More Cats and a Toolbar

Madre appears to be doing well at the rehab center, except that the staff are having trouble delivering medication to her.

My sister the editor came down from Escanaba last Saturday with her two cats, and has taken residence in the house of the Madre. She will stay until Madre is well enough to return home, which (I have been told) is about four weeks. While there, my sister will sell off the furniture in her house, and maybe the house itself.

I am caring for the two cats of my sister the ex-teacher while she is in Boston. She warned me about the excavation along her street, where they are laying new gas lines. Yellow plastic gas lines are being laid all down the alleys in my part of town for the past couple of weeks. So far, the excavation has not prevented me from getting to her house because the workers are digging one quarter-block of the street at a time.

I am proud of the University Libraries Toolbar that I had created a few years ago. It originally came in Firefox and Internet Explorer versions, back when these were the major browsers. Today, a combination of Google Chrome and Apple Safari (in Mac OS X and iOS) among the common folk has pushed both into the background. Internet Explorer has developed to such an extent that it is no longer possible to update the Toolbar for it. Political turmoil within the Mozilla Foundation threatens to worsen Firefox’s lessening popularity. But worst of all, the people who run the library’s Web site no longer see a need for the Toolbar. If I cannot persuade them that the Toolbar has a future, I will have to put it to sleep.