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Goodbye Little Kitties

May14

Sadly we lost both kitties over the weekend. The second left us during Saturday night, which made the start of Mother’s day very sad. We placed them both in a very comfortable decorated shoe box, and buried them in the woods in front of our house.

During our service, their grandmother, who we call Momma Kitty, came to sit with us while we placed roses on top of the casket and filled in the grave. She just seemed to know what we were doing and was trying to comfort us.

It’s amazing how deeply a small little creature can get into your heart in such a short period of time. We cried, we said good-bye and let the Great Mother Earth watch over and care for them now.

Orphaned Kitties – Day 2

May8

Well the twins made it through the night and have been doing well today. Our main concern has been keeping them warm enough. We finally solved the problem by putting their box on top of a heating pad and setting the heat to medium. So far that seems to be working well.

We also discovered which one of the feral cats was the Mom. Seems it is one of the youngest, a year old calico that we call Dale. We initially named her after Dale Ernhardt because she’s black and we thought she was a boy. We realized our error when she was about 3 months old, which is the first time she let us pick her up. As a side note, her brother is orange and of course we named him Tony after my guy Tony Stewart awho at the time drove the Home Depot (orange) car.

So back to the kitties. They seem to be active, eating, warm and ok so far. We took an opportunity at one of the feeding sessions to determine their sex. We have one girl and one boy. SirEvil came up with a new suggestion for names: Zig and Zag.

Orphaned Kitties

May7

Wednesday night SirEvil said he heard something that sounded like cats crying in our backyard. Not unusual, we live in the country and there are many wild cats around our house. It was a stormy night, so we assumed they were simply unhappy about the weather. We went about our business today, but after we picked up our munchkin from school and returned home the day turned out to be anything but normal. Our younger dalmatian was going crazy barking in the back yard. After about 5 or 10 minutes SirEvil goes out to pull her behind inside, only to discover the sound of kittens from under our porch.

A few minutes later I took a walk outside to check the kitties and see which one of the feral cats is a new momma. Only to find a 12 hour old kitten laying in the middle of the mud, cold wet and no mom in sight. What was I going to do, I couldn’t leave it there. I scooped him/her up and rushed inside to wash the cold mud off, dry it and try to get it warm. The next hour we tried to find out if one of the cats came around looking for her kittens, but no one came or seemed interested. Once again we heard a noise that sounded like a bird in trouble. This time the sound was coming from the back yard and under the porch. Sure enough another baby kitty, covered in wet dirt and obviously cold. So we had another rescue on our hands.

While I was tending to the well being of our new twins, SirEvil was searching the internet for information and suggestions for what to do now. It’s too late to call the vet, so we’re hoping for intelligent information online. Sure enough we found a fantastic website to help. A farmer who has rescued several orphaned kittens. RuralRoute2.com

Right now the kittens are warm and sleeping soundly in the kitchen. We keep checking for a momma kitty who might be looking for her lost kittens. But so far, none have come around. We’re assuming the mom is one of the very young cats who hang out around our house and is too young to know what to do with the kittens. We looked around for the traditional nest, but have found nothing. We checked around the area where we found the kittens, again we found nothing. I feel bad about a momma kitty being out there and worrying about her kittens. But by the same token these 2 are way to young to be out on their own from a nest and with no nest under the porch, we really do think they have been abandoned.

Hopefully they’ll make it. We tossed around names for them at dinner. They are identical twins so far, and I suggested we name them “This” and “That”.

More to come…

I HATE Comcast! Part 3

Jul8

The Comcast saga continues.

So the tech was supposed to be here between 6 to 9am. We got up at 5:30 to make sure we were up and waiting for the call from the tech that he/she was on their way. And of course they never came.

Here it is 10:20 and the tech just called and said she was on her way. After telling her she was suposed to be here before 9am, she replies “I don’t know why they told you that we don’t even get to the office in Spotsylvania until 9am. But she’s on her way if we still need service.”

…now we’re waiting for her to arrive. I’m hoping it’s the same lady who came on June 17th so I can tell her she was never here on that day…

Well thankfully it was the same lady, Ms. Missy. She’s very competant and doing everything she can to provide support to us. I told her we were told that she never came on the 17th and she immediately grabbed her stack of work orders and found the ticket. She gave it to me so I could make a copy. I told her no report was filed and as far as 1800Comcast was concerned we were no longer having a problem. She looked at the ticket and said it cleary says the matter was refered to her boss Mike.

She did the same thing she did last time and checked our connections. We showed her the difference in signal between going directly to the TV and going through the box. She’s having the office send us out a new analog box to see if that helps the reception.

In the meantime she has suggested writing a letter to the area VP, Ms. Chris Whitaker. Unfortunately finding an email for her is near to impossible. And forget trying to find a phone number for the building. Even Comcast doesn’t seem to know that. All you can find is sales and service. So evidently you’re not allowed to file a complaint. Heaven for bid someone would have a complaint.

So the saga continues. 

I HATE Comcast! Part 2

Jul8

It’s amazing how incompetent these people are. Monday when we were supposed to have a tech come to the house and fix our cable they never showed up. I called Customer Service and was told the tech arrived and no one answered the door. That the tech identified the color of the door to verify he had been to the house.

Now, this is interesting. Seeing as we have 2 Dalmatians that go totally ballistic when someone pulls down our gravel driveway, it’s amazing this guy managed to get to the door AND knock on it for us never to hear it and not set off the dogs. I was so angry at the woman on the phone I hung up on her.

After about 15 minutes of calming down I called back and asked to talk to a supervisor. After 10 minutes on hold I finally got a woman who said the tech said he called the house and the phone number wasn’t our house. Uh..ok..wait..I thought the last story was he came to the door, identified the color of the door and we didn’t answer the door. Now the story is that he called and couldn’t get us on the phone?

After arguing with this bitch for 15 minutes, Comcast refused to send out a tech and rescheduled for Tuesday morning between 6 and 9am. Guess what…they never showed. Surprise surprise. Now the question is…do we call Customer Service AGAIN? Or just find a way to put up a dish over the trees in our front yard?

Since it’s obvious Comcast doesn’t want our business, we’ll find out what Home Depot has to put a dish on our roof and over the trees. I’ll build a damn telephone pole on the house if I have to.

I HATE COMCAST!!!!!

I HATE Comcast!

Jul8

Sent to Rick Germano – SVP Customer Operations, Comcast
and Investor Relations.

July 5th 2007

Dear Mr. Germano,

I cannot tell you how angry I am this morning at Comcast. There are no words to describe my complete and total dissatisfaction in not only your customer service, but the lack of customer support I have received from your company in the past several years and especially in the past month.

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I received my Masters!!

Jun30

Happy Solstice Everyone !

I received notification during the weekend that I had passed my masters exams and that my masters thesis was accepted. It was a major relief getting that letter. The longer the time went by, the more I was getting worried the thesis was going to be rejected. A number of my close friends have told me that I have connected the energy of the Doctorate program to the energy of the new business. And I’m stuck on the business primarily because I’m worried about the studies. So getting that note seriously took some pressure off my mind and shoulders. Whew. So this solstice was a special one for me personally. A few people emailed and asked if they could read the thesis when it was done. I was reluctant to do that at the time. Didn’t want you guys to see how bad it was. Now that it’s been accepted, I have put it on Spring’s Haven. If anyone wants to check it out. It’s kind of a large PDF file, but you’ll find it @ http://springshaven.com/articles/index.htm It’s listed as the 3rd item on the left side of the menu.

So with this part of my dream completed, I lit a candle, drew a circle and had my own private moment of thanks and gratitude for the help the GreatSpirits gave me. Course I did ask for some help for the next part – writing the Doctoral Dissertation. First thing to do is decide what topic to cover.

But for now, I am so happy I graduated. I get to put letters by my name now and be Rev.Spring, M.Msc. Woohoo

Update: September 1, 2008 — I received my Doctorate!

After many years of researching, learning and formal education I finally reached a long term goal. My Doctoral Dissertation passed muster and I have received my Doctorate in Divinity in Metaphysical Studies on August 26, 2008.

There’s a measurable sense of pride and satisfaction on not only completing a goal, but of achieving a higher level of education and degree. I’ve worked very hard over the years to continue my education, even though it may have been informal. I truly love researching about beliefs and spirituality on all paths and faiths. But there’s nothing like going through formal education and acquiring recognition of that which you have learned. I’m a doctor now. Rev. SpringWolf, D.D.  Wow.   

CNN Promotes Pagan Bigotry

Dec21

I’m annoyed, appalled, and in general truly annoyed by something I saw and heard on CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer this evening (12.21.2006). Today the big topic dealt with Rep.Virgil Goode (R) of Virginia who wrote a letter to his constituents that unless immigration is tightened, more Muslims will become members of Congress. A reference to incoming Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota. Ellison touched off controversy recently when he indicated he’d include the Koran as part of his swearing in ceremony next month.During a segment of the show Wolf Blitzer speaks to Paul Begala and Bay Buchanan, CNN Political Analysts. Like everyone else they condemn the comments made by Rep. Goode. In the words of Begala “Virgil Goode is a bigot and he’s an idiot.”

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Installing SiteMeter

Oct19

There’s a free counter that I prefer using on all my sites, Sitemeter. I found several instructions for adding the counter to a weblog. Some have examples of the standard html converted to PHP and you can simply drop the code in your sidebar, or main template.

SiteMeter has very good detailed instructions for adding the counter to your weblog.
Login to your sitemeter account. Click on the WebLog option from the top menu bar, scroll down to the paragraph entitled WordPress.com counter instructions and follow their steps. This option doesn’t use the java components that allow you to see where people have come from when they’ve visited your site.
Others, such as Dr.Mike’s Sitemeter plugin, have little in the way of instructions for adding the plugin. So here’s some info I posted on his site on that one.
Uploading the plugin and getting it to show up in your plugin directory is a little tricky. You may have one of two issues.
When you upload the file it becomes corrupted and WP can’t read the file. So it will never show up in your available plugins directory.
When you uploaded the file, it is not set with the right permissions and cannot be read.
I guess you could have both problems at the same time too. There’s an easy way to figure out what’s happening. I’m writing this for people who have no technical background, so for those of you who do, just skip the obvious instructions.
  1. Go to the /wp-admin console. Click the menu item titled “Manage”, then click “Files”. The panel will open to the last file you edited.
  2. Scroll down and you’ll see a section that says “Other Files”. Type in /wp-content/plugins/sitemeter.php and press Edit File.
    1. If you see a lot of weird characters, your file is corrupted.
  3. Scroll down and look under the square; if it says something like “if this file were writable you could edit it”;
    1. Then you need to go back to your FTP software and change permissions on the file.
  4. When the file is writable, just open Notepad (or similar editor),
    1. Open sitemeter.php.txt on your local pc;
    2. Copy the entire text and paste it into the file window.
    3. Then press update.
  5. Now go to your plugins panel and you should now see the sitemeter widget.
You still have to add it to your sidebar. So check your plugins and make sure you have the ‘Sidebar Widget’ activated. Keep in mind that if the theme you’re running for your blog doesn’t support this widget, you’re out of luck. And you’ll have to add the commands to the sidebar.php file yourself.
The theme I was running did support this widget. You can go to the Presentation panel, select the sidebar widget and drag and drop the sitemeter box to your side bar. Unfortunately every time I did this, the entire side bar would vanish.
Off to do more research! And I found a better plugin.
SiteMeter by David Smith
If you are using WordPress for your blog, here is a WordPress plugin to automatically add the Site Meter tracking code to all your blog’s pages . It works with WordPress 1.5 and 2.0.
To use it:

  1. Download the plugin.
  2. Unzip it and put the “SiteMeter.php” file into your plugins directory.
  3. Go to the WordPress “plugins” page and click on “Activate” to turn the plugin on.
  4. Go to the “Options” page and click on the “Site Meter” tab.
  5. Enter the codename of your Site Meter account.
  6. Press the “Update Options” button.
  7. Login to your SiteMeter account, chose Meter Style from the side bar. Select your style and save.
  8. That’s all there is to it. The counter will appear on the bottom right side of your home page.

Starting A Blog

Oct19

I design simple websites for small companies, friends and family. SoI’m not a novice to web development. But I’ve never created a weblog until Evil asked for my help to create his site. Like most people, I started out with some research and googled for “Starting a blog”. Man are there a lot of suggestions and opinions out there.

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