocked out by the anesthesia she was given. However, she didn’t actually have any surgery. Apparently, while the vet was prepping her to be spayed, they discovered a previous scar that suggested that she had been spayed previously. When we picked her up, she yowled rather plaintively when we put her in the car, but then went right back to sleep. She started waking up an hour or so after she got home, but she’s still somewhat numb – she’s not walking in a very coordinated way, and it’s obvious that she has yet to regain feeling in her tail, since it’s dragging on the ground. She’s already dragged it through her water dish twice without even noticing!

The vet did notify us that she needed an additional treatment for distemper in a couple weeks, and also that they had detected signs of tapeworm and had already treated her for it. She also needs to have some drugs to prevent ringworm, which need to be given in the next day or so, so Amanda and I will need to go to the grocery store and get some deworming medicine. We have scheduled her initial vet appointment with a Dr. Mitchell at the Westside Olympia Animal Hospital on Harrison – I may report back on that visit in a few weeks.

She’s a very gentle and currently somewhat timid cat. We have her downstairs in our combination guest bathroom and laundry room, and we’ve been alternating between leaving her alone and visiting her. She has discovered that she’s small enough to fit behind our washer and drier, and she crawls behind it, then peeks out at us from the little crack between the machines. The crack is big enough that it almost looks like she could fit through it, and she has tried, but alas, she must go around, then jump over herself to get back out! She was also very tolerant of my camera and our attention – hence the photo. I have yet to hear a peep out of her beyond her initial yowl in the car, but Amanda claims she’s meowed twice.

She’s going to be an indoor cat – many thanks to Sean to reinforcing my suspicion that confining her during the times we’re gone isn’t a bad idea. This is part of the initial introduction of a cat to a home anyway – give them a limited territory, then gradually allow them to expand that territory. That may not work too well in a place like this where most of the house has an open layout, but we’ll let her roam in a day or two after she’s adjusted to using her litter box and where her supplies are.

At right is our newly adopted cat, Libby. She’s not home yet (she’s due to be spayed tomorrow and will be transported to the vet by Thurston County Animal Services, which is where she’s being adopted from), but we’re looking forward to it.

What we know: she’s a year and a half old, FELV negative, and up-to-date with routine shots. Past that, she’d have to tell us.

Perhaps we can teach her sign language…?

If you’re seeing this, it means that my recent change of web hosts has been successful. Obviously, not quite everything is done yet – this blog usually carries the same layout as my personal site, but since the WordPress template associated with that is currently broken, you may see some odd layout results from time to time as I try to fix the problem.

For those wondering, I’ve switched from pair Networks to Dreamhost, which gives me as much functionality as pair but far more flexibility in terms of cost and the number of domains I can host on my account. That’s not to say I’m ragging on pair Networks; I absolutely recommend them to anyone looking for a competent and stable web host that puts their customers first. Case in point – as I was moving files over to Dreamhost, I found that I couldn’t access my domains via web or SSH but could ping and traceroute to pair’s server. A ticket request into pair’s Urgent Support system and 30 minutes of lobbing messages back and forth traced the problem to an xmlrpc file (WordPress, specifically) that got an abnormal number of hits. Since this can sometimes be a server attack, pair’s network blacklisted me. Support was nice enough to whitelist my IP block to fix the problem.

If that doesn’t speak volumes (and that their Urgent Support people were on the job within five minutes of my e-mail), I don’t know what does!

In marketing, there’s a concept known as the ten-word summary. This is a marketing phrase that is about ten words (preferably less) that you use to capitalize on what service your product provides to others. A la the irreverent nature of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, I attempt to provide below a ten-word summary of my life in the last couple months:

Wet, Hectic Box Shindigs for Writing, Insanity, and Sequence Diagrams

Sounds more like a bad self-help book title, really, but there is a point to it. I’ve been running around in the pouring rain that becomes Washington State this time of year, moving, doing a lot of writing associated with class and my work in general (some of it coding, some not), and, in general, trying very hard not to require a strait jacket and padded walls. I’ve also been completing a substantial project in my academic program, Student Originated Software.

As much as I enjoy telling my friends to have a padded room ready for me any time now, it is typically a slight exaggeration. This quarter has gotten better lately, though it’s going to get worse after the Thanksgiving break, which, thankfully, starts at the end of this week(!).

One of my professional acquaintances and logo designer extraordinaire Jeff Fisher has chugged into the blogosphere. Well, if that wasn’t a cool, hip marketing move, I don’t know what was. If you haven’t read his book, The Savvy Designer’s Guide to Success: Ideas and tactics for a Killer Career, pick up a copy — it’s a witty yet insightful collection of marketing tips for anyone starting in graphics design, though his tips are applicable to most any business I can think of.

Welcome to the blog world, Jeff, albeit a bit belated! If you ever need any guest posters, look me up.

I took some photos from behind the police line. They’re available here.

NWCN reports:

OLYMPIA – Olympia firefighters battled a two-alarm apartment fire in a two story, eight-unit apartment complex on Sunday afternoon. Four units of the eight units of the Olympic Heights Apartments near the Capitol Mall were damaged.

There were no injuries.

The fire is under investigation, and the cause is undetermined.

Damage to the structure is extensive.

It is a little odd looking out your window and seeing black smoke and at least five firetrucks that are just sitting around…