Hooray! Saturday marked my first appearance as a regular columnist for The Seattle Times: Regular change of passwords keeps sneaky crackers guessing.
My colleague Glenn Fleishman has been the Practical Mac columnist, and when he took some time off to become a new daddy, I filled in for a few weeks. (Notice that the Times’ Web publishing system wasn’t equipped to handle a guest columnist at the time, so Glenn’s byline and picture appeared on my columns online.) The experience went well, and so Glenn proposed that we share the column from now on.
The column appears every two weeks, which means I’ll be writing one column per month. We’re always open to column ideas, so feel free to contact me at carlsoncolumn at mac.com with ideas or questions!
Jeff Carlson | Never Enough Coffee Creations 
just wondering if you could tell me where to send a sample of my writing for a column idea? just trying to hook up with some paper…
thanx
here is a copy…i’m a vet btw so its obviously about animals, hehe
My cat’s view on the human race .1
Hello, my name is Valerie. I am a mix breed cat living on the island of St. Kitts with my owner Lexy. I am saying owner very lightly. After all she does feed me but I can still leave whenever I want. We established a sort of a free relationship in which I get the food and in return I allow her to pet me once in a while. My brother and sister live here too but they don’t have my attitude and wont be mentioned many times here.
I’m writing this to express my thought and concerns about human race as a whole based on my observation of lexy. Few months ago she took a dog home (horrible, isn’t it). Black 3 months old puppy, not very bright in my humble opinion. She was supposed to be here only temporarily until someone adopts her. Temporary lasted 6 months. Dumb dog spent this time on chewing cords, chasing her own tail (seriously), peeing on the bed and trying to jump on the counters like me (her big butt couldn’t jump high enough). Today, oh happy day, she was adopted. Day for celebration of peace and quiet you might say, oh no, lexy has been crying all day, couldn’t work, forgot to feed me, didn’t clean my litter box and has been calling people to tell them how much she misses that silly black barking thing. Unexplainable. I seriously think she actually got attached to that thing !!! the thing was one big pain in my furry butt and all this fuss about her is totally unnecessary. Well I just hope lexy will now remember to clean my box and give me food as no more distractions will be present. But I’ll get back to you on that…
My cat’s view on the human race .2
A page from my diary. Beautiful lazy morning on the sunny island… undisturbed peace. I figured as a normal cat would that this called for a nice breakfast. So I left my usual spot inside a kitchen cabinet and went to explore my bowl on the top of the washing machine (placed there due to the ever annoying presence of the stupid dog). Oh what a horror I experienced there. What a torture to a hungry gut, the bowl was empty. Yes, the nightmare of all domestic cats came true. So there I was standing over an empty bowl, felling my gut pressed against my spine, making terrible noise, begging for a little bit of food. I stood in horror and disbelieve for a long time until I realized what has happened. Lexy went out last night with some other representatives of a human race. From what I could understand, they were planning on visiting a place called ‘bar’ in order to get smth to drink. Stupid if you ask me, cuz you can easily get smth to drink out of the tap. Another example of human irrational behavior. Few hours later she came back home walking rather strangely and being very loud, if I may say so. Now, I was raised to be a sophisticated cat with good manners and I had to end in a home where irrational unclassy behavior was a norm. However I can stand all that, but forgetting to fill my food bowl is outrageous. I’m beginning to consider leaving this place for good. But then again, I would have to ‘hunt’ my food outside, in the dirt, and eat smth of questionable nutritional value. A cat like me…. I don’t think so. Someone might take me for a stray !