The sequel to Cyteen is available!!!
Jan 20, 2009
It’s out!! The sequel to Cyteen is available in hardback!! I want to get this book — I’m really curious to see what happens — but I’m almost concerned. It’s been 23 years since Cyteen was published, the author’s written some good series in a different universe (or, at least for some of these other books, a much different part of this -=same=- universe) and the few “sequels” written two decades after the first book haven’t always held up. They may have been good, but they weren’t quite the same. The author had changed as a person and as a professional, and that was (of course) visible in the books. (I don’t know that I’d want to read something written by a person who hadn’t changed at all in two decades…because that’s a kind of scary person.) But still…there will be change. And this sequel is supposed to pick up right where Cyteen left off.
But even with all the concerns about “will it pick up the same voice”...it’s Cyteen!! I have servers named after the characters in this book, for pity’s sake. I have to read the sequel. (Okay…first, I have to get the spare money to buy the sequel. Ursa’s doing quite well; but the vet bills were Not Small.)
For anyone else who wants to check this out, it may not have hit your local bookstores just yet, since it has a publication date of January 6, 2009 (that’s two weeks ago). The book you’re looking for is “Regenesis” by C J Cherryh. Good old reliable Amazon will have it for $18 and taxes; or you can buy it from Deepdiscount.com for about the same price.
Permalink
Adventures in amateur feline veterinary medicine (or, pilling the poor longsuffering cat)
Jan 18, 2009
I've tried pilling Ursa (he quickly got wise to that routine), I went back to the vet's and got Clamavox (I ended up wearing quite a lot of it), and then...I got sneaky.
- Get two soft cat treats, a small paring knife, and one of the cat's antibiotic gelcaps.
- Using the point of the paring knife, dig a small hole in one of the cat treats. Try to make sure not to cut out too much, or the treat will just crumble.
- Carefully separate the two halves of the antibiotic gelcap. Shake the extra medicine off your fingertips into the kitchen sink. (Note: trust me on this - do not perform this operation anywhere near your coffee.)
- Carefully pour some of the medicine powder from the gelcap into the hole in the treat. Pour, tamp down, pour a little more, tamp down...until the hole is filled. Do not overfill.
- Put the gelcap back together. You should still have just over half of the medicine powder still in that gelcap. Which means that you'll get to do a second round of this.
- Slice the second soft treat lenghtwise. You're going to use this to "cap" the first, now-drugged, soft treat.
- Wet the treat cap with a drop of water. This will, if all goes well and the planets are correctly aligned, form a very simple glue between the soft treats. Hopefully it will work just long enough for the cat to bolt the treat, thus getting the medicine inside of him where it can do some actual good.
- Hold the two treat-bits together for a while, letting the water-glue do its job. Don't press the two halves together. You'll just end up with a crumbly, gummy mess that the cat won't touch.
- Offer the treat to the cat. Pray that he's still in his "treat bolting" phase, and doesn't try to chew the treat.
- Watch as he bolts the treat. Good!! Okay, there's about 1/3 of his daily dose of antibiotics.
- Get two more soft treats and repeat from step 2.
- On Step 3, accidentally dump half the remaining medicine powder down the sink. (Well, at least it didn't go into your new cup of coffee.) Swear a bit; but realize: if I can get the rest of this into the cat, I can give him .25ML of the antibiotic liquid and he'll still have his full dose of meds for the day.
- When "glueing" the treat together, realize that perhaps you were a bit too enthusiastic about creating the hole in soft tream #1. Try to keep the doctored treat-sandwich from crumbling completely.
- Offer the glumped-together treatbits (with some medicine powder not-so-cunningly concealed in there somwhere) to the cat. Watch as he takes the treat and tries to chew. Sigh resignedly as treat-bits fall out of the cat's mouth.
-
- Pick now-untouchable treat-bits off the feeding mat and go get the liquid antibiotic.
- After administering the liquid antibiotic, change your shirt. Then give the cat a treat (totally undoctored) and put him right in front of the water dish.
- Pour yourself the last of the coffee, realize you need to make a new pot, and decide to just write the day off as "wasted".
On the positive side of things, it's sunny out, I got in a really nice long walk yesterday, and Mystery Manor coffee is *really* good. And, of course, Ursa's doing well. He's put on a little bit of weight (he was skinny before), his coat is softer, and his eyes both look fine. Yesterday after I got back from my walk I even laid down with him to take a 1-hour nap. He curled up at my side, under my arm. (Granted, I had to use soft-treat bribery to get him there...but once there, he stayed with no further prompting.)
Permalink
After six years, I haz a park!!!
Jan 14, 2009
So I jumped the gun a bit when, in my previous post, I wished everyone Happy Inauguration Day. That’s -=next=- week.
Oopsie.
In other news: Ursa’s still not home. I will be able to pick him up this evening around 6pm. I’ve got a few cans of soft food, one package of moist treats (because if the other two get their crunchy treats and Ursa gets nothing, Retaliation Will Ensue), and I’ve filled Ursa’s favorite toy mouse with fresh catnip. I’ve got a box set by the bed, so that he has an easier time getting up there. I’ve fluffed the fuzzy blanket and refolded it so that the fuzzier side - the side the cats love the most - is facing out. Ursa’s got a little “nest” up on the bed: pillow on on side, bunched-up fuzzy blanket edge on the other, heating pad at the bottom. He can choose where he wants to sprawl.
Yesterday morning, I went walking along the trail near my house, headed in the opposite direction. When I was originally househunting, I had looked at two condo complexes beside a certain lake. I knocked one out of the running because it barely had any lakefront access at all; and I wasn’t happy that I couldn’t walk *around* the lake; but the second complex stayed in the running of “possibles” until I found this place. When I moved here, I did not realize just how easily accessible that lake-ling was. The walking trail goes all along the eastern shore of that lake. There are several benches, and the ducks have a little beach. It’s not as large or as pretty as the lake near where I lived up in Canadia; but it’s close, it’s a lake with ducks, and I don’t have to drive to get there. After six years, I haz a park again!!! I’ve only been walking regularly for three days, and already my knees ache less and grind less when I’m climbing the stairs.
...and now, off to fetch the kitty.
Permalink
The good with the bad with the relieved
Jan 14, 2009
Happy Inauguration Day!! That’s right, after eight years of not running the country super-well, Dubya’s outta there.
Ursa went to the hospital yesterday. He woke up from a nap and started twitching and yowling. Apparently, his front fang was abcessed and it was falling out. During his nap, the fang had reached such a position that Ursa couldn’t close his mouth, and it hurt to touch that side of his face. He had two teeth pulled, got the rest of his teeth cleaned and polished, and should be coming home this afternoon.
Remember a few weeks ago when I was complaining - almost nonstop - about the cold and the snow in Seattle? Well, apparently the rest of the country’s getting smacked with cold…while Seattle has sun and temps in the upper 40s to low 50s. I feel for the folks in the northeast and midwest. Western Washington has had flooding, landslides, and avalanches, and we (as a municipality) were utterly paralized by less than three feet of snow, so it hardly seems fair to compare our suffering to what you guys get to go through now. But…good luck and plenty of space heaters, all the same.
Permalink
And then...they kind off slid.
Jan 11, 2009
I woke up at 7am, went for a good 3-mile walk, and got a scone for breakfast.
Came home, got dressed and ate the scone, and opened all the drapes to let in some light. (Kept the blinds closed for insulation - but it wasn’t so bitterly cold that I felt I needed every layer of thermal blocking I could get.) Last night I had written down some ideas for an alternate name and domain for my project, and this morning I got online and found one of those domains’ .com version to be available. I also visited an industry forum, got in my “reservations” for their upcoming showcase (hopefully that will drive me some clients), and all was going well…
...and then another forum, one that I visit and enjoy largely for the community, took another step towards implosion.
It’s a forum that started as a “fan site” of a certain brand of makeup (Brand X, for convenience’s sake). This forum has a pretty good moderation team, some lively contests, lots of activity, and lots of news about the products - both old products and upcoming releases. There’s minimal overt cliquishness, not a whole lot of backbiting or bear-baiting that’s tolerated, and people are very supportive. Since its adoption by Brand X’s company as a “semi-official” site, there’s been even closer communication, and users have been able to send more direct feedback - positive and negative - to corporate. However, recently, Brand X hasn’t put out much that’s particularly amazing. There’s been some overlap, some duplication, and many items that are too similar to previously-offered items. Another brand, which has some competing and some complimentary products, has launched several new things this month. Lots of people on the forum are talking about this other company’s products. Apparently, this has some noses out of joint. The moderation team announced a clampdown on threads about Brand Y. People got upset, felt betrayed, asked why policy was being reversed (lots of history - there was a forum created specifically for non-Brand X discussions, and now even that’s being curtailed), and wondered if they could pay to offset costs if they could then be allowed to have their non-Brand X discussions. Everyone was hurt and angry. There were some reactionary postings.
I had been thinking of starting my own makeup blog (because, yes, Virginia, I need another blog), and I decided to throw out the idea of having these non-Brand X discussions move to a new forum that I would host. I got the domain, set up the forum, and sent around private messages to the most outraged participants of this particular thread. This forum won’t have any of the “community” aspects that the main forum does, like the off-topic discussion areas, the contests and games, the updates about all new items. I’ve also instituted a policy that if someone’s topic is 50% related to Brand X, that they start the thread back at Forum 1. Hopefully this will keep the main body of the community intact, provide a “pressure release” for non-Brand X posts, and keep things from imploding utterly. If the forum ends up not being used, I can always just take it down.
Now we’ll just have to see how everything shakes out.
I actually think that this latest furor will die out, and people’s interest in Brand X will resume when new and unique offerings are made available. The repeats and dearth of new toys to play with is what makes the discussions about Brand Y [And Brands A-X, come to think of it] stand out all the more.
Permalink
And changing my mind.
Jan 10, 2009
I’ve been prepping a project for about six months now: getting all the content together, figuring out logistics, setting levels, et cetera et cetera. And today my traitor-brain says, “What about changing the domain name?”
The domain name (let’s call it A) I was going to use for this particular project (let’s call it 1) has been “shut down” for the last seven months, and barely active before that. It *would* make a bit of sense to use domain name A for project 2 rather than one. The name simply fits better. However, that means that I have to come up with a new name for project 1 - one that has an available domain name. (Either that, or use one of my existing domains - just shuffle everything about, so to speak. That might work well, especially since one of my existing domains is a three-letter .com with a long, long history, but not much actual content.) And if I’m going to shuffle things around, better to do it now than later when things start taking off and more confusion will result.
But why couldn’t I have thought of this nearly a year ago, when I was buying a bunch of other domains…which now may not be used for anything?
Meh.
Permalink
1 of 3 pages 1 2 3 >
