The Internet home of Kevin Barrow
Tonight at work we launch our redesigned website, thus concluding (I hope) the several-months-long process that has been the source of too many headaches and the root of my getting too little sleep for too long.
To those with whom I’ve been mildly incoherent, or to those owed an email response, please know that the long, long struggle is nearing its end, and I shall soon be able to poke my head out more fully than I have been for some time now.
From PeterDavid.net: RIP Andreas Katsulas
(He played G’Kar on Babylon 5.)
Happy birthday, dude!
My work blog, Transmissions from the Ether, has been reborn as a podcast ‘tween Doug, Valli, and me.
One episode down, many to go.
And yes, everybody who’s asked (including you, Evo), I plan to do some personal ones here, and yes, I’ve really, really slacked in not having done any in the last 13 months. What can I say? I had a bit of a mental hump to get over, and I finally found some nice inspiration that helped. 
I went to my first hockey game (ever!) and saw our San Jose Sharks defeat the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning 3-1.
Answer: They get love.
I’ve been trying for a couple of days to deal with the news that my parents’ dog Sierra has died.
Most of you know that I’m definitely a cat person. Pretty much always have been, though I have, by and large, liked my folks’ other dogs: Chien and Shanna, Mai Tai and, now, Tinker.
But Sierra was special.
He was, without a doubt, the sweetest, most patient, most cheerful dog I’ve ever known. He was an Austrailian Shepherd and so had a bobbed tail as is the norm for the breed. The lack of a tail didn’t stop his exuberant expressions, though: When he was happy to see you (and he was always happy to see you), he’d wag his butt and greet you with a chipper “Wrroo-wrroo-wrroo!”
He liked to push a half clam shell around my parents’ backyard porch, and could entertain himself (and, by extension, we spectators) for hours with an empty two-liter soda bottle.
In his younger days, he’d sometimes get on the sofas and push the cushions off while we humanfolk were out. But doggone it if he didn’t really seem to feel really guilty when we’d point at the couch and ask, “What is this?!”
He was affectionate and even licky without being slobbery. (A big fan of slobber I am not.)
He and I used to play tug-of-war with his rope toy. He’d make these fierce gutteral noises that meant nothing more vicious than, “Oh, I’m gonna win this time!”
When I spent the holidays with my parents last month, it was very hard for me to see Sierra, the bouncing, playful dog of my memory still as sweet as ever but now hobbled by a body that was betraying him. The pup that used to scamper back and forth to his basket of toys was struggling to even stand.
My mom and my dad both had kind of warned me before my visit that the end was nigh but, upon my seeing him, the tears still flowed.
Those tears returned Tuesday night.
From: Mom
To: Kevin, LisaSweet Sierra
1992-2006
We will miss him. There will never be another dog like him.
For the next two months, Zak Akin is the featured artist at a gallery/design shop/cafe in Palo Alto called Jungle. His “Pixelism” exhibition opened Friday evening, and I’ve posted pics from the gathering in a Flickr set.
