Rinsefirst

So I let my mind wander a little bit this afternoon the to the concept of what this site really is.

On one hand, it\’s my diary. It\’s where I post some of what I\’m thinking, feeling, doing, or some combination of the 3. It\’s good to have places like this, just so you can look back 5 years later and say \"Hey, I remember that.\" It\’s also good so that you can vent sometimes (something I try not to do to often here).

On the other hand, I wanted it to be a place to give back to the community, both with technical resources, and technical knowledge. If you think about it, I often talk about JS, CSS, and sometimes even PHP. I\’ve developed tools which are more or less gone, things like Rinsemarks, or the ISMS. Heck for some of you, I even gave you blogs.

Many of you have noticed how rinsefirst keeps going backwards. Things get added and removed on a whim. Some of this is me testing, some of it me not knowing where I\’m going with this site.

Direction….

Take blockstats.org for example. I had one goal with that site. The goal was to be the best Tetris site possible, and to provide easy access to a tool I had put together for TDS. My blog posts there are about that site. My content is all directly related to Tetris. I\’ve started giving back to the community by now offering free tetris blogs, who knows what else will come.

So no direction…

Do I want to be the next alistapart? Do I want to be considered a \"good\" designer? Do I even I want to redesign rinsefirst? What about the personal aspect?

All good quesitons, but I\’ve spent enough time thinking today.

We had a kitty that showed up on our doorstep 2 weeks ago. It meowed and begged, and at first, we refused to acknowledge it existed. The next 3 days, it slept on our porch, greeted people as it came and went, and began getting fed.

We bought it cat food. We gave it tuna. We even made a nice little bed for it, and housed it in the garage at night so that it could live safely away from all the big bad creatures that might try to eat it during the day.

Over the last 2 weeks, we played with it, would let it out during the day. From time to time it would vanish into the weeds for an hour or two, but it always came back to get water or food. One time, it even brought home a dead bunny corpse. We\’re still not sure if the kitty killed the bunny, but it was cute non the less.

Yesterday morning, I let the kitty out as I left for a series of meetings. Amy was home, so at the time, I wasn\’t worried about leaving the garage door open. When I got back, someone had closed the garage door, with Kitty not inside. I reopened it thinking someone must have left in a hurry (even though gramps was still there). I even looked around for kitty a little, but no sign… No surprise.

Of course, I went back to work on my computer for the rest of the afternoon. Amber IM\’d me at some point and asked me if \"we still had a kitty\". I replied as far as I knew, but it felt like a bad question to ask. Shortly after that I went upstairs again to check to see if Kitty had come back for a nap. No sign.

Amber arrived around 5 yesterday, and I still hadn\’t seen kitty since I left. There were a lot of people around on the neighboring lots, so I thought maybe kitty went for a walk to go meet one of them. And sometimes she would be gone all day, and just come back at night. Amber put out some nice cat food for when the kitty got back, and we went and watched some TV and played some video games.

We continued to check on kitty whenever we got a chance, but non of use ever saw her stop in for water. When it came time for Amber and I to say goodnight, I moved the water and food outside, and closed the garage door. The first night in 2 weeks where the garage was closed without the kitty inside at night. I went to bed hoping to find kitty on the porch in the morning, in the same place we found her before.

It\’s now been over 24 hours since anyone has seen kitty. It\’s hard to say if kitty went for a walk and found new owners. It could have gotten hit by a car, taken to the humane society, eaten by a fox or wolf, attacked by a bunny, stuck in a tree. No matter what the case, kitty seems to be gone. That makes me both sad, and angry.

Why couldn\’t kitty have become an indoor cat? Why did Amber have the jinx kitty. Why did the dumb kitty have to show up in the first place. Oh well, if kitty never comes back, I will miss her. At least there are photos of her and her rabbit.

Wow, have I been busy… And Wow.. when was the last time I posted at 4:41 AM not because I just woke up, but because I\’m about to go to bed… And I\’m still not tired.

Friends were over and we had a GREAT time til like 2:00 AM (at least I did). Playing wave race, super mario kart, and cards (everything from poker to BS). Just a fun time… Watch out the plastic is moving!

Why am I still up? Well, I\’ve been putting a lot of my spare time into seeing what I can get sunfox to do site wise. I launched a new site called www.tetrisds.org or www.blockstats.org It\’s being powered by sunfox, and really, has been put together in the last 4 days. What scares me more than anything, is that in 4 days, I managed to get it up to 100+ unique visitors (which I\’ve never done so quickly). Partially because I\’ve been features on a few Tetris websites, but still…

I just felt this site needed to be updated… Man, I can\’t wait to sunfox it. I have so many other sites to work on though.. JR is staying busy to say the least.

Oh, and in case I don\’t post before then: this sunday is Amber\’s and My 3 year aniversary. Hard to believe I know, but we\’ve been together now that long (and I still love her :-)).

Ok, time to get some zz\’s before the sun gets over the horizon.