Way more info about my horse's butt than you really want

I am SO OVER being sick.   Apparently sick isn't over me, though.

I gathered the gumption to get out of the house today.  First I had a coke.  High test, with sugar and caffeine.  Then I drove out to check on Pluto.  His rear end still looks skinny to me.  However, I decided to check against photographic proof.  I don't have perfect pictures of his butt over the years, because normally I focus on his front end, or his body as a whole.  But I think that he hasn't lost as much as I thought.  I think that his hair is maybe matting down a little on his behind, so it looks worse than it is.

The electrolyte pellets I got for him don't appear to have helped, at any rate.

He's never had a particularly large rump, when you get down to it.  (Unlike his owner.)  His back end is petite compared to his barrel.

I pondered the possibilities of EPM (which could be caught from hay, if an infected possum had spread its ick to the hay before it were cut) and Cushing's disease, either of which could lead to muscle wasting.  But he doesn't seem to have any other symptoms that would indicate either of those two.

I've upped his food a little more, and I'm just going to keep an eye on things for a bit longer.  And keep taking pictures so I'm not relying on my memory.  Perhaps I'll come up with some way to actually measure his butt.

It turns out that when you google "how to measure a horse's butt", the answers aren't very helpful.

Pluto's dirty, matted butt today (fine, YOU try to keep a grey horse clean)

Pluto's somewhat cleaner and less hairy butt at Thanksgiving

The ear mites are looking pretty good by comparison

My horse vet called me to see how Pluto was doing.

A)  When did my vets start calling me to check on animals?  Dr J does it too.  That sure didn't happen 20 years ago.
B) I have no idea, because I haven't seen him since last Wednesday.

I told her that I wouldn't know until probably the weekend, because I have to go out and spend some time with him before I know.  A five minute fly by isn't going to do it.  Thinking about the mild shortening of stride which I noticed as the first symptom, I said "the signs are pretty subtle, so I'll have to watch him for a while before I know for sure."  She laughed out loud.  Then I remembered the NEXT signs I observed, which included excessive weenie waving and related dribbling.  Yeah, those aren't too subtle.  But honest, those are not the first signs!

So in the next couple of days I need to spend some time observing my horse for weenie action.  I'm expiating sins from a former life.

What is it with me and grey horses and their uncomfortable, awkward to explain issues?  Couldn't I have a bay with ear mites?  Just once?

I used to dress like a grape

I like purple.  Again.  Because apparently I'm fourteen.  That's how old I was the last time I liked purple.  But back then I REALLY liked purple.  I had an entire purple outfit.  Baggie pants, button down shirt, sweater, Members Only jacket (which was only the coolest thing EVER), socks, I think the shoes too.  All purple.  Purple bandana.  Purple earrings.  I don't recall if my underwear and bra were purple. It seems likely, and yet I can't remember ever owning such things.   And I wore the whole outfit all together.  Somewhere I feel certain that there is a picture of this.  Sadly, I do not have a copy of it.  Unless it's in a yearbook.

*Edited after I found it:

Oh wait!  I found it in my 1984 junior high yearbook.  Sadly, it's in black and white so you can't even tell how purple I am.  But you can tell by the expression on my face that I was pretty pleased about it.

Hello, junior high yearbook.  If only they had color pictures back then.

Oh, and let us not forget the purple eye shadow!

I felt like the snazziest thing on two feet.  Sometimes being young and totally clueless is AWESOME.

Recently I've noticed that every time I've really liked how something has looked on me, it has involved a purple top.  Not always the same shade of purple, either.  Looks like I have the jewel tone thing going on in my forties.   I think I will discontinue my decade long blue shirt streak, and start looking into more purple.

Don't worry, Tara, I'm not planning on outfitting me and the horse in your colors for riding.

Do they still make Members Only jackets?

Word salad

I learned some new words today.  Nominal aphasia.  "Nominal aphasia (anomic aphasia, amnesic aphasia) is a severe problem with recalling words or names."  I do not have nominal aphasia, because I don't have a severe problem.  But I do have trouble with recalling nouns.  I frequently have to scramble for a phrase to describe the thing I am thinking of.  It's normal for everybody to occasionally be unable to think of a word.  However, in my case the lapses increased in frequency fairly suddenly after a severe concussion I sustained during college.

How severe?  Well, I was unconscious for a while.  Then I was conscious again for long enough to see a face over me.  Then I was unconscious.  I remember very little of the time surrounding the injury, and for the next week or so I had to be watched carefully because I had lost my short term memory.  The problem with losing your short term memory is you will end up brushing your teeth five times because you don't remember that you've already brushed.  Similarly, you can eat multiple breakfasts with no idea that you've done so.

I trace my noun problems back to that time.  Prior to that I'd had the normal "it's on the tip of my tongue" feeling that every other person occasionally gets.  Following that concussion (and, unfortunately, more concussions over the years) it became more frequent.

Fortunately, I've gotten used to working around it.  I seldom spend much time searching for a word.  Instead, I describe the thing and let my listener figure it out.  ("You know, it's tall and green and has nuts and birds like them?"  )  And then I move on.  Life is too short to worry about words you can't think of.

The tricky part is the other half of my word problem.  The half where the word I'm thinking of is not the one that comes out of my mouth.  Spinach instead of cabbage.  Door instead of window.  Vi instead of pine.  If I'm lucky, I hear the mental echo and correct myself.  If not, I have very confused friends.

It's interesting to me that it seems to be primarily an oral problem, for me.  My writing is mostly unaffected, although I am prone to inserting any word I might hear into the sentence I am writing.  Works great for dictation, not as well for trying to write while sharing an office.

On a completely unrelated note, I am looking at a USPS "Sorry we missed you!" note and wondering who sent me registered mail.  According to the post office, the sender's name is "Taiwan".  I don't think an island sent me mail.  I could be mistaken.  With luck I'll find out tomorrow.

Completely nerdy. Migrating OSX users, and weird login issues.

Well, with a clue from Sweth (to whom I now owe Vampire Wine) I finally came up with a workaround for my OSX problem.  It was weirder than I thought, and I still don't know all the ins and outs.

FWIW, for that one other OSX sysadmin out there:  IF  you have set up a global password policy to expire an account due to inactivity, and IF you have X11 forwarding enabled for the ssh server, a newly created user's account will be disabled the first time they attempt to ssh in.  If they ssh in before the inactivity password policy is applied, no problem.  If you or they disable X11 forwarding (ssh -x disables it on the user end), no problem.  A .Xauthority file in their account solves the problem.  My workaround was to put an empty .Xauthority file in the skeleton directory, which on osx is in /System/Library/User\ Template.  That way new accounts are created with an .Xauthority file and everyone is happy.

You're welcome, that one other guy in the world who has X11 forwarding enabled and is using the inactivity setting.

Also?  I think I have finally figured out how to migrate accounts between OSX servers.  It isn't super straightforward, and it isn't in the docs.  Part of it is, sort of.  You use dsexport to export the user information from directory services.  Like this:

dsexport export.out  /Local/Default dsRecTypeStandard:Users

In my case I then manually edited out of export.out any users I didn't want getting copied over.

On the new machine,  use dsimport:

dsimport export.out /Local/Default I

The I says "ignore the record if there is a conflicting name, UID, or GID".  There are other options.

Okay, so that imports the users.  The next part is the key.  The passwords are stored in /var/db/shadow/hash.  Copy the hash files for the users you have imported.  You'll need to know their generated UID, which you can get by reading their plist file (in /var/db/dslocal/Default/nodes/users/) or by using the Inspector in WorkgroupManager (turned on in WM preferences).  The hash files for each user are listed by the generated UID.

So, in theory, you just copy over the hash files (and associated state files) for the users and Bob's your uncle.  I only found this out when it was time to leave today so I won't know for sure until the morning.

Of course, you also need to copy over the normal stuff, like their home directories, and their mail if you're running a mail server.  In /var/spool/imap/dovecot/mail, if you were wondering.

BTW, if you already knew all this?  Why didn't you tell me BEFORE?

Oh well, I guess it was sort of fun figuring it out.

Blood and gore update, plus kitty butts and a tattoo

I met the vet out at the farm amidst sprinkling rain and vigorous winds.  Pluto was airing out his Arab side.  In between Pluto's wild eyed lunges and uncooperative posturing, the vet got a look at his chinny chin chin.  Her comment:  "Huh!"  It doesn't really look like an abscess, for all that it's bleeding and icky.  It looks maybe fungal.  Or something.  Since we never have gotten anything definitive to grow on a culture, we are relying on guesswork and her years of experience here.  Treatment is more straightforward.  He is getting enough doxycycline to kill a goat (but not a horse, luckily).  It's doxycycline mostly because it's a different antibiotic from what we've already tried, but she said it also has anti-inflammatory properties.  Though I might have been mistaken on which thing was anti-inflammatory, because he is ALSO getting the Ointment of Doom.  It's an antibiotic.  It's an anti-fungal.  It has steroids in it.  And it's anti-itchy.  You better believe I will be wearing gloves while applying it.

I am going to post pictures of his owie, but I will put them at the bottom for the faint of heart.  Do not scroll down below my awesome tattoo if you don't want to see.

Today was my day to be snubbed.  Here is Dori snubbing me.

Here is Andy snubbing me and knocking everything off my desk.

My awesome AT tattoo, since washed off.

Okay, ready?  Gore ensues.  I warned you.

The dark area next to his halter (continuing beneath it) is his owie.  He has blood smeared on the right side of his jaw.

Oh gross.  I can't decide if this is better or worse than last night, when there was pus and goo all in there.

It's itchy, so in addition to a bloody head he has a bloody knee.  I guess he couldn't get anything else up in there to scratch it.

Horses.  Never a dull moment.

Oh, and the doxycycline?  Fifty pills, morning and evening.  That's five zero.  I tried two in a handful of grain before I left and he hoovered them up, so possibly it won't be too difficult to get them into him.  I hope not, because my other option is daily shots and doesn't Pluto sound like he would be an exemplary patient for that?

Work, shmerk.

If I say what I'm really feeling right now, it might be libel.  Or that other word.  Slander?  Whichever.  So I'm just going to tell you that there is not enough Xanax in the WORLD to keep me from being pissed off right now.

Everything will work out in the end.  But Joe should probably keep all the carpentry tools away from me until all the connection issues are resolved.

Hide!

BTW, Internet?  That cold I'm having?  It is not a genteel cold.  My snot will hunt you down and kill you.  If you see it coming, run.