Oliver the Cat seems to be doing better and better over the past couple of days. He had been a bit removed and seemed to not be feeling completely well up until a day or two ago. That seems to have changed as he has become rather chipper and more active.
I've been giving him regular doses of Pepsid A/C lately (1/4 of a regular pill) and have been more consistent with giving him fluids. I'll keep that up and see if he continues to be his normal self.
For those of you who don't know, Oliver was diagnosed with Chronic Renal Failure (CRF) last July. Since then, he's had kind of a rough time with plural effusion (fluid on the lungs), hepatic lipidosis (a liver condition triggered in cats who have a sudden weight loss), and some sort of immunological malfunction where his liver was being attacked by his own immune system. Each of these conditions have been delt with one-by-one over the past year to the point where his bloodwork now appears to be as good as can be expected for a CRF kitty.
He's on a low dose of Chlorambucil (a chemotherapy drug) every other day in order to keep his self-destructive lymphocites in his liver at bay along with prednisone every other day. He also takes, or rather is given, Amlodipine to control his blood pressure and the afore mentioned Pepcid A/C to keep his tummy from feeling upset, which is apparently a problem in cats with renal deficiency. Finally, he gets 150ml of lactated ringers injected under his skin (subcutaneously) every other day to help his kidneys flush out his body.
It's quite a production to keep up with all of this, and I've had to resort to printing up a schedule and posting it on the fridge in order to keep up with all of his meds. Thankfully, all of the time and money that we've spent to treat Oliver has given him some extra time with us and given him a very good quality of life as well. Had we not treated him, he would certainly be dead or near death by now; instead, he continues to be a happy, alert, and loving member of our family.
Jeff
Wow, I just got hit with a pretty intense wave of sadness thinking about my dad's death a year and a half ago.
I started wondering whether or not he knew he was dying when he reclined back in his chair. I figured that he did not... then a strong feeling of dispair hit me when I decided that he didn't know what was going on and he may not have know that the walk back to the house and to his recliner were the last moments of his consciousness. I broke down and cried for a few minutes -- the first time that I've really cried really profoundly since the day after his death.
The despair that I felt was based on the knowledge that all of his plans for retirement were dashed. Why the hell didn't his cardiologist order a cardiolite test for him? I wish that dad had come to me and asked me to ask Lizette for the name of a good cardiologist in Greensboro. Instead he got some lamer without any imagination.
My dad deserved more than to work his whole life and die just before retirement just because some cardiologist never imagined that something might be wrong with him. I still feel that my dad could have been spared this pointless death had he gotten a proper diagnosis and treatment.
At least I can talk about it now, instead of always running it through my brain over-and-over.
Jeff
Oh dear. Why is it so difficult to go back to work after a vacation? It is mentally painful to me.
Everything seems to be out of order, confusing, and generally disquieting.
I think I'll go get some more caffeine.
Conference calls from hell.
Jeff
Well, I finally was able to update my template and modify it to my likings. I have no idea why I couldn't update it from the hotel room last night.
Might have been a routing thing. Dunno.
Note to hotel operators that provide high speed internet access: Always change the password on your router when you install it. There are people out there who DO know the default password and will use it!
Well, enough for now.
Jeff
OK, I'm trying to update my template for this thing, and I aint getting nuthin'. LOC got his to work... why not me!
Blargh!
Oh my god. I am having to physically prop myself up this afternoon. I've had back-to-back conference calls on topics that are terribly dry.
A machine needs to be backed up here, people need to log in there. Meh, what great way to put me to sleep.
No amount of caffeine can save me...
ZZzzzZZzzZZZzzzZZzzZz
The goof-ball should not be a problem any longer. I took it upon myself to add a few Deny statements to my httpd.conf file and a DISCARD statement to my /etc/mail/access file. We won't be hearing anything from that person any time soon.
Basically, I made it so that they can neither send mail to the listserv nor access the listserv web page interface. This is done in two places.
For the email blocking, a simple one line addition was necessary. Let's say that you wanted to have all email from "goof-ball@goofy.org" just discarded when it arrived. All you have to do is edit your /etc/mail/access file and add the following line:
goof-ball@goofy.org DISCARD
You can add lines that will handle whole domains if you like as well. I'll leave it to you to figure out how to do that. Make sure that you perform a "make" in /etc/mail after your done editing the file in order for the access.db file to be generated. I'm not sure whether or not you have to restart sendmail after you make an update to access.db, but I do it any way just to make sure.
Now, the web interface Deny statements are a little more tricky. For these, I had to get the IP address or IP address range for goof-ball and add some Deny statements to the
In /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf you find entries that say:
Order allow, deny
Allow from all
Now all you have to do is add:
Deny from 11.22.33.44
if you want to deny a particular IP address from viewing that particular directory. You can deny access to whole subnets by leaving of one, two, or three of the following octets. You can also deny access by DNS name, if you have DNS lookups enabled on your web server.
You will have to restart your web server after making these entries. Make sure that you add the Deny statement to all applicable
That's it for now,
Jeff
Oh my! What a beautiful sight. My inbox not filled with the yammerings of the neighborhood goof-ball. My hopes of fully disabling their ability to access the web were not realized.
Just as they withdrew their now shuttered email address, they sprung forth with a new more hideous one. Fortunately, they haven't yet figured-out that they need to JOIN the listserv before trying to post to it and I aint helping them with that.
What a putz.
Hmmm... That makes me wonder.... should I? Yes, I shall.
I'll be back later..
Jeff
Well, today I woke up and found over a half dozen email messages on the listserv and all of them were the ramblings of the goof-ball of the neighborhood.
This is the third day straight that this person has jabbered on about how they've been wronged and how they're going to start their own listserv. My thoughts up to this time have been, "OK, so go on and start your own listserv already!".
This morning my thoughts turned to "OK, one way or another, this person is going to shut up."
After a 2 minute header lookup and two email messages to their ISP and their email provider, I headed off to work.
When I arrived at work, I found that the goofball had posted another annoying email on the listserv. Another check of a header, and another email to a different ISP.
Now every time that I've passed along an email to the abuse department of an ISP in the past, they either agreed with me or did not agree with me and acted accordingly. This time something a little different happened.
As it turns out, the second ISP turned out to be Goof-ball's place of work. The postmaster there was kind of a busy-body and decided to punish me for complaining to him, so not only did he get Goof-ball in trouble, but also got the person that Goof-ball was attacking on the listserv in trouble with their ISP.
I was pretty much dumbfounded by this. Note to self: Always remove any email address of the innocent in the future. Luckily, the innocent person here didn't get their internet service cut-off -- they got off with a warning.
The Goof-ball didn't get off so well. They got a talking to by their IT guy and their email provider cut them off. I'm still waiting to hear from their ISP. If they yank Goof-ball's internet connection, then I'm 3 for 3 today.
Aint I a stinker?
Jeff
Well, here it is. My blog presence on the 'net.
I guess all that I need to do now is just jot down whatever it is that I'm thinking at the moment.
At this point, I'm just glad to have finished installing this beast know as Movabletype.
It wasn't all that difficult really, just follow the directions and just a little bit of educated guessing.
Oliver the Cat is sitting next to me on Mrs. Annorax' computer chair looking profound if not a little bit nautious. You see, Mr. Oliver is a Chronic Renal Failure (CRF) kitty. Not to worry, he's actually in pretty good shape at the moment. He gets special care that keeps him feeling pretty good most of the time. I'll talk about what all he gets to keep him feeling good later.
For now, I'm just going to close this first entry.
Jeff G.