House of Wonder

Check out this new site I’m working on. Still needs some work, but it’s up there!

Griffin Adhesives

Fitzy-Boy in the breezeway of Aunt Hilda's house in Olmsted Falls, OH.

Old Fitzy-Boy…we got you some time in ‘96 if I remember correctly…five years old already. A big moon was how our friend described you to us. Big, beautiful, white kitty…it took some adjusting but we soon got along. You had a big meow, bigger than any cat I’d heard. Kinda’ raspy, but bellowing. You loved to lick toes in the morning…you were an expert mouser even though you’d had your front claws removed before we got ‘ya. You’d growl every once in a while but almost never hiss. I remember one time you got a hold of the drawstring of Mik’s sweatshirt and dragged it out, pulling on it until she had to take the sweatshirt off and let you take it. You were Simba’s friend, Milo’s mentor and friend to anyone who came over to visit. Never afraid, always looking to get a little affection. When dogs came around, you didn’t run or hiss, but stood your ground. Fitzy you were an original. Noble, confident, poised, independent.

I hated to see you get sick. You were such a strong boy. Battling arthritis, high blood pressure, nausea, kidney disease, loss of hearing…you did your best to hang on. I only wish there were something more I could have done to keep you going, to fix your ills and get you back to your younger self. The happy, healthy kitty you were for so long.

The last couple of weeks were devastating. Your limp had gotten worse. You fought me when I gave you your medicine. You’d barely eat and all I could do was force feed you. I did it all out of love for you, Fitzy! But maybe there was something more…something we didn’t know and you continued to decline. I hated to leave you in the morning and just wanted to rush back home to see how you were doing. If you were feeling any better. But you couldn’t do it anymore. My heart was shattering…I carried you around, put you on the couch with me and tried to comfort you. It was then I realized I couldn’t let you suffer like that any longer. You made your last trip to the vet…not happy to be there but you had become so fragile…Dr. Ray gave you the sedative and it took a couple of minutes for it to set in. Then you started to slump over and I helped you lay down and stretch out. You held your back leg, the sore one, tight to your body for another minute then let it relax and I felt so much guilt and grief. My sweet boy, these are your last moments…we hugged and kissed you, told you we loved you so much and stroked your thin body. Your eyes were so blue and radiant, I hope you were feeling bliss and could see how much we loved you, how much we wished there were any other way. When the doctor gave you your final injection you held out for another minute then succumbed…I could see the light was gone from your eyes. Anything to have you back, Fitzy! I held you some more and we stroked your body for the last time. My big buddy, I hope there’s some place for you beyond this world, free of pain and suffering where you’ve got your health and someone is there to take care of you. I am so sorry and miss you so much! Rest in peace. old friend…

I consider this to be an essential upgrade for anyone with a late 2008 MacBook Pro. I got my upgrade from OWC. I’ve also bought ram for my Mac Mini from OWC and it’s been rock solid for several years.

Earth • Beer • Music

Atlanta Hotoberfest 2009
World MKT (Free) Public Area: 12pm – 7pm
Craft Beer Tasting (Gen. Adm. & VIP):  1pm – 6pm

On the grounds of Glenwood Park community, exit 59-B off I-20 east

HOTOBERFEST.NET

I’ve had AT&T u-Verse for a couple of months now. My impressions…

1. Pricey. Not entirely AT&T’s fault, since I did opt for the  AT&T u-Verse u200 Double Pack. Comes with (1) DVR unit and broadband. I upgraded the broadband to ELITE 6mbps downstream ($10/upgrade from standard) + (1) extra non-DVR unit ($7). That brings the grand total to $114. HD is another $10/mo. so I skimped on that. My total bill with taxes and such is $119 — more than I was paying with Comcast.
2. Fast. I haven’t had a problem running 2 laptops over the WiFi. Even when streaming a movie from Netflix. Mind you, I haven’t done any diagnostics…this is just my impression.
3. Wifi died on AT&T router. After a month, the radio on the router took a dump. Fortunately, I had another WiFi router to pick up the slack. It’s worked just fine with the other router broadcasting the WiFi. I did have to change some settings on the routers, but that wasn’t too difficult.
4. Broadband tech service sucks. My mistake in dealing with the router problem mentioned above, was in calling AT&T’s customer service to help me with the problem. I explained the problem to the support guy over and over again and he just didn’t get it. He wasted a good hour of my time, after which I told him I’d fix it myself. I would advise checking the forums for any problems before calling tech support.
5. DVR accessible by other receivers. I like that I can watch my recorded shows on the other TV that doesn’t have a DVR.
6. No down time. Other than the WiFi problem, AT&T broadband has been stable at all times of the day. This helps because I work from home and telecommute often, and when I had Comcast it was always dropping out.

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I got the Roku Netflix player today, plugged it in, configured it and within a couple of minutes was watching an episode of The Office via Netflix instant play. It comes with the option of hooking it up via ethernet cable or over your wireless connection (it’s wireless g). Simply put, it’s awesome and works great. I’m not sure how to shut it off…maybe it doesn’t shut off…but the stream was very acceptable. Not the kind of quality you’d expect with DVD or cable but sufficient for watching TV show and movies. I’m not a quality purist, so don’t take my word for it, but I’m very happy. I had been streaming films through my Macbook Pro and the quality is equivalent. Well worth the $100 IMO…

We wanted to see Shane. I think that was the case with most everybody at the show. And the man came through! I was surprised…McGowan made it through the set and sounded amazing. He’s still got the pipes. Of course, he was sloshing beer around a bit towards the end of the show, but I was impressed and it was one of the best shows I’ve seen. The Tabernacle was packed. So much so, that it was difficult to find a place to stand without security asking you to move. Which they asked us on several occasions. Mik and I ended up going to the floor and though it was sweaty, at least no one was asking us to move. Just slamming into us…but that’s fun.

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I got up early on the day they went on sale, was logged in to Ticketmaster with my account, refreshing the page as the seconds ticked up to 10am and still couldn’t get pavillion tix to this show!! WTF? They must have sold out in less than 2 min. since that was the wait time I got from Ticketmaster…oh well, at least I got lawn tix.

I’ve managed to get my iCal and Google calendars merged. In some respects it’s unnecessary to use both Calendars but I like using iCal when I’m at home on my Mac. It looks much nicer than Google Calendar and I don’t have to log-in to Google.

The major advantage of using Google Calendar (IMO) is that it’s online so it’s accessible from any computer on the Internet (well, assuming it’s not blocked by your company…). The big drawback is that it is ugly. The problem with using iCal exclusively is that to publish it online you need a .Mac account or some other way to serve it that seems to be a pain in the ass. I hope Leopard addresses this issue. And if not, when I get some free time I may figure out how to use OSX’s Apache server to get this thing working…

Anyway, if you log-in to your Google Calendar you can get the RSS feeds for the calendars—personal and/or public—then subcribe to those calendars in iCal. That’s it.

After much ado, I’ve officially moved my blog. Just over to www.house-of-wonder.com/blog. I’m back in the game now…

One of the things I’ve been working on is installing multiple blogs within a single database. That was the reason for the move. I have a couple of other blogs—somewhat off topic—that I’d like to get moved from their present locations onto my server within my site. My plan is to create several subdirectories then install WordPress into those directories. The other part of this is directing the domain names that I have registered to those subdirectories. It’s something I haven’t done…one of these days!!

Hi, I’m updating my site so things may not look quite right for the next few days. If you’d like you can view my old site here.

I’ll be back soon!