Life, Work, the Internet, Dogs, the Universe, and Everything...

woof. it has been a hell of a few weeks. i started a new full time job the first week of may which has been going well, but which has still been a whirlwind. the dog has been diagnosed with skin cancer which is freaking all
of us out. i have been slugging away at this bbs i made for naclcon which
has involved building a significant security stack in the background,
because to a hammer the world is nails, and because a computer with a bunch
of ports open wide to the internet in 2026 is guaranteed to get some
unwanted attention. i have been booking hotels and flights and rental cars
for a trip back east to scatter my dad's ashes in his home town, to meet
some family that i didn't know i had, to visit the place of my birth for the first time since i was a child, and to visit the graves of my dad's parents
at arlington national cemetery for the first time ever, all before heading
from there to north carolina for the con, and then back to new york after
that for a weekend with erica and her family.





visit the bbs in your web browser at https://naclconbbs.net or from your terminal: telnet naclconbbs.net 23 or ssh naclconbbs.net -p 2222

in the meantime missoula has had a warmer and sunnier spring than normal so
we have been trying to keep up with yard work (planting flowers in boxes and pots, fighting back the dandelions and norwegian maple sprouts, aerating and over seeding the lawn, getting the sprinkler system turned on and the major leaks patched so as not to flood the basement again). we cleaned up the workshop some, which involved selling a bunch of my dad's old duck and goose decoys that were taking up space and which we were never going to use,
throwing away a bunch of tarps that had started to disintegrate,
inventorying our raft and associated gear, throwing away a ton of ancient
and also disintegrating life vests, shuffling lumber into the rafters, and dodging hantavirus while breaking up countless old rodent nests along the
way.





cancer ain't slowing him down: a happy dante running free on mount sentinel above missoula

as for this god damned sweet amazing emotionally intelligent spaz of a
doggo, i don't know what to do except to hope for the best while preparing
to accept the worst.

we are meeting with a veterinary oncologist this week to see what the course
of action should be. hopefully its just removal of the significant growth on his outer thigh and not full tri-podding or a life of chemo. we have read
that there is pretty good chemo therapy for low grade mast cell tumors in
dogs but it might cost as much as $900 a month and that he might need it for the rest of his life.

of course we would be happy to pay $30 a day to keep him with us and healthy
if that's the only option but that adds up to over $10,000 a year for maybe another five to seven years which is probably more than we can realistically afford. so i guess we need to start sending his headshots to orvis and
gundog magazine and see if we can get his coverdog career going to pay for
his medical bills.

he's only five years old so we are definitely not giving up on him. modern oncology kept my dad alive for quite a while longer than he expected, so hopefully it works to keep this wonderful dogfriend he left me when he died alive long beyond his doggy expiration date as well. i just hope we don't
have to spend every single dime we have to do so, because if it comes to
that we certainly will.
--
https://foodbark.io/posts/life-the-universe-and-everything/