random thought: January 2003 Archives

Picked Bear up from the vet this evening...his original appointment was just to have him be fixed, but I had them check out the limp he's been showing the last week or two. I had a feeling it was going to be bad when they called me at work and recommended taking x-rays.
I stopped by after work and they showed me the results. Our puppy has almost no hip sockets. The limp is caused by his joint popping in and out while he's walking. He hardly ever even gave us any indication anything was wrong.
It's killing me to think that he's been in any pain over the last few weeks/months, and that his joints are this bad this young. The vet recommended a surgery that will help him quite a bit, and she said that down the road he won't even be bothered by it.
I hate to see him with the e-collar he's wearing now (to avoid chewing on his stitches) and knowing he's going to have to have it on for another week after he heals up from this one.
I want my playful puppy back.

Well, I don't know where to start. I was going to bitch about FF's link icon not showing up properly last week, but then all of a sudden I go to put this week's in and the entire text just drops nicely into place, no cut and paste or anything.
I think it's just dumb luck, as I tend to randomly highlight sites as I read them, but I'll take it.
I've also just realized that the css changes I made to make Mozilla happy (why did I do that again?) are making IE 5.5 barf. Nothing like catering to the minority...
the friday five
1. Where do you currently work?
Northrop Grumman Information Technology
Good place for me, the pace suits my style, I get to do DoD oriented projects, and I have an office. What more can a man ask for?
2. How many other jobs have you had and where?
I'm not going to do the math and give a number, but here they are.

• Ranch hand - working cattle for my parents, baling hay, etc.


• Fireworks salesman - what's better than marketing a way to blow yourself up?


• Line Operator, Inteplast - what's worse than making plastic produce bags? Doing it for 12 hours a day, that's what


• Conner's Corner Cashier - yep, a convenience store. Best day was when a woman bought a Sunday paper in the newspaper machine outside (that we didn't own), demanded a refund (which I denied) because the paper didn't contain coupons , and then attempted to buy Fritos with said paper.


• Stockroom flunky - Texas Union Microcenter. This job kicked ass. On campus, laid back, musician co-workers. If they'd stayed open I might still be there. Underpaid, of course, but mellow.


• Tech Support, IBM Global Services - originated the phrase, "The customer always lies". They did, too.


• Software Engineer, NGIT - see above and below

3. What do you like best about your job?
Everything in #1
4. What do you like least about your job?
Sometimes it feels too big, but most everything is contained within my office, so I'm sheltered from the majority of the politics & policies.
5. What is your dream job?
I've often thought something in photography, but there's little market for the kind of photography I want given that my name isn't Ansel Adams. I guess at this point my dream job is having enough (see: a ton) of money to tinker around with my hobbies and get proficient at them.

1. Where are you right now?
At my desk at work. Oddly enough, I'm not working.
2. What time is it?
10:19 a.m.
3. What are you wearing?
Something from Abercrombie that I always refer to as a sweater but really isn't, jeans, Doc Martens.
4. Any people or animals around you? Describe them.
No. No.
5. What are your plans for the weekend?
Heading back to Ganado for a wedding Saturday, playing some basketball on Sunday. Relaxing, as usual.

Because then I might have more creative ideas for my site design. I guess it's supposed to work the other way around, though.
I'm not unhappy with things now (other than needing to finish setting up my photo galleries), it's just that I roam the web and see lots of cool pages that I have no clue how to implement and make me wish I could come up with those things myself.
I expect there will be some changes over the next few months; I really want to make things more robust and handle most browsers reasonably well. I also want to be cool, damnit.