I crossed the "dork line" last night.

I grabbed a book of brain teasers as I crawled into bed last night and glanced at the first couple of puzzles in the book.  The first two were pretty easy word problems in the "find a word that contains the letters wkw in that order" vein.  The third problem in the book, however, involved creating a magic square.

It may astound some of you know learn that I have never actually tried this before last night.

If you're not familiar with a magic square, it's a 3x3 grid into which you insert the numbers 1 through 9 in such a way that the sum of the digits is 15 in all directions.  The book said, "You could do this by trial and error, but it would be more fun if you could come up with some rules in building the magic square."

I decided that an even better challenge would be to develop the rules and construct the magic square in my head.  It turns out that it wasn't nearly as hard as I'd thought it would be.

( My solution is behind a cut in case you want to try it for yourself first. )

Semagic - blah

The latest Semagic has become an unstable piece of excrement under Win2K. I'm going to see if I have an older version that I can roll back to, but right now I'm dead in the water. =/

Has anyone else had problems with the later versions? Does anyone else out there use Semagic?

[Edit: I found an older version kicking around and it runs just fine, so until further notice I'm going to keep using version 1.5.1.5U.]

Sick cats

I mentioned briefly in an earlier post that we are fostering some cats for the Humane Society.  I stole some pictures from atara for the occasion.

We're keeping them isolated from our regular cats for a couple of reasons - not the least of which is that the foster cats are all sick with a respiratory ailment.  Mother and daughter are both coughing and sneezing, and the little male is having a number of problems.  To be honest, we're not entirely sure what's wrong with him, but we're both beginning to fear that he may not survive.  A kitten should be bouncy and happy, not mewling and depressed like this little guy is.

I suspect we're going to be making a trip to the vet later today.  Hopefully it's something treatable.

( Pictures behind a cut. )

Looks grim. This is the latest from local coverage.

****ALL RESIDENTS ON THE EAST BANK OF ORLEANS AND JEFFERSON REMAINING IN THE METRO AREA ARE BEING TOLD TO EVACUATE AS EFFORTS TO SANDBAG THE LEVEE BREAK HAVE ENDED. THE PUMPS IN THAT AREA ARE EXPECTED TO FAIL SOON AND 9 FEET OF WATER IS EXPECTED IN THE ENTIRE EAST BANK. WITHIN THE NEXT 12-15 HOURS****

... but I can't imagine there's anyone left on my contact list who hasn't been following this pretty close anyway.