My So Called Life

Nala Update

/ Shane / 4 Comments

As some of you were quite concerned about Nala after my last post, despite my assurances that she’s an awful nuisance, I just wanted to give you an update.

We did take Nala to see the vet, which is the most *amazing fun thing in the world* if you’re a child, but not so much if you’re a cat. She had basically a clean bill of health, other than some fairly significant weight loss, but they took some blood for some testing.

Survey says? Hyperthyroidism!

This is apparently quite common in cats of a certain age, and Nala happens to be of a certain age, so there you go. Hyperthyroidism is associated with a number of things, including behavioral changes. However, the vet was skeptical that it could explain the refusal to drink from her bowl (if anything, hyperthyroidism should cause more drinking, not turning your nose up at the stuff) or constantly biting Sara. But, she allowed, every cat is different, so maybe it was related after all.

We were presented with 4 choices:

  1. Be referred to a specialist and treat Nala with radioactive iodine therapy
  2. Give Nala a pill every day
  3. Rub a cream into Nala’s ears twice a day
  4. Buy special food

My reactions were:

  1. Do what now? We’re still talking about the cat, right?
  2. Okay, I’ve had to give Nala pills before, and it is a nightmare. Practically impossible. She can isolate the pill and eat whatever’s around it, saving only the pill in her mouth for an hour before discretely spitting it behind a house plant. And now I have to do this every day??
  3. I guess that’s better than giving her a pill, but sheesh.
  4. Wait, one of the options was to do everything the same except give her different food? And you saved that option until last?

So, yeah, we’re getting her special food now.

Hopefully it will make a difference. Sara pointed out that in the long run it’s probably actually cheaper to give her radioactive iodine therapy, even though it seems expensive. But it just seems….wrong somehow. On the other hand, giving her special food has practically *no chance* of turning her into a giant, super-cat with magical powers. Then again, let me take a look at that ingredient list…

5 Ways Computer Programming Helped me be a Better Person

/ Shane / Leave a comment
  1. Never say never – I don’t know how many times I swore something couldn’t be so in the code, only to find out it was so. It helps me remember to try not to be so absolute about my opinions. Whenever you declare that something couldn’t be so, you’re setting yourself up to look foolish.
  2. Talk it out, take a break, walk away – Sometimes you just need to get away from a situation for just a second, and then a solution occurs to you. This works for writing too, it’s almost like you need to let the subconscious take its crack at it. I don’t know how many times I’ve had a solution pop into my head all obvious-like when I’m in the middle of trying to explain to someone else what the problem is. Personality-wise, I prefer to just keep grinding away at a problem relentlessly until it is solved, which, at some point it turns out, is not the best way to go.
  3. Take things with a grain of salt – The next big thing often isn’t (Silverlight comes to mind). You can’t always be ready to jump on each new thing as it comes out, whether it’s buying the latest iProduct only to have it supplanted by the new one with the 48″ screen next week, or rearranging your whole life around swing dancing. Yeah, maybe there are some advantages to Linux, but I think at this point we can all agree it’s not going to happen, alright? (Same goes for swing dancing.)
  4. But not too much – Well, it turns out sometimes the next big thing really is, like java or tablets or the Internet. Don’t be the guy in the corner screaming about how the last real language was C++. (Says the last man on earth without a smart phone.) I think it would be easy for me to become an everything-was-better-in-the-old-days-luddite if I let myself.
  5. Patience, patience, patience – The devil is in the details, be methodical, persistence pays off, never give up, etc. etc. etc. Debugging issues is the quintessential exercise in patience. Sometimes you have to spend hours digging into obscure pointer references. If you make any assumptions about what is happening, the error will inevitably turn out to be hidden behind those assumptions. I think (I hope) that doing this day in and day out has taught me the importance of being methodical, not making assumptions, and questioning everything.

Let’s talk about the weather

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Today is January 29th, and it is 60 degrees. In Chicago. So far this winter, we have had a total of one “snowstorm” resulting in a grand total of 1.1 inches so far for the year. That was a record setting 335 days without snow. Just to put that into perspective, Chicago normally averages 36.7 inches of snow per year.

If I had never heard of global warming, I might just chalk that up to, “huh, unusually warm winter this year.” I have heard of global warming, but I’m trying keep that in perspective and fight my natural impulse to say, “ZOMG IT’S THE END OF DAYZZZZZ!”

The thing is, we’re not talking a “unusually warm winter” here. This is not the first 60 degree day this winter, and, for all intents and purposes, we’ve had no snow whatsoever this year. And this is on top of last winter, which was also “unusually warm”. They kids are wondering why we haven’t been able to go sledding, or build snowmen, or make snow angels.

I’m no expert on global warming, but even an idiot like me has to wonder what’s going on. Is this just a two-year fluke, or a sign of some larger trend? I’m reminded of when I attended The Great Climate Debate, all the way back in 2008. The thing that struck me then, and strikes me now, was that the experts on both sides of the debate agreed global warming exists, and their argument was not the same as what the general public believes the issues to be.

But even this guy, who had incredible credentials, is at the forefront of this movement, and who is rabid in his belief, agrees global warming exists and we are causing at least part of it.

I know anecdotal evidence is not evidence, but 60 degrees in January is at least remarkable. I don’t know if there are still people who think global warming isn’t real, or not. But my opinion on it remains unchanged from 3 years ago:

Whether our pollution is causing global warming or not, I think we all know we shouldn’t be polluting.  So we should stop polluting based on its own merits whether it causes global warming or not.  It kind of reminds me back when people used to argue about whether smoking causes cancer or not.  Who cares?  It does a lot of other bad things and you know you shouldn’t be smoking!  So if there is even a chance global warming is caused by us, that is just one more reason on top of all the other reasons to stop polluting.  And if that is the final straw that makes someone stop doing it, then great!

Spoons

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Once upon a time, we used to play a lot of spoons. By “we” I mean my family when I was growing up, and specifically my mom and all her grown-up friends. Real life adults with real responsible jobs, in some cases up to 4 tables of people playing spoons because there were too many people for fewer games. Later I took my love of spoons to college, and convinced a lot of semi-real adults without real responsible jobs to play as well.

Usually people look at you funny if you try to get them to play spoons. It’s not a game that requires a lot of skill, and it’s a little silly, so it’s usually thought of as a kids game. How can a bunch of adults enjoy playing something like that?

The game works like this: you place once fewer spoon in the middle then there are people playing, musical chairs style. You have 4 cards in your hand, and your goal is to make 4 of a kind. You obtain cards by picking up a card off the stack discarded by the person from your right, and then discarding one for the next person down the line on your left to draw from, as fast as you possibly can. When someone finally does obtain 4 of a kind, they grab one of the spoons from the middle. At this point, everybody grabs for a spoon and whoever doesn’t get one is out (or gains a letter in S-P-O-O-N as in the basketball game “horse”).

Of course there are some tricky nuances, such as getting 4 of a kind and grabbing a spoon on the sly without anybody noticing, or casually waving your hand over the spoons to trick someone else into thinking you’re going for one. But you get the idea.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. If that was all there was to the game, it would still probably be somewhat enjoyable, but not enough to keep a bunch of adults playing late into the night. Our special twist on the game was that the dealer got to add additional rules.

The rules can be anything, and the possibilities are endless. They might force you to look foolish, break your concentration, or be physically difficult. You might have to stand up and sit back down every time you get a card you’re looking for, or run around the table, or say, “I, Shane Halbach, being of sound mind and body do declare that I’m stupid”, or pat your tummy and rub your head, or shout, “We’re coming to America, TODAY!” You might have to pick up a spoon and set it back down, or flip the spoon in the air, or run into the bathroom and get a square of toilet paper. (These are all actual rules I have played with.)

Then there’s the spoons themselves. Are the spaced neatly on the table in front of you, or are they under something? Are they in a different room so that obtaining a spoon becomes a full contact race? Is your strategy to grab a spoon yourself or to prevent someone else from grabbing a spoon? In college I’ve played where the spoons were actually downstairs or on the other side of a field of about 20 sleeping people.

I can’t stress enough how quickly this game becomes full contact. It starts simple with two people wrestling over a spoon, maybe someone slips on the hardwood in their socks, and then pretty soon there’s body tackling. My mom actually bought a special set of spoons to play this game because our regular spoons were getting too bent up. We’ve had a card table destroyed, our hardwood floors damaged, and countless bumps, bruises, and head bashes.

It’s certainly a sight to see. I remember a friend witnessing the chaos of adults playing when I was in elementary school, and declaring, “They have to be drinking. They have to.” I remember playing with my family while waiting for 4th of July fireworks, in the middle of a sea of strangers, using one shoe from each of us in lieu of spoons and acting like complete buffoons.

I sort of forgot about all of this until we thought to play last weekend. It was totally as fun as I remembered it being! Evie finds it too stressful and will not play, but the rest of us adults had a grand old time. We even accidentally put a long scratch in our dining room table, just for old time’s sake!

Grumpy Cat

/ Shane / 4 Comments

Nala has acquired a taste for human flesh. Specifically Sara’s flesh. Every opportunity she gets, she sinks some fang into the back of Sara’s feet. Sara can be just walking around, minding her own business and then out of nowhere, fang in the achilles. She sometimes attacks me, but very rarely. She’s too frightened of the kids to try it with them.

Nala is about 13 now, and I think she is getting grumpy in her old age.

It’s not just the attacking either, she has suddenly become very particular. She will no longer drink water from a bowl. For a long time she has been gradually turning her nose up at her water bowl. At first I thought it was something to do with the bowl, so I tried several different bowls and different schedules for replacing the water. She continued to drink out of it less and less until now she refuses altogether. Instead, she either drinks out of the toilet, sometimes trying to jump in as soon as you lift the lid, or out of the bathtub, sometimes while you are taking a shower. I have to admit, at first I was worried about her hydration, since she seemed so desperate to get a drink. But then I remembered that she had a big bowl of fresh water sitting there that she was refusing on principle to drink. Makes it hard to feel bad for her.

However, I think we have finally crossed the line. Nala has suddenly decided that she no longer wants to go to the bathroom in her litter box. If I clean the litter box, she will deign to give it one use, but after that she’s done, usually preferring the bathmat.

Well I’m sorry, but I’m not cleaning the litter after each use, Mrs. Queen of Sheeba.

I’m not sure what to do about this exactly. You can’t really reason with a cat. Combine all of these things with a return to meowing outside our door before 6 every morning, and I’m kind of at wit’s end. I understand that the older generation may be entitled to a little bit of persnicketiness, but this is going too far.

Why is my life just a series of showdowns with my cat?