Got the Sniffles

So, what's the best treatment for fire-hose-nose?

• Clor-Trimeton
• Sudafed PE Severe Cold
• DayQuil
• Airborne
  
• Chicky-Shnoodle Soup

Leave a comment: what's your favorite remedy?

And another.

Just another picture of our long-lived friend.

Two Wikis, One Installation

I've pretty much wrapped up the installation of MediaWiki on my server. I have respected the wiki concept from a distance for several months: wikis are often mentioned in books about Agile Development practices, and, of course, Wikipedia is proving something astonishing to the world.

If you're not familiar with the concept, please permit me to direct you to the introduction at Wikipedia. The amazing thing about these websites is that anyone can edit.

I came close to starting a wiki at my previous project, but it wasn't until the current project that I found a receptive environment and a wiki already installed and ready for use.

I would like to start wikis on a diversity of topics. Now that the code is installed on my server, I need only follow these instructions to start up an additional instance.

My first contribution to Wikipedia

Yesterday goes down in history as the day I first contributed something to Wikipedia. For reasons I will describe in a moment, I found myself looking at the entry for alto flute, which mentions that the instrument was popularized by Theobald Boehm. Since I hoped to find music featuring alto flute, this seemed like a good man to learn about, and I searched Wikipedia for information. Sure enough, he has his own page. However, the alto flute page, in mentioning him, did not link to his entry. So, I changed his name to be a link to his page.

Later I created an account: my user page can be seen here.

The reason for my interest in the alto flute is that a dear friend recently purchased one. She has a strongly baroque and classical bent and background, but it appears to be difficult to find much music for alto flute (or for bass flute either) outside of the Jazz and New Age genre. I was hoping to discover sources, but have, so far, failed.

And then there were five.

Today we mourn the death of our oldest cat, Tiba. We got her in the late summer or early autumn of 1990, so she must have been born right about the time we were getting married. Yesterday we saw that she had become too weak to walk or take care of herself. She lived with us for nearly sixteen and a half years. We will miss her very much, for a very long time.

** Update **
Vicki (as Riker) posted a retrospective with several pictures.

Everything at once?

It feels like this is one of the low points in our personal lives: Vicki and I are both dealing with a stomach virus, Monday night Charlie bit my lip and did enough damage that I won't be playing trumpet again this week, and Tiba appears to be on (actually, off) her last legs. Her back legs don't seem to be supporting her anymore, and we're assuming she's had a stroke. Neither Vicki nor I is up to the task of finding a vet and taking her in for what seems very likely to be her last rites.