Category Archives: Family

Buster July, 1996 – March 18, 1997

Family

Our good kitty, Buster, died peacefully yesterday morning. We will miss him!

Click the photo to see a larger image.

Buster sleeping Buster boy

Somewhere in a past life, Buster was royalty, and he entered this life believing he was still a king. He ruled our house, was the most dignified cat we ever had, and fully expected to be waited on hand and foot.

Buster provided much amusement among the girls’ friends, as he was unpredictable with who he would like, who he would not like, and at what point in time he’d stop liking someone he was liking at the previous moment. All I can say for that is, good thing he was declawed! He has been known to throw punches to faces, tops of heads, dogs, and legs. But when he liked you, he was the best lap cat ever.

Good-bye Buster-boy.

We’re going to cut down on beef

Family, Politics

Vin and I have decided to cut down on the amount of red meat we eat. (Well, okay, I decided, and he’s going along.)

For some time, I had been hearing about cow’s contribution to global warming, but didn’t know any of the details. Then I read this interview with Michael Pollan, and it convinced me. Pollan has also written The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, which I haven’t read yet.

? I love beef, and it is the only conventional (as opposed to organic) meat that I can still eat. But I, like just about every other American, feel impotent to stop global warming. This may be a nominal effort, but one that I am quite willing to undertake.

How I Became a Web Designer

Computers, Family

How did an art-deficient musician get into web design, you ask? I?ve asked myself that a hundred times!

I was slow to get onto the Internet. My old boss and good friend Brad was (I swear) one of the first internet users. I had no use for chatting with people I didn?t know, so although I was an avid computer user, I limited myself to software applications.

Eventually the Internet morphed into the World Wide Web and I got a job that required going online for various purposes. By that time, I was also in school for computer science. Although we didn?t study any HTML, and the idea of dynamic sites was well out of my experience, I loved the idea of web pages. Graphics combined with code. What could be better? I was bound and determined to learn HTML.

One evening, while I was at work (I worked second shift and went to school during the day), then 12-year-old Kerri called me and asked me if I could teach her how to make a web page. I said, sure, maybe over the weekend we?d learn it together. Darned if that smarty-pants didn?t call me back an hour or so later and said never mind! She?d figured it out and now just needed to know how to upload.

Although I never learned it all that fast (Kerri would continually eclipse me with technical issues until I became proficient with databases, but I think she?s ready to pass me again), and my older sites are painfully dated, I fell in love with web design and all its potential. I studied a bit of graphic art, learned the Macromedia products, and got a job at a dot com, and absorbed everything I could. Sadly, the dot com closed, but I continued on my own, learned php, honed my design skills, and opened my own freelance business, White Wave Designs.

These days, I?m fortunate enough to be able to work on web pages all day! I am a programmer in the web development department of an area college, and continue to freelance. Life is good.