This is the hardest post I’ve ever written. My cat of the past 10 years, Tiamat, passed away yesterday. He was the smartest cat I’ve ever met. He was my first cat. Tiatmat was a heavy set fellow, alright, he was overweight. But he seemed quite comfortable in it, and wore it well. He was all black save a few white hairs on his chest. He played fetch with me when he was young, followed me, played chase with me. He was in the witchy sense, my familiar.

I noticed he wasn’t feeling well. He started throwing up, then he became incontinent. I contracted a serious flu on Saturday, today is Friday. So maybe there were more tale-tale signs, but I was bedridden. We noticed he wasn’t eating, and we were getting worried. So we brought him down to be with us in the bedroom where I was laid up. He stopped being able to walk on his own the day before yesterday, and we noticed blood in his urine. He also started mewling for me. I felt horrid, I was in so much pain from the flu I was shivering constantly, sweating, feverish. I laid on the floor with him and stroked his fur. Occasionally he would purr, and if I crawled back into bed he would mewl for me again.

We took him to West Market Veterinary Hospital http://westmarketvets.com/. Now I was hopeful when we took him in, but I also knew I had limited means and medical problems can often become quite expensive. Dr. Elizabeth Murray was our attending veterinarian. She was very considerate, very kind, and very clear. Tiamat’s temperature had dropped so far it wouldn’t even register on the thermometer. The decision was either let him suffer or give him peace. I elected to put my friend to sleep and ease his suffering. He seemed very peaceful in the end.

I also want to recommend West Market Veterinary Hospital to everyone in Greensboro, NC. This vet was the best one I have ever dealt with. They are now our regular vet. Please keep this local business in mind if you have pets that need care. They also offer boarding.

My life will be an adjustment. I will miss him, my familiar. I love you Tiamat. Thank you for all the years of comfort you brought me.

In my humble opinion:

The Kindle is grossly overpriced and their digital books are overpriced as well. I can buy a netbook for the cost of a Kindle, and the netbook contains much more processing potential and power. With the advent of new, cheaper to produce technologies am I really so out of line to expect lower pricing? EBooks are not much less than the paper versions. Yet, delivery of the content costs a fraction of the price conventional books cost. And, this one is the kicker: there is no inventory issue attached. You deliver the ebooks as they are purchased, no unsold inventory to worry about.

The Kindle is an early adopter’s toy. But it is not a sustainable, long term solution. The profit model worries me because it does not deliver enough value added to the end consumer. Especially considering Amazon.com reached into hundreds of Kindle owners’ machines and removed their purchase of the ebook 1984. I understand the copyright of the book was in dispute, but what it showed is the books purchased are ultimately “loaned”, not owned.

Your comments are most welcome, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and replies.

I’ve learned how to operate paper books while Twitter has been down… Now I understand why the web always refers to “pages”.

SocialFresh is a marketing expo for social media.
http://socialfresh.com/
http://twitter.com/sofresh

@dhatfield first turned me on to SocialFresh with her tweet about them last week.

@dhatfield @socialfresh Getting my Social Fresh! http://bit.ly/1mINs1

I attended a morning siminar on social media this past week at the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship. StrategicGuru was a guest speaker for a talk that Phase3Communications hosted.

It was interesting to hear more perspective on this. We social-media-starlets are all of us pioneers in exploring what this new way of communicating and expressing will become. SocialFresh‘s conference looks like a great way to extend the conversation.

Am I selling out by accepting their offer of 50% Off my registration for writing this BLOG? Yes, in a sense. Or you could say: I just got paid $100 an hour to write this, paid in trade for my time. $100 off my ticket in exchange for my efforts, that works for me.

Another reason I’m writing this: I think SocialFresh proves a point by offering this discount to those who write a BLOG post about the SocialFresh conference. Social media is a viral, organic, medium. SocialFresh‘s offer will likely spread in a very viral way from one BLOG poster to another. I respect a conference on social media that embraces that in their marketing of the event.

Please comment below with a link to your SocialFresh BLOG post, I’m curious to see the contagion pattern on this…

Social Networking has begun to accelerate noticeably in the past few years. From ICARUS to Facebook, it’s a climb towards… well, what is it climbing towards? Total telepathic immersion?

I bet when you saw that title you thought this might be some sort of rambling, epic post. Or a deeper insight into something profound… Well, probably not. It’s more likely to be some meandering thought train that peters out sometime before it really even resolves.

Is the Singularity approaching? Will we suddenly have HoloDeck-like powers and morph and twist our surroundings into whatever we want? That’s not really part of this post either.

No, the sideways expressions are the strange language accents we now use in text based communications: emoticons.

It’s kind of like hand gesturing or eyebrow raising. It accents our instant-messaging, text-rich, communications. Without it we might not know someone was just poking fun.

And WTF is that expression of surprise, like LOL, it too accents. But, hell, if you are reading this you already know all that. I don’t have Followers that aren’t at least that initiated.

Live long and prosper.

I was late arriving at ConvergeSouth, located at A&T University – Greensboro, NC, but I heard the Robert Scoble talk. The best quote is shown below. His talk focused on the voice each of us has, the private broadcasting studio we each represent given the new accessible technology. Very good talk.

From Twitter.com:
usernames above quote
(harvested at 11:20PM, 09-03-08, just after Sarah Palin spoke)

film_girl
“I seriously want to shoot my television set a la Elivis. Palin sucks. Ferraro 2.0. Way to set us back lady! ”

roztedford
“I just threw up in my mouth a little…I’m going to bed…. ”

rosebeezy
“who needs to watch any news when you have people on twitter to tweet it for you, and it’s much more amusing to boot. ”

NandRPolitics
“Palin’s speech: So, if you watched Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s speech at the convention Wednesday ni.. http://tinyurl.com/6fxgm3 ”

laurenpressley
“i cannot believe she just said that ”

brandonpierce
“Wow. Elizabeth Dole commercial. http://tinyurl.com/5lpvok ”

Scobleizer
“I’ve been watching the Tweets and Palin hit a major home run. Enough politics, got some deadlines to meet now… “

jrmozart
“Look at Mr. Palin spanking that baby! “

We achieve greater awareness of possible leaders by having a white woman in the race and a black man on the ticket. Regardless of outcome, and I refer to what either party will do with the presidency (be he Democrat or Republican), our society now sees (in a VERY public theater) minority people stepping into leadership roles.

Let me state it one more time, in the simplest of terms I can:
Regardless of outcome, our society now sees minority people stepping into leadership roles.

This is a great thing for the advancement of equality in America. Moving forward perhaps we will see more options across the entire political spectrum.

All gone by the afternoon, but at 11:30AM this morning it was basketball underwater.

The creek’s far bank is past the trees, the line of shrubbery in front of the electricity tower. I don’t know how far that is, but it must be more than 100 feet the water washed over the banks of the creek into the park.

This is Lake Daniel Park, Greensboro, NC seen from the bridge that crosses the creek north towards Benjamin Parkway. The restrooms building is to my left, the bridge is behind me on the right.

Jonathon perches on the railing of the east facing bridge, the one that goes through to E. Lake Drive. I estimate the water to be around 20 feet deep under the bridge. The current was strong near the creeks, I worried I’d slip with my camera. I was wading in the water up to my thighs.

I don’t know what this playground piece is called, but it must be about two or more feet under water.

I drove by and wondered, but the cat was fine. All water logged, the cat was laying on the sidewalk as if dead. I stopped and received a plaintive meow, then a staggering towards me. I just hope the little guy found his way home.

News & Record, Greensboro reported 1200 gallons of untreated water was released at 3740 Battleground Ave. for one hour. Horsepen Creek tributary of the Haw River basin received some untreated water as well. Along with other locations throughout the city of Greensboro.

I can not confirm this, but I believe North Buffalo Creek runs through Lake Daniel park. There was no mention in the article of untreated water spillage in that neighborhood. I’m glad it’s still raining nonetheless.