Dyepot, Teapot

I knew something was wrong when I opened the bedroom door this morning. Frances is almost always waiting in the hall, anticipating breakfast, and on the rare occasion that she isn’t, she reappears within a few minutes. I didn’t want to panic. I checked in the bathroom. I looked for her under the computer desk before glancing at my email. No cat, but my inbox had a forwarded obituary from my mom, about the mother of one of my favorite people from high school. And I thought, “this is going to be the day my cat dies too.”

I found Frances behind a chair in the living room, barely able to lift her head.

We took her to Dove Lewis, and almost immediately the vet fetched us to say her temperature was way too low, her body giving out, were we aware of any kidney disease?

It shouldn’t feel like such a shock. I knew this was coming, as she got thinner and quieter over the last several months. It’s still very hard to arrive at the end, to have her put to sleep.

Frances has been part of my life for ten years. For me that’s the last year of high school, college, several residences, my entire adult existence.

If I don’t answer my email for a couple of days, it’s not personal. I can barely write two sentences in a row without taking a break. I really miss her.

Tags: frances, cats, death

I decided to give del.icio.us another try upon realizing that my current habit of emailing myself links I want to check out later was resulting in a cluttered inbox I don’t want to look at anymore. The del.icio.us network feature seems cool too, but I don’t know anyone to add. Does anyone reading use this? Leave a comment with a link to your bookmarks. Mine are at http://del.icio.us/spinnerin.

Tags: bookmarks, organization, del.icio.us

A post I made earlier this year has gotten a some interesting responses, including a pair of emails from someone trying to promote a movie. I wasn’t going to comment on it, but John Scalzi had a great post recently about marketing to bloggers over something similar, and this time the marketer forgot to fill in all the form letter blanks. Read closely.

Hi,
I found your Fashion Design blog entry, http://dyepot.blogspot.com/2005/08/fashion-rant.html and contacted you regarding Phat Girlz back in April. We are currently working on the dvd release for Phat Girlz which is about an aspiring plus-size fashion designer who struggles to find acceptance, Phat Girlz hilariously shows that size does matter and big is in! Since you mentioned [connection], I thought that you might be interested in posting the press release or a review of the film on your blog?
For your help, I would like send you a copy of Phat Girlz on DVD. Please let me know if you’re interested!
You can check out the banners, press release, and more here: http://assets.m80im.com/webmasters/phatgirlzfox/assets/AssetsPage.htm
Thanks!
Mel, M80
www.m80im.com
www.m80teams.com

I don’t know if I should be flattered that she thinks enough people read this blog and actually pay attention when I recommend something, or if this went to so many people it’s essentially spam, but at least it’s funny.

For the record, if anyone wanted to send me free things I’m actually interested in, I would gladly write all about it. But I’m not expecting that to happen anytime soon. Should I start a new wishlist, just in case?

Tags: marketing, blogging, spam

Our Ruby Rodeo (aka FOSCON 2) last night was a blast. See pictures here. Sean Mountcastle has a good summary of the talks on his blog (link seems to be broken now, but try later), and Chris Dawson captured audio, which you can download as a set of podcasts. We had more people than the space could hold, which I think is fabulous, but next year we may need to hold it at the convention center with the rest of the OSCon events instead of at Free Geek. It’s great to have that much interest.

I’ve been wandering over to the convention center to catch bits of OSCon when I can, including lunch today and yesterday. I’m eager to get back to working on programming projects (with the hot weather we’ve had, it’s a little hard to concentrate… if only I had a laptop and could escape to an air conditioned place). Seeing what other people are working on makes me want to write more code, and especially to get more comfortable with Ruby, so I can do some of these neat things too.

Tags: oscon, oscon06, foscon, foscon06, ruby rodeo, code, programming

It was 104 degrees in Portland today. I planned to be at a Timbers game right now, but I was stuck at work later than I expected and between that and the heat I feel exhausted, immobile. I’m actively sweating as I type this. I’m frustrated and disappointed too. All day at work I felt antsy, wanting to get out of there and go do something, work on one of my projects maybe.

I started the soles for the Seaside Espadrille pattern in the spring/summer Inteweave Crochet, but I don’t think the pattern works right. The first try, I did the whole thing in size medium and not only was the sole too thin in places, but it was much smaller than the listed dimensions. Then I did a gauge swatch, which came out larger than the pattern says, so now I think the finished dimensions for the sandals are on crack. I tried doubling the twine and using a larger hook, but that didn’t seem right either. I’ll probably just improvise my own pattern. When the weather is cooler.

Tomorrow I’m heading up to Seattle for the second half of this weekend’s home and home Timbers/Sounders matchup. It should be fun, and maybe a little cooler than staying at home, but where I really want to be is the beach, like the picture at the top. That was last weekend, but it ought to be every weekend, and every weekday…

Tags: hot

I’ve been helping plan this year’s FOSCON event, and it’s now less than a week away. We’re having a Ruby event one evening during OSCon, which runs all next week at the Portland convention center, to highlight some of the neat things both local and visiting Ruby programmers are doing. I’m particularly looking forward to getting to hear Amy Hoy, because I really like her articles on getting started with Ruby and Rails. I think she’s planning to talk about how to be a good newbie, and how programming communities can be friendly to newcomers without letting them turn into “help vampires”.

I know most of the regular readers here either don’t program or don’t live in Portland, but just in case someone else stumbles in or the Seattle folk are interested in driving down for an evening, here’s the event announcement.

Join us at FreeGeek on July 26th for a fabulous set of presentations on Ruby programming and Ruby culture. If you didn’t catch it last year, FOSCON is a free and fun gathering of Ruby fans held one evening during O’Reilly’s OSCON conference.

* Who: You! And all of your Ruby-loving friends
* What: Exciting speakers, pizza, and discussion
* Where: Free Geek, 1731 SE 10th Avenue, Portland, Oregon
* When: July 26th, 7:30 PM

Speakers will include:

* Alex Bunardzic: Alea Jacta Est::Crossing the Rubicon (Ruby-inspired ways to minimize the burden that the computing infrastructure places on the software developer’s short term memory buffer)
* Lucas Carlson: Ridiculously easy ways to distribute processor intensive tasks using Rinda and DRb
* Topher Cyll: Building a Turn Based Strategy Game in Ruby… in 20 Minutes
* Ryan Davis: ruby2C and the metaruby project
* Geoffrey Grosenbach: Power Tools: Scripts, shortcuts, aliases, and other ways to make your Ruby programming environment more enjoyable
* Amy Hoy: The growing nature of the Ruby community & embracing us “right-brainers” with the minimum amount of trollishness/help vampirism/etc.

FOSCON is sponsored by CD Baby: a little CD store with the best new independent music and Planet Argon: Ruby on Rails Development, Consulting & Hosting.

Tags: foscon, ruby, programming