1. There’s an energy usage warning given about Nest’s “range” mode with no other explanation.
2. Its thermostat is heavily affected by your hand and breath when messing with Nest for more than a minute, which causes undesirable behavior.
3. The company appears to be missing an opportunity to get me to buy other HVAC equipment and installation services through their site.

Here’s my response:

I was disappointed with two things: First was the all-or-nothing schedule or range setting strikes me as odd. I thought, “What about it may use more energy?” I wonder if a future software update could be more flexible – a hybrid of the two with “best-it-can-manage” power savings. That is, maybe two ranges and a preferred value within that range? A “heat if really low” and a “cool if really high”. The system then tries to stay close to your preferred temp for the time of day. An audible alert with a visible icon (and a push notification to iDevices) could let the user know an energy-versus-comfort decision needs to be made. If no answer after a user-choosible length of time, the system chooses efficiency.

This would be environmental control heaven.

The other disappointing thing was that, after standing there playing with Nest for more than a minute or so, its thermometer read significantly higher. Not surprising once it happens but it takes *quite some time* for it to get back to the actual room temp. All the while, as the weather happens to be here, this causes it to crank the AC the whole time, getting it significantly cooler in here than I’d asked. “So stop standing there playing with it,” you say, childishly. The only possible geek-to-geek response is, “You want me to NOT obsessively fondle my new electronic toy?” In any case, could this be solved by watching for a sudden rise in temp that coincides with manual input? Lock out any cooling (or don’t turn the heat off in heating mode) but rather infer the remaining cycle based on its history, computed from the time the input-and-temp-rise coincident was noted.

I’d also like more information (as someone new to fussing over my HVAC system’s efficiency and automation) on what kind of equipment I could add to my HVAC system that Nest could control. I purchased a new home for its older architectural charm. It’s a home automation blank canvas. I’m interested in installing things like an automatic damper system with multiple nests to help balance things out more evenly. This home seems like it should have two zones already, given its layout. We’ll be refinishing the full basement next year and that would add at least one more zone. It’d be great to get a consumer-targeted HVAC primer on those possibilities and others I didn’t even know existed. I want a PREMIUM air system over time. Help!

That’s really it. That’s all the negativity I can muster. Even Matt approves, despite the Nest’s “well-fed” price tag.

It was pretty easy to figure out overall. My favorite feature is that it can be set to activate its UI when you get near it. Whether I walk up to it to read or adjust – it comes to life when I get close to it. I found I have to slightly exaggerate my movements sometimes to get it to activate, then other times it’d come on as I walked down the hall. I suppose proximity sensors in general can be dimwitted at times. Least harmful are iPhones not sleeping the touch screen when we put them up to our heads. Whoops – what did I do, drop the call, mute something, face-mash numbers – what? On the dreaded end of this spectrum are those evil infrared-sensing, auto-flush, water-cannons labeled “toilets” in public restrooms and office buildings. Impishly, they won’t flush when you want them to. They prefer to wait to use some random movement as an opportunity to unleash the apparently-combustion-fueled power flush. Suddenly the urine and feces of many other people and, more plentifully, your own, becomes a brisk spring gully-washer. Depending on your eliminatory progress at the time, something gets up-showered: a) you and the toilet stall or b) your asshole. I tend to think the Nest’s issues here are far more benign even than those of the iPhone. At least the nest isn’t still on the line listening with crystal clarity at you making a fool of yourself as you repeat  ”Are you still there? Hello?” then begin cursing in a God-angering way.

Regarding installation, I’m no stranger to thermostat wires but I’m no expert either. The replacement of my existing thermostat with the Nest was easy enough that I recall thinking my tech-nervous mother could do it if she was determined. It took me somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes from opening the box to rounding up my laser level for the optional plate (needed for the existing hole in the plaster) and having the Nest basically configured.

Of course when we find new and interesting things, we must fondle them. So I fondled it, pushing, twisting, etc. This gave rise to a hot and overstimulated thermostat, causing the second issue I mentioned. The request for more consumer-targeted “look what we could do if your system had this…” information was sincere. For many people (home and small business owners alike), Nest’s web site is perfectly positioned to be a portal to consumer ventilation system upgrades, all controlled by a device nearly as polished as if Apple had made “iThermostat 4G” sans Siri.

Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with it as a device. I only have a brief history of gas and electricity consumption in this house pre-Nest but I’ll be interested to see whatever it can tell me about our energy consumption.

I’m amused by our jumpiness but Matt’s been feeling under the weather, so he’s having a harder time adjusting. Some of you know we’re not at all used to having other houses nearby after years of relative silence. His energy levels have been low enough that that he’s been housebound for the last few days. We both started recovering from the labor of the move itself but he started going back downhill. I believe it’s allergies (because of 5 days straight of high pollen count warnings in the area and the area’s mix of pollen being new to us); Matt’s convinced it is Strep.

The Frank-Lloyd-Wright-inspired house (built in 1960) is charming and more or less what I expected, now that we’re living in it. It’s older with plenty of character (which we wanted). Here I define “character” as “style plus lots of things that need to be updated and possibly brought up to code.”

We both love the idea of fixing up an older house as opposed to a hollow-feeling cookie cutter home of depressingly modern design (plush with wall-to-wall carcinogen diffusers). We’ve got plenty of projects (almost as many as we’ve completed already). They include refinishing aging hardwood floors, updating the guest bathroom and master suite, and soaking our “the-60′s-aren’t-dead-yet” kitchen in gasoline and sending it back to hell.

Then there’s the “partially finished basement.” The “den” as the real estate folks like to call it. The basement is walk-out level and in relatively great condition but it turns out we’re going to have to un-finish the finished part actually do it right. The un-finishing will involve pry bars, sledge hammers, and my reciprocating saw. Also lots of cursing and reprimanding of particularly difficult lumber, emphasized by corrective strikes from the heaviest object that happens to be nearby. We’ll then need a few thousand dollars in floor and wall sealant to provide a proper moisture and vapor barrier as well as a few cheap and suicidal volunteers to stay down there and apply it. It’s no great loss – the pipe-tobacco-and-dank-infused fake wood paneling along with the poor lighting makes the “den” (quotes reapplied for emphasis) feel more like a creepy interrogation / rape room inside Castle Wolfenstein. But it does have a lovely brick fireplace.

Since I love improving homes (and wiring them to be smart), I’m itching to get going on this blank canvas. It may surprise some of you to know I’m actually a pretty decent handyman. Maybe not so surprising to my fellow user-experience-minded and design friends that when I eventually tire of software development, I’m thinking of going to school to become an architect.

Why are we leaving? Just outside Frederick, a common home for DC and Baltimore commuters, we’ve enjoyed the lake life for some years. Unfortunately the area has been getting crowded and the “city attitude” is traveling north. It’s lost its luster (for us, at least – we don’t judge you, neighbors ). That’s the negative aspect. The positives are that much of my family is in one place and my family is now Matt’s only family, so it’s where most of our family is.

Why are we all gravitating to Danville? Well, my middle sister’s partner had a farmhouse down there but didn’t use it since they both lived in Frederick at the time. My oldest sister was looking for a place to move and loved the farmhouse, so they moved in to take care of the place. After awhile, my middle sister and her partner started a family and wanted to move back down to a quieter area. My oldest sister moved further into town (Danville) and has been there for quite some time.

Almost two years ago, when we were talking seriously about leaving the region (without quite being able to agree on where), we took a trip down to see family. On the way back, Matt talked about how he’d had such a great time with family. Out of the blue, while I’m driving, he looks at me and blurts, “Let’s move to Danville.”

I laughed. Derisively. Much of Danville isn’t in the best shape and its crime rates are higher than Laurel, Maryland (P.G. County, y’all! HOLLA!), which is impressive in its own right. My response pretty much shut down that line of thought.

Or so I thought.

It kept coming back to me – being around two of my sisters. A whole new area. Of course I’d have to find employment in Greensboro or Roanoke (same old long commute) or go completely independent (or – sh’ya right – convince my employers to let me telework 100% of the time). I began surreptitiously Googling information about the area. The cost of housing shocked me (in a good way). The city government’s web services shocked me (also in a good way). The city-owned fiber optic network – for which they’re now shopping consumer ISPs to deliver residential service – floored me. I started reading their revitalization and continuing education plans (also on the city web site), as well as their incentives for luring more businesses to the area. For a “podunk” town, Danville seemed remarkably progressive.

Then I started really thinking about the family aspect. Being even an hour away from any family made it very difficult to see any of them regularly. This was fine for the aloof twenty-something geek I used to be as I struggled to establish a career for myself, but Matt made me realize how much we both needed to be near family again.

I brought it up to him nearly a week later. We talked and basically decided: We’d move to or near Danville.

I had already set to work on a plan to step up my career since it’d been going so well. I made some adjustments and began “playing the long game”. I’m happy to say I achieved the major goal of working from home nearly a year ago now. A year after that, we own a lovely home in Danville and I’ll continue to work for Dr. Roederer, building data mining and visualization tools for the Macs in the labs of the NIH Vaccine Research Center from my new (and quieter) home office.

Interestingly, the government contract on which my mother worked came to an end and, knowing Matt and I were Danville-bound, she packed up her studio apartment and headed down last Fall. So I have only one sister (and two nieces) who is more than a few minutes away, but I’m working on her. Slowly.

I’ve had several farewell lunches with ex-coworkers some friends I’ve made over the years. There are some great people who work at the NIH and I’ve had monthly lunch with them ever since I left my on-site position last year. E-mail still works, so I’m not worried about losing touch. Still, I’ll miss catching up with them over good food.

So that’s it. We’re moving to be near family, to take advantage of the housing low and business incentives, and to start a new chapter in our lives together. We are loading the moving truck this weekend. Monday we’ll head out to move into our new home.

Wish us luck.

If you’re considered an adult (or old enough to enter into a binding agreement), for the love of all that isn’t incredibly stupid, I certainly hope this is a yellow flag. Caution is in order. Read what you’re asked to sign. Following are some easy-to-understand situations where you should be managing your “oh shit” flags when encountering anything requesting your signature.

Raise that flag right on up to orange if any of the following accompany the form you’re asked to sign:

• It’s unexpected
• You’re being rushed
• You’re told it’s “standard” or “everybody signs it” or “it’s no big deal”

Raise that flag straight to bright flaming red if two or more of these situations accompany the form together.

Also raise the flag straight to red if you don’t understand the form or something in it makes you uncomfortable or sounds like you might be giving up any rights (key words “indemnify/indemnity”, “waive/waiver”, “[your] responsibility”, “[your] liability”).

If at any point the party or parties asking you to sign the form become agitated and repeat the “it’s standard, everybody signs it, just sign it” mantra without offering to amend the scope of the agreement, and especially if their attitude seems to say without saying, “JUST FUCKING SIGN IT!”, something is very wrong. That’s when that red flag becomes a detonated thermonuclear device, rendering the entire business dealing uninhabitable for ten thousand years. Run away.

Following the above, as soon as your flag turns red, it’s time to call lawyer. Such forms tend to have already been drafted by lawyers with someone else’s interests in mind. They’re usually one-sided and that side is not yours. The moment they have your signature on their form, you may very well be bound to an agreement to waive some (or all) of your rights or to accept responsibility for things you didn’t need to. Seeking the advice of an attorney is the absolute best thing you can do at this point. You might regret the cost (if there is any) but then again, if you hear what your lawyer has to say about the form, you might just feel like you dodged a bullet.

One thing you will regret, though, is being screwed because you signed a form you discovered you didn’t have to. It stings especially bad if you realize you allowed yourself to be pressured by time or by being made to feel guilty / unreasonable / overbearing / overcautious over what’s “just a standard form.”

Don’t be a dumb ass. Don’t be pressured. Take your time. Seek legal advice if you don’t fully understand what you’ve read. If you don’t understand it or what you understand looks fishy, lawyer up or walk away, but do not sign it.

Also, no, I didn’t get burned, but I did just encounter someone with the audacity to ask me to accept full liability for any losses or damage incurred by the actions of complete strangers. Can you guess what my response was?

I still break down and cry when I think too hard about her. Sometimes I tear up not even realizing she was in the back of my mind. I’ll never get over it – I’ve been told that enough and it sure feels like it – but I do think I’m starting to adjust to life without her.

I no longer expect a bath- or poop-buddy when I go to the bathroom, no longer waiting to close the door for her to get up, stretch, and make her way to the bathroom. I no longer wake up and reach for her empty spot by my head. I no longer look down at the cat bed by my desk, saddened when I don’t see her there.

I do still wake up and hurt. Twice recently I had similar dreams where I’d wonder aloud why she hasn’t been coming to bed with Daddy lately … just as I wake up and say, “Oh.” I go back to sleep sad.

Our Wine Nights (A.K.A. “Friday”) haven’t been very much fun and it’s entirely my fault. Alcohol lets out the torrent of emotional groundwater that’s been lurking just beneath the surface. Damage done, the flood starts and doesn’t stop until I go to bed. Wine Night has been less frequent lately.

As some of you know, we plan to move about 5.5 hours away in a few months. I think of how much of a seasoned mover she used to be and how much this larger new place full of new areas to explore would have excited her. I think about our planned addition of a screened sun room would have thrilled her to no end. I think about how I didn’t realize our move into our current residence would be her last. Those things all hurt.

But my disrupted routine – as upset as such things make me – is finally becoming my “normal” routine: Life after Cara.

Daddy misses you every day, baby girl.

Also Viewed

A few of the comments on the (very real) Amazon page are hilarious.

Their Perspective: Me obsessively e-mailing, calling, sending random, unrequested scraps of information, eventually tracking down home addresses, knocking on doors, windows, letting myself in and waiting in the living room chair in the dark…

The update provides a number of bug fixes as well as a major performance increase. SPICE is brought to you by yours truly in collaboration with Dr. Mario Roederer of the NIH/NIAID Vaccine Research Center. Enjoy!

Daddy's Girl

It’s been a month since I lost my oldest cat, Cara. I rescued her when she was a very small palm-sized kitten, her little flagpole tail sticking up everywhere she ran. She nearly died then due to an upper respiratory infection that was spread around the shelter. Due to the kindness of the man who (almost forcibly) adopted her for me, she got treated just in time – such infections can be deadly for kittens.

She became Daddy’s girl. To me she was a sweet, loving, insightful companion. To others she was a holy fucking terror. She didn’t like people much. She didn’t like other cats either. In fact, Cara didn’t like most things. But she loved her Daddy.

When she died, Cara was somewhere between 14 and 15 years old. We think she was born in August, based on her approximate age when I adopted her. She was diagnosed with angiosarcoma. Right up until her last few weeks, several veterinarians had commented on how healthy she was. With only a mild case of arthritis in her hips in the last year, she was running up and down the stairs and remained the reigning queen just a few months ago. Really, she remained the reigning queen right up to the end – any other cat would be wise to steer clear of her regardless.

She was very much her own person. On several occasions, she acted as Attack Cat against those who she perceived were threatening the household. This was a surprise to them, since they weren’t really threatening but just playing. She’d always be right there with the same “I got’cher back, Daddy” look any time Matt and I would wrestle, too.

Angiosarcoma is messy and untreatable. While not directly painful, it’s a cancer of the blood vessels, which causes their structure to break down over time. Hers started on her belly, causing blood serum to leak, then eventually a lesion to form as the surrounding tissue became starved for regular blood flow. Over time, actual blood will drain from the internal parts of the lesion. Inevitably, it metastasizes elsewhere in the body – typically the lungs, heart, and brain. Usually a natural end can be as gentle as simply “dying of old age”. Usually.

Sometimes not.

Rallying After Surgery

After she was diagnosed, we knew we would be in hospice mode. In Matt’s experience as a veterinary technician, he’s met some interesting people. We called upon one of his interesting ex-coworkers, a vet by the name of Dr. Furie. She’s amazing with animals and visibly emotionally invested in their wellbeing. She kindly accepted our request to be our home hospice vet for the remainder of Cara’s life.

We asked her very frankly what to expect and whether we should euthanize my baby girl. Dr. Furie explained what would happen and that, if Cara were her cat, she wouldn’t euthanize unless Cara showed signs of distress. We could have a few good weeks – maybe even a few months – to say goodbye. Our goal was to keep her comfortable with an oral pain medication if she appeared to need it, hydrated with subcutaneous fluids, and eating (sometimes with a topical appetite stimulant applied to the ear).

Over the next few weeks Dr. Furie came and checked on her patient, assessing her condition and giving us frank updates. At no point did she feel it was “time.” Cara had a few ups and downs in terms of energy and apetite. Over time, she stopped jumping up on the bed to sleep with Daddy, a sign things were definitely not right. Her leaking became a problem for furniture and carpeting, and she wanted her privacy, so we set up the cat tent (meant for safe outdoor fun) on an electric blanket and put her own litter box, food, water, and bed inside. She willingly stayed inside most of the time, even with the flaps open. At night, I’d drag the tent into the bedroom and zip it up so she could be safe and unbothered while being at least near Daddy.

In the last week of her life, her belly was looking raw but she tolerated having it prodded and cleaned. It couldn’t have felt good but it didn’t appear to bother her. The occasional blood alarmed us more than her. That Monday, Dr. Furie showed concern only for her apetite and, like us, thought she’d probably have another bounce-back. She still seemed okay. Except that she’d stopped even playing “SEND-THE-STRING-BACK-TO-HELL”, her favorite game.

Things started to go downhill. By Tuesday, I started having doubts and fears. It looked for all the world like she was giving up. I struggled into Wednesday, when she appeared to be restless and looking for an alternative hiding place to her tent. By Thursday, she looked uncomfortable and would occasionally complain.

Drugged and Tired

I went to bed Thursday night very worried, wrestling with the decision. Around 4 AM, Cara woke me with a few forceful, attention-grabbing meows. I turned on the lights and looked over the edge of the bed. She was sitting facing me with a very purposeful “give me attention” look. I crawled out of bed, opened the tent, crawled in and pet her. She turned around so I could stroke her back as she kept the uncomfortable part of her belly off to the side. She purred very hard, luxuriating in my attention. After awhile, she got up and crawled back into her bed.

Then she loosed a sad yowl. I started to cry (again – I’d been crying several times a day every day for nearly a month by that point). I looked her in the eyes and asked her, “Are you telling Daddy goodbye, baby?” She seemed to know something was very wrong. Her out-of-character behavior and purposeful attempts to get me to notice and comfort her couldn’t be more obvious.

I crawled back into bed and cried some more, leaving her to rest. I told myself if that was her goodbye, then she probably wouldn’t be there in the morning. After what seemed like forever, I fell asleep. When it was time to wake the next morning, I lay there afraid to get up, afraid to look over the edge of the bed. Finally, I gathered my courage and looked. She was laying in the middle of the tent breathing but she had “the thousand-yard stare.” I decided to work from my bed to be by her side.

As I sat there in bed with my laptop, I admit I didn’t get a thing done. I couldn’t concentrate. After a few minutes, she started yowling. She appeared not to be able to get comfortable no matter how she laid. The tone of her crying hit me hard – my heart broke as I realized it was time. By that point, it didn’t seem like she was going to have an easy end and, against my own long-held convictions, I decided to make the “assisted suicide” decision on her behalf.

In tears, I called for Matt and told him to call Dr. Furie, that it was time. Cara was vocalizing regularly. I went out to listen to the conversation. By the time I went back to the bedroom (less than five minutes), Cara was breathing heavily and crying. I cried with her and tried my best to be soothing.

Then something awful happened. For sensitive readers, I think it’s best you stop here. Seriously. I have to write about it for several reasons but I have to warn you: it’s brutal.

Cara couldn’t get comfortable and was visibly distressed. I hoped for Dr. Furie to arrive quickly, but I strongly suspected we didn’t have time even to drive Cara to the vet’s office and she’s always been freaked out by that. I wrestled with myself.

A minute later, she began to crash. She staggered into her litter box. I thought she was just trying to use it but she laid in it. Cats will surround themselves with their own smell when they’re truly insecure. Cara has never been insecure in her life. She doesn’t get scared, she gets angry and fights.

Maybe I shouldn’t have, but my human side prompted me to lift her gently back out of her litter box. I told her I wasn’t going to let her die there. I brushed her off and kept petting her. By this time she was crying regularly.

Then it got worse.

She knew exactly how to get out of either of the two flaps in the cat tent. Yet she got up and tried to bolt through the tent wall. Several time she headbutted it in a blind panic. I got out of the opening and guided her toward it. She wanted OUT. She dashed under the bed and wailed. I took one look at her eyes and yelled, “Matt, she’s going!”

Her pupils were completely dilated. Her eyes were swiveling back and forth like a dizzy person. She was clearly anoxic. She was panting heavily but no oxygen was getting into her system. I was beside myself with grief and terror but somehow a calm came over me. I laid head to head with her, telling her it was alright to let go, that she’d been a great friend, that I’d remember her and love her forever.

By this point, she’d taken on a Cheyne-Stokes breathing pattern. It’s a very distressing thing to witness. It comes in cycles. Recovered heart attack patients report no pain from it specifically, and untreated, severe apnea sufferers do it every night, but in a terminal patient, it’s the final spiral. It couldn’t have been more than two minutes but it felt like I was serving out a long, agonizing prison sentence. It shifted to an outright agonal breathing pattern.

Then it got even worse.

She jumped up, ran in a half-circle, and ended up under the middle of the bed. She rolled on her back and screamed several times. She rolled to her side and let out what I can only describe as an agonized moan. It was heart-breakingly pathetic sounding. Her back was arching and falling, arching and falling. I’d pulled myself under the bed and was petting her, still trying to be a soothing voice, to let her know Daddy was right there with her. Matt was watching from the side of the bed and asked through his tears, “Is she gone?” Because of her movement, I hadn’t realized it. The pathetic sound she made was her dying breath. I put my head on her little body and listened. No heartbeat. No breathing.

It was the morning of Friday, January 6. Cara was gone.

I gathered her little body into fetal position so I could pull her out. The floor was wet – she’d voided her bladder. Through my grief, I noticed the oddest detail: her tail was completely limp. I’d never felt a cat’s tail with no tension in it, especially not Cara’s. Some cats are easy with their tails being handled, others aren’t. Even the easiest cats carry some tension in their tails. It was the first time I ever felt a cat’s tail so limp. That detail has stuck with me. Vividly.

I pulled her out and put her on my lap. I didn’t care about the mess. I sat holding her for awhile. Matt asked me to close her eyes but they wouldn’t close. After awhile I took her out and put her in a towel on top of the old shower curtain we’d been using under the tent to prevent anything leaking through to the carpet.

Without a word we began mindlessly cleaning up. We called Dr. Furie to let her know what had happened and to ask if she would pick up Cara’s body for cremation. I’d picked out a beautiful copper urn and a small urn necklace some weeks before. It was my way of coping with her death sentence. I cut a bit of her fur – she’d always had a beautiful, well-groomed coat – and set it aside for the necklace.

When Dr. Furie arrived, all she had was a cardboard box. Seeing my baby girl for the last time, curled up and lifeless at the bottom of a cardboard box was yet another detail that hasn’t left me. I don’t know what I expected – a gilded rickshaw carried by holy eunuchs? Nothing would’ve been enough.

We received her ashes the following Wednesday. I opened the bag and pulled out an impossibly-small wooden box. I slid the lid off it and pulled out a felt bag. I opened the felt bag and there it was – a plastic bag with what looked like … sand. Beach sand minus the rocky components. For a moment I felt robbed – duped. A flash of anger stole over me as I imagined I’d been tricked. This couldn’t be her remains.

Then I came to my senses. All that was left of cremation was broken down bone. I held the bag and a thought came over me, crushing me down in a split second: it was the first time in 14 years I was able to hold her in the palm of my hand. I wept hard as I opened her urn and placed her remains inside. I sealed it and sat over it for awhile. Then I got up and placed it on the shelf I built for it over the bed. She’d sleep by Daddy’s head like she always had.

I’ll spare you the details of the numerous things I did to build a shrine to her. I only stopped when I remembered my thoughts of her being in a cardboard box: nothing would ever be enough.

I spent the past month learning everything I could about what happened to my baby girl. I learned cats often vocalize when dying. Even when euthanized “kindly.” I never wanted Matt to tell me about the euthanizations in which he’d taken part but suddenly I needed very graphic descriptions – anything he could remember. Believe it or not, it helped immensely. It seems the ultimate cause of death was metastasis in her heart and/or lungs. The same seepage from her belly was occurring in her chest cavity. Her chest (not her lungs) filled with fluid. Blood loss and chest cavity compression put her into cardiopulmonary distress and ultimately her heart failed. Dr. Furie had said it was just plain bad luck – that this kind of cancer usually takes them more peacefully. Just bad luck.

During that time, I felt immense guilt. I still do, just not as harshly. I blame myself for waiting too long, for not recognizing it wasn’t going to end easily for her (even though I was told by several professionals there’s simply no predicting it). I blame myself for her suffering. I relive her desperate, screaming, fighting death all-too-regularly. I have many nights of fitful sleep. I’ve decimated many boxes of tissues.

Ultimately, the consensus of all those in the know are counseling me in a simple truth: she knew I loved her. She sought me out for comfort the night before – me and nobody else. She was treated like royalty for 14 years. Her end was awful but it was a few minutes of pain and panic – like many dying people experience – but it’s a tiny fraction of a lifetime of comfort, love, and pampering. She went out fighting, true to her lifelong nature.

After a month of reflection and a rather substantial medication increase (which has served as a good pressure relief valve), I’m finally able to look fondly at photographs of her and laugh about stories and her personality with Matt without crying every time. I have good days and bad. Some days I’m perfectly fine all day long; then I might have one, two, even three days in a row where I’m depressed and crying constantly. The medication has helped me to calm down and face my grief without getting to a point of hyperventilating … it was that bad.

It was the first time I witnessed the death of a loved one and it was a hard death. It’s my first real battle scar in that respect. I’ve always been emotionally strong (though I hadn’t realized it until the last few years – I’d always felt weak). Like a strong brick building having survived its first earthquake, I have cracks and crumbles that’ll never be entirely whole again. I’ve never in my life experienced grief as deep and debilitating as this. Her death changed me.

I’ll never again be dismissive about people’s need to keep the remains of their loved ones. I’ll never again be dismissive of people’s need to “spare no expense” for the memorial of a loved one (though I’ll always hate the Funeral Industry’s predatory nature). I’ll never again doubt there’s something that can emotionally bring me effortlessly to my knees and completely overwhelm me for weeks.

I love Cara deeply. I miss her smiling eyes, her coos and trills, her fiery, angry, royal opinions about damn near everything. I miss her odd need to accompany me to the bathroom for toilet or for bathing. I miss her comforting purring as she jumps up on the bed and settles down right next to my head. I miss how excited she’d be to do so during the middle of the day during the rare occasion of a midday nap. I miss her sleeping contentedly under my desk as I work.

In a photo album I made, the last page is a very brief letter to her. It ends: “I hope you loved your life. – Your Daddy”

Special thanks to Dr. Michael Karg for taking such good care of Cara the last few years, to Dr. Wendy Furie for her compassionate hospice care, and for the staff of Frederick Emergency Hospital for allaying my fears of her blood loss early in her diagnosis. You’ve all been wonderful and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Happy coding!

Permit me to rant a moment. There are those who see our companion animals as things. Too stupid to know any better, to remember their past, to understand pain and loss. Then there are those who know better. Not because of some idiotic mystical nonsense, but because they’ve actually opened up their hearts and minds to a dog, a cat, or some other intelligent animal. That’s when they learned that, while no animals – a cat for example – are quite as smart as a human they’re damn sure not stupid. The smarter ones are … smarter. They remember things. They get sad and even vindictive. If you don’t think a cat can hold a grudge and then make a very clear point beyond “stupid animal” about it, you’re the one who is fooling yourself, not the cat owners.

The same goes for a dog. Hell even pig owners who’ve allowed a pig the same special place in their family as a cat or a dog can see an impressive amount of self-aware “person” in that creature. It’s a shame they’re so tasty I’m not a PETA member, I’m an omnivore, but I believe in treating all animals (even the ones we eat) with respect.

I address this post to those insensitive, vulgarly stupid assholes who close their eyes to reality and favor “conventional wisdom” – for whatever reason – about just what defines a “person” and whether a cat, dog, pig, horse, dolphin, chimpanzee, or whatever has a right to be treated, respected, and loved like a person.

For those of you who would tell me, in my current situation with a sick cat whom I’ve lived with and loved deeply for my entire adult life, that “she’s just a cat” and that I’m somehow being unreasonable with the depth of emotion I feel over her rapid decline and eventual loss, I have a few things to say to you.

First: Fuck you. Seriously.

Second: I feel very sorry for you (but still, fuck you) because you’re missing out on one of the most important lessons you can learn in this life.

Third: I never wish a beloved animal (*person*) in your life to die, but here’s what I do wish upon you: Against your will, a creature whose intelligence and personality you’ve dismissed, will worm his or her way into your heart. You’ll grow to truly recognize them for individual they are. Then you’ll be forced to be there for them when they age and eventually die. I hope that by this time your bond is so close, you wouldn’t dream of being impersonal … that you’d feel the responsibility toward your loved one that really is there – the deep-seeded need to be there for them, to make them comfortable, to worry over whether to let them go naturally or worse, to worry over when it’s time to end their lives for them.

In short: I wish you my fate. Not out of cruelty, but out of a hope that there’ll be one less hard-headed, closed-minded, soulless fuckwad out there because he or she went through a heart-breaking experience that taught them one fuck of a valuable lesson about love and commitment.

Even if it is “just a cat.”

CocoaHeads, DC

On November 2, I gave a whirlwind tour of Xcode 4 (highlights from my Xcode book) to the nice folks at the DC CocoaHeads meetup. Side note: LivingSocial has a great office space.

iDeveloper Live Podcast

I was also a guest on episodes 34 (November 21), and 35 (November 28) of the iDeveloper Live podcast. The hosts, Steve “Scotty” Scott and John Fox – graciously allowed me to blather on about (you guessed it) Xcode 4. Episode 34 was about its good side; episode 35 was a gripe-fest. I felt rather bad about spending nearly an hour complaining about a tool that is rather good, in spite of its faults. All month long, Scotty had been giving away e-book copies of Mastering Xcode 4.

Thanks to my hosts for the opportunity to speak and thanks to all those who listened patiently to my dimwitted jokes.

* I also just discovered Google Scholar.

I haven’t posted in awhile (especially anything Cocoa related) but the subject showed up on my radar again. What bothers me is this generalization: if you’re not (always) segregating your windows with nibs, you’re (always) doing it wrong. I have to take a stand. Blind adherence to generalizations will get you in trouble.

The Methodology

Let’s consider the approach. The basic idea is that every window in your app is placed into its own Interface Builder (nib) file. This coincidentally forces you to use one NSWindowController per window, which in turn forces you to keep that window’s UI management logic separate from other windows’ UI management and so on. For larger applications (which implies larger Xcode projects) this has performance and organizational benefits.

Note the term “basic idea” – this is where rote advice repeaters can fail their listeners. I’ll admit it: I make this mistake myself. If you repeat a bit of advice often enough, you become lazy. You carelessly overgeneralize. This can result in misguiding others. We’ll get to that part in a bit. For now, let’s have a bit more detail.

Performance

If you’re not familiar with the concept of “lazy loading” you’re doing yourself and your users a disservice. Lazy loading means only loading resources when the user’s actions demand the resource. That is, only load the UI that’s needed now. In the case of the “monolithic nib” – where the entirety of your application’s UI is in a single nib file – your application takes longer to launch and uses more memory whether it needs to or not because it’s loading everything. This is often unnecessary.

A favorite example is the preferences window. A user is unlikely to adjust the application’s preferences every time they use the application. It just doesn’t happen and we know this. Many apps have toolbar-driven, multi-pane preferences windows (another “is-it-really-necessary” discussion begging to be written). Does all that need to be loaded at launch time? No. It’s better that the preferences UI be loaded only when the user requests it for the first time.

Another example is the really complex application. Complex panels, such as Xcode’s Utility Area, can come with entire populations of sub-panels and may never be used during a session. If you’re any kind of sane, there’s at least one top-level NSViewController that manages such a panel but in reality, an extremely complex application may have view controllers for each sub-panel as well. For something as large and complex as Xcode, it’s a good idea not to load all of this unless the user asks for it.

All but the smallest, simplest of apps usually have at least one opportunity for lazy UI loading of a unit. The agreed-upon major unit is a window and its contents; a view is the minor unit. Anywhere you see a UI unit that may not be seen during a user’s session is an excellent opportunity to segregate and therefore to save time, memory, and even battery power. iPhone users will thank you for the latter.

In fact I’ll go a step further by saying anywhere you see an NSWindow and NSWindowController pair or an NSView and NSViewController pair that may not be used is an opportunity to optimize.

An opportunity. Remember the specificity of that word.

Organization

From the developer’s perspective, simply maintaining a large Xcode project offers its own set of challenges.

Good organization is more than just satisfying OCD. A well-organized project makes it easier to find things months or years down the road when you revisit a part of your app you haven’t needed to in awhile. Believe me, this long-time-no-see scenario happens often when you have more than one app. Or when your app is complex. Or when you’ve come back from vacation. Or when you finally got over being sick to death of even looking at that damn app.

Organization is especially important when working on a team or when you pass on the torch to another developer. This is similar to the need for readable, well-commented code. You can’t remain intimately familiar with every facet of your large project. Your future self (or your replacement) will thank you for making things easy to parse later.

Putting the preferences window in PreferencesWindow.xib (or whatever clear and concise naming convention you choose) makes it easy to find the related UI. Together with groups (the yellow folders in Xcode), the project is more easily navigable. You have a reasonable minimum of three files to maintain: PreferencesWindowController.h, PreferencesWindowController.m, and PreferencesWindow.xib. Put these in a group called “Preferences” and you can keep the group collapsed until you need to work on the preferences system. Put other preferences-specific source files there (like view/view-controller files if it gets really complicated) and you stay organized.

Zen and the Art of Xcode Project Organization.

Another organizational benefit is fault tolerance. Although it’s a less frequent occurrence these days, corrupted nibs have bitten nearly every Cocoa developer. Like the segmented hulls of modern ships, the puncturing of one segment shouldn’t sink the ship. Similarly, one corrupted nib in a well-segregated project causes less of a mess than that monolithic nib into which you stuffed the entire universe.

This is much less of an issue if you’re using a source code management system like Git or Subversion and make frequent, task-oriented commits. You are using source code management, aren’t you? Even so, there’s still risk of unnecessary loss of work if a nib is corrupted when you’re changing a lot of your UI at once. In the monolithic nib, all those changes are gone if the nib croaks; with multiple nibs, you only lose the work done in the corrupted nib. It’s a marginal benefit but you’ll be glad for it if the situation rears its ugly head.

The Exception

The point I’ve been coming to is this: it’s possible to take it all too far.

Consider a small utility app. It has one main window that’s always visible and a secondary window (let’s say a floating palette, despite their decreasing popularity). Neither window is particularly complex and the secondary window is likely to be invoked during each (possibly every) session. The use of multiple nibs here is ridiculous. I’ll tell you why.

The user launches the app to perform a task. The MainMenu.xib file is read and the UI is loaded. The task likely involves a utility palette. The app is user-friendly so the palette remembers its shown-or-not-shown state from the last session and needs to be loaded. Now there’s a second round-trip to the disk to read its nib file and load its UI.

If you know the utility application will never become the next Photoshop, your blind “future-proofing” is utterly pointless. You’ve increased your application’s load time and disk activity for nothing. You followed the “conventional wisdom” you heard summarized somewhere without considering why you were doing it and in this case it was the wrong thing to do.

You’ve also added more files to your Xcode project. Did it help? Did it make your small, simple project easier to navigate and to maintain? I’ll bet not. Interface builder helps you extract and segregate UI from a single nib; you’re on your own if you want to merge nibs. From an organizational standpoint, over-segregation can be a burden. Just navigating between several interrelated nib files can become cumbersome. It now involves tabs and assistants. It may soon involve satellite surveillance and an operations team. Think The Bourne Identity.

Conclusion

Is it all really necessary? For medium-to-large-complexity apps, you’re sure to benefit at least a little. For small projects, you might be hurting performance and maintainability. Remember the word “opportunity”? It’s not the same as “requirement”. Always consider the units of measurement (window/controller pairs and view/view-controller pairs) and the likelihood those units will be used in each session.

In short: prefer true wisdom to conventional wisdom and think before you segregate.

…I noticed you’re the ziplight developer, so I just wanted to thank you for it, and share my story; since I suspect I’m the only man who used Ziplight on Snow Leopard.

I was searching for a solution to tagging comic files (just renamed zips) without using spotlight comments, and then I thought of a slightly ghetto method using file names. So I took ziplight and swapped in the UTI I needed.

Since I was a late comer to Lion, that act got me an extra 2 years of life out of Ziplight.

It makes me happy to see someone still had a use for it well after it became unnecessary. Old apps and plugins so often fade quietly into history…

My sister lost her (very sweet) cat to cancer. My own cat had a lump that was removed – she’ll be fine (but she is an old lady and still has old lady issues). The problems didn’t stop at pets, though.

One of my sisters has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. She’s a mother of two in her thirties. It’s not mild but fortunately it’s not end-stage-severe. We’re all still reeling. Just a few months ago, her youngest daughter had a seizure . Looking back, it’d been going on awhile but this one was bad. She’s now on medication, probably until her adult years.

Another sister (mother of three) was very likely misdiagnosed with MS a few years ago but her latest doctor – who is angry at the previous “diagnosis” – is now thinking syringomyelia but a lot more testing is necessary. There are definitely cysts on her spine (thus the earlier diagnosis) and the kinds of problems that go with them. We’re still waiting to know more.

As if this wasn’t enough the sister I just mentioned has a fourteen-year-old son. He’d been having odd problems for quite some time now. I’ll skip the details, but it’s now confirmed: he has a form of lymphatic cancer. He’ll have a catheter inserted tomorrow so he can begin chemotherapy. At 14. Fortunately, this form has an 80% recovery chance (which I think is higher since he’s so young and it was caught so early).

But wait, there’s more. An uncle on my father’s side was just diagnosed with prostate cancer. It has progressed enough that it’s now in his bones. I don’t know much more than that.

A familiar problem we thought we’d solved popped up as well – Matt’s ongoing sleeping problems have resurfaced with a vengeance and it looks like it’s back to obstructive sleep apnea (for which he’d previously had a positive sleep study and painful operation to correct). We’re exploring next steps but for now, it’s back to the problems associated with lack of oxygen while sleeping many times per night.

How are we taking this all? Well, we’re all alternating between grieving and laughing together. It’s our way. I’m personally bouncing between optimistic and focused (throwing my energy into work) and depressed and crying. It’s a lot to deal with but that’s what’s going on with me right now.

Keep me in your thoughts and prayers (just because I’m areligious doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the latter). A special thanks to those of you who’ve sent me words of support over the last few weeks as some of this came to light. Truly: thank you.

From that moment forward, I kicked my hobbyist-level programing dalliances into high gear to become, a decade later, a damn good Cocoa developer 100% devoted to the Apple ecosystem. 100% of my income is due to my Cocoa and Xcode knowledge and I’m much happier than I was as a network engineer – even as IT Manager.

Steve Jobs started something. Then he was booted out of it. It suffered. He came back. In less than 15 years, it rocketed to the top of many lists that matter. Steve’s leadership made my career and success possible. Would I have found it otherwise? Possibly – I’m a very driven person – but “possibly” didn’t happen. Steve and Apple did. So I am where I am now because of it.

Thanks, Steve, for positively affecting my life.

As a thirty-something, I am really starting to enjoy the confidence that comes with learning my twenty-something self was overconfident. An odd paradox, to be sure. This is a normal state for one’s teens and twenties and nothing to be ashamed of. Not outgrowing it by forty … that’d be squarely into shame territory.

In Reason number 7, Stephanie writes:

You see an ex from a number of years ago. Despite the fact that you are now on good terms — friendly terms, even — the relationship ended somewhat badly, and you recognize that most of this is your fault. In your inebriated state, you apologize, profusely, for your past behavior. In your mind this amounts to a sort of self-deprecating wisdom, an acknowledgement of past wrongs and a mature desire to right them. In actuality it is the manifestation of the desire to have everyone like you, despite the fact that you have, undoubtedly, fucked some people over in your life. Additionally, approaching an ex in a state normally reserved for hitting on people and then invoking your relationship comes off like, well, hitting on them. They will probably also not want to remember how you fucked them over. They will have overcome this and constructed an idea of who you are w/r/t you fucking them over, and used this to move on. You are not helping yourself. It is time to go home.

The emphasis is mine and it’s what I want to discuss.

The older I get, the more willing I am to acknowledge stupid shit I’ve said or done to others in the past. In part, I suspect it’s easier to own up to because it’s more distant. I like to think, though, that it’s also maturity and recognizing that, even as a twenty-something adult, I view myself ten years ago as a kid with adult rights and still very little by way of a clue. I also realized in my late twenties that I have the same sort of social problems described by Asperger’s Syndrome, though I’ve not been diagnosed with this. I worked hard to learn to recognize those problems and work on them. I wish I could say I’ve eliminated them, but I haven’t – they’re still there and I’ll likely have to work at it all my life. But it’s getting easier with age. Introspection is getting easier with age.

So. Is the desire for atonement really a “manifestation of the desire to have everyone like you”? If yes, how much? Completely? Half and half? Just a little bit? More to the point, is that actually wrong? Of course ”normal people” desire that everyone likes them. They may acknowledge that it’s not a realistic desire in practice, but we’re hardwired social creatures by nature. Surely it’s not wrong to desire that everyone likes us, so long as we know it’s never going to happen. Isn’t that desire part of the mechanism that prompts (most of) us not to be sociopaths?

So what do you think? Ignoring that it’s a reason for leaving a party, is Stephanie’s (seeming) all-or-nothing label for the compulsion she describes mature introspection, or the oft-scorned desire for everyone to like you? Moreover, is the latter so black and white (and “bad” or “immature”) as people make it seem?

To Stephanie if you read this: You make good points, which is why I chose to read more. Please don’t think I’m singling you out or chastising. Also, please like me.

Not That Kind of Remote Control

First, I’ll admit my own misunderstanding lead to some disappointment before the device even arrived. Based on the wording, the device’s iOS-app-controlled nature, the look of its lens, and of course the price tag, I had assumed a fully “remote controlled” camera. That is, a camera whose position you can control, letting you pan and perhaps zoom. Other (cheaper) products do this, albeit with web-hosted software. It turns out this is not the case. This camera swivels on a magnetic base. By hand. No remote-controlled panning. Damn. My mistake, I should’ve read more carefully (though the product site offers surprisingly little detail).

Wireless. Asterisk.

Second, their claim of “wireless” is outright false. The device requires a USB cable (with AC adaptor for wall sockets) for power. Only its data is sent wirelessly using your WiFi network. I had assumed it could be battery powered (and hoped for reasonable battery length). Nope. No battery option. It would have been nice to place the device up high in our main living space without a wire dangling down. Nicer still would be to have it last at least an overnight trip. Not the case. Requiring a wire for power is not wireless. This company is extraordinarily bad at communicating their product’s capabilities. Or they’re intentionally misleading customers.

Suspicious Package

The problems began the moment I opened the box. I began pulling the device (and its wireless wires) out and removing the twisty ties, additional wrappings, etc. The USB cable (two, actually; the second, short cable is of unknown intent) was “protectively wrapped” at both ends. I’m used to cast plastic caps or shrink-wrap cellophane sleeves. What I wasn’t expecting was cellphone tape directly applied to the cable ends. You read that right: the cable ends were very securely wrapped with plain old cellophane tape. Tape that had to be cut and pried with fingernails. Tape that did not come off in one piece. Tape that’s still partially stuck to both ends of each cable.

It’s a Setup

So I plugged in my wireless camera’s wire. Its light lit. I was at a loss as to what to do next. I dug around and found their tiny “Quick Start” guide. After the obligatory “plug in your wireless camera” steps, it informed me I had to download their app from the App Store. Oh, right. Makes sense. Maybe a brightly-colored reminder card on top of all that packaging somewhere would’ve reduced the WTF factor there, but fine. My mistake.

I looked up the app – Stem:Connect – and paused a moment in worry. At the time, there were 115 reviews and the app averaged 2 out of 5 stars. Uh oh. I installed and launched it. It crashed. I launched it again and followed its prompts through creating an account with Stem’s network. I did read that the camera depends on their service (worrisome, but I hoped there’d be an alternative in there somewhere – a hope that died today) so I wasn’t surprised. I waited a moment for their confirmation e-mail with my activation code and typed it into my iPhone.

The next step was to set up the device itself. This involved switching my iPhone to the device’s wireless network, entering my own network’s credentials, then switching the phone back. After a few false starts (the app wouldn’t connect to the camera for a full minute), I started to see the camera’s image updating.

Poor Performance

Were this a movie, I’d have demanded my money back in the first five minutes. While the five-second live video lag is understandable, the interface’s lag is not. Every UI action is delayed. Some delays make it feel like it’s about to crash.

Even less understandable is the user interface. Stem:Connect is apparently meant to be a one-stop shop for all of Stem’s products. As far as I can tell, there are two and they have nothing to do with one-another. Unless you own all of Stems products – and very shortly I will happily be back to owning none of them – much of the room taken up for navigation is wasted space. For someone who just wants to check up on their home, a dedicated app makes a lot of sense. As it currently exists, I have to launch the app, select the type of device (the camera), then select the device itself. Every time. Bewildering.

You cannot rotate the device to see the input in its proper aspect ratio, which means the video is much smaller than you’d expect, as it’s stuffed into “portrait” orientation. In the main living space of my home, things on the opposite side of the room are small and indistinct. Worse than that, the camera’s image quality is poor in lower light situations. A cheap US $20 USB web cam I found on Amazon looks positively beautiful in average room lighting conditions compared to the iZON.

Did You Feel That?

A few weeks ago, the East Coast was rocked by surprise earthquake. My house wobbled. A rather unexpected event for this region of the world. I don’t think the iZON would’ve noticed. Its motion detection requires a bit of setup (it’s not a simple “on” switch at first, though you wouldn’t know it from the UI). You turn the feature on then set up its sensitivity and “active area” (the area of the image you want to monitor). Although I turned on push notifications when the app (successfully) launched, and even verified it was allowed for Stem:Connect via the iPhone’s settings, but I could not get this to work.

I designated the whole damn image as the active area, set the sensitivity all the way up (and down, in case I misunderstood the direction) and acted a fool waving and moving around. No luck. I moved closer, moved further. I even waved my hand (quickly and slowly) directly in front of the lens, thinking that would surely count as motion.

Nothing.

Motion detection is the primary reason I want a remotely-accessible camera. I want to know if someone’s there. If they are, I want a picture of them. Or a video. Maybe even their voices (so the audio streaming is a nice touch). The iZON, however, doesn’t seem particularly motivated to give a damn.

Stop the Camera! I Wanna Get Off!

Too goddamn bad. There’s no off switch. There’s no “pause” switch. The only mode that’s truly wireless is its “off” mode because you have to yank the power cord to turn off the device. Otherwise, your house is under 24-hour video and audio surveillance (routed through Stem’s systems). Oh, and your bandwidth? Yeah, it’ll be using that too.

Conclusion

What an awful, ill-conceived, overpriced failure of a product launch. Seriously.