www.ChristinaWarren.com

Story Songs

Christina — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:24:49 +0000

So, Ged got us started off with this whole Story-Song idea, and I want to thank him for coming up with the idea! Ged is awesome!

The basic premise as Ged twittered is simple, favorite songs that tell a story. Ged listed his five, and man, great list!

Coming up with 5 songs that have fantastic lyrics that tell a story, especially when that story adds to the overall essence of the song, was more difficult than I thought. Paring down the list took me some time.

Simon & Garfunkel - He Was My Brother
From the classic, if under-appreciated, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM -- this is my Simon and Garfunkel pick. And I'm a HUGE Simon & Garfunkel fan, so this was really, really tough.

He was my brother
Tears can't bring him back to me
He was my brother
And he died so his brothers could be free

The song is about a murdered "freedom writer," and it was written by Paul in 1963. "He Was My Brother" was later dedicated to Andrew Goodman, a classmate of the duo, and one of the slain civil rights activists from Freedom Summer in 1964. Melodically, this is pure folk. Lyrically, it evokes what I can only imagine must have been a very real part of the era. My parents were in college in 1964 (or, my dad was -- my mom started in 1965 I think), but neither were really involved in any movements.

Counting Crows - Anna Begins
From August and Everything After, one of my favorite albums of all time, is a great song about falling in love, despite denying it, despite claiming you aren't ready.

This time when kindness falls like rain
It washes her away and Anna begins to change her mind
"These seconds when I'm shaking leave me shuddering
for days" she says.
And I'm not ready for this sort of thing

After finally realizing that it is love, the relationship is over, and you aren't ready for it to end. I don't know, I love this song.

Dashboard Confessional - Hands Down
From the So Impossible EP and later A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar, before this song was the emo anthem for a bunch of annoying teenagers who don't know how to act at a concert and almost cause me to go postal on their asses, it was a song that had very, very real semblance in my own life, specifically the summer of 2002.

My hopes are so high,
that your kiss might kill me.
So won't you kill me,
So I die happy.

It is quite simply the story of a great date, from beginning to end. It's nothing that fantastic or life-changing, unless you can relate to it on a personal level. And then the lyrics are perfect. Personally, I think Chris Carraba is one of the most amazing lyricists, even if that does get marred by his annoying fan base.
Guster - Airport Song
Guster is another band that I have a hard time just choosing one song. "Airport Song", from 1998's Goldfly, was the band's first modest radio hit, and probably the song most people first heard by the band. It's about joining a cult, from the POV of the cult leader.

Put to bed the son and sister moon
Ill be hiding in your dirty room
Ill go there seeking only what I need
La ti da we’ll stay there till we bleed

The line, "you'll be selling books at the airport" is always one of my favorites -- because we've all seen those Hari Krishna freaks or whoever doing that stuff. Like most Guster songs, the melody betrays the lyrics, which are darker and more sinister than what the sound suggests.
Bruce Springsteen - The River
Without a doubt, one of the greatest story songs of all time. Released in 1980, though written earlier as "The Ties That Bind," Springsteen has said this was one of his breakthrough songs and one of the tracks that led to Nebraska, his evocative narrative album.

Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true
Or is it something worse

The song is such a great story of life, especially when things happen that are unplanned and unexpected. It's just such a gorgeous and sorrowful song. Fantastic really.

Check out these other “Story Song” bloggers:

David Miller (@daveobe)
Living in the Now

David Schultz (@dvsjr)
The (mis)adventures of a macintosh administrator

Mike Schramm (@mikeschramm)
MikeSchramm.com

Dave Caolo (@panache)
Hardcore Geek

Von Glitschka (@vonster)
Glitschka Studios

Andy Rudkin (@mizaru)
mizaru.me.uk

Austin Heller (@austinheller)
AustinHeller.com

Mason Sklar (@zargap)
masonsklar.com

Allen Emory
A. Emory

Alain Edouard (@alainedouard)
alainedouard.co.cc

Mark Goody (@marramgrass)
marramgrass

Jamie Parkins
The Sound of Silence

Webmaster Jam Session 2008

Christina — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:19:22 +0000

For whatever reason, despite being the most "most wired city in the US," Atlanta rarely gets any tech love. I know, I know we're no Seattle. We're no Vegas. We're certainly no San Francisco. Hell, we're not even Portland. Still, you'd think the 8th or 9th largest city (depending on the census) and the so-called "Capital of the New South." Where's the ATL love?

In fact, Atlanta is so frequently left-out of the Web Conference mix, I didn't even KNOW that Webmaster Jam Session 2008 was going to be in my own backyard until like two weeks ago!

But thanks to CoffeeCup's J. Cornelius, I not only KNOW about it, I'm also going to be speaking on a panel about web visibility! I'm so excited!

So many genuinely cool and awe-inspiring superstars are going to be there, Jeff Croft, Dan Rubin, Nathan Smith -- my Austin roadtrip hombre Keith Robinson -- I'm really, really thrilled about the whole event.

If you're going to be in Atlanta (or want to be!) on October 3rd and 4th, and you are interested in web technologies, design, SEO or social media, this should be a fantastic conference! Spots are limited, so register now -- oh, and if you use the code "REDCAT" when registering, you'll save 20%!

If you're going to be in town or are interested -- give me a heads up via e-mail or Twitter -- I'd love to meet up with you!

Blogging from the BlackBerry

Christina — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 05:43:00 +0000

I've already written in detail about my BlackBerry and why I chose it over an iPhone, so I won't make anyone read that stuff again. That said, the one area that really, really makes me lament not having an iPhone is the third-party app market. Apple's App Store isn't perfect and has gone through some growing pains, but the interest in development for the iPhone was crazy nuts even before the SDK, now that it is official, a slew of the types of applications that I would want to use are available or being made available. For my purposes, comparing the types of innovative stuff being done on the iPhone with the crap available for BlackBerry makes me just sad.

Nothing has made me more sad than the total lack of a blogging application for the BlackBerry. Within two weeks of launching the App Store, both TypePad and WordPress. Meanwhile, I've spent like 4 and a half months trying to find a decent WordPress or other blogging app for BlackBerry, with no luck.

Thanks to the always wonderful Twitter, I was alerted to the fact that SixApart actually released a TypePad app for BlackBerry back in May. So close, yet so far (if it were 2003 and I were looking to migrate from LiveJournal to a hosted service, I would have probably gone to TypePad -- but it is 2008 and I want my own software installation -- I'm sticking with WordPress unless Expression Engine 2.0 blows me away or I decide to roll my own Django thing). Fortunately, I decided to try Google again for BlackBerry blogging apps. Although the BlackBerry market of good third-party software is woefully underdeveloped, I am excited to say I have discovered a workable MetaWeblog API solution.

The program is called BBMetaBlog and as best I can tell, it was developed as a blogging tool for the Lotus Note and Lotus Domino servers/platforms. As such, things like categories and tagging is all handled by a different application that is designed to run on Lotus Domino servers. However, because Domino/Notes uses the MetaWeblog API for its blogging engine, any XML-RPC capable platform, meaning WordPress, can take advantage.

Neato. There are a few caveats:

Because this was developed to work with a pre-existing blog system, tags and categories don't work. I haven't messed around with it enough to find out if you create a default category if that will pass through or not. If it will, I might just make my default category "BlackBerry Mobile" or "Mobile Posts" to help keep things clean.
While it appears as if you CAN edit past entries, those entries don't actually show up to be able to see them to edit.

Still, it's better than nothing.

To get this to work (and I'm running everything off of a BlackBerry 8320 running 4.2.2 (they haven't updated to 4.5 in the States yet, at least not at T-Mobile)), download the program using the OTA link above. Run the application and click on the "Configure" button. Enter in the username and password for you WordPress blog (or other MetaWeblog API blog software) and leave Location and Category at their defaults. On the line that says access URL, for WordPress users, enter in: http://www.yourblogdomain.com/xmlrpc.php -- other MetaWeblog API programs might have a slightly different syntax, so check with your software.

That's it.

Now you can create new posts and send them straight from your BlackBerry!

**Note about WordPress 2.6 and later**
If your first installation of WordPress was version 2.6 or later and you have never used a third-party blog client before, you need to enable Remote Blogging from the Settings --> Writing tab:

Just make sure you select XML-RPC.

If I knew anything about programming for BlackBerry, I'd try to take on this thing (since it is Open Source) and modify it to work better. Until then (or until a better option becomes available), this will suffice.

Test BlackBerry Post

Christina — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 02:48:19 +0000

This is a test to see if I can blog to my BlackBerry.

Best political web scheme EVER

Christina — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:03:09 +0000

Running for Office: It's Like A Flamewar with a Forum Troll, but with an Eventual Winner

This is the most brilliant thing I have ever seen in regards to utilizing the web for campaign finance/exposure. Brilliant!

Had I not donated $50 to the ACLU earlier today, I would totally give it to this dude. Wow!

GRRR…

Christina — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:44:15 +0000

So WordPress 2.6 was released earlier this week, and while it is pretty awesome (I love lots of the new features), it has totally broken my neato-mosiquito javascript Quicktime thing using Shadowbox. A dude created a WP plugin for Shadowbox that worked in 2.5 (and presumably also would in 2.6), but it hasn't been updated since April, so it doesn't use the newest version (released last week) and it strips out some of my CSS.

Here's the bizarre part: when I did a manual update to 2.6, everything was fine. However, when I updated my install to an SVN copy (so that I could ostensibly have easier access to better builds and easier updates), shit broke.

Fail.

I'm sure this is my fault in some way, but it pisses me off nonetheless.

So now I'm off to copy my folder that contains my WP stuff, copy over the relevant shit, add the new WP files, rename, and blah blah blah.

~~Stupid web tech...~~

And as usual, this was probably not my fault (or WordPress's for that matter), it was Comcast or somebody. It's working now.

Funny how right after my ISP issue gets sorted out, my website works again.

Video Tutorial: Automate Media Temple (gs) backups with Amazon S3

Christina — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:27:35 +0000

This is a video follow-up to my last post about S3 Backups on Media Temple's (gs). The response I've received to that entry has been really, really positive and I'm thrilled that people are finding the tutorial and the script useful.

In the comments of that entry, Patrick was running into some problems -- it seemed like maybe he had missed a step. It occurred to me that it might be really beneficial to have the entire process documented in a screencast, because some people do better with a visual guide, and for anyone unfamiliar with their command line, seeing what you are supposed to do can be really, really helpful.

So I whipped up a video tutorial on Thursday. I wanted to have it posted earlier, but I wanted to stream it as a QuickTime file (for optimum quality/performance) and I had to tweak the settings of the QTSS server I'm using and then figure out the best way to embed the content. I was out all day yesterday and I didn't really get a chance to look seriously at embed options until this morning. The solution I ended up using is Shadowbox, a JavaScript AJAXy media player.

You need QuickTime or VLC or something to view the file. If you need it in another format, I can try to acquiesce
For the demo, I'm assuming you are using my
backup_server.sh script, but the steps are the same even if you are using your own.

Small Player

Medium Player

Super Huge Player

Enjoy! If you have any more questions, just leave them here and I'll try my best to answer them.

Using Amazon S3 to backup Media Temple’s Grid (gs)

Christina — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:00:00 +0000

Proper backups are like eating your vegetables -- we all say we'll do it and that it is a good idea, but it is so much easier NOT to do it and eat Oreo cookies instead. Then you wake up one day, are 25 years old and are a really picky eater and annoy your boyfriend because you won't go eat at the Indian place he loves that doesn't have a menu but only serves vegetarian stuff that scares you. And the people at Subway give you dirty looks when you tell them you don't want anything on your sandwich. Don't risk losing your website because you didn't bother backing up.

Update: I posted a video tutorial that walks through all of these steps here. I still recommend reading through this page because the video tutorial assumes that you will be following these steps.

This a tutorial for creating an automated back-up system for (mt) Media Temple's (gs) Grid Service. Although it will almost certainly work on other servers and configurations, this is written for users who are on the Grid who want an easy way to do automated backups. I personally feel most comfortable having my most important files backed-up offsite, so I use Amazon's S3 service. S3 is fast, super cheap (you only pay for what you use) and reliable. I use S3 to store my website backups and my most important computer files. I spend about $1.50 a month, and that is for nearly 10 GBs of storage.

You can alter the script to simply store the data in a separate location on your server (where you can then just FTP or SSH in and download the compressed archive), but this process is assuming that you are using both the (gs) and S3.

This tutorial assumes that you know how to login to your (gs) via SSH using either the Terminal in OS X or Linux or PuTTY for Windows. If SSH is still confusing, check out (mt)'s Knowledge Base article and take a deep breath. It looks more scary than it really is.

Acknowledgements

I would be remiss if I didn't give a GIGANTIC shout-out to David at Stress Free Zone and Paul Stamatiou (I met Paul at the Tweet-up in March) who both wrote great guides to backing stuff up server side to S3. I blatantly stole from both of them and rolled my own script that is a combination of the two. Seriously, thank you both for your awesome articles.

Furthermore, none of this would even be possible without the brilliant S3Sync Ruby utility.

Installing S3Sync

Although PHP and Perl script exist to connect with the S3 servers, the Ruby solution that the S3Sync dudes created is much, much better.

The (gs) already has Ruby on it (version 1.8.5 as of this writing), which is up-to-date enough for S3Sync.

OK, so log-in to your (gs) via SSH. My settings (and the defaults for (gs), I assume) are to place you in the .home directory as soon as you login to SSH.

Once you are at the command line, type in the following command:

wget http://s3.amazonaws.com/ServEdge_pub/s3sync/s3sync.tar.gz

This will download the latest S3Sync tarball to your .home folder

tar xvzf s3sync.tar.gz

This uncompresses the archive to its own directory.

rm s3sync.tar.gz 

cd s3sync

mkdir certs

cd certs

wget http://mirbsd.mirsolutions.de/cvs.cgi/~checkout~/src/etc/ssl.certs.shar

sh ssl.certs.shar

cd ..

mkdir s3backup

That will delete the compressed archive, make a directory for certificates (certs), download an SSL certificate generator script, execute that script and create a backup directory within the s3sync directory called "s3backup."

Now, all you need to do is edit two files in your newly created s3sync folder. You can use TextEdit, TextMate, NotePad or any other text editor to edit these files. You are only going to be changing a few of the values.

I edited the files via Transmit, but you can use vi straight from the command line if you are comfortable.

The first file you want to edit is called s3config.yml.sample

You want to edit that file so that the aws_access_key and aws_secret_access_key fields correspond to those from your S3 account. You can find those in the Access Information area after logging into Amazon.com's Web Services page.

Make sure that the ssl_cert_dir: has the following value (if you created your s3sync folder in the .home directory):
/home/xxxxx/users/.home/s3sync/certs were xxxxx is the name of your server.

You can get your entire access path by typing in

pwd

at the command line.

Save that file as s3config.yml

The next step is something I had to do in order to get the s3 part of the script to connect, but it may not be required for all server set-ups, but it was for the (gs).

Edit the s3config.rb file so that the area that says

confpath = [xxxxx]

looks like this

confpath = ["./", "#{ENV['S3CONF']}", "#{ENV['HOME']}/.s3conf", "/etc/s3conf"]

Writing the backup script (or editing mine)

OK, that was the hard part. The rest is pretty simple.

I created the following backup script called, "backup_server.sh" This script will backup the content of the domain directories you specify (because if you are like me, some of your domain folders are really just symlinks) and all of your MySQL databases. It will then upload each directory and database in its own compressed archive to the S3 Bucket of your choice. Buckets are unique, so create a Bucket using either the S3Fox tool or Transmit or another S3 manager that is specific for your website.

This is the content of the script:

#!/bin/sh

# A list of website directories to back up
websites="site1.com site2.com site3.com"

# The destination directory to backup the files to
destdir=/home/xxxxx/users/.home/s3sync/s3backup

# The directory where all website domain directories reside
domaindir=/home/xxxxx/users/.home/domains

# The MySQL database hostname
dbhost=internal-db.sxxxxx.gridserver.com

# The MySQL database username - requires read access to databases
dbuser=dbxxxxx

# The MySQL database password
dbpassword=xxxxxxx

echo `date` ": Beginning backup process..." > $destdir/backup.log

# remove old backups
rm $destdir/*.tar.gz

# backup databases
for dbname in `echo 'show databases;' | /usr/bin/mysql -h $dbhost -u$dbuser -p$dbpassword`
do
if [ $dbname != "Database" ];
then
echo `date` ": Backing up database $dbname..." >> $destdir/backup.log
/usr/bin/mysqldump --opt -h $dbhost -u$dbuser -p$dbpassword $dbname > $destdir/$dbname.sql
tar -czf $destdir/$dbname.sql.tar.gz $destdir/$dbname.sql
rm $destdir/$dbname.sql
fi
done

# backup web content
echo `date` ": Backing up web content..." >> $destdir/backup.log
for website in $websites
do
echo `date` ": Backing up website $website..." >> $destdir/backup.log
tar -czf $destdir/$website.tar.gz $domaindir/$website
done

echo `date` ": Backup process complete." >> $destdir/backup.log

# The directory where s3sync is installed
s3syncdir=/home/xxxxx/users/.home/s3sync

# The directory where the backup archives are stored
backupdir=/home/xxxxx/users/.home/s3sync/s3backup

# The S3 bucket a.k.a. directory to upload the backups into
s3bucket=BUCKET-NAME

cd $s3syncdir
./s3sync.rb $backupdir/ $s3bucket:

For (mt) Media Temple (gs) Grid Server users, you just need to change the "site1.com" values to your own domains (you can do as many as you want) and substitute all the places where marked "xxxxx" with your server number (again, you can find this by entering "pwd" at the command line) and with your database password (which is visible in the (mt) control panel under the "Database" module.

Make sure you change the value at the end of the script that says "BUCKET-NAME" to the name of the S3 Bucket you want to store you backups in.

Now that you have edited the script, upload it to your /data directory.

Change the permissions (you can do this either via SSH

chmod a+x backup_server.sh

or using your FTP client to 755.

Now, test the script.

In the command line type this in:

cd data

./backup_server.sh

And watch the magic. Assuming everything was correctly input, an archived version of all your domain directories and all of your MySQL databases will be put in a folder called "s3backup" and then uploaded directly to your S3 server. Next time you run the script, the backup files will be replaced.

Check to make sure that the script is working the way you want it to work.

Automate the script

You can either run the script manually from the command line or set it to run automatically. I've set mine to run each night at midnight. To set up the cron job, just click on the Cron Jobs button in the (mt) Admin area:

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

and set you parameters. The path for your script is: /home/xxxxx/data/backup_server.sh.

Enjoy your backups!

One note: The compressed domain archives retain their entire directory structure, as such, there is a .home directory that may not appear in Finder or Windows Explorer unless you have invisible or hidden files turned on. Don't worry, all your data is still retained in those archives.

Update (7/27/2008):
If you are getting an error that says something like
Permanent redirect received. Try setting AWS_CALLING_FORMAT to SUBDOMAIN

Add the following array to your s3config.yml file
AWS_CALLING_FORMAT: SUBDOMAIN

The error is either because your bucket is in the EU or there is something else funky with its URL structure. Changing that value should allow the script to perform as intended.

Film_Girl Gets Slashed!

Christina — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:18:07 +0000

So this is pretty awesome: I'll be a guest on the /Filmcast tonight (June 23, 2008) talking movies, culture and Get Smart! The show starts at 10 PM EDT and you can join us live either at http://www.slashfilm.com/live or at the /Film Ustream page.

I'd like to thank David Chen and Devindra Hardawar for inviting me to join them -- I can't wait! Oh -- for anyone who isn't familiar -- Dave and Devindra are responsible for the uber-awesome Always Watching blog. It kicks total ass!

So again, tonight, 10 PM EDT -- join us live in the UStream.tv chat. I'll post the podcast link later in the week when the recorded version goes live.

All Dogs Go to Heaven

Christina — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:44:13 +0000

My earliest memory is of our dog Gretchen, licking me and knocking me over onto my butt, and laughing. I was outside in the screened-in-porch in the house where I grew up and I couldn't have been more than 15 or 16 months old. That memory of Gretchen -- a female Doberman Pinscher-- is my only memory of her, because she was stolen from a construction site later that year.

Gretchen was a brilliant dog, she couldn't be kept inside fence (she just tunneled underneath), looked both ways before crossing the street, and was perhaps too clever to be a dog. Someone picked her up from the construction site (my parents think she was lured with food, her weakness) and because she was an extremely well-bred dog from a lineage of champions, probably sold. Someone (probably the thief) even had the nerve to call my parents house (they put ads in the paper, went to where she was stolen, looked everywhere) to ask if they ever found their dog -- mentioning that he found a female Doberman in the same area and "gave her away."

I cannot even imagine the kind of pain my parents and my older sister must have gone through -- losing the dog in that way. I know that the stories alone affected me, and I was a baby.

After Gretchen, my family went through a number of less than stellar dogs. There was King, the mean Doberman left to us by some rich guy that thought of my dad like a son. He was no longer a member of our family after growling at me -- an experience I remember vividly as being kind of terrifying. There was Oreo, the Black Lab with the white stomach, that we found while at the lake and that my sister refused to let us leave without. Oreo was awesome, she was just a bit too feisty. When she jumped through our screened in porch, that was one thing. When she jumped through the neighbors (she saw my sister and I go over, we left through the front door -- hours later she wanted to see us), she had to go to a new home. There were the bird dog puppies, Buck and Sugar, that I loathed because they were small and jumpy and scratchy. There were a few other bird dogs, including Jill, an old dog who was probably 10 or 11, who got out of the yard because our neighbor (who liked the dog because she was old and thus practically unable to move and "frighten" his children" and opened the fence between our houses to allow the dog to have more roaming space), left the gate to his carport open.

And then there was Shadow. Shadow was the first animal that was a pet to my entire family. My sister is six years older than me and even before Gretchen, had lots of different dogs (and even briefly a cat). My parents were married for 4 and a half years before having my sister and they too had pets. But Shadow was the first pet that was around to be enjoyed and loved by the entire family. Shadow was the ultimate family pet.

We got Shadow at the Humane Society in 1990, when my parents went out looking for Jill. I had just started second grade, and I remember coming home off the school bus and seeing the dog in the front yard. Like Gretchen (and Gretchen's brother, mother and father -- who also lived with my parents or my uncle at various times), she was a Doberman Pinscher. She was five and from a very nice family in Pennsylvania that had just moved to Atlanta and into an apartment. They loved her very much but were worried that such a large dog wouldn't be comfortable in small quarters, so they gave her up. In actuality, she probably would have been just fine indoors, but their loss was our gain.

Shadow was smart, which is pretty common for Dobermans, but she was also extremely sweet and gentle. She was the perfect family pet. She could shake hands, which always impressed visitors, was impeccably behaved (save the two times she got out of the yard -- both times she was caught by my cousins who lived a few houses down the street), well trained (she used the pine straw that lined the back fence to do her business and then buried it), she was perfect.

We had and loved Shadow for 8 years. She got on in age and had some kind of cancer (we could see the tumor in her stomach) and in October of 1998, when she was having a hard time even lifting her head, as a family, we took her to the vet and had her put to sleep. It was incredibly sad and painful and a sense of loss I had not experienced up to that point. I am thankful that the entire family was there when we put her down, holding her and telling her we loved her. She was, after all, our pet.

In January of 1999, we got Jamie. Now, 1999 was a pretty terrible year for my family for a variety of reasons. I was 16 and suffering my first debilitating major depression. Although I have suffered from Major Depression since I was a child, it was January of 1999 that things were so bad that I could not get out of bed. I just wanted to die. My parents felt helpless and the medication and doctor's seemed incapable (or unwilling) to do anything. It was pretty awful.

My mom didn't want another dog; she wasn't ready and claimed (as she always claims) that after Shadow she did not want a pet at all. My dad, however, wanted another dog. My parents went to the Humane Society and found Jamie -- a Black Lab who the vet estimated was between 1 and a half and 2 years old.

I remember being in bed, incredibly sick (I had bronchitis) and depressed and this dog barreling up the stairs. Shadow was terrified of heights so she never came upstairs, but Jamie was immediately at home. He licked my hand. And despite not wanting another dog, I was in love.

Jamie was not a smart dog. In fact, he was as dumb as they come. He would eat anything, had no sense, was scared by ladybugs, you name it. That said, Jamie was without a doubt, the sweetest dog our family ever had. He never growled at anyone, he never did anything but love us and love his pig's ears. He could be a handful -- like his penchant for tunneling out of my parent's new house (they had to install an invisible fence) and his fear of the hardwood floors that kept him from coming inside the new house for almost a year. I wanted to take him to a dog psychiatrist or dog hypnotist and the family all said I was crazy. Now the Dog Whisperer has made a bajillion dollars and I don't look so crazy.

Still, Jamie was wonderful. He was the sweetest most happy dog you could imagine. And we loved him. As Jamie got older and it became harder for him to walk up the steps of the deck to get into the house, he still remained a jubilant puppy.

Jamie died last night. My mom called me at 11:00 PM with the news. She and my father were of course, devastated. He had been a little sick the day before and had thrown up a few times that day, but initially they were planning on taking him to vet this morning for a visit. When he threw up again and seemed to be having trouble, they took him to the emergency room. He died as they got there. My mom said that he heard her voice, saying she loved him, wagged his tail and then died.

My dad thinks his kidneys shut down -- which would make sense because he was drinking lots of water and throwing-up.

When Shadow died, as horrible and tremendously sad as it was, we were in a sense prepared. We saw her downturn coming and collectively as a family decided to put her to sleep. She probably would have passed on that same day or the next naturally, but we knew it was coming. Jamie came as a surprise. Sure, the dog was getting old, but his puppy-like nature never made it seem like he was aging.

As my mom said, I'm just glad they were with him and took him to the emergency room. I can't even imagine them having to find him dead in the back yard this morning. That would just be too awful for words.

Our family had Jamie from January 1999 until now -- so we had him for 9 and a half years -- even longer than our beloved Shadow. And although I was in college and living on my own for the last 7 years or so, I was home often enough that he was still our dog.

People say that losing a pet is like losing a child or a parent -- I think because they love you unconditionally in the same way; because they ARE part of the family. I cried last night more than I have cried in years. Our wonderful puppy, and the last "family" pet (if my parents get another dog, it will be theirs, not the families) is gone.

If you have read this far -- thank you. I would normally do this sort of thing in my journal. But seeing as I don't use that anymore, I figured I might as well use my site/blog. It's not the type of stuff I normally write, but it's real and it is my life, and I want to write about it.

I don't have access to all of my old pictures from my last digital camera so I can't include a picture of Jamie (I didn't get any of him at Christmas for some reason), but here is a Black Lab that looks strikingly similar, and this will do until I can get a real shot inserted.

Jamie Warren -- beloved pet 1999 - 2008