Goodbye, Lady Jane.
A little over three years ago, this adorable ball of fuzz came into our life. Sure it started out as cat-sitting for our friend John, but it soon turned
into full-on adoption. John had asked us to cat-sit while he through-hiked the Appalachian Trail, but by the time the hiking ended, Janey was so firmly entrenched in our lives that we all agreed that she was happiest with us.
After three years of wake-up meows, curling up on laps, and freaking out at her own shadow, we noticed about a month ago that she wasn't acting quite right. I had suspected a hairball, but after 2 days of nothing, I took her in to the vet. X-rays confirmed that she had a large tumor on her intestine and probably would last too long. A few days later, the vet confirmed our worst fears, an aggressive lymphoma. The vet offered a few treatment options, and after taking it over with Gena we decided to try the prednisone therapy. Chemo, we decided, is a cruelty that we ought only inflict on ourselves.
That worked, or at least it looked like it did, for a few days. Her appetite started to return and her energy started to increase. But after 2 weeks, things weren't looking so good. She had stopped eating again, an no barely had the energy to make it up onto the couch. It was time to say goodbye.
So we did. Last Monday after work, Gena and I took Janey to the vet for a last time. we both were hoping for something miraculous to occur. Instead the vet told us what we already knew, the cancer was spreading rapidly and we had some tough choices to make. We both knew what we were looking at and we took a few minutes to say goodbye. I stayed with her until she wasn't with us any more, petting her and telling her what a good kitty she is.
Now, nearly a week later, the sharp pain is fading, but the ache of missing her is still there. I still look for her in her usual places, still think I see her moving out of the corner of my eye. She's still here in our lives, even if she's no longer napping on our pillows or stretched out on the floor.
Email and web problems resolved.
There was a problem with the DNS servers that my hosting company provides which is why some of you were unable to get to the site or were having email bouncing in the last 2 weeks. I was able to find the root cause last night and updated the DNS entries with the domain registrar, so things should be completely resolved by later this morning (if they're not already resolved).
The non-technical explanation: Websites have a name (jasonstonehouse.org) and an address (10.0.0.1). DNS servers are the phone book that link the two. In this case, I had an out of date phone book that didn't have my current address.
Labels: long time no see, technical difficulties
technical difficulties
UPDATED 9/9 @ 7:20AM:
This problem has now been resolved. Any mail that was coming through during the outage has bounced (sorry about that), but it looks like the accounts are working normally again. I'll continue to keep an eye on everything. Thanks for your patience.
If you've got an email account with me (on jasonstonehouse.org), you may want to alert folks to try reaching you on other alternate accounts. There was some server wonkiness over the weekend, my hosting company restored from backu, but now it looks like all the accounts that I had are bouncing as undeliverable.
I'm working on a fix, but no ETA yet (and with freshman move-in this weekend, it's not likely to be in the next 2 days).
ideas for anti-social networking
Sadly, the domains getoutofmyfacebook.com and yourinvadingmyspace.com are taken by cybersquatters. Still, there's got to be a market for anti-social networking sites for introverts such as myself. I'm thinking something like this:
- Instead of sending "winks", you could send "cold glares"
- Instead of "friends" you can have "people you're avoiding"
- "what I'm doing" would be replaced with "passive-aggressive behaviors"
You get the point.
All of these ideas grew out of a late-night post comedy and ice cream bit of brainstorming near Davis Square with some friends last night.
If only I were social enough to actually want to implement any of this. :)
Pandemonium needs helps, and needs it soon. They've had a traumatic year, and while they're not doomed right now, there is looming doom on the horizon. Help save a landmark if you can.
hitched
No better feeling in the world than having sucessfully convinced the most rockin' woman in the world to marry me. It went wonderfully, the honeymoon was great, and we're reluctantly getting back to reality.
Oops.
I just realized that the reason I wasn't seeing any comments was that I had somehow turned on comment moderation. So yeah, I just approved every one of them.
My name is Jason Stonehouse, and I approve this message. Tacos rule.
A little over three years ago, this adorable ball of fuzz came into our life. Sure it started out as cat-sitting for our friend John, but it soon turned
