For the last month, a little white cat has been hanging around our house. I have been calling no-kill shelters in the area to see if they had room for him, with no success. I made a deal with Melissa that once we started getting frost, we would take him in and keep him in our spare bedroom until we found a place for him. Our neighbors had been feeding him, and providing an outside place for him to sleep, but they were not able to take him inside.

So last week, we put the word out that it was getting cold, and to let us know if the cat showed up. That night, we got a knock on the door, and were told that the cat was in the house next door, ready to be picked up. So I went over to get him. That was Wednesday. On Friday, he went to the vet, and was given his vaccines, tested to make sure he was healthy, and also neutered. The theory was once the initial expense was out of the way, shelters would be more likely to take him.

We had no luck for a few days, but I am happy to announce that Melissa's parents decided they wanted him, and will be coming to get him the weekend of November 11th! It did not hurt that i had the DogCam pointing at the cat for the last few days.

We have named him Jake, and Melissa's parents like the name, so he will keep it after they adopt him. Pictures of Jake can be found here.

UPDATE: We took Jake up to PA this weekend. They couldn't wait until the 11th. So Jake is settled into his new home, and enjoying it immensely.

Melissa says I have crazy taste in music. At the risk of baring my soul, here is my current exercise playlist on my iPod. I start out on the treadmill for 20-30 minutes, depending on the day, then move on to a weight circuit, just so you know which music is playing when.

It is now official. I have been accepted into graduate school at University of Maryland University College. And even better, ASM is paying for it. Time to get me some of that fancy-pants book learnin!

Lincoln delivered that line in his first Inaugural address. I was thinking about it today, as I was reading about the horrible earthquake in Pakistan, with so many thousands of people affected. The author was mentioning that in the past, various factions would put aside their disputes and stop fighting to help recover from the devastation. And there was a question about whether it would happen this time as well. Or if feelings on both sides have gotten too intense to stop for anything.

Over the last year, we have seen tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, and mudslides. And after those tragic events, we also witnessed people helping in many different ways. We have seen the worst in people, and the best. So what is it that prevents us from listening to the better angels of our nature more often?

In 1943, Abraham Maslow proposed a Hierarchy of Needs which is often depicted as a pyramid with 5 levels. He postulated that you cannot move to the higher level without first meeting the level below it. The first three levels are the most important to this discussion, I think: Physiological, Safety, and Love/Belonging. Read the link above for more information about those levels, they do a better job explaining them than I could.

Having set that up, I am not sure I completely buy into the idea. I think it is possible to only partially meet a level's requirements to be able to progress to the next level, but possibly not fully progress. For example, I think even in war-torn countries, where people cannot get enough to eat, they can still experience love. But with basic survival in question, it would not be something that could be experienced fully. I am trying to figure out where in the pyramid charity would fit in. Because I have seen people with nothing give a lot, and people with a lot give nothing (I am reminded of a parable here, but will leave the details as an exercise for the reader to test their Bible knowledge and/or Google-ing skills).

I will postulate, and feel free to disagree in the comments, that the higher up on the pyramid a person is, the easier it is to look outward instead of inward. If you have no food, it is hard to contemplate giving food to others. If no mercy has been shown to you during your life, then how can you know how to show mercy to others? The better angels are drowned out.

What is to be done about this? Hah. If I knew that, I would probably be doing something other than programming web pages. The obvious answer is to help people around the world rise up the pyramid, and make sure the direction is a positive one. Love/Belonging can be family or it can be gangs. Is it possible for a society to reach a tipping point, where a critical mass is reached of enough people high up in the levels to it becomes self-sustaining? Is it possible to tip the other way, and have enough people backslide down the levels so that it pulls down all the people around them? I have no idea. But it does seem logical to me that if enough people are moving upwards, they would be taking their immediate peer groups with them, and vice versa.

Is humanity as a whole going up or down the scale? I don't know. I am not able to step back and take an historical view. I am too close to current events, and they overwhelm the past, and make it hard to objectively compare. We all pine for the Good Old Days, but really, were they that good, or do we just forget the bad stuff? I do know this, though. Even if collectively we are going to Heck in a hand-basket, we can still resolve individually to do what we can to make a positive impact on someone's life. Tell your friends how great they are. Tell your parents, spouses, boy/girl-friends how much you love them. And give your animals a scratch behind the ears.

Happy October everyone. I saw Christmas stuff in a store today, so everyone get that shopping in now!