2,996 Project

A few days ago I posted about a worth project that I had signed up for: an effort to get 2,996 bloggers — one for each victim of 9/11 — to create a tribute. One blogger, one tribute.

When I signed up for it, I asked the organizer (D. Challener Roe) if there was anything I could do to help. I mentioned that I was a technical sort of guy — which prompted him to ask if I could help automate the process of signing bloggers up. At the time he asked me, he had manually assigned over 700 bloggers, by reading emails, copying the details into a little database, and typing response emails. Even a few minutes work, multiplied by 700 (or 2,996!) times becomes a real challenge.

Well, after talking it over with him I realized that a fairly simple little web application would do the trick — and that’s something I know a little about! Being able to contribute to such a worthwhile project gives me great satisfaction — and the fact that I got to exercise my skills in the process was just icing on the cake. Even better, I got to explore some new things I’d never done before, like working with images in JavaScript.

Earlier today, my little web application went “live”. If you visit that site, you can sign up (and if you’re a blogger, please do!) for the 2,996 project. Or you can just look through the list of the 9/11 victim, see their pictures, read about them, research them on the web, and see which bloggers are doing a tribute.

Drop on over for a visit, won’t you?

Jodi Burnett

Jodi Burnett is the woman who was killed last week in Jamul by a reckless, speeding driver. Today, while driving past the spot where she died, I noticed a large banner announcing a memorial fund that’s been set up in her name, to benefit her husband and children. She was an employee of the San Diego Union-Tribune (an independent delivery person). I’ve often criticized the Union Tribune, so it feels especially good to be able to commend them on this occasion: they have set up the web site about the memorial fund, and they contributed the first $10,000 to it.

Jodi’s family could use your help — please visit that site and make a donation.

If you aren’t familiar with Jodi Burnett and her tragic death, you can catch up with my posts here, here, and here.

The comments on those posts are interesting to read through. There seems to be a clear dichotomy amongst my readers: there’s the Jonny Dallo apologists (which I am not), and then there’s the group who (like me) would like to see Jonny Dallo held accountable for the consequences of his actions. Take a gander at them, if you’re interested in this affair…

Alika, RIP

Alika died today, very suddenly and very unexpectedly — he was just over two years old, and had no health problems that we knew of. He was our “gentle monster” cat; he will be missed by all his two-footed and four-footed companions…

I’ve blogged about him several times before: here, here, and here.

Yesterday afternoon, Debbie spotted the fact that he was walking oddly. After observing him for a bit, both Debbie and I thought he had some muscle or skelatal problem — perhaps he’d fallen and twisted his back, something like that. Other than his odd movement, and reluctance to move, we didn’t see any signs of trouble. Debbie called the vet and went over the situation with her, and the vet told us to give Alika an anti-inflamatory steroid (we had some lying around), and to bring him in for a visit in the morning. I watched him last night, and saw no change. This morning Debbie visited with him several times, and saw no alarming signs. But when she went to load him up into a crate for the trip to the vet, she discovered that he’d died.

We had him examined by the vet, because we were concerned that whatever happened to him might also pose a risk to our other five indoor cats. But it turns out that Alika had very bad urinary tract blockage (unfortunately a fairly common problem with male cats). We’re told that a blockage of just two days or less can lead to a cat’s death. The most obvious way to detect this problem is through absence of urine in the litter box — but with five cats in the house, that’s a little hard to discern. The only other symptoms are behavioral, and the vet explained to us that these can be very hard to pick up, particularly if the cat was habitually sedentary — which Alika most definitely was.

So we’re left with the very sad feeling that if only we’d understood the seriousness of the problem — if only we’d gotten him to the vet earlier — then maybe he’d still be with us. I put that question to the vet, and she said it was possible that had we brought him in last night, it might have been early enough to save him — but most likely not, as his condition was very advanced. We really needed to spot the symptoms earlier to have had a good chance of saving him. For the umpteen millionth time, we found ourselves wishing that our animal friends could just tell us when they were hurting.

RIP, Alika. We will fondly remember our gentle monster kitty…