that’s whacked

Isis and I

Friday, Mar 21. 2008  –  Category: Pets, Photos

This is the last photo I took of us together, and was taken the night before she passed. She was always such a fidgety dog and would hardly ever sit still for a photo, let alone look directly at the camera. I took about 180 photos of her that night and the next morning, of which a few turned out well. This one required about 45 minutes of Photoshop to touch up and get it looking good.

Can a dog achieve enlightenment?

Monday, Mar 17. 2008  –  Category: Pets

Isis passed peacefully this morning. I was up all night with her.. we video-conferenced with Wendy (who is still in Taiwan) and I’ll admit to shedding quite a few tears.

Isis has always hated going to the vet’s office, so we had our vet do a house-call. Isis went peacefully and comfortably in her own bed with her favourite sweater, with Char-siu sitting sad and confused nearby while I held her head.

She was 10 years old, and we only had her for 3 years - but she taught me a lifetime of lessons. The most important? One only needs the simple basics to lead a happy life: love, loyalty, friends, a warm bed, water, and some good beef jerky.

I’ll miss her immensely.

3 years and 2 days.

Sunday, Mar 16. 2008  –  Category: Pets

That’s how long we’ve had Isis. She won us over within 5 minutes of meeting her. I remember when we went to go meet her and we swore we wouldn’t make any snap judgements and that we’d think about it for 24 hours before we decided to adopt a dog. As planned, we went to meet her, and walked away to think things over seriously. Half an hour later we found ourselves at a Petco buying a crate so we could go back and pick her up.

Anyone who’s met her over the years can hopefully attest to what a wonderful dog she’s been. She won the hearts of many a neighbour and coworker at Sun. I remember last June when we found out she had bladder cancer. The vet placed her at about 3-4 months to live. Instead, she’s hung in there for 9 months. I’m thankful for all the time we’ve had… I’ve had plenty of time to say goodbye.

I’m writing this on the plane as I cut my vacation short to come home to put Isis to sleep. I don’t know how to feel to be honest. When I got the email from my sister that Isis had taken a bad turn, it had a sense of inevitability. Wendy and I have been telling ourselves “any day now” for the past 6 months. Anyone who’s met Isis knows that she does anything for food (like most beagles), and we always told ourselves “when she stops eating”, that’s her time to go. She’s barely eating, barely drinking, and it seems she’s decided that now is her time to go. I’m gutted she’s finally leaving us now, but I’m bittersweetly happy that I’ll be able to hold her one last time and that I can be with her when she passes.

off-kilter beagle

Monday, Mar 3. 2008  –  Category: Pets, Photos

i dunno why. the camera shot is clearly off. but i love this photo. it’s classic Isis. she just can’t sit still for a photo, and needs to climb all over me instead.

catchup rambling

Friday, Feb 8. 2008  –  Category: OpenSolaris, OpenSource, Outdoors, Pets, Songbird

i propose starting a new trend in web 2.0. first there was blogging. then there was microblogging (aka twitter’ing). i propose to start time-batch concatenating micro-blogging, or twitter with a touch of both diarrhea and constipation if you will.

so here’s my spew of random micro-blogging-type thoughts, concatenated into one post.

• psyched to be going to London for a week. looking forward to hopefully dropping by the LOSUG meeting while i’m there. would give my left nut to get tickets to the Arsenal/AC Milan Champions League game.

• super-psyched about FOSDEM. little bit nervous to be presenting my first conference preso about Songbird. looking forward to moules et frites with timf, catching up with other various OpenSolaris folk, and meeting more of the Mozilla Community.

• steak and bj day. seriously. i’m so in.

• i’m so desperate to go up to the sierras. i haven’t gone snowboarding at all this winter, and its been dumping lately. sigh. brand new snowboard and everything.

• work is keeping me so busy. feel like every day i finish 5 tasks only to add 7 more to the plate. i was expecting as much when i left Sun… and i love the work and my coworkers, but wow i could use a few days off.

• had a shite day at the gym yesterday, couldn’t get up the V2 & V3 routes i was able to do two weeks ago. ugh. starting to get really psyched about climbing Cathedral Peak with jesse in june though. i think my strength is there, but i could definitely do with some sustained route-climbing to build up the endurance. should probably go out somewhere (diablo maybe?) to practice some trad placements in case my rusty.

• isis is definitely getting worse. we’re taking her to the vet on saturday, but i suspect her time is near. she’s eating slower, and starting to strain so hard her body shakes a lot of the time she’s awake. her 10th birthday is in 10 days. bumming me out.

• great to see benr, tamr, and to finally meet derek c at redmonk’s party a couple of nights ago. cheers to sogrady for a great party and for the beer.

• i feel like i’m spending so much time in front of my computer lately, and not nearly enough time outdoors or with the dogs. gotta figure out this work/life balance thing.

Bad news for Isis :(

Friday, Jun 15. 2007  –  Category: Pets

Those of you who know Wendy and I know that we are crazy about our beagles. We love those stubborn stupid lazy hound dogs even when they’ve cleaned out our fridge, drank my whiskey, and in general done something stupid whenever their noses have led them into trouble.

So we were really bummed today to hear from our vet that Isis’ recent bladder problems are due to a large (2.3cm in diameter) tumour growing just outside her bladder. It looks like she has some sort of bladder cancer.

I picked her up from the vet, took her home, took the rest of the afternoon off and took her out to play and give her treats (to make up for her not getting breakfast this morning)

I have to say I wasn’t prepared for this. I’m not naive, I knew Isis would pass one day, but I expected her to live for at least a few more years (she’s nine). The life expectancy (without surgery) for her is about 200 more days. Given she’s had these symptoms for about a month already, we’re expecting we only have about 5 or 6 more months with our favourite beagle… and whenever I think about that I get choked up a bit.

We’ll be looking into the surgical option, but the vet said the tumour is in a pretty high risk area to operate and it may not extend her life that much. If that’s the case, I think we’ll give her some medicine to ease the pain (the vet said it shouldn’t be bad), and let her live out her remaining days with lots of food and love. (and she will get LOTS of food) We’re officially stopping her training, and she’ll get to lick the ice cream bowl from now on.

I’m pretty bummed out…. I can’t believe how attached I am to that little prima donna. I’m gonna miss her an awful lot.

more destructive dogs…

Tuesday, Jan 2. 2007  –  Category: Pets

sigh. we called in professional help.

char-siu is an eff-ing evil genius. not only that, he’s an alcoholic too.

bet you’ve never heard a dog described as a brilliant alcoholic before, but he is………………. last week he managed to break into the fridge twice. getting into a double-door fridge is no mean feat… but char-siu did it AFTER we started putting a child-lock on.

yes. you read that right. my beagle broke into a double-door refridgerator with a child-lock on it.

amazing. if only he could use his evil genius for better things…. like washing the dishes, or doing the laundry. heck, make me some dinner even.

… anyway, i think i figured out how to set the lock such that he couldn’t leverage it and open it. it foiled him the past 4 days anyway…. so today he moved onto other things.

i came home today to find a chair pulled out next to the liquor bar, my bottle of 12 year Glenlivet lying on the floor… half drunk.

my dog drinks single-malt scotch.

amazing. not only that, he drank half the friggin’ bottle…. which explains his erratic behaviour (and pained yelping when i came home).

anyway, we’ve had two training sessions with Matt, and it’s looking good so far. char-siu is starting to respect us a little more, and i think his confidence is slowly increasing. once we get him focused and more self-confident, i’m hopeful his separation anxiety will ease up.

but in the meantime, i put all the good liquor away.

new camera!

Monday, Dec 18. 2006  –  Category: Musings, Pets, Photos

we got a new camera over the weekend… the Nikon D80.

it’s been fun playing with my first DSLR… of course, the first photos i took were of the beagles. i’m particularly happy with this shot of the two dogs sharing a bed.

on saturday night we headed into the city with wendy’s cousin and nephew to have dinner and walk around Union Square and check out the Christmas madness (we BARTed in, not wanting to participate in the Christmas madness occurring on the Bay Bridge), and then on sunday we had a winter bbq (on a gloriously sunny day) with wendy’s family.

both opportunities gave me chances to play with the camera

so far i’m loving it… it’s a wicked camera.