Melissa Dunphy

As you can see, Hunter has taken to hanging around outside now that the weather is decent, so I took her to the vet to have her shots. Apparently, she is eight or nine years old! I had no idea. This explains why she seems to prefer climbing to jumping - her hip joints are middle aged. She sure has a lot of pep for an old lady, though, as demonstrated by her willingness to stalk a groundhog about twice her size (she didn't have the nerve to pounce, which is probably one reason she has lived so long).

Summer school ended today, and thank Christ. In the course of six weeks, my public speaking course took me from being quite comfortable giving a speech to being neurotically full of dread and anguish when giving a speech. From now on, whenever I hear someone give a formulaic speech as advocated by the course material, I will immediately discount everything they have to say. Also, PowerPoint is evil and should be obliterated, along with everyone who relies upon it.

Poor Lexx. I took him apart, desoldered the broken power jack and soldered on a new one. The jack itself seems to be working fine now - it is able to recharge a battery. Unfortunately, the system won't boot. In fact, nothing at all appears on the screen when I turn it on. Sigh. I'll troubleshoot some more this weekend. It's become something of a challenge.