The Canonizer.

The Canonizer looks to me like an interesting experiment. Its a wiki that attempts to capture the points of view of different camps on divisive issues (such as what is God), with each camp being allowed to hone its own statements on the issue, while reacting to others. It seems conceptually related to some of the things that I would like to do in publicly-created ontologies, and in the real-life tech-graph project I've been thinking about.

Its still in its infancy now, so its hard to guess if anything will come from this, but it does look interesting.

Its Morning.

Its morning and I haven't slept. sucha is next door in the bathroom meowing almost continuously, as she has almost all night. I don't think she's really slept at all in a day or more either. I think she's in too much pain. She also has a really hard time drinking as I don't think she can stick out her tongue any more. Actually, just a few minutes after typing that, I saw her manage to lap up some water, so she can still drink a bit, which is good.

Anyway, I've been trying to provide her what comfort I can, but its proved to be very little. Mostly I check on her every few minutes and pat her or stroke her and refill her water bowl so its brimming over, as that seems to make it easier for her to drink.

But, really, I just feel completely useless.

Better News than Expected.

I finally crashed around 10:00 am this morning, after taxlady was awake and able to take care of sucha for a bit, even though I knew she'd be heading into work later. Somehow it was easier to sleep knowing that right at that moment she was being cared for.

I awoke to a surprisingly quiet house. sucha is sitting calmly downstairs as used to be her normal behaviour, not hiding in the bathtub and meowing as she's done for the last few days. She seems to have drunk a fair amount of water as well.

The news from the Vet, who called while I was asleep, was better than expected. sucha's liver and kidney's haven't shut down so we can up her dose of anti-inflamatories. They already seem to have helped her as shown by her more normal behaviour right now. The Vet said they should also help her be able to move her tongue for drinking. When asked about pain killers we were told that the anti-inflamatories dull pain as well, and should be good enough for the moment.

The fact that she's responding to the treatment and acting more like her old self means that we won't have to have her put down this weekend as I had feared and had half-resigned myself to. We've been told that she'll probably last another month or so, before the cancer is so advanced that nothing works any more.

I'm not really sure how this affect plans that taxlady and I made earlier to go visit a sick aunt of mine sometime in September, as it would mean leaving the cats alone for 3 or 4 days. Before sucha got so sick, it seemed like a reasonable plan. Now I'm not so sure. On the other hand, its not clear if my aunt (who I haven't seen since I was 15) will last until next summer, which would be the next opportunity to visit. I guess that right now we'll just have to take this one day at a time.

Mysteries of the Strange and Weird.

Today taxlady noticed something very strange, and she just proved to me she wasn't imagining it. We have an outlet in one corner of our kitchen that we've plugged a power bar into, because we have a number of electrical gadgets that we use in that spot (typically one at a time) and its a pain to unplug one to plug in another. One of the things currently plugged in there is our ceramic-burr coffee grinder (to distinguish it from our rotary-blade coffee grinder which is also there but not currently plugged in -- have I mentioned we have a LOT of coffee-related paraphernalia?)

Today taxlady told me the burr grinder made noises when she plugged in our immersion blender and turned it on. I figured it was some sort of resonance effect, but not so. As she just proved to me, when she plugs in the immersion blender (into either the power bar, or the unused wall outlet) and turns it on, the burr grinder starts up. You can actually see its feeder running, although there's no coffee in it right now to be ground.

I'm not sure what would cause that, but I'm thinking its something wrong with the electrical connections in the immersion blender, the coffee grinder, or the outlet, or possibly some combination of all three. Maybe I should find my outlet tester just so that I could eliminate that as one of the things that is wrong.

As for the other two, its a toss up. The immersion blender has always been rugged and reliable, but its 15 years old now, so could be failing in some subtle way. The Burr grinder however, is only a few years old, but its always been rather crapulous, so its hard to say which is most likely at fault.

Hierarchies.

It seems that not only is there a hierarchy of needs, but there is also a hierarchy of worries. Now that I am, at least temporarily, not as worried about sucha, the other worries have popped up again.

Somehow though, it comes as a relief. I would far rather be worrying about what job offers, if any, I am about to get, or how to pay our credit card bills. Those are at least problems that admit to solutions.

Daft Hands.

Thanks to kallisti, here's Daft Hands with a wonderful version of Daft Punk's Harder Better Faster Stronger: