qofe.net

I called him Sweet Boots almost all the time, because that’s exactly who he was. Just the sweetest cat, not a mean bone in his body. A very gentle soul.

Back in August of 2006, Boots was diagnosed with CRF (chronic renal failure). From that time to this,  Boots fought the valiant fight until, as expected, the kidney disease finally won out. But he (and we) did win 3 extra years full of life and the pleasure of each others company.

Even though we knew this would happen eventually, it didn’t make it any easier for any of us. There is very definitely an emptiness in our home.  That feeling of a specific missing part of the whole. It has taken me a while to get used to not having to medicate  him every night. I kept thinking it was time to do his meds. I still have to remind myself sometimes.

There were many times that Boots seemed to be studying us, as much as we would study him. He seemed to enjoy watching us, but I don’t know for sure of course. I don’t want to anthropomorphize too much, but there were times I thought he was looking at us and thinking how strange human behavior is. I remember him watching me put on pantyhose, and I swear his expression said, “What the hell is she doing?”

He was fascinated by shadow and light. So when I went to my first (and last) cat show and saw the laser pointers for sale, I got one for him. He loved that red dot, man did he ever. He especially loved spinning around in circles until he was dizzy. And as soon as he recovered he wanted to spin around again. When the laser wasn’t being used, Boots would sit and stare at the usual spots where Bill would shine it, and look back and forth at Bill and these areas, with an expression of, “well, where’s the red dot, you gonna play with me or what?” Bill would happily oblige.

And he was a belly-boy. Boots absolutely loved to have his belly rubbed, and it was never a trap. He would purr up a storm.

Boots always loved to play with the water in the water bowl. As a kitten he would place his toys in the water bowl and bat them around. He did outgrow that, but he never stopped  moving the water dish around, and always moved it into the path of human foot traffic. Despite our best efforts we eventually would kick the bowl and spill water everywhere.

Since he’s gone, the water bowl stays where it’s been placed.

This was so easy to set up! I have to test it out. So many times I think of things I want to write about while I’m in transit, then when I get home I’m focused on other stuff. Dunno if I’ll do long posts this way though, being that I’m not a big fan of the iPhone typing interface.

I suppose I could have titled this “Dotster sucks” but they aren’t the only company with lousy customer service. It seems to be a pervasive issue these days, and I find it infuriating. I think I’m especially sensitive when it comes to online companies because I work as a web developer and I would never treat customers with such callous disregard as these large service providers do (nor would any of my teammates).

What is it that these larger companies don’t understand? It’s simple — we are paying them to provide a service, and at the very least — if they want to keep our business — they ought to provide informative, intelligent help. They pay lip-service to having online help, or response in 24-hours, but if and/or when you get a response it’s not meaningful, it has no bearing on the issue you’ve written to them about. 99% of the time it is someone who is paid to read from a script, asking a set of questions, regardless of the fact that those questions have nothing whatsoever to do with the issue you are having.

Long story short — shoulda been more diligent about backing up my blog dB (lesson learned). The blog dB got totally munged somehow, one day it was there, next day I went to login and it was all gone.

All I wanted to know from the hosting company (Dotster) was (a) did they have any backups (which I knew was doubtful) and (b) could they tell me if security had been compromised or the cause of the dB failure.

I got the usual automated responses that said I would hear from someone in 24 hours — but that didn’t happen.  The first response I received from an actual person made it seem as though I was going to get help. It said “this should be fixed with in 24 hours i have forwarded this to our team will be work on it.” Horrible English, yes — but the “team” was going work on my problem. A day passed, then two, it was New Years… so I waited ’cause who works during the holidays?

It took 2.5 more weeks before I got any further information, and by that time I was pretty well angry… not about my site, but about the lack of basic information, and/or courtesy — not to mention decent intelligible English.

All I wanted was an answer — the first time. I didn’t need a fake — we’ve got our team on it — just a hey, “we don’t backup customer databases” would have been fine. I’m sure it was something in the original agreement, but who remembers those things? Especially when your dB has been lost — I just wanted confirmation, information, an intelligent, courteous human reply.

I immediately moved the site here to Hurricane Electric. We’ve been hosting other sites with them since… 1994 or 1995. Never have had an issue, and always get timely, appropriate and *helpful* customer service responses. Shoulda been here with my blog since day one. Won’t make that mistake ever again.

Well, I have to say Wordpress made it pretty easy to get back up and running on a new server, and of course it’s great to have this site at Hurricane Electric. Shoulda started here, dunno what I was thinkin’.

At first I thought there was an automated XML file made of all my posts, but then I remembered I had actually done an export to XML a few months ago, thinking I would change hosting companies back then. I just totally forgot about it. (File under ‘getting old can suck sometimes.’)

I’ve got some more style adjustments to make, but on the whole, it’s looking much like it used to. I’m going to be backing up the dB faithfully and will tell all about the horrors of customer service over at Dotster in another post.

If you’re reading this, and you have kids… don’t ever, under any circumstances tell them that they are stupid. If they make a mistake, or several — then educate them… tell them they’ve made a mistake and mistakes are how we learn. But do not ever, ever tell them they are stupid, make fun of them, or otherwise make them feel inconsequential in their ability to improve their own lives.

I am sitting here reading a book, a programming book I’ve had in my possession for some time, with a bookmark placed where I left off reading. At one point I just stopped reading it… and I wasn’t sure why until tonight.

I’ve got great reading comprehension, always have — but because this is a book on programming somehow it set off a math-trigger thing. Afraid I’d find out that I didn’t understand it, that I was too “stupid” to understand it, so I just stopped.

Now that I’ve started reading it again, I realize, I understand it! I am smart, I can comprehend, I can still learn. It was really hard to write “I am smart” just then really hard. It should not be so difficult.

Until that last post from a few days ago, it had been a good long while since I wrote a post. I’m not going to make any new year’s resolutions about posting more often — I know that won’t turn out too well.

I guess I haven’t been focused on my own writing these days. Mostly trying to keep going at work, very much trying to keep on keepin’ on and not focused on my own thing. Nothing extra-curricular as it were.

I’ve got all these grand plans — in my mind — but nothing will come of it of course, not unless I actually make the effort to ‘just do it’.

It’s easier with time off (oh, okay and a few drinks), to get some writing done. But I can’t be drinkin’ every damn day and expect that clients web sites will come out okay. Somewhere inside my ears I know that rhymes…

Not a lot of comments… it’s true. I think it’s ’cause I don’t promote this site in the other blogs I post at. I dunno why. Maybe I need to get over that and maybe not. I read some of the comments at the other places I frequent and there sure are a lot of idiots out there.

There are about 40 minutes left to 2007 as I write this… I’m having a grand evening, been hanging out with DH, and listening to some of my favorite tunes.

I hope 2008 will be a healthy & happy year for everyone.

Peace Out…

This morning as I was waiting for my cinnamon raisin bagel to be toasted, buttered and added to the rest of my breakfast purchase from the corner deli, I spied the Dunhills in the cigarette display behind the counter. Ahhhh the thought of just having one cigarette, really enjoying a good smoke entered my mind.

I’ve been a little stressed lately, so I’ve found myself thinking about it more frequently than I’ve become accustomed too. Of course once I actually smell the smoke of anyone else’s cigarettes, or even that lingering stench of stale smoke on any smoker, I remember one of the reasons I don’t do that anymore. But I digress…

As I stood there in my reverie, suddenly, like a needle scratching an old LP I heard the cashier say “$7.25″ to a man who had just asked for a pack of Marlboro Lights.

“Holy shit, you’re kidding?!,” I said.

“Nope, said tall reasonably healthy looking gentleman, that’s what they cost.”

“I’m so glad I quit.”

The guy asked what they cost when I quit — about $5 per pack (of course Dunhills were more expensive being imports hereabouts). “Still too expensive,” I said. He smiled and we laughed, and he took his cigarettes and left.

I still can’t get over the price. You can get a great lunch (even dinner!) for $7.25 (tax included).

It’s just water, cats need to drink it to survive just as we do — but get it *on* them, and it’s freak-out time. Unless they are drinking out of the sink, somehow then the “wadder monsters” don’t have the same affect.

We’ve got the kitty food bowls on the counter-top by the sink, and sometimes Orion gets up there and sets about making a nuisance of himself while I’m washing dishes. I’ll say, “remember, you are afraid of water” and he looks at me incredulously just before jumping down to the floor.

We have a spray bottle in the living room and merely holding it in my hands (I hardly ever have to use it) makes them stop whatever mischief they were into, and run away post-haste. It’s just water, but it is what gives us our only advantage over felinus domesticus.

If you happen to have one of those cats who is the rare exception to the rule, well, just give up my friend, there’s really nothing you can do, the cat has won.

change habits, outlook, feelings
grow
learn
lose sight sometimes but
gain perspective
still,
who did you expect when you walked in the door
i’m the same person from before

In a couple of weeks it will be 27 years ago that my dad died. He’s been dead for more years of my life than he was alive.

Dad was the sort of person who kept everything inside. Also for his generation ‘talking’ about things didn’t have the status it has now, especially for men. He never spoke about the pain and guilt of being the only member of is immediate family to be alive, or if he did speak of it, it wasn’t to us kids. The pain leaked out of him anyway, as repressed emotions tend to do, expressed mostly as rage though his violent, erratic temper.

That’s not to say he was a bad person, on the contrary. He was extremely honest, very charitable, a hard worker, an excellent provider for us, had a sense of humor and was highly intelligent.

His emotional intelligence was where he needed education. He could fly off into a rage over the simplest most innocent things for no logical reason. I don’t really like to talk about the abuse, people get all weird and stupid about it usually. Unless someone’s been through a similar situation growing up, they can’t understand, and that’s probably a good thing, but either way judgment needs to be left behind.

As a child I was constantly terrified, afraid of making him angry (there were other reasons to be terrified — mother was extremely cruel but she had almost no redeeming qualities, but that’s not what this post is about). He had a way of pounding up the stairs that was most unnerving.

At the age of 16 he crossed a boundary I could not accept, he ran after me into my room and proceeded to beat me. But my room was the only safe place in the house, the only place, that until that moment, I’d never been beaten. It freaked me out, enraged me. I started hitting back, and that freaked him out. The look on his face was, well, complete shock. That day saved me, it saved my soul in many ways. He stopped, he left my room, he went down the stairs to the living room and I heard him say to her, “do you know what that kid did, she hit me!” and “I’m too old for this.” And that was it, he never hit me again. If I’d have known, I’d have done it a lot sooner.

Over the years I grew to understand him, at least partially. Most of my understanding came from watching him die of lung cancer, changed me that did.

Once a week we would take him from one hospital to another for his radiation treatment. I’m still not sure why that task befell us, I would think that he either should have been in the hospital that was capable of providing the treatments, or the hospitals should have arranged the transport between them. He was so weak at that point and it was strange pushing him in a wheelchair, the man who terrified me all my life. Yet there he was, helpless and dependent upon me (and her). He trusted me, despite all that he’d done before, he trusted me to take care of him when he was sick, and of course I did. My only complaint about it was why. *Why* were we taking him to this place at all for treatment, because it seemed to be more of a form of unnecessary torture for him, he would get soooo sick afterwards, and so much weaker. They knew, the doctors knew, that there was no hope for him to get better, so why they made him go through that, I’ve no idea.

The anatomy of families is so strange and hindsight lends some clarity…

Dad was really great when I felt sad, I mean nobody else in my family would even have noticed my sadness, but he did and in his own way took great steps to try and cheer me up whenever it happened. In the dichotomy of our relationship, I was also ‘daddy’s little girl’ being the youngest of 3. I cling to the happy memories, the times that he showed how much love he had for me. Those are the things that allowed me to see him as a person, troubled, but still human, humane.

My dad was always great at reading stories to us kids, and not just reading but enacting them — different characters had different voices, different inflections in his voice. He was grand at that, and there were some stories (and I know all kids do this) but there were some stories I made him read over and over and over again, just because I loved the sounds, the way he read them. I can still hear his voice when I think of it.