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Your Pet Loss Diaries'Theresa, Zeus & Shimma'Another Year Without You Oct 2013 xxxxOct 27, 2013

Dear Shim Shim, I hate this month, it's so miserable and even more so cos you passed on Halloween eve. I remember it all so vividly, your loss and Zeusy's




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Your Pet Loss Stories'Ivy "Noodle"

Ivy came into my life on December 22, 2012. She was the most beautiful little creature I had ever seen and I knew instantly that she was supposed to be




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Your Pet Loss Stories'My Taz'

I lost my Taz April 20th. He was my best friend and companion. He looked at me with so much love. My children and grandchildren live so far away. He




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Your Pet Loss Stories'Pepper the Dog Who Needed Love'

Pepper was not my dog at first, she was given to me when she was a year old. She suffered horrible abuse for the first year of her life, when I got her




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Your Pet Tributes'Tank'

2 days ago I lost my best friend. Nine years ago you saved my life and stole my heart. You brought me happiness at my lowest point and gave me reason to




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Your Pet Tributes'Scamper'

My darling, all of Mama's love. You have gone leaving a void in my life. I still hear you sigh, and the patter of your feet up the steps, and the sound




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Your Pet Loss Stories'My Dogs'

In the past year I had to put one dog to sleep. I adopted her when she was only 4. When we first got her she had a lot of health problems which got taken




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Your Pet Tributes'Sassy'

To my beautiful little girl Sassy, I hope wherever you are you are happy and well. I look at your photos that are all around the house and wish you were




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Your Pet Loss Diaries'Lisa & Diana'My Beautiful DianaNov 17, 2013

Hi my baby girl, How are you? Are you playing and having a good time? Are you staying close to Rufus? I hope you're happy and have all kinds of new friends




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Your Pet Loss Diaries'Lisa & Rufus'My Beloved RufusNov 17, 2013

Hi my big guy, How are you are you having fun? Are you playing and have you made new friends? Are you keeping an eye on Diana? I hope you are happy and




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Our Library Associations

I’ve been spending some of the wintertime outlasting the blues and making sure that Wikipedia’s got entries for every state...




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Appeals Court Says Prosecutors Who Issued Fake Subpoenas To Crime Victims Aren't Shielded By Absolute Immunity

For years, the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office in Louisiana issued fake subpoenas to witnesses and crime victims. Unlike subpoenas used in ongoing prosecutions, these were used during the investigation process to compel targets to talk to law enforcement. They weren't signed by judges or issued by court clerks but they did state in bold letters across the top that "A FINE AND IMPRISONMENT MAY BE OPPOSED FOR FAILURE TO OBEY THIS NOTICE."

Recipients of these bogus subpoenas sued the DA's office. In early 2019, a federal court refused to grant absolute immunity to the DA's office for its use of fake subpoenas to compel cooperation from witnesses. The court pointed out that issuing its own subpoenas containing threats of imprisonment bypassed an entire branch of the government to give the DA's office power it was never supposed to have.

Allegations that the Individual Defendants purported to subpoena witnesses without court approval, therefore, describe more than a mere procedural error or expansion of authority. Rather, they describe the usurpation of the power of another branch of government.

The court stated that extending immunity would be a judicial blessing of this practice, rather than a deterrent against continued abuse by the DA's office.

The DA's office appealed. The Fifth Circuit Appeals Court took the case, but it seemed very unimpressed by the office's assertions. Here's how it responded during oral arguments earlier this year:

“Threat of incarceration with no valid premise?” Judge Jennifer Elrod said at one point during arguments. She later drew laughter from some in the audience when she said, “This argument is fascinating.”

“These are pretty serious assertions of authority they did not have,” said Judge Leslie Southwick, who heard arguments with Elrod and Judge Catharina Haynes.

The Appeals Court has released its ruling [PDF] and it will allow the lawsuit to proceed. The DA's office has now been denied immunity twice. Absolute immunity shields almost every action taken by prosecutors during court proceedings. But these fake subpoenas were sent to witnesses whom prosecutors seemingly had no interest in ever having testify in court. This key difference means prosecutors will have to face the state law claims brought by the plaintiffs.

Based upon the pleadings before us at this time, it could be concluded that Defendants’ creation and use of the fake subpoenas was not “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process,” but rather fell into the category of “those investigatory functions that do not relate to an advocate’s preparation for the initiation of a prosecution or for judicial proceedings.” See Hoog-Watson v. Guadalupe Cty., 591 F.3d 431, 438 (5th Cir. 2009)

[...]

Defendants were not attempting to control witness testimony during a break in judicial proceedings. Instead, they allegedly used fake subpoenas in an attempt to pressure crime victims and witnesses to meet with them privately at the Office and share information outside of court. Defendants never used the fake subpoenas to compel victims or witnesses to testify at trial. Such allegations are of investigative behavior that was not “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process.”

Falling further outside the judicial process was the DA's office itself, which apparently felt the judicial system didn't need to be included in its subpoena efforts.

In using the fake subpoenas, Individual Defendants also allegedly intentionally avoided the judicial process that Louisiana law requires for obtaining subpoenas.

The case returns to the lower court where the DA's office will continue to face the state law claims it hoped it would be immune from. The Appeals Court doesn't say the office won't ultimately find some way to re-erect its absolute immunity shield, but at this point, it sees nothing on the record that says prosecutors should be excused from being held responsible for bypassing the judicial system to threaten crime victims and witnesses with jail time.




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Fans Port Mario 64 To PC And Make It Way Better, So Of Course Nintendo Is Trying To Nuke The Project

I'm lucky enough to own a decades old Nintendo 64 and a handful of games, including the classic Mario 64. My kids love that game. Still, the first thing they asked when I showed it to them the first time is why the screen was letterboxed, why the characters looked like they were made of lego blocks, and why I needed weird cords to plug it all into the flat screen television. The answer to these spoiled monsters' questions, of course, is that the game is super old and wasn't meant to be played on modern televisions. It's the story of a lot of older games, though many PC games at least have a healthy modding community that will take classics and get them working on present day hardware. Consoles don't have that luxury.

Well, usually, that is. It turns out that enough folks were interested in modernizing Mario 64 that a group of fans managed to pull off porting it to PC. And, because this is a port and not emulation, they managed to update it to run in 4k graphics and added a ton of modern visual effects.

Last year, Super Mario 64's N64 code was reverse-engineered by fans, allowing for all kinds of new and exciting things to be done with Nintendo’s 1996 classic. Like building a completely new PC port of the game, which can run in 4K and ultra-wide resolutions.

This is a very new and cool thing! Previously, if you were playing Super Mario 64 on PC, you were playing via emulation, as your PC ran code pretending to be an N64. This game is made specifically for the PC, built from the ground up, meaning it not only runs like a dream, but even supports mod stuff like ReShade, allowing for graphical tweaks (like the distance blur seen here).

As you'll see, the video the Kotaku post is referencing can't be embedded here because Nintendo already took it down. Instead, I'll use another video that hasn't been taken down at the time of this writing, so you can see just how great this looks.

In addition to videos of the project, Nintendo has also been busy firing off legal salvos to get download links for the PC port of the game taken down from wherever it can find them. Now, while Nintendo's reputation for IP protectionism is such that it would almost certainly take this fan project down under virtually any circumstances, it is also worth noting that the company has a planned re-release of Mario 64 for its latest Nintendo console. That likely only supercharged the speed with which it is trying to disappear this labor of love from fans of an antiquated game that have since moved on to gaming on their PCs.

But why should the company do this? Nintendo consoles are known for many things, including user-friendly gaming and colorful games geared generally towards younger audiences. You know, exactly not the people who would take it on themselves to get an old Mario game working on their PC instead of a Nintendo console. What threat does this PC port from fans represent to Nintendo revenue? It's hard to imagine that threat is anything substantial.

And, yet, here we are anyway. Nintendo, after all, doesn't seem to be able to help itself.




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The EARN IT Act Also Threatens Journalists And Their Sources

The EARN IT Act is dangerous. It threatens speech on the internet and tech companies' ability to provide secure communications for their users. There may not be anything about encryption in the dry text of the bill, but the threat is there all the same. No one knows what "best practices" the law will demand from online services, but the bill's focus on child porn strongly suggests any platform that "allows" this information to be transmitted using encrypted communications will be targeted by the government.

Bill Barr and Chris Wray have made it clear encryption is the enemy. Both have advocated for encryption backdoors, even if they're both too cowardly to use that term. No one thinks the government and service providers shouldn't do all they can to prevent the sharing of child porn, but undermining encryption isn't the solution. It may shield some child porn producers and consumers from detection, but the government's efforts in this area show encryption hasn't posed much of a problem to investigators and prosecutors.

Encryption protects people who aren't criminals. As Runa Sundvik explains for TechCrunch, targeting encryption via the EARN IT Act also threatens some of the foremost beneficiaries of the First Amendment: journalists.

[T]echnology experts warn the bill not only fails to meet the challenge, it creates new problems of its own. My job is to enable journalists to do their work securely — to communicate with others, research sensitive stories and publish hard-hitting news. This bill introduces significant harm to journalists’ ability to protect their sources.

Strip communications platforms of their encryption and you make it that much easier to expose journalists' sources and snoop on their communications. This isn't an existential threat. It's an actual threat. The FBI has spied on journalists and several successive presidential administrations have made rooting out leakers a priority.

But it does more than harm journalists. It also harms the people they're trying to reach: readers. Encryption protects readers who visit news sites utilizing HTTPS. That's almost all of them at this point. This ensures their connection is shielded from people trying to snoop on their web activity. More importantly, it ensures the sites they reach are legit and the content originating from the journalists the site says it is.

If EARN IT becomes law, whistleblowers and other sources will see their secure options disappear. Tor, Signal, etc. will be considered nothing more than aiders and abettors of criminal activity. Anything secured by encryption will be treated as a virtual dead drop for criminal content.

Protecting children from exploitation is important. But the tradeoff legislators are demanding isn't actually a tradeoff. The American public will receive no net benefit from this tangential attack on encryption. Very often we're first informed about serious government misconduct by journalists. Destroying this outlet works out well for the government so often exposed as untrustworthy, but it does nothing for the governed.




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Court Of Appeals Affirms Lower Court Tossing BS 'Comedians In Cars' Copyright Lawsuit

Six months ago, which feels like roughly an eternity at this point, we discussed how Jerry Seinfeld and others won an absolutely ludicrous copyright suit filed against them by Christian Charles, a writer and director Seinfeld hired to help him create the pilot episode of Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee. What was so strange about the case is that this pilot had been created in 2012, whereas the lawsuit was only filed in 2018. That coincides with Seinfeld inking a lucrative deal with Netflix to stream his show.

It's not the most well known aspect of copyright law, but there is, in fact, a statute of limitations for copyright claims and it's 3 years. The requirement in the statute is that the clock essentially starts running once someone who would bring a copyright claim has had their ownership of a work disputed publicly, or has been put on notice. Seinfeld argued that he told Charles he was employing him in a work-for-hire arrangement, which would satisfy that notice. His lawyers also pointed out that Charles goes completely uncredited in the pilot episode, which would further put him on notice. The court tossed the case based on the statute of limitations.

For some reason, Charles appealed the ruling. Well, now the Court of Appeals has affirmed that lower ruling, which hopefully means we can all get back to not filing insane lawsuits, please.

We conclude that the district court was correct in granting defendants’ motion to dismiss, for substantially the same reasons that it set out in its well-reasoned opinion. The dispositive issue in this case is whether Charles’s alleged “contributions . . . qualify [him] as the author and therefore owner” of the copyrights to the show. Kwan, 634 F.3d at 229. Charles disputes that his claim centers on ownership. But that argument is seriously undermined by his statements in various filings throughout this litigation which consistently assert that ownership is a central question.

Charles’s infringement claim is therefore time-barred because his ownership claim is time-barred. The district court identified two events described in the Second Amended Complaint that would have put a reasonably diligent plaintiff on notice that his ownership claims were disputed. First, in February 2012, Seinfeld rejected Charles’s request for backend compensation and made it clear that Charles’s involvement would be limited to a work-for-hire basis. See Gary Friedrich Enters., LLC v. Marvel Characters, Inc., 716 F.3d 302, 318 (2d Cir. 2013) (noting that a copyright ownership claim would accrue when the defendant first communicates to the plaintiff that the defendant considers the work to be a work-for-hire). Second, the show premiered in July 2012 without crediting Charles, at which point his ownership claim was publicly repudiated. See Kwan, 634 F.3d at 227. Either one of these developments was enough to place Charles on notice that his ownership claim was disputed and therefore this action, filed six years later, was brought too late.

And that should bring this all to a close, hopefully. This seems like a pretty clear attempt at a money grab by Charles once Seinfeld's show became a Netflix cash-cow. Unfortunately, time is a measurable thing and his lawsuit was very clearly late.




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The first thing that came to our heads

“Monster Mash,” “Crocodile Rock,” and “Jailhouse Rock” are all real songs about other, fictional songs that share the same titles...




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“‘The days of your life’ refers to in-game time…”

Blacow* speaks of four players: the Wargamer, the Power-Gamer, the Role-Player, and the Story-Teller. The Wargamer, what does he say?...




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#440994 - Flourless Chocolate Cake Recipe



A flourless chocolate cake to help ease your lockdown woes.

craving more? check out TasteSpotting




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Twitter sticks a beak in, Clippy-style: Are you sure you want to set your account alight with that flame?

No, you still can't edit tweets

Although editing published tweets still remains strictly verboten on Twitter, the microblogging anger echo chamber intends to prompt English-speaking iPhone-wielding users to double-check content before posting a reply that they might regret.…




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FYI: Your browser can pick up ultrasonic signals you can't hear, and that sounds like a privacy nightmare to some

High-frequency audio could be used to stealthily track netizens

Technical folks looking to improve web privacy haven't been able to decide whether sound beyond the range of human hearing poses enough of a privacy risk to merit restriction.…




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Go on, hit Reply All. We dare you. We double dare you. Because Office 365 will defeat your server-slamming ways

Even Exchange’s marketing bod reckons tests of new Reply-All-stopper could be a career-defining moment

Microsoft may just have made Reply All storms a thing of the past, by adding a suitable blocker to Exchange in Office 365 environments.…




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Source code for seminal adventure game Zork circa-1977 exhumed from MIT tapes, plonked on GitHub

Revisit what it’s like to run a PDP-10 and be eaten by a grue

Source code for seminal adventure game Zork, dating back to 1977 and recovered from MIT tapes, was published this week on GitHub.…




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Need some weekend reading? How about the source code for UK, Australia's coronavirus contact-tracing apps

Problems aside, no one is sure how useful phone-based tracking will be

The NHSX, a technology group within the UK government's National Health Service, has released the source code for its Android and iOS COVID-19 coronavirus contact-tracing apps in an effort to allay privacy concerns and improve the code.…




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3/16/14 - The spark has gone out of your eyes




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07/19/15 - I"m yours forever




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08/23/15 - Never have the courage




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10/11/15 - Under your bed




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12/20/15 - To once again see the sparkle your eyes used to have




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01/31/16 - Four years ago




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05/01/16 - Your lips have grown so cold




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11/13/16 - Look into your face




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04/09/17 - Hand over your heart




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11/12/17 - Our souls are bound together




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McNeill wants probe into tourism entities not filing deductions

Opposition spokesman on tourism, Dr Wykeham McNeill, is calling for an investigation into allegations that some employers of tourism workers have not been turning over income tax deductions to government.  The situation has resulted in...




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Make your restaurant decorative with finest interior design

Interior decoration is a tremendously crucial element of any kind of dining establishment. If you are in the planning stages of opening up a dining establishment, if you already own one and also are thinking about making adjustments, you will… Continue Reading




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Get rid of your unwanted trash with skip bin removal

Every house resident understands how quickly she or he can build up a lot of unwanted junk, broken items as well as simply simple rubbish. For those who often tend to hoard, or delay disposal of garbage, this buildup can… Continue Reading




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Featured - Position Yourself for a Job in Industry

Many thanks to the scientist who sent in these great questions for discussion.  I welcome input from everyone so please share your advice with this reader. If anyone has more questions, please feel free to email me privately if you prefer. These questions were edited to remove specific details and indentifying information. ******************Hi Jade,I'm a frequent reader of the blog, if a rare c; (read more)

Source: Suzy - Discipline: BioTech




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Last Day to Enter Video Contest! Show Us Your Kid’s Newfound Independence!

I realize that sounds kinda nuts — why are we asking PARENTS to show us their KIDS being independent? Who, after all, is better at making videos? Mom or little Ava (who’s 5)? But legally we can’t ask anyone under 13 to do anything. So go document your children doing something new on their own, […]




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JoT #2693: Keep your distance!



Limit your exposure!




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Affiche - Bonjour Monde

Affiches.
Vous pouvez commander des affiches de cette image en ligne.
De très petit à 76 x 102 centimètres, c'est à 30 x 40 pouces.
Prix d'USS 1.95 vers les USA $79.95.




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Labour Day 2020 (Multiple)

Date: May 1, 2020

Also known as May Day or International Workers’ Day, Labour Day is celebrated on May 1st in many countries around the world. Today’s Doodle celebrates the day by illustrating a handful of the many professions across the labor force.

Recognized around the world, Labour Day originated from the 19th-century labour movement. First declared a holiday by trade unions in 1889, Labour Day commemorates worker’s rights and their fight for weekends, better working conditions, and shorter working days. 

Here’s to everyone contributing to the livelihoods of those around them each and every day. 

Happy Labour Day!

Location: Global

Tags:






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How to Fly Overseas With Your Cats

Cats. Cats are the best, and I can’t seem to settle down in any one place for too long, so my cats (possibly to their dismay) have had to move around with my silly butt. I don’t own a boat that can cross the Pacific Ocean, so that means taking them on a plane. BUT! While it’s no fun for anyone, it’s not really as hard as you think! Really really! My cats are my family, and if you’re here then you probably also have furry family members, and you are worried about flying with them. I’ve both taken my cats in the cabin and had to check them into the pet cargo hold (to my terror), but they not only survived, they are all flourishing wonderfully. While things do happen (and if something happens, raise a ruckus and make sure that whomever hurt your baby knows it), for the most part, flying is actually pretty safe for cats. Not that you want to take them. It’s just that sometimes you have to. So read on for my personal tips on how to make the flight go as smoothly as possible for all of you! Trust me, you’ll want it to be this way. My cats at the vet for their checkups and vaccinations. 1. Do Your Homework. This might seem obvious, but that being said, let’s put it out there anyway. Know your stuff! There are two things that you’re going to need to find out as soon as you decide to fly with your pets:      a) What paperwork does the airline require for me to bring my cat on the plane?      b) What does my arrival location require for me to bring my cat into the country/state? Usually, a) is the easiest part. It’s usually just a health certificate from your vet, issued less than a week before travel. Just book an appointment at your vet for less than a week before departure, and tell them that you’re flying to (wherever). All of my vets, even my one in Japan, either knew what they needed, or looked it up beforehand. Check your airline’s webpage (my absolute favorite for flying with pets is Alaska Air, btw. You can take two in the cabin by yourself, and it’s the only airline I know of that allows this!), and follow the instructions. I keep all of my paperwork with my passport while flying, so that I can show it to the ticketing agent or anyone else that asks (sometimes, nobody has, but at least I had it). In all of the cases where I’ve flown, my plane required a current health certificate to board, and when I left Japan, they required an inspection from the on-site team, which I just asked for when I arrived in Narita. b) can be easy, or it can be hard. In order to enter the US from Japan, I had to check the US Customs website for the country’s official regulations, and Washington State for its regulations.  The US didn’t have any regulations at the time, but Washington state required a health certificate (same as the plane), and current rabies vaccination, both of which I had done within the week before I left. Funny enough, nobody checked my paperwork after I landed, since it was the 4th of July and the Agricultural Inspections office was closed. When I went to Hawaii, it was another story. It was a long, long, long process (more than 6 months) to get all of my testing and paperwork done for Sansa to enter the state, but I did it, kept all of my paperwork in order, and was able to leave the airport in Hawaii with her in my arms without any fuss! There was a lot to do, but I just made sure that I knew what I needed, did it, and had the documentation, and things were pretty smooth sailing afterward! You should always check the official government pages to make sure that you have the correct information. In Hawaii’s case, it can be found here. All of my cats reacted differently to being examined. 2. Get your stuff in order! Once you have your list of things that you need (vaccinations, health checks, etc), then CALL the airline to make your reservations (you always need to call them in order to add pets to your tickets. They usually cost a little bit extra, and try to get them in the cabin if you can). Then, check your airline’s website to find out what kind of carrier you will need, and whether you will need anything else. When I flew to Washington the first time, and to Hawaii, I only had one cat, so I didn’t need any food (I brought some anyway, and a little bowl in my carryon just in case), and a soft-sided carrier that would fit in the dimensions they specified on their websites (it’s usually in the pet section or the carry-on section, and every airline is different). When I flew to Washington again, it was with three cats, so I needed two large hard carriers that met certain criteria for my babies flying underneath, and one soft-sided one for the baby going in the cabin. The website for the airline was very specific, but it was easy to find what I needed at Petco. Check, check, and check. I had my carriers, my paperwork, and I was ready! When your cat isn’t too happy about getting her shots. 3. Getting ready for the flight. A week or so before my flight (or days in my last case), I set all of my pet carriers out in the living room and set them up how I was going to have them for the flight — I lined the bottoms with puppy training pads (in case there was an accident in-flight), then a towel for absorbency (in the large hard carriers only), and finally, on top of that, a blanket that I had been using a lot (so that it had our scents on it, and would comfort the cats). I sprayed the interior of all of the carriers with Feliway, and left them out for the cats to get used to them. The carriers sitting out for the curious kitties to explore. They all took turns exploring the carriers, and after a few days, got comfortable with them and would lounge around inside, play with them, and rub up against the sides. This was all in order to reduce the stress of travel on them as much as possible. I continued to spray them with Feliway at least once a day until we left. There is no hard and fast rule on this, but I took away my cats’ food and water the morning of the trip, and waited until just before we left to toss out the litter boxes. There was some satisfaction in being able to stuff those nasty things in a giant garbage bag and haul them to the trash without scooping! Hey, take pleasure while you can– you’re about to undertake something pretty stressful! After I called my Uber, I rounded up the cats one by one and deposited them in their carriers. Nobody was particularly happy about this, but just be patient. Two of my babies at the airport waiting for inspection. All of them were champs! 4. The Flight Be calm, patient, and as rational as possible. I know that it’s pretty scary (terrifying, to me) to let your precious babies our of your sight, but once the porter had helped me to the ticket counters (I actually needed two the last time, and I tipped them very well), I just reminded myself that it would all be over soon, and that the calmer I was, the better the kitties would feel. In order to pass through security, you will need to remove the cats one-by-one from their carriers and hold them while the crew puts your carrier through the scanner, or manually scans by hand (two of mine were too large to fit). Sometimes, they will let you do all of this in a separate room so that the cats are calmer, but there isn’t always one available (it will say that you can do this on most websites, but I wasn’t allowed a separate room the last time and had to hold three wiggly cats in the middle of the airport). BRING A HARNESS FOR THIS. I can’t stress this enough. My cats don’t like harnesses, but I fastened one to them before I brought them out of the carrier, and removed it right after, and it brought me a lot of peace of mind. None of my cats tried to run, but I have heard that some cats do, and you don’t want to take that chance. Look for a harness like this one— thick and really hard to pull out of. Better safe than sorry. I only brought one harness for three cats, since I would only need to take out one cat at a time. By the next morning, everyone was already claiming “our” new bed as their own. And that’s it!  Once you’re on the flight, it’s mostly a waiting game. I honestly am not sure whether the cats or I were more stressed about the trip, and they were certainly shaken and scared when they arrived at our new home. However, within a few days, my cats were all behaving as if they’d never lived anywhere else. They rebound quickly as long as you shower them with love and affection. ???? Well, those are my tips for making the smoothest ride possible! It helps to have litter and litter pans, food, etc, sent to your new place before you arrive, as well, so that everything will be easy to set up for you. Make sure that your kitties are confined to one room for at least a few hours, and let them hide for as long as they need to. They’ll get curious and hungry and come out on their own. I hope this helps someone! If I did it, anyone can! Remember, I took three cats on a flight overseas BY MYSELF! Nobody to even drop my off at the airport but an UberXL driver! =^-^=

(337 geeks have read this)



  • ☆ i heart cats
  • ☆ i heart travel

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A Tour of the Twilight Filming Locations

I’ve been to Forks and La Push, where the Twilight book series takes place, but I’ve never been to the actual filming locations from the movies! That’s because while the director wanted to film in Forks, when he came to scout the town he realized there was just not enough infrastructure to support an entire film crew– there were literally not enough places to house and feed all of the people who would be working on the movie, and there was no other large town within driving distance! (Yeah, Forks is really far out there) Enter Halloweento— I mean, St. Helens, Oregon! St. Helens stands in for most of Forks in the movies, and a few places in nearby Portland, Oregon make up most of the rest. I ended up nearby by complete accident, as it was only when I picked up a brochure at Halloweentown that I learned that Bella’s house was just on the other side of town! LUCKY!!!  So, we took a short break to drive over to the locations that were still standing, and made a special detour to Portland because how could we leave the Cullen house behind?! I WANTED TO GO INSIDE SO BADLY! It is a real house with real people that live there, and although they encouraged taking photos from outside (according both to a brochure from City Hall and a sign in front of the house), the inside was off-limits. Honestly, it’s not Bella that I particularly love. I didn’t care for her portrayal by Kristen Stewart (sorry!), or her melancholy, passive attitude in the book. Actually, I didn’t care for Edward, either. It was the idea of a love so strong that forces of  nature were pulling you together. It’s the idea of fitting together so perfectly that you can’t do anything without the other that I am a complete sucker for! I said it on my old Livejournal years ago, but Twilight is just a big Mary Sue anyway, so I like to imagine myself as Bella, with a gorgeous (female) Edward out there waiting for me. ???? Like I said, it’s the love, not the characters themselves. I’ll fight you on this (just kidding). ???? Here is where Edward rescued Bella from some catcallers, complete with the mural that the movie crew painted (!) on the building. And the theater that they drove past, that you can’t really see well in the movie but hey, it was on the map!! This is Jilly’s, which supplied all of the dresses in the shop when Bella went to pick out something with her friends for prom. Oddly enough, they had this sign outside but no actual merchandise inside. Go figure. ???? This place, which is a private house now, was the bookstore where Bella went to find out more information about the Quileute myths. And then, though we only had a little bit of time, we drove over to Portland and checked out Edward’s house. I have to say…. THIS HOUSE WAS GORGEOUS. Whew! I would LOVE to live there. LOVE LOVE LOVE! I would also have loved a tour, but it is a private residence, and therefore we kept our distance. Mmm, but it sure is gorgeous! Twilight brings back a lot of memories for me, and it’s special because I grew up (mostly) in Washington. It’s also not the only book series to claim that there are werewolves living amongst the local residents. The town that I spent most of my childhood in also has a series revolving around it! I’m planning to take a trip over there to see my old friends and photograph all of the wolfy places of interest, so I’ll post about it then! Love ya, and see ya tomorrow!

(1,343 geeks have read this)





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The History of Cartography’s Fourth Volume, Now (Almost) Out





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Day One Journaling App Update Adds iPad Trackpad Support, New Day View, and More

Popular journaling app Day One today updated to version 4.13, adding support for trackpad navigation on iPad, a new Day View interface, and other improvements.


This release comes after the launch of iOS and iPadOS 13.4, which added support for trackpads and mice on ‌‌iPad‌‌.

After updating, Day One users on ‌iPad‌ can use various trackpad actions to interact with the app, including two-finger swipe down to dismiss, and two-finger horizontal swipe to open and close the journal drawer.


The new Day View offers quicker access to daily entries by tapping on or clicking dates in the calendar or the timeline.

Also in this update, Daily Reminders now include additional information like the number of photos taken and locations visited on a given day, and the Settings pages now provide links to Day One feature documents.

Elsewhere, several bugs have been fixed, including one that caused video thumbnails not to display in the media timeline, and one that prevented photos in the activity feed from showing location or calendar events.

Day One is a free download for iPhone and ‌iPad‌ from the App Store with in-app purchases for premium features. [Direct Link]
Tag: Day One

This article, "Day One Journaling App Update Adds iPad Trackpad Support, New Day View, and More" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Wearechange.org interview of Glenn Greenwald on the next four years with President Obama. Greenwald predicts “it’s all going to get much worse”.

Glenn Greenwald predicts over the next four years that "it's all going to get much worse", with President Obama shifting politically more to the right while the Democratic base continues to support him. Continue reading