mashby | The personal blog of Michael Ashby

September 30, 2003

An Update On Monkey

Doctor talking to patients We took Monkey back to the vet yesterday and it’s not great news Monkey did not respond to the treatments that we were giving him over the weekend. His blood work showed that his liver was doing worse. So the next step was to leave him there at the hospital and let them take over the treatment.

They are going to insert a feed tube into his stomach so that they can feed him directly as well as put him on a fluid program. After 4-5 days after that, we should be able to take him home and continue the feeding through his tube until he starts eating on his own. This could take as long as 12 weeks or more before he decides to eat on his own. The most important thing is to get his liver to begin coming back to normal and that’s why he’s staying in the hospital.

I think the additional fluids and vitamins will make all the difference and he’ll round the corner this week. However, having to leave one of your pets at the vet is one of the worst feelings in the world and Holly isn’t taking it too well. The cloak of doom has descended and until we get word that Monkey is doing better, I don’t know if anything can lift it. The doctor saying that we had a 60% chance that he’ll recover didn’t help any. I see the 60% and Holly sees the 40%.

So, as silly as this may sound since I’m talking about a pet, please keep us in your prayers. We’re praying for a fast recovery and that he’ll be home very very soon. Thanks.

Update: We went by this morning to look in on Monkey and he’s doing great. He has an IV attached to his wrist and they’ve been giving him vitimans in addition to his fluids. He was very perky when we visited him and quite active. I took a couple of pictures and posted them in the moblog.

September 29, 2003

Cutting My Teeth

RedHat Logo Back on the 18th of this month, I wrote about what a sad shape my computers were in. One of the things I did on that day to try and rectify some of the problems was to wipe out my laptop and re-install Windows XP Professional. While reformating the drive, I split it into two partitions so that I could install the Red Hat 9 distribution of Linux on one partition and Windows on another. For the past few weeks, I’ve installed Red Hat, configured it some and been working on it when I can. There hasn’t been a lot of time to work on it with my deluge at work, but I’ve squeezed in a little time here and there. Here’s a little run down of my experience thus far.

The Install
The installation was pretty straightforward. I installed Windows XP on the first partition and after that was all said and done, I downloaded the latest build from the Red Hat ftp server for version 9. After the download, I then burned the ISO format files to three CDs. I installed the first CD, turned on the laptop and Red Hat began installing. The prompts were simple and straight forward and in no time, I had Red Hat 9 installed.

September 29, 2003

Not Perfect But Making Headway

I’m a bit of a perfectionist, as anyone who knows me can attest, but in my quest to become more healthy I’m finding that I’m being more gentle with myself. Instead of beating myself up about not waking up and walking in the morning, I just do what I can. With Monkey’s illness, that threw a bit of a wrench into our plans, so I’ve just done what time allows for.

I haven’t been walking in the morning, but after dinner I’ve taken Gracie on extended walks that last anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes. Also, Holly and I have been eating a lot more healthy. We’ve watched our fat and caloric intake and I think that’s helping. Our diets have really changed for the better.

I did get the BalanceLog software downloaded and I started building a profile and it crashed. Not a good sign. So, I’ll be setting it up tonight so I can begin tracking my input and output.

September 28, 2003

Holly Needs Her Own TV Show

BloGTK Holly is the choir director for the youth choir at St. Edwards Catholic Church and they had their first performance yesterday at 5:30pm mass. She had 21 kids, which is her largest group yet, and they sang a modified version of Alan Jackson’s hit Little Bitty. It was absolutely adorable and the entire congregation loved it. Holly has kids from Pre-K to 5th grade, so there’s a wide range of ages, but all the kids are just precious and Holly does a fantastic job.
I don’t know what it is, but Holly works so well with kids. Maybe it’s the fact that Holly still has some of that innocence that most of us have lost as we’ve grown older. Or maybe it’s that tender heart of hers. Whatever it is, I haven’t found anyone that can manage and teach such a big group of chaos. I don’t care how well behaved your child is, you get 21 kids in a room to rehearse music and you’ve got a big job on your hands. Holly makes it look easy, even though I know that it’s not.

Before the start of the school season, Holly did a little song at many of the masses to help recruit new kids for the choir. She sang at the start of each mass, so we ended up staying for all the masses that day, joining in with the choirs to sing. At the 10:30am service, a friend of ours Deb made the comment, “Holly Needs Her Own TV Show. She’d be a hell of a lot better than ‘Tahra Time‘.” Tahra Time is a local show produced here in Nashville, but it’s broadcast nationwide via PBS. It’s not a bad show per se, but it’s a little hippy and kinda corny. IMNSHO, I think Holly could put together a much better program. Not that I’m biased or anything. 😛

September 27, 2003

Home Care For Monkey

Monkey On The Couch With Holly This has been a tough week for Holly and I because of our 3rd cat Monkey. We noticed that he had been losing weight and we thought that was great because we’ve been trying to slim all of our cats down. However, in Monkey’s case, we found that he lost too much weight too fast. None of the other cats appeared to have lost more than a pound over the last few months, but Monkey appeared to have lost more than 5. We were obviously concerned, so we took Monkey to the vet on Wednesday to have him checked out.
My wife Holly has a very soft heart for people, animals and even plants, so Monkey’s condition already had her worried and on the verge of tears. The vet did some blood work, but scheduled an ultrasound for the next day. The doctor’s initial prognosis was that Monkey could be dealing with something called Feline Hepatic Lipidosis, otherwise known as Fatty Liver Disease. However, there could also be cancer in his liver as well, so the ultrasound and maybe even a biopsy might tell us more. In the meantime, they gave him an appetite stimulant and injected fluid under his skin to make sure he was hydrated.

September 26, 2003

The Neighborhood Looks Different

The Neighborhood I saw a different side to my neighborhood the other day. I walked Gracie a little earlier than I usually do and my street was a totally different from the way that I usually experience it. There were different people out in their yards, or walking down the block and the odd thing was that they all knew Gracie.

Our street is pretty quiet. We live at the end of a cul de sac so there isn’t a lot of traffic and it would appear that most of the families here either have young children, or none at all. I say appear because I haven’t met many people on our block. When we moved in, no one came over to say hello, or introduce themselves. The people in the houses closest to us keep to themselves for the most part and we haven’t really become familiar with anyone. When our new neighbor Judy moved in next door, Holly and I made extra sure to introduce ourselves and get to know her. We didn’t want to miss that opportunity like we did when we first moved in.

September 25, 2003

Stutter Stepping

Holly and I didn’t walk yesterday. She had an appointment to take Monkey, our Siamese cat, to the vet and we didn’t wake up early enough to do our walk. I figured we could walk when she got home, but when she called sobbing after leaving the vet, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. It seems that Monkey may have some liver problems. We’ll know more this afternoon when we take him back for an ultrasound.

I did manage to take a little extended walk that afternoon with Gracie. Our street is at the top of a very steep hill, so walking down and back can give you quite a little workout. I need to get an inclinometer, so that I can figure out what the grade is and then really impress you. In the meantime, take my word for it, it’s steep. 🙂

This morning was all about Monkey too and tonight is the Friends season premier, so I doubt there will be much walking then either. Until we find out the status of Monkey’s health, things are a bit on hold at the moment.

September 25, 2003

Weblogging From Linux

BloGTK A client of mine is pushing me more and more towards setting up a Linux server for him. To help me cut my teeth and get more familiar with Linux, I installed RedHat 9 on a second partition on my laptop. This allows me to choose which OS I’d like to use when I boot my Sony Vaio F650. I can either boot to Windows XP Professional, or I can boot into RedHat. I’ve been trying to use my laptop strictly in Linux and not reboot back into Windows so that I can become more familiar with the OS. Since one of the things I use my laptop for is to post to my weblog, I thought I’d take a look at what type of software is available for posting to Movable Type in Linux. I’m a big fan of w.bloggar for windows, so my hope was to find a similar program for Linux.

With a few Google searches, I pulled up a small handful of applications that could be used for posting to a weblog. Here’s a list of what I found:

1. exaro
This client was written in ruby/gtk and although it claims to be the first client for Linux, development has stopped. To quote from the website, “BloGTK is in, Exaro is out.”

September 24, 2003

Mactopia? Not Quite

A while back I wrote about how I was fighting an urge to switch to Mac OS X. At the end of the post I concluded that it would be best if I moved Holly to a mac first, since her needs were less than mine. She was using a salvage PC running Windows98 and complained of it crashing all the time, so it was time to do something.

Over the weekend, I rearranged the office to put the original Bondi Blue iMac in place of what she had. Once everything was plugged in, my first task was to get her e-mail up and running and her address book moved. The built-in Mail and Address book applications were a piece of cake to work with. Although somewhat basic, they really do everything that she needs. The one hurdle I ran into though was that I had zero options in terms of trying to import her information. She was running Outlook on the PC and I tried everything I could think of to move things over, but to no avail. Continue Reading

September 23, 2003

Where Did All The Jingles Go?

You Deserve A Break Today At McDonald's This week marks the start of the fall season for the major networks. As Holly and I watched the season premier of Two And A Half Men I was taken a back when the titles came on and I heard the title song. It was pathetic! Some low male groans and one little soprano wispy cry and that was it. The whole titles took no more than 10 seconds tops. That got me thinking about theme songs and how they haven’t totally disappeared, but they are certainly a rarity.

When I think about some of the classic TV shows, they all had a theme song. Cheers, All In The Family, Three’s Company all had memorable theme songs that you could probably sing parts of, if not the entire thing. “Come and knock on our door…” or “One, Two, Three, O’Clock, Four O’Clock, rock…”, each of those makes you immediately think of the television show associated with it. Not all shows had words in their theme songs, but they still had distinctive songs that you could quickly identify the show from, such as Bonanza, Seinfield, and Law and Order.