There have been a lot of things that I have done within the idea of “keeping my wife happy”, but this adventure started out as one of the more extreme examples.

My wife and I have a cat named Finn, who has been with us for a long time. In February of 2024, he got really sick and my wife was making daily trips to him to the vet to figure out what was going on with him. He was lethargic and having trouble judging distances. He was having problems deciding if he could make a jump up or down on to surfaces he has been gracefully traveling to and from for years. Also when he would try to eat, more food would fall out of his mouth than would stay in.

The vet checked him for abscesses and other injuries. He was battling a fever of 106 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a lot for a cat. Cats usually run a temperature of about 100 degrees F. As the vet was getting ready to sedate Finn so that X-Rays could be taken, it was discovered that there was fluid building up in his abdomen. This prompted the vet to check some other things, and Finn was diagnosed with a condition called Feline Infectious Peritonitis, or more commonly called FIP.

Some websites say the same thing that the vet told me and my wife when we found out about the diagnosis. They say that is incurable and very torturous to go through. The vet encouraged us to put him down that day to minimize his suffering. My wife and I both felt like it was not Finn’s time to go. He didn’t act ready. The vet also told us about an organization that helps people with cats suffering from this condition. It turns out that there is a cure for the condition, however it is not approved by the FDA. My wife and I decided to go down that path of treating him and after three months of daily injections and regular blood work, I am happy to say he is cured and playing like he always had.

What does this have to do with flying from Portland, Oregon to Philadelphia and back in one day, just to pick up two kittens? Some people have asked me if they are out of cats in Oregon. There are still a lot of cats in Oregon that need homes. During Finn’s treatment, my wife got connected with a lot of people all over the world who have been through this ordeal and those who are going through treating their own cats with this condition. One of the people she met is someone who works with a cat rescue in Virginia who had over a dozen kittens surrendered to them that were very sick. My wife saw photos and videos of the kittens and fell in love with two of them. She picked them and got updates on their health as they got better. The kittens did not have FIP. Sadly, some of the kittens were too sick to be saved. Our kittens were not from the same litter, but they were from the same cattery. FIP does have a genetic component, and one of the cats that I brought home had two siblings that were diagnosed with FIP and one did not survive. The other kitten is currently being treated, and both mommas from the cattery had it. After kittens that we got were cured and fixed, the schedule was set for me to fly to Philadelphia to pick them up at the airport.

The reason that I made the journey is because my wife has some medical conditions of her own that make air travel more dangerous for her. I wanted to be sure that she was as safe as she could be, so I volunteered to go.

I have flown a lot over the course of my life, but I have never transported small animals like this before. The kittens were too small and fragile to make it in the animal container area at the bottom of the plane, so I brought them home in a cat carrier that was my carry on. They travelled really well and didn’t freak out as I thought they might. Complete strangers were fascinated by them as well as the idea of flying with kittens. I felt like I was being a bodyguard for two tiny rock stars.

The kittens were given the names of Parchment and Bone at the rescue. The rescue does something where they let donors vote on names for new cats that come in, so they were named after different shades of white. The kittens got new names with in a couple of days of being home. Bone had his name changed to Harley because he instantly purrs like a race car when you pay any attention to him. We considered calling him Ferrari for a short while, but it didn’t seem to fit him as well. Parchment became Daphne. She also instantly purrs, but that was the name that my wife felt suited the fluffy princess.

We went to these extremes to adopt these kittens because animals with a history of health issues are some of the last to be adopted, if it happens at all. Generally speaking, when people go to adopt a pet, they don’t go looking for project that could be heartbreaking. Harley and Daphne both have bad genetics, being pure bred Ragdolls. Part of learning how to best help cats, as well as their owners, survive FIP, there is a lot information around cats and how to tell if they are sick with something that is learned. No one at our house is a vet, or anyone who pretends to be. We have learned how to tell when a cat has a fever, or when a cat is in pain. My wife and I both feel like we are better equipped than most amateurs to see when they need help and get that help for them. It isn’t just anyone who can summon the courage to give a member of the family 1 to 2 shots per day, every day for three months. Especially when you can tell that the shot itself is painful. Even if after a while, the cat knows that you are trying to help them.

The kittens just turned one and are thriving. They have fit in with the rest of our clatter. They are very confident cats and show us their personalities all of the time.

This is Harley

My favorite time of day is the morning. Morning is the beginning of a new day. It is quiet. It is peaceful. The sun is barely starting to rise. The birds are chirping. The only other people I see are the occasional fellow runner. The air is cool and my thoughts get clearer with each stride. The stresses of the day are either asleep, or well hidden. Their time will come, but it isn’t in the morning.

Life has a lot in common with flying. Both involve a series of small corrections to get to your destination. There will be unexpected weather, other aircraft that cross your flight path and there will be times when you have to land to let some nasty stuff pass. Staying calm in those situations will get you out trouble more so than panic ever will.

I just got back from a business trip to Minnesota. One of my kids asked me what it looked like. I told her “Imagine Oregon after someone ironed it”.

I took my kiddo to the hospital for a scheduled CT. She is fine. When we got there, the low tire pressure alert kicked on. As it turned out, I picked up a nail in one of the tires. Good weather and in a parking lot are a set of conditions to teach her how to change a tire.

I wrote on my Conduit connection that I had worked out a way to change my task management system to handle 11 different projects for two different manufacturing locations with team members scattered across 8 time zones. Some people have asked me to explain this a little further. I should probably start off by saying that I really didn’t change any of my tools. As I started to put together some ideas as to how I wanted to tame this beastly set of tasks, I went back to my program management days and dev died that a Gantt chart is a must. A Gantt chart is a 30,000 foot view of all of the actions for each project applied to a timeline. It is great for being able to see how all of the actions line up in a given time period. This sort of chart is a common tool used by program managers to track the progress of a project based on how the tasks are completed. For me, I am using the tool to make sure that I am doing the stuff that I am supposed to do in the right order. Also, it gives me a chance to see where schedule conflicts may be so that the managers of the different projects can be made aware of them and give them a chance to agree on what the priority is. I did look to see if there are any task management apps that would take the tasks across multiple projects and plot them in a Gantt chart. Sadly, it appears that there isn’t one on the market. There are Gantt tools that are used for managing teams. I am basically a team of one. I solved this problem by finding a Gantt chart template that I could use in Excel. As much as I don’t like to have to enter the same information anywhere more than once, it is a comparatively small price to pay for having this view of all of the tasks. At the 10,000 foot level, I reorganized my projects in Todoist so that I could take advantage of tags and sub tasks. This change allowed me to be able to easily focus on a specific project as needed. This is helpful during meetings tasks can be added and due dates can be changed with no warning. I can use that information at the end of the day to update the Gantt Chart. The 500 foot level is what is going on in a given day. For that, I use the Sidekick Note Pad to deal with the work day ahead. One of the things I have to do, as part of my job is to track how much time I spend on a given project. As far as how I use the Sidekick, I put the day’s actions due that day on the far right side of the page that is set up for a to do list. To the left of the to do list, I have an informal column where I record the times I am working on a given project. The times are rounded up to the quarter hour for easy math. I am glad that I don’t need to track to the second. The rest of the space on the sheet of paper I use for notes that I take over the course of the day. At the end of the work day, I transcribe the meeting notes into the appropriate file in OneNote, update the Gantt chart with any changes and take a look at what is due over the next couple of days. Once all of the is done, I don’t think about work until the next day. While there are things that I wished I could find to make things a little easy on myself, I think that this process is working well for me. It came from stuff that I already have or I could find something easy to modify to suit what I needed. The most important part is that I am keeping stuff going that I am depended on to do and I don’t need to be concerned about having forgotten something. My time is really limited and any advantage I can find to keep from drowning in tasks is a good thing.

Because of some new requirements at the day job, I am becoming an armchair Microbiologist.

I think I need to stop going to therapy without some notes. I have been thnking of things that I wanted to talk about, but forgot during my session today.

I have been working on writing somerthng for a while and I feel like it is coming together in pieces. I think I am looking forward to seeing what it become as much as anyone.

I need to spend some time this weekend working out how do deal with a lot of stuff going on in life. Any suggestions on how to achieve not balance, but more pressure equalization.

I am trying to figure out ways to minimize the distractions while I am working at home. I think I need to start with actually cleaning up my office.

The family and I watched Die Hard this evening. The Christmas season has finally started.

It seems like it took an emergency for my neighbor to finally connect my computer to the printer my wife bought a month ago. I print so little these days.

Occasionally, I will say something funny or thought provoking and my wife says in need to put it in a book. This is something that we have started to call The Book. I wonder if there is an audience for this sort of stuff beyond the 6 people in my house.

My daughter and an example of how things change. A few years ago, she wouldn’t go outside because that is where the bugs are. Now, when it come to it, she is the brave one of her sisters.

I have spent a couple of hours working on my Python programming skills. I can understand why the author of the book I am learning from emphaizes practicing all of the time.

When the work memos are sent out, I get confused between exempt and non exempt. What are some staff exempt from?

I have deep admiration for those who have a strong sense of self discipline. I had that for a while and it is very difficult to get back, even though you know that you have been there before.

I have had my driver’s license for over 30 years. I got my first and only ticket act the beginning of the year and it was issued by a traffic camera and a computer.

I went for a run in the rain this morning. It has been a while since I have done that and I didn’t realize how much I missed it.

Tomorrow at work, they are providing lunch. For 600 people, it will look like a feast. Hopefully, something will be there that I can eat.

When you have 4 children, it is hard to figure out the monthly budget. When you have 4 daughters, wedding budgets become the stuff of nightmares.

My wife was trying to use a Shark stick vac and it wasn’t working well. She took it apart and cleaned out the stuff that didn’t make it to the receptacle and cleaned out the filters. She went from using a vacuum cleaner to being the vacuum cleaner.

I stumbled across a blog post I wrote a while back and didn’t publish. It is written in Markdown and my current platform doesn’t support it. I need to move into this decade.