Totally Hip Cat Blog

Well, it’s been a while now since I was informed that Clotty had decided to disappear from my life and do you know what? I don’t miss him a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m reminded of him regularly and could never forget the little freeloading bastard. I just don’t miss him.

I’ve just finished my first tour back at work and life is on it’s way to becoming somewhat normal again, except for the reminders. I’m not supposed to lift more than about 60 pounds, which is a fairly decent amount to live with I guess. Then there are the veins. My left shoulder will always have a spiderweb of veins that are WAY more visible than on the other side plus there are double to triple the amount on my right. Then there’s the scar below my armpit that is quite highly visible. Taken together, these things are the building blocks of a half decent Halloween costume. All I have to do is wear something that exposes my left shoulder and lower armpit area.

The last thing is a touch harder to deal with. I’m much more of a swell guy than I was before. You see, my left arm tends to regularly turn pinker than my other arm and swell a little bit. This is one of the worst things ever. With my left arm regularly being different from my right, it has instilled a sense of paranoia in me. I am regularly checking both arms against each other to gauge the difference and figure out what is normal for me. Apparently, there was enough damage done to my vein (probably due to Clotty doing stupid renovations to make it his home), that there is some scar tissue and the vein is still a touch thinner in that spot, meaning that it will always drain blood slower than my other arm.

So there you have it, the end of the saga as far as the story is concerned, and the beginning of the rest of my life. The one where I must pay more attention to my body and try not to fuck it up too much more. See if I can get at least another 50 or 60 years outta this ol’ beater of a body before I discard it and go check out what’s really out there in the universe (as I chuckle at the narrow-mindedness of the species that I used to be a part of).

Until then, remember; be good to each other, create something (anything) that nobody else could, and try to be a part of evolution, not devolution.

This is Totally Hip Cat, signing off.

As this saga comes to an end, let’s have a quick re-cap of the story thus far. At the end of October, my arm swelled up and got very red. I, being lucky enough to possess a few brain cells, went to the doctor. I was diagnosed with a blood clot in my upper chest. My vein had somehow wandered in between my clavicle and first rib, causing a pool of non moving blood in front of it. These conditions, big whoop of luck to me, were the perfect conditions to form a new friend inside my body. Clotty McVeinblock was officially born and living contentedly within my vein.

Clotty was a problem for me. I was sent for surgery and they busted up Clotty by mechanical and chemical means. They managed to get at least a 99% breakup of the clot and I thought I was good to go. Unfortunately, the blood pool was still sitting in my vein due to the pinch and Clotty, the little bastard, managed to re-form by the next morning. The next course of action was three months of blood thinners, during which, that little fuck just lazed around and sponged off of me.

Clotty was worse than a bad roommate. Trust me I’ve lived with enough people to know what bad is. From the first day of his re-existence he did absolutely nothing to contribute. He sat around lazily in my vein doing sweet fuck all and sending all my blood back around on a newly formed detour around him (due to which I now have a creepy spiderweb formation of veins on my left shoulder for life). Because of the thinners, I couldn’t drink or have any real fun or do any real work for months, while that little shit lived the good life safely snuggled in my vein.

After three months of thinners, it was time to do something about the little slacker. I had a surgery in which my first rib was removed to relieve the vein pinch. After that, there was about a month and a half or so of thinners. This brings us to the present… Almost.

After a month and a half, it was time to go back to see if they could get any vacation photos of ol’ Clotty before they dragged him out in front of the firing squad for a proper death. At least, that’s what I thought was going to happen. Turns out, when they finally got a good look, that the little clot that could had just disappeared. I guess he had started to melt as soon as the first rib was pulled out. By the time I went to check on him, he was just a puddle of plasma to join with the rest. I hope he enjoys being a part of something again, instead of just a wart on my bodily society.

So here ends my saga with Clotty. It’s now time for me to join in with society again as well and go back to work. I am, however, willing and able to accept ideas on what else I should write about and apply my unique perspective to. I’ve got an idea or two, but more are always welcome. Contact me – darin@totallyhipcat.ca to give suggestions or to ask a question you’d like me to research and answer for you.

Until next time, enjoy what you have, it could become less at any time.

Totally Hip Cat

Hello, everybody. In the last post, I had sprained my ankle and it ballooned up into a freakin’ blimp foot. The good news is that it’s all healed up now (good thing, as I’ve been doing a fair bit of walking the last few days). The next step in my saga has been completed. Let me tell you about it.

I arrived in Vancouver (yet again) on the 26th of January for my pre-admission appointment (what the fuck is that? To be admitted before you’re admitted?). This consisted of a bunch of questions and a package of reading material about preparing for the surgery. I was told that I couldn’t eat anything after midnight on Sunday night. Also, that I can drink “clear” fluids up until about 5 hours before surgery (easy enough). After all of the paperwork was done, I was given several requisitions for tests to be done in the medical centre across the street.

I went to the lab across the street and gave them some blood. Well, maybe more than just some. They took about 5 or 6 full vials (holy shit, how many tests do you need to run?). After that, I went upstairs and was put through a ECG to check my heart. After all of these tests, I was sent to get a prescription for Fragmin, an injectable blood thinner (because I had to stop the Warfarin just before I came down here). On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I had to give myself injections of this stuff into my abdomen.

So, basically, from after my pre-admission (there’s that stupid word again), until Sunday night I was free. Luckily, I have a friend or two in town so I wasn’t too bored. I walked a fair bit and killed some time by visiting people and my usual entertainment of TV and Facebook on my iPad (that device is awesome when you’re traveling). Sunday night was the next phase of my preparation.

I had to get a package of antiseptic body wipes because of a new policy at VGH. To kill body germs and help prevent post-op infection, I had to wipe my whole body down with these disposable rags with Chlorhexidine Gluconate (whatever the hell that is). This procedure was also repeated the next day in Pre-op (that’s Monday, for those of you who have dozed off). Also, every 48 hours, they sterilize your nose by putting blue dye up your nostrils (so that it looks like you’ve been using smurf jizz as nasal spray), and then blasting it with laser light to kill the germs (which have conveniently attached themselves to the dye).

A couple of hours after I showed up for pre-op, I was sent in for surgery. Upon waking up (quite suddenly) I was slightly disoriented. Luckily, this didn’t last too long and the staff was on the ball. Then, it was relax time. Or at least, ATTEMPTED relax time. It’s hard to relax knowing that you have one less rib and a hole in your armpit. That’s right, armpit. The entire operation was performed through there. It was quite uncomfortable having tubes coming out through your armpit, let me tell you.

I had one tube going in (called a Picra), that was actually quite small and delivered a numbing agent to the area. Then there was a larger tube to drain the wound into a spring loaded suction container. On top of that, I had another, larger chest tube to drain from around the lung (apparently, I was one of the lucky 10% who gets a nick in the outer wall of the lung during this procedure). All in all, it went well.

Here’s a couple of pictures of it. The first is where the tubes came out of the dressing to their various devices. The second is of the tubes and drainage reservoir.

The smallest tube is the Picra (which gets smaller again where it enters the body), the larger bloody one, is the drainage and the huge one is the chest tube.here’s a picture of the incision, drain, and chest tube without dressings.

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I was given Tylenol and Oxycodone for pain. The numbing agent dosage in the Picra tube, was slowly dropped over a couple of days until it was shut off on the Wednesday. Later that day, it was also removed. Now I had the freedom to clip the drain reservoir to my hospital gown and pick up the chest tube reservoir (which happens to be a big plastic box with readings to tell you how much blood and stuff was collected) and go for a walk (It was soo nice to go to the washroom to urinate instead of using a handheld plastic urinal). Now there was only a drain and chest tube to go.

On the Thursday, the chest tube and the drain was removed. I was now totally untethered (except for the bedside O2 and pulse monitor, which is simple to detach and re-attach). Now it was just pain management and healing to worry about.

Friday was the day they let me go home. I hopped on the plane and headed back to freedom for another month and a half. Around mid-March or so, I have to go back to get another scan on my veins and break up any remaining blood clots. Then the saga will finally come to an end. Until then, remember that your attitude, most of the time, will determine your outcome (more often than not)

This is Totally Hip Cat, signing off for now.

Last time, I described how I got a bleed in my arm and was on simple maintenance therapy to keep ol’ Clotty from getting any bigger. The bruising in the arm is basically gone and feels fine now. This is the story of my trip to get an MRI.

It was nice that I got to spend Christmas with the family before I had to go to Vancouver to get my MRI. On the 27th, I went to the city to catch my flight to Vancouver (wouldn’t it be something if I actually had to catch it, those fuckers go really fast). Everything was pretty uneventful on the flight and the taxi ride to my hotel (this time, at a Holiday Inn instead of the not so great place I stayed at last time).

After a while in the hotel, my bad luck caught up with me again (good thing I’m a mellow guy or this shit would REALLY piss me off). As I was trying to accomplish the seemingly very simple task of getting off a chair and turning, I caused myself even more damage. You would think that after so many years of using chairs, that I’d have a firm grasp on the mechanics of the process. Apparently, I didn’t. Immediately after my chair dismount, I went to turn and my right foot rolled over on it’s side and got a major sprain. Because of the blood thinners, the foot swelled up to huge proportions and got very bruisy. It looked something like this.

The next morning, I limped my ass to the hospital and proceeded to the MRI bay. The whole process took a while, but went off without a hitch. What a loud freaking machine. I didn’t realize that an MRI machine was so damn noisy. I was told after the scans that it would be about a week before the main tech got a look at the images and sent them to my doctor, as he was on vacation (my doctor’s office was closed as well). The next day, I headed home, to wait again.

So, here I stand (well, sit actually, ’cause my foot hurts so fuckin’ bad). I am once again on the hurry up and wait list. In a couple of weeks or so, my doctor will get in contact with me and tell me the next step. All this waiting sucks, but at least there’s something getting done.

Until next time, remember, it’s a wast of time and energy to get angry or excited about stuff you can’t change. I’d have gone stress crazy by now, if I was a worrier.

Later,
Totally Hip Cat

In the last part, Clotty had been destroyed, but quickly re-formed. Now the real battle was to begin, starting with what the Hell to do about the little bastard. I left the details up to the doctor and waited.

I was brought back to the radiology department and set up for another operation. They went into my vein a couple of inches below where they went in the first time. A catheter was run up the vein and placed right in front of the clot. The plan was to pump tPA directly at the clot for at least 12 hours to melt it. Heparin was run into the sleeve so it wouldn’t clot up and the tPA was run through the catheter and pumped right into Clotty’s little face (melt fucker melt). Unfortunately, Clotty was way tougher than anyone thought.

After about an hour or two of tPA, I noticed that my arm was swelling up and lightly bruising. I was taken back to Radiology for a vein-o-gram (at least, that’s what they called it). As the contrast was pumped into the vein, I could see on the monitor that there was a blank spot where it thinned out and then started again. It turns out that it was a bleed. Between the tPA and the Heparin, the previous surgery hole in my vein had opened up and was bleeding, internally, into my arm, causing major bruising. To try and stop it, a compress was put on tightly over my previous surgery site and the tPA drip was resumed. I was sent back to the step down room to be monitored (because tPA stops clotting completely and requires close monitoring)

After another hour or two of the super thinner cocktail, another problem occurred. The compress, it seems, pushed the excess blood in my arm up into my upper arm. The few inches between the compress and my armpit had swollen to rather huge proportions. The skin was hanging down a couple of inches and was hard and very bruised. Upon noticing this, I informed the nurse that it didn’t look right.

The nurse looked at my arm and the look on her face said it all. At this point, I could see that she was a bit worried and her reaction triggered an even worse reaction from me. Suddenly, I had a hard time breathing and the blood drained from my face. I also became quite light headed. I mentioned that I’d never had morphine before and that maybe the pill was kicking in. My bed was lowered down and I was given oxygen. It wasn’t until later that I realized that what I’d experienced was a panic attack (something I had never in my life had before then). It wasn’t long before I could breathe and felt better.

At this point, the doctor was called and the decision was made to stop the tPA drip. It looked like Clotty McVeinblock and I were going to be together for a while. Because of the bleed, my arm was one huge bruise. I took a picture of my arm the next day. It looked something like this.

Pretty, huh? The white patch is just to protect the blisters that formed when some tape was pulled off. I was kept in the hospital until the blood thinners stabilized, then I was discharged and told that me and ol’ Clotty would be living together for a while. I’ve got an MRI after Christmas, so I’ll be living with Clotty for another month or two at least. I guess this’ll be the last post about this subject for a bit, at least until after the MRI. I hope it’s been a somewhat entertaining story so far, and I’ll catch you all on the flipside.

Later, all.
Totally Hip Cat.

Last time, I wrote about how I discovered that Clotty existed. As soon as I got home from the city, I went to my local hospital and was informed that they were already trying to set up my stay all the way down in Vancouver, to deal with my problem. I went home, packed a bag and headed back to the city the next day to get a flight down to the coast.

Once I was in Vancouver, I got a room at the Park Inn right behind the hospital. I got called several hours later and told I was to check into the hospital immediately. I went to check out of the Inn and told them I had to check in to the hospital. The Inn told me that it was too late to check out so they’d have to charge me for the whole night. You’d think that for a medical reason they’d make an exception and just charge a housekeeping fee, but not at the Park Inn. I had to pay over one hundred dollars for just a few hour long stay. I won’t be staying there again.

I checked into the hospital and settled in for the night. In the morning, I met the surgeon and he gave me the rundown on what was going to happen. Then it was off to surgery. I was laid down on the table with my arm laid out to the side on a board. I was given a local anesthetic to numb the arm and I was ready to be worked on. They went right into the vein and pumped contrast in while taking an x-ray video to see how the blood was flowing. I could just barely see the monitor and watched as the blood flowed into my upper chest, hit a black spot, and started to flow back and re-route around the area. This was my first look at Clotty (the little bastard).

After locating the clot, the doctors routed angioplasty balloons onto either side of the clot. They also put a catheter into the vein, right by the clot so that they could pump in some tPA (used to chemically melt the clot). There was also a trellis put in as well (to mechanically break up the clot). So here I was with two balloons, a catheter, and a trellis machine ready to go, all in the same vein (talk about crowded). They were now ready to start the procedure.

The angioplasty balloons were inflated to block the clot off from the rest of the body. The tPA was pumped in to melt the clot and the trellis machine was turned on. The end of the trellis is basically like a little wire that vibrates inside the vein and mechanically breaks the clot up. It was probably the strangest sensation I’ve ever felt. My entire shoulder felt like it was vibrating from the inside (I guess it was, really). All I can say is that having a vibrator inside you is not as nice as all you women think it is (at least, not in your shoulder, anyway).

They were very impressed with the results that they got from the trellis (99 to100 percent break up), and I was sent back to my room for the night. In the morning, I was scheduled for an ultrasound. The results of the ultrasound confirmed that ol’ Clotty McVeinblock had re-formed in my vein due to the low blood flow because of the vein still being pinched by my clavicle and rib. (And the clot came back, the very next day.)

Now, what was I supposed to do? Tune in next time. Same clot time, same clot channel, and find out.

Hello, people of the Internet. Last time, I told you about how my arm swelled up and the doctor suspected that I had a blood clot in my chest. He suspected that I had Paget-Schroetter syndrome and sent me to the nearest city for a CT scan. I went home and got ready for my trip the next day.

As it turns out, I awoke the next day to the first nasty snowstorm of the year. The white shit was falling everywhere. It looked like somebody nuked a teddy bear factory and all the stuffing was falling and creating a huge blanket over the ground. It was thick and coming down hard, and I had a fairly long drive ahead of me.

The driving was not easy. The roads were a bit slick and it was hard to get up to a proper speed. I was averaging about 80 km/hr and people were moving to the side of the road to let me by. On top of all of that, every time a vehicle passed by going in the other direction, there was a temporary white-out where the road and everything in front of me turned completely white for a few seconds. For a drive that averages about an hour and 45 minutes in the summer, this one took me over two hours (nearly two and a half, actually).

I managed to make it to the hospital with about 15 minutes to spare. I signed into the radiology department and went to the CT waiting room. After a short wait, they took me in for the scan. I had some contrast pumped into my veins and was run through the scanner. I was told afterwards that I definitely had a blood clot in my upper chest. I was told that it lit right up on the first pass.
That was when it hit me. I had a little visitor inside my vein. I was now completely aware of little Clotty McVeinblock. Now; what the hell was I supposed to do about it? That is a story for next time.

Until then, this is Totally Hip Cat, signing off.

Clotty was born silently around the 24th of October, 2011. I know it was silently because I sure as hell didn’t hear anything. I didn’t feel anything either. The only indication to me was a red, swollen left arm that I didn’t notice until I got off work and was showering and changing into clean clothes before heading home. I was a little concerned, but not a huge amount, at least, not until I noticed the spiderweb of blue veins on the upper, left side of my chest.

It looks kind of like this.

Pretty, huh? This was the main reason I went to the emergency room at the hospital. Once I got there, the doctor didn’t know what to think. He just assumed that I had overworked the muscles that day and they were demanding too much blood. The only thing unusual at work was that we were on a shutdown, and I was tapped to be a maintenance helper. Greasing bearings isn’t very labour intensive, however, it did require some stretching and strange positions that I never get into as a forklift operator (my regular job). Either way, the doctor sent me home and told me to come back if anything got any worse.

Overnight, the swelling in my left arm went down quite a bit. I decided to go to work and see how things went. I was doing pretty good until about halfway through the day, when the arm started to swell again. I reported it and left work to go to the emergency room again. Once at emergency, the doctor seemed quite a bit more concerned than the previous day. They immediately set up an emergency CT scan for the next day, thinking that I might have a DVT (that’s a Deep Vein Thrombosis for you non-medical types out there). Clotty had been born, however, I didn’t quite know about him for sure, yet.

Check in next time to get the story of how I found out that Clotty had been born, and what I was going to do about it all.

Until next time, this is Totally Hip Cat, signing off.

Hello, people… Internet citizens… Netizens, we’ll go with that. I’m Totally Hip Cat. My music recording stage name is D.V.is. It’s kind of sad, but I have once again been neglecting my Blog. Normally, this would be typical, however, I haven’t been working since late October. I have the time and even something to write about, but the motivation still sucks. The fact is, I’m not allowed to use my left arm much for a while, so work is on hold and my music making abilities have been somewhat hampered. Therefore, I’ve decided to do something entertaining with my time (well, entertaining for me anyway).

In the coming days (weeks, months, whatever), I’ll tell you all about my wonderful encounter with my new friend, Clotty the blood clot. He lives in my subclavian vein in my upper chest. We tried to kill the little fucker, but he came back right away and decided to move in for a while. I’ll tell you the whole story, piece by piece so you don’t get too bored at any one time. Once I’m finished, you’ll have the complete story of the life and times of Clotty McVeinblock.

So, starting as soon as part one is ready, you can kick back and relax, while you read about Clotty.

Until next time, remember, even the healthiest of us has a time limit in life. Make the most of the time you’re given.

Hi all.
It’s been a while since I posted anything. In fact, the last one was me after a long day of traveling and waiting in line to get a new iPad2, and then returning home to download apps and see what it could do, with little sleep. I look just a mess.

I just got an app called MindJet, that let’s you create little flowchart style maps for brainstorming. I’m using it to attempt to make a map of this website (or, actually, a map of how I want it to be). After that, I’m hoping to get motivated enough to use that mind map as a road map to building a new site from scratch.

After the long arduous process of building a website with very little technical knowledge or ability, the hard work begins. Then I have to get motivated enough to get my ass back into guitar playing, singing, recording, mixing mode and churn out some new recordings.

I don’t know how long this shit’ll take, but at least I put up a post of something new and informative, instead of a post with a video of a techno-zombie marveling at the amazing new direction computing is going in.

Until the next time, this is Totally Hip Cat signing off.

Hey, world.
Just testing out an iPad app to update my blog from pretty much anywhere.

Later,
Totally Hip Cat.

Right click box below and select view video to see the vid

Hi there, everybody.

As you can probably tell by the amount of blogging I’ve done lately, my motivation has hit a low point for the past few weeks. There are several reasons for this, the main one probably being laziness. I also wanted to leave my last post up for a bit to see if I could get the THCommunity off the ground. So far, there are several people using it but not regularly enough to make it work. Either way, it’s still a good place to get a free blog. One member in particular is using it to re-post music blogs from elsewhere and give us some useful information on music and guitar. Way to go Knocker Jamison. You can see his posts at http://totallyhipcat.ca/THCommunity/knockersblog/. This little thing motivated me to write a new blog entry. Check it out and join the community.

Another example of how a little thing can drive you to get a little motivation, happened to me last month. I was doing some recording for my cousin in my basement when we realised that the drum track wasn’t going to fit well with the guitar we were recording. Since his drummer was out of town and we wanted to keep working on the song, I pulled off a bit of recording magic. I ended up cutting and moving the rest of the drum track back so that it came in at the right spot to match the guitar. Then I found out that the first section didn’t match the tempo, so I cut it and moved it to where the section started and time stretched it to match the next section. It worked out better than I could have imagined. I was inspired my this little piece of music wizardry and ended up starting to do some new recording for myself soon after that.

The point is that you have to take your small victories and use them to your advantage. When a small thing happens to give you a lift, you can say yippee and move on, or you can use it to drive you into doing more. Finding a new sound for your guitar can drive you to create a new song. Creating a new, more complicated, drum rhythm can drive you to practise more. Creating a line on guitar that sounds more like a bass rhythm can drive you to learn to play bass guitar.

This idea can be used in more than just music as well. Use it in your everyday life. When life hands you a small victory, use it to drive you to do more stuff. I am on the verge of having a permanent full-time job for the first time in two years. This is going to take much time away from my website development and blogging. I can accept that and let the site die, or I can use this small victory to create some kind of schedule to continue my blogging and song writing. I think I’ll do the latter. Therefore, over the next month or so, I’ll be doing some minor re-organizing of my life and priorities. Hopefully, I’ll find a happy medium to balance my work, blogging, and my music. Maybe I’ll even rejoice in some more small victories to help me figure it all out.

Later, people, and remember;

The smallest of victories can be the largest of inspirations.

Hi, there, people.

I’m sure you’re wondering what the THCommunity is. It’s the Totally Hip Community. It’s a BuddyPress plugin that runs on WordPress MU (that’s Multi-User). It gives every member their own Blog to write about anything they want and to share their creativity with the world. It also has activity streams, friends lists, groups and forums. All I ask is that the members are all creative people in their own right or at least are very big supporters of creativity. That’s the main focus of my little community, creativity.

If you’ve ever thought of something out of the blue that you found entertaining? Blogging lets you share it with the world. Do you make YouTube videos? Link them to your blog to show the community. Do you record your own music? Share it with others and promote your creativity to the community. Blogging is one of the best ways to share your creativity with the world.

Who’s not welcome in the T H Community? Anybody who would rather destroy than create is not welcome. Those who are plugging a product or anything that is NOT a product of their OWN creativity, is not welcome. People who get a rush out of hurting others or putting others down just for fun are not welcome. If you aren’t willing to be creative and to help others to be more creative, you aren’t welcome in the Totally Hip Community. Haters need not apply. In the THCommunity, creativity rules.

This community is about fostering creativity and helping that creativity to grow beyond ourselves and become something new. It could be a song, or a painting… a tattoo you designed, or a book you wrote. Hell, it could even be a poem, a joke you made up, or a funny thought. Sharing creative things allows you to expand your creative abilities through feedback from others. Who knows, maybe, eventually, people will start to collaborate by sending tracks to each other or drawings will be created that have dozens of artists.

The best part is, this community is starting out right now, to bring more entertainment and creativity to the world. YOU get to decide who to tell and shape it into the type of community you’d like it to be. I’m hoping to collect an interesting group of talented people to entertain each other, and maybe someday, the world. Remember, at THCommunity, creativity rules and entertainment is just a by-product of joining.

The Totally Hip Community, it IS what YOU make it.

Hey there, people.

I know, I know. You know you’re thinking it, I know you’re thinking it. If you didn’t get it right away from the title, you’re thinking it. ” Hey, fucktard! What the hell is BuddyPress?”  Well, I’ll tell you.

Let’s start with WordPress. It’s an open source blogging software for your webpage. WordPress is what I use  to post these blogs. This blog… in this window that you’re looking at right now, is a basic WordPress installation. I just installed a different version for multiple users at a different address. “O.K, ” you may say, “But you haven’t even mentioned  a buddy, yet. What’s up with the buddy thing?” Good question, let me answer that for you. BuddyPress is a plugin for WordPress MU. Once activated, it turns your WPMU install into a sort of Facebook Lite.

BuddyPress allows each user access to features such as Activity Streams, Profiles, Groups, Friends lists, Messaging, Forums, and of course, Blogging. I’ve finally gotten it all up and running, so I’m testing it out right now with 2 users. The user, admin, who is of course the administrator, is Me. The other user, D.V.is, of course, you guessed it, is Me. I’m not sure what I can do with this thing,yet. But it’ll be interesting to find out. If you are interested in finding out with me, check it out at http://totallyhipcat.ca/THCommunity/.

Later, all.

Hi, everybody.

You may ask yourself, ‘What the hell is this guy talking about?’ or ‘Wow, his second post. Sure an excitable fellow.’ Well, there’s actually a reason for this ‘again’ thing. You see, it was about a year ago when I bought a website through a company that told me they’d give me a good deal on a ready made affiliate web site. Well, I learned pretty quickly, that even though the deal for the site was OK, it was just a way for them to plug their own get rich scheme which resulted in me spending more on advertising than what I made. I soon realized that I could plug any product I wanted that had an affiliate program, so I emailed the hosting company (who was separate from the company I bought the site from) and they said that the site was mine and that I could do anything I wanted with it.

I decided that the huge marketplace of affiliate programs at ClickBank was just what was called for. I realized that I wanted to plug music products, so I filtered the marketplace into music products and sorted them by popularity. I then found the best digital products and sorted them into my own categories. These were the categories that would become the various pages in the site. The next problem was finding a way to design the web pages with only the most basic knowledge of HTML.

I found a good HTML editor and design program in the open-source ‘Nvu’. As good as this program was, I still needed an even more basic and easy to use program to make the site AND create the HTML for me. Luckily, my hosting company was plugging a great program called 90 Second Website Builder that was pretty good at making great drag and drop websites and doing all of the HTML coding for me. I promptly built my first website and published it (using the pre-installed WordPress software that was on the site already). Then I immediately got to work on designing a better site. While on this mission to design another site, I kind of left the blog for a bit.

I decided to make multiple sites that would link to each other instead of just one huge site. I did this so that It would be fairly easy to add sections later on (such as Totally Hip cat PROductions). I used a free 3D program called Blender, that I was playing around with. I found a 3D tiger model for free and used it as a template to cut and alter it until it looked the way I wanted. I then used it to build all of the logos around the site. I then built and published the new site, which is pretty much the site TotallyHipCat.ca is now. When I launched the new version of the site, I also started to write the occasional Blog again, the first of which was titled ‘Totally Hip Cat is Back!’

Fast forward several months and you see me adding on Totally Hip Cat PROductions. Several more months and all of a sudden, the year goes by. At this time, I’m still using the same hosting company (uhhh… we’ll just call them Wack Blire Hosting, yeah, that’ll do), and they cancel the site without even offering a renewal. Several days later, I try to go to my site and it’s gone so I Email them and ask what’s going on and they tell me that it was a one year only deal, but they’d give me a good deal if I sign up again. Well, I decide to take a look, but when I do, the domain that I was using was not available. This was the final straw so I bid them farewell and decided to look for a new hosting service.

I decided that if the dot-com wasn’t available, that I’d go all Canadian (’cause that’s where I live), and get the same address, but with a dot-ca instead. I found a hosting company in Canada at CanadianWebHosting.com (which gave me a better deal plus faster uploading speeds) and registered for the totallyhipcat.ca domain. Then I started the rather large task of re-publishing my site. I lost all the blog entries and other stuff that was on the other server (due to my lack of intelligence of not having a proper backup), so I used the 90 Second Website Builder files and went about the task of changing all the .com links to .ca links. Then I finally published the site that I have now.

I’ve decided to make a fresh start with this site’s Blog instead of tracking down and re-posting all the older entries. I even installed it all on my own from scratch (I’m actually surprised that it worked the first time).  So, here I am, starting fresh with a year of experience and a new love for playing and recording my own music (along with my cousin’s stuff). Now that I’ve got links to my old MySpace videos and a music player with my first two real multi-tracked recordings in my little home studio, I can concentrate on making something new. That’s pretty much where I am right now. Back!…. again.

Until next time, remember; If you can at least be a little happy with where you are in life, it’ll make it a lot easier to get where you want to be.

Totally Hip Cat.

Well, the Blog is up and running.

I’ll let you in on the full story when the rest of my site is up and running again.

Totally Hip Cat