Allegra’s Memorial Webpage Found

In another post I mentioned our Dog Allegra who passed away last March.  We were hosting her memorial page on an webserver I was running here at home.  I took that server down some time ago.

In reviewing all the content I moved to my Drobo I found the webserver folder and the memorial page.  This was written by my wife Susanne, and I am posting it here for a more permanent location.

Allegra’s Journey, May 2001 – March 1, 2007
(More Photos Here)

Allegra was born around May 2001. Around the end of June, Greg, Jacob and I were sitting on the stoop at the Lake Street House visiting friends after an afternoon downtown at the Blues, Brews, and BBQ festival. A young man who was staying downstairs at his brother’s apartment walked up with the most adorable little puppy. He told the story of how someone was giving away puppies in front of Winco, and he didn’t have the heart NOT to take the little pup in his arms. He continued by telling us he had no idea what he was going to do with her because his apartment complex didn’t allow dogs. He wanted to find a nice place for her to live. As if in the same nanosecond those words exited his mouth, both Jacob and Greg looked at me with, ironically enough, puppy eyes, eyes that were begging and pleading with me to say we’d provide her that nice place to live. I was secretly excited, but I had to play tough, getting Greg to convince me that he would be okay with her because of his allergies to dogs. Greg said he’d do whatever it took to keep her, and so our journey with our new family addition began.

What’s in a name? We looked through our friend’s baby name book right then and there and decided upon the name Allegra. It was both funny and fitting for this little pup. It means “quick, with a happy air” as well as being the name of the allergy medicine Greg would have to take to keep her. How appropriate for this lively little one.

She was so tiny, that is all except her ears. We were up at Galena Forest with her during her first winter, and these two snow-shoe guys were walking down the hill. They had to have been 50 yards away when we heard them holler “Check out the ears on that dog!”

Even though she was tiny, I had a HUGE adjustment to make. I was the type of person who would grab onto Greg’s arm in a parking lot when I heard keys jingle because I thought for sure it was the sound of a collar on a huge dog just waiting to chase and chomp me. So, with this new tiny addition to our family chasing and nipping at my heals, I found myself in tears. Greg even asked me if I wanted to get rid of her.

I said no, convinced that I could get past my fear of dogs. And that I did. Allegra turned me into a dog person, and she was an integral part of our family.

On Saturday Allegra became ill. After a rough night, we took her to the emergency room on Sunday where they kept her on fluids all night. We took her to our regular vet on Monday morning, where her x-rays, blood work, and exams gave nothing conclusive as the source of the problem. She couldn’t keep anything down, and a Berium (sic?) series indicated some sort of problem with her stomach. On Tuesday, they operated on her and found a piece of mesentery wrapped around and tying off part of her bowel. Part of the bowel had died, so the doctor removed the bad portion and sewed her back up. Allegra did okay with this surgery but still could not keep anything down. She continued to get ill. The only option was to go in and see if there was a second issue in the stomach. On Thursday afternoon, the doctor had a two-hour surgery with her. This surgery was a very difficult surgery for the doctor. He found that since the first surgery a huge section of her small intestines had died. He removed this dead section of her small intestines, and she almost didn’t make it off of the operating table. Greg and I saw her that evening. She was zonked out on pain meds, but we got to give her loves. We were hopeful that she would make it through this, but it was all too much for our beloved dog. She passed away in the night.

Those of you who knew Allegra know how amazing she was with children, how playful she was with other dogs, and how puppy-like she was regardless of any time that had passed. She was loved, and she will be missed.

Allegra eating doggy ice cream.

MOTHER-IN-LAWS TUTORIAL TO CREATE A PICASA ALBUM

This is Part 2 in a series of tutorials I made for my mother-in-law. Part One was how to get pictures off your memory card. Part 3 (to come) explains how to burn a CD.

1. Click on the first picture in a group that you want to be in an album.

2. Scroll to the last picture in the same group, press the SHIFT key and click again. If you wish to select images from other folder groups you will need to use the CTRL key and click on each additional image.

3. The pictures you have selected will show in the bottom left of the Picasa window as shown here.

4. Click the Add To button and select New Album

5. A box will pop up asking you to add a date, description and location. Fill out the information and click OK.

6. You now will have an album that shows in the upper left of Picasa that holds only your chosen photos. Click on the name to see the pictures in that album. In this example the new album Snakes and Bugs is highlighted.

Coming Soon – Part 3 Copying Pictures To A CD From Picassa

Password Generator

I saw a post on CNET that talked about passwords.  I posted a method that I use.

 

Create your own method of generating a password that will not make sense to the average viewer but can easily be remembered without writing it down.
My method:
A) Pick a sentence from your favorite book, one that you can easily remember. 
B) Then pick a split point (a comma or junction for example) that makes a great break point. 
C) Now create something to insert at that point that you consistently use from each site, how about the first two characters of the url (other than ww from www). 
D) Then say, add the first two numbers of your birthday to add to the end (or month and year or other combination). 1/12/24 would be 13.
So...from Stephen Kings Firestarter...
"He looked at her and saw how pale her face was."
becomes the password on this site (news.cnet.com) 
Hlahaneshphfw13
the NE in the middle being the first two characters of the url in this page.  Now, each password for each site you visit is
1) easy to remember
2) unique to the site you have visited
3) not easily figured out for other sites, should one be breached (ie if you use the same password on all)
4) easy to remember once you have created the method in your head, you will know how to create a new one or remember one for each site you visit.

Our Dog Allegra

Allegra passed away unexpectedly last summer (we had a tribute to her online, but I seem to have broken that, working on fixing it).  Anyway, I was working on getting UPnP Fuppes working on my Drobo with the newly released SDK and apps and I ran across this video recently.  This just epitomizes her spunk  and the joy she brought to our family.  I truly miss her.

For The Love Of FSM - It's A KILT