gsamsa

Leaving the house for a job interview, I found her lying on her side in the driveway, unable to move. The vet explained that she was near-comatose from hypogycemia, the result of an inoperable abdominal tumor. So I put her down. Showed up late for the interview and didn’t get the job.

Chose not to cremate her and couldn’t afford a perpetual care plot. So we decided to bury McBean in our yard. It’s not so easy, finding a place that will “never” be disturbed, digging a 3’ deep hole, getting the shrunken, frozen body of your pet from the vet. My 9-y.o. son wrote a poem which he read, then placed in the ground. We tossed in handfuls of cat litter. The whole absurd ritual took two hours. And there she lies, my first pet, the only cat we’re likely ever to own now that it’s clear the kids are dog people. RIP, McBean.

They look alike
They walk alike
Sometimes they even talk alike…

See for yourself:
http://www.jonasson.org/maps/

But something tells me the likeness is only skin deep. My goal is to code a geodata app using Microsoft’s brand new, “free” mapping service, Virtual Earth, to compare with the work I’ve been doing with Google Maps.

Before Google Maps, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) were proprietary, expensive, arcane. Now, thanks to the GMaps API, in two weeks I was able to build my own mapping application. Along the way I wrote a bunch of reusable classes for calculating distances, clustering by proximity, decluttering … all the features that used to cost big bucks.

Open-source software and what is sometimes called the Age of Mass Amateurization also have their troubling side, of course. Example: my income today is roughly a third of what it was in 2000. But since there seems to be no going back, I take pleasure in having an ever-growing toolset and community in which to play.