Saturday, December 16, 2006

saying goodbye

Recently I've had to say goodbye to two entities I cared for very much.

The first, everybody knows about already. We are in the process of turning off Google Answers, my first Google project. The project itself is one of my proudest achievements: bringing together lots of really interesting people to generate high quality content about a broad range of topics. The reasons behind the closure are (as always) complicated, and confidential, but even though I haven't been actively working on it in a while, I had hoped something better would come of it. But sometimes you just can't make the right thing happen, even when it's your baby. So now we close the year-end books, put up a readonly copy of the site, finalize some AdSense details, and watch the last questions expire, until the dashboard finally says '... 0 unanswered questions.'

clyde The second is Clyde. Clyde was our eight-year-old ferret, who had been diagnosed with insulinoma about a year ago. Eight is really old for a ferret, and this diagnosis would normally mean only a month or two to live, but he hung in there for a long time. He was active and in good spirits up until a day or so before his passing, and was still capable of getting into all kinds of mischief. He'd gotten very cuddly near the end and was happy to be held and fed treats. I know you're not supposed to have favorites, but he was my favorite of the ferrets. It wasn't unexpected, but it was still hard to say goodbye.

6 comments:

Missy said...

Condolences, Lexi. It's been a rough few weeks for a lot of people, and losing pets only makes it worse.

I had to have my 20 year old cat put down two weeks ago after his cancer finally caught up with him, and that just increased the suck.

David said...

Lexi,

I don't know you, but I feel a connection to you and Clyde through the work I've done at Google Answers these past few years.

GA was a beautiful system. I truly believe it will be looked back on as one of the seminal moments in the development of the internet, even though it's a tad, shall we say, underappreciated at the moment.

Thanks for all you've done to bring it into being, and for keeping it humming as long as it hummed.

All the best to you and yours (inclduing the pets, of course) for the new year ahead.

Dave aka pafalafa-ga

Word Imp said...

Sorry to hear about your losses. I hope 2007 brings much to smile about Lexi. Laughter is a great medicine.

Anonymous said...

So sorry about both of your losses. Losing a pet is very hard, I know.

I don't mean to come on your personal blog to ask for help, but I really don't see a link from the Blogger site to send an e-mail or anything for help. It keeps redirecting me to the FAQs basically and I've just spent hours on one simple issue.

I would like to transfer the ownership of this blog to my other account with the New Blogger, I'm not allowed to. Now I kind of screwed things up between the two accounts and really need to make the transition.

Are you able to help me or perhaps can direct me to someone via e-mail to fix this for me?

Thanks in advance!

CLYDE said...

Hey man!
I'm so sorry about Clyde.
I have the same name!!!
I have a dog and I know how close you were!I was ready to cry watching his photo!
I need your help.Can you explain to me how to make a domain point at my blog?I checked the help section,but couldn't understand it.
My email is klajdi2@gmail.com
Thanks

Lexi Baugher said...

Thanks for all the kind words, everybody.