She was wrapped up in a pink towel when they brought her back in. Laying almost motionless, she stared blankly forward. Only the slow, pained motion of her chest as she breathed gave any indication that she was still alive.

I touched her paw, the right forepaw, the one with the needle sticking out of it. She didn’t flinch one bit; she just continued to stare blankly. Somehow, I thnk she knew what was coming next.

The doctor grabbed a hold of the syringe. Nadia clasped her head in both hands, shielding her expressionless eyes. We watched the life drain from her body as the doctor pushed the plunger deeper into the tube. In a matter of moments, her breathing stopped, her pain subsided, and she ceased to be.

The above is what I wrote into my little notebook about what happened this morning. We put Harmoni down, as her kidney failure continued to worsen. She would barely move, she would barely eat, and she stopped cleaning up after herself the few times she would decide to eat. She wouldn’t groom herself, nor did she sharpen her claws. She seemed like she just gave up. We were constantly changing the type of food that we fed to her in hopes that we would find something that she would like eat. At the end, we were giving her chicken broth and baby food, at the suggestion of a local vet. Those barely worked.

I call this a little tragedy because comedian George Carlin once said (I’m paraphrasing) that getting a pet is like getting a little tragedy that is waiting to happen. Harmoni was the third of such tragedies that Nad and I have endured. I just hope that Harmoni enjoyed the year that she spent with us.

The vet at the emergency clinic told us that there was nothing we could do to save her. Her kidney had deteriorated to the point that only constant 24-hour care would keep her alive, and there was no telling how long that would keep her going. He felt that putting her to sleep was the best option for her.

I believe that many pet owners would agree that we made the right decision. Even the doctor thought so. However, I can’t shake the feeling that we put a dollar value on her life, and determined that the cost of that 24-hour care was greater than that price, so we had her killed instead. That’s probably a harsh way to think of it, but that thought is making me feel about *that* small right now.

There are very few great game commercials out there. Many aren’t even good. Too many are easily forgettable, like Criterion’s Black commercial, or just plain stupid like Sony’s latest line of PSP commericials. Nintendo’s early line of DS commericials were great, and I enjoyed the one and only GameBoy Micro commercial that ever aired (in the States, at least). Microsoft’s Xbox 360 commercials were also enjoyable, in particular the one with the jump ropers.
I’d link you to the commercials on YouTube, but I can’t find them anywhere. However, I do have a link to an awesome Nintendo DS game commercial. The best one ever, you might say. Go to Joystiq and check it out.

I have to wonder… why do I even watch so many commercials, regardless of the subject matter? With two DVRs in the house, each capable of recording two channels at once, and Nad’s beast of a Media Center PC that can record one show, we should never see another commercial ever unless it is on YouTube.com or the movie theather.

This is already old news in tech circles and the tech section of the blogosphere. Once referred to as “Origami”, Samsung, Asus, Founder, and others showed off their now-named Ultra Mobile PCs at CeBit early last week. It turns out that these UMPCs are little more than WinXP Tablet-based notebooks in a small form factor.

Rather than reiterate what others have said about it, I’ll link you to Engadget’s coverage of the devices and instead talk about what I think.

Most of the comments on various sites and blogs, as well as the opinions of most of my friends, state that these UMPCs will be utterly useless. Without a real market to sell them to, it is destined for failure. PDAs are more portable as are portable media centers and digital audio players, and they all offer better battery life. The UMPCs are not that much smaller than today’s ultraportable notebooks and tablets. For each function a UMPC could serve, there is another device that accomplishes that one task better.

While I too have a very hard time seeing who the UMPC is for, I would certainly be able to make use of it. Watching videos on the bus, surfing the web on the couch, updating the blog in bed, IMing on the can, and more. Although there are a number of devices that can accomplish any one of these very same tasks more effectively, a UMPC wraps up all this functionality into a pretty small package. It also eliminates the need for syncing or dealing with specialized software. For example, I wouldn’t have to sync my Outlook contacts to my PDA anymore, nor would I need to deal with the anemic Microsoft Money for Pocket PC anymore.

I’m also excited about the lack of keyboard and mouse. The various input methods that work with a UMPC, including a stylus, the neat software keyboard, and my index finger, should be more than enough to replace the standard input devices.

There are several more reasons that I could list here, but this entry could easily expand to three pages worth of text. I’ve added the UMPC to my wishlist. I like the Samsung and Asus ones. Hopefully, they’ll up that awful battery life (2.5 hours, yuck) and launch it at a decent price point ($500-$700). I must admit that I’m really doubting a price that low. A more realistic price would be around $1200, which is a little too high for me.

Here are a few videos of UMPCs in action:

• From CNET
• From Gizmodo
• Another from Gizmodo