Subtle, but very sad

Don pointed out something to me last night that made me very sad.

A few weeks ago, Chip‘s cat died.

It was one of the few personal experiences Chip wrote about and it was very touching.

So like most other blogs, these days, I read Chip’s blog via an RSS reader. It’s a very efficient way to keep up. Unfortunately, in most cases, it alleviates the need to actually visit the site in a web browser (since all the “important content” is in the feed and the site design is just “fluff”).

Well, Chip made a very subtle change to his site layout that I missed because of this. When I saw it, I choked up.

Up at the top, he has always had a tagline “Weblogging and commentary by Chip Rosenthal and his cat.”

Now, the words “and his cat” have a single line, crossing them out.

Makes all the curmudgeony about spam and people not following the letter of the Internet Protocol Laws a little more… a little more human, somehow.

Chip’s a good friend and definitely a geek hero. I’m glad to have met him.