Welcome Scarlett & Magenta!

The boss and I have apparently gone off the deep end, as we re-felined the house this weekend. We each had cats (three between us) when we got married and we adopted another a few years later. The four cats grew old (some gracefully, some less so) and passed on in the early 2000s when the kids were still tiny. Now that the kids are a bit older, we thought it would be great to revisit the issue of pets.

While we both very much wanted to get a dog, it’s wholly unclear that we have the bandwidth to properly take care of a dog, so we punted. We started visiting cat shelters and decided to adopt a pair of kitties this weekend. Although it’s painfully easy to fall in love with kittens, we wanted older cats, who statistically have a tougher time getting adopted.

We adopted Scarlett, a three year old black and white short-hair and Kitty (who we are calling ‘Magenta’ now), a five year old mostly-white tortoise medium-hair. They lived together previously before they ended up at the shelter. They are both sweet as can be, and seem to be quite happy to be out of the shelter after two months.

Obligatory proud parent pictures below.

I Love The Fall

The fall is my favorite season – by a long margin. There’s nothing like fall in New England. I can take or leave the spring here, and I can do without winter, but fall is the shiznit.

In honor of the lovely fall that’s underway, I’ve got my music server churning out the jazz standard Autumn Leaves. I apparently own 11 versions of the song in total, covering two hours altogether. The recordings span half a century, from 1950 (Dizzy) through 2000 (Barber) and range from 3 minutes long (Dizzy) to a marathon 27 minutes (Jarrett)!

I bought a CASSETTE !!!

Remember audio cassettes? In my decades as a music-purchasing audio-junkie, I never bought a pre-recorded cassette. Instead, I would purchase the LP and then, as necessary, make a cassette copy for portable and car use. I switched directly from LP to CD in the mid 80s.

But yesterday I received via snailmail a brand new cassette copy of Miracle Legion’s EP “The Backyard”. This EP was released in 1984, and as far as I know, was never mastered to CD (I’ll be ripping it to my music server shortly). Someone I know or knew had the vinyl of it at some point, but I never got a copy for myself. I’ve poked around for years off and on, online and in record stores, to scare up a copy – without avail. Until now! What a great (short) album. Six tunes and not a clunker among them!

Recorded twenty-three years ago. That doesn’t make me feel too old .

Sign Your F#@*ing Code.

I’m not going to name names in public, but, dammit, people need to start signing their code. Yes, it can be a tad cumbersome. Yes, it isn’t free. But it’s not that cumbersome and it’s not that expensive.

Pretty please with a cherry on top. Sign your f#@*ing code.

iWhining iSheep

How inane.

Welcome Jothy to the Blogosphere!

Jothy Rosenberg started blogging last week. I’m sure it’ll be a fun read! Welcome to the insane asylum, Jothy!

Whoever you are, it’s a good bet that Jothy is way more interesting than you . Never mind that he’s a really great guy as well.