Introducing Sydney!

We recently adopted Sydney, a black lab mix, from a rescue (I’ll edit in details later). She was found nearly starved to death late at night by a truck driver near a hog farm here in North Carolina. He nursed her back to health (with a lot of work from the vet). She is still extremely timid around people she doesn’t know (almost fearful of adult men), but she has warmed up to us considerably. We had some problems getting her to eat and drink from her food bowls (she was afraid of them), but she is doing fine now.

Sydney is less than a year old, and very gangly (she has long legs). One of the funny things about her is how insanely bendy she is. She can curl into a tiny ball (and usually sleeps this way), or twist her head around like an owl. She also has a funny habit of showing her perfect little front teeth when we get home from being out. It looks like she is trying to smile at us. Holly has been able to get her to do it on command a few times when she is really amped up about something.

Sydney is also a very sneaky thief. One minute she is next to you acting all innocent, and the next second she has a sock or a shoe in her mouth from another room, and you are wondering when and how the hell she managed to teleport around. She hides acorns and other small things in her mouth…I’ve watched her sneak something, pretend like she doesn’t have anything at all in her mouth, and chill out for ten minutes until she thinks you aren’t watching, at which point she spits it out and then starts nibbling on it.

She also likes to move things around. She will rearrange her toys in the living room, relocating them all from one place to another. I came home one afternoon and she had dragged our pillows from the bed in one room into the guest bedroom (where we had the doggie bed at), along with several shoes, miscellaneous pieces of clothes she pulled out of the laundry, and one of the folded blankets on a chair. It was like she decided to build a little fort or a nest. 

She is pretty goofy, but very sweet. Welcome to your new home Sydney.

Goodbye Phoebe (2000-2011)

Barely a few weeks after losing our cat Sicily, we lost our “baby” Phoebe, an amazing black lab on July 15th. I’ve been putting off writing this for months now, and I really need to get through it. I’m not sure I’ll do her justice in the first post here, so I’ll probably go back later and edit it.

Like Sicily, Phoebe suffered a rapid onslaught of cancer. We noticed a number of small hard lumps going in almost a straight line down her back, and initially attributed them to a skin reaction from changing the stuff we used for anti-flea/tick. But they quickly became larger and harder, and then she simply stopped eating. We tried everything to get her to eat (and I mean everything you can think of). The vet wasn’t sure what the problem was, but was concerned about the lumps, so we tried some different meds and food, and he took a biopsy of one of the lumps.

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Goodbye Sicily Cat (1998?-2011)

I lost my calico cat, Sicily, to lung cancer tonight.

I am a dog person, and most of my friends will tell you that I brag about my black lab, Phoebe, all the time. My wife and I love that dog like a child. Some of you will understand this and know what I mean.

We don’t talk a lot about our cat Sicily though. Mostly because, I guess, she has been such a quiet fixture in our lives for almost thirteen years. She was a gorgeous calico cat, if a little overweight, very sweet, affectionate, and pretty damned cuddly. She like lazing around the house laying flat on her back, or curled up on a pile of laundry. I loved Sicily as much as I love Phoebe, but our relationship was different. She was always in the background, napping in a corner, or chasing imaginary prey through the house with her tail fluffed out like it was an afterburner propelling her at light speeds.

Sicily liked to

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Empire Avenue

Ok, this is pretty cool. Check out Empire Avenue and sign up. Then buy shares in me : )

Think of this like a stock market for people. This is especially cool if you are active in social media. You can link your profiles on twitter, linkedin, flickr, youtube, and facebook.

Aggregating a Revolution (Updated)

Update: Lead Story on NBC17.com: “Raleigh-Based Website Drawing Attention To Social Media From Egypt” The day after we posted the blog post below on the Mirascape Dev Blog, we picked up attention from local NBC17 and they sent over a journalist this morning to do a story. We weren’t expecting it to be the 7p lead!

Aggregating a Revolution

(Reposted from Mirascape Dev Blog)

How do you aggregate a revolution? How do you give voice to protesters that are being silenced? How do you find out the real story from the people experiencing it, instead of the quick news bits that show up on TV (if at all)? How do you know where to look? If you take a picture or video of something and upload it to flickr, facebook, or youtube, how do you get exposure? Who sees it beyond your friends and the occasional random browser?

You get it Earthmarked.

Like this: Cairo Al Tahrir Square

Let me explain… We have been

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