Imablog Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.

Collaborative writing made easier?

An abstract I wrote up for the little archive project I've been collecting data for got accepted as a talk for the SIIM 2007 annual meeting. One of the things they ask accepted presenters to do is to also submit a paper for publication in JDI.

Anybody who's ever written a paper with more than one author knows that keeping track of all the revisions and changes from one author to another can be problematic, especially if both authors are contributing different sections.

This time I'm going to try something different. I'm going to try using Google Docs for the writing. At least for the content anyway. Google Docs has some neat collaborative functionality and revision tracking capabilities that will probably come in handy. My co-author and I can open the document at the same time, we can both write and even discuss online while we're editing. Once we get things written, I'll convert it into a LaTeX document for typesetting and submission.

This should be an interesting experiment.

Fast math ops

Just wanted to stash this little tidbit here in case I needed it for something.

This Slashdot article bringing up Origin of Quake3's Fast InvSqrt(). The original article is a bit of a sleuthing expedition looking for the origins of this little code snippet and makes for an interesting read along with pointing to some other interesting sources.

The algorithm is a remarkable in the way it hides a lot of complexity in a simple looking package. All it does is calculate 1/sqrt(x), but does it very quickly using a cleverly written Newton-Raphson method.

float InvSqrt(float x) {
  float xhalf = 0.5f*x;
  int i = *(int*)&x; // get bits for floating value
  i = 0x5f3759df - (i>>1); // gives initial guess y0
  x = *(float*)&i; // convert bits back to float
  x = x*(1.5f-xhalf*x*x); // Newton step, repeating increases accuracy
  return x;
}

Holiday spirit

Been here 7 years now, and each year I'm finding it harder and harder to get into a holiday kind of mood. It just never feels like Christmas.

It's the weather. It's just not wintry enough for me to get into the right mood for the holidays. Having been born and raised in Edmonton, winter and the accompanying cold and snow are second nature to me. Winter, for me, kicks off the holidays. It means watching the first snowfall, and venturing out into the dark quiet that follows where all the noises seem muffled. It meant Bill Matheson on ITV talking about that "dreaded of all meteorological phenomena, the Siberian High" and the weather in Baker Lake. It was donning layers of warm clothes, filling a backpack with sandwiches, a thermos full of hot chocolate and heading off for a hike through the river valley. It also meant walking to school in skin-numbing -35°C cold on more than a few occasions, but you take the good with the bad.

Now a few flakes falling to the ground is a huge news event and grounds for shutting everything down. A cold day might reach 5°C and just below freezing at night. Is it any wonder I can't get into the holiday mood when I'm still walking around in shorts?

Don't get me wrong, I love the mild winters as much as anyone from colder climates would. I love torturing my friends with pictures of me walking on the beach in shorts and a t-shirt on New Year's Day while they're freezing their butts back home. Aside from the summers, which are a little toasty for my liking, the weather here is great. It just doesn't trigger that holiday feeling in me.

Blogger hour (or two, or three)

Tonight's blogger gathering over at the Dog & Duck was pretty good. Had about 13 show up including a couple of new people (Chris from Signal 46 and JJ from I'm not drunk enough for this). Plenty of good random conversation to enjoy over some reasonably tasty bar grub. A little bit of current events, some shared winter stories, the latest bloggings in the lowcountry blog-o-verse, Geoff conducting a few straw polls about UK vs US differences and other topics. And picture taking of course.

They have some fabulously hot wings that I enjoyed. I told the waitress I wanted a dozen wings as hot as they come (they call them Burners). She was a little bit hesitant about it and warned me about the last person who ordered them and ended up sending them back, but I told her to bring them on. Not the absolute hottest I've ever had, but pretty close and hot enough to make my nose run a little.

Fun time tonight. Looking forward to the next gathering.

Food meme

Nabbed from Heather who nabbed it from Mike

Favorite food to crunch: Corn nuts

Favorite comfort food: Rice porridge (congee)

Food that makes the best noise: Anything that sizzles on a hot pan

Favorite picnic lunch: Sammiches

Favorite food scene in a movie: The segment in Eat Drink Man Woman where the dad spends the whole morning making up dim sum dishes

Favorite food lyrics: Peaches by Presidents of the USA

Least favorite food lyrics: Can't think of any

Best food smell memory: The smells inside a real Chinese restaurant (not the cheesy Chinese buffet places).

Favorite summer snack: Strawberries

Food that reminds me of the ocean: Anything fish.

Favorite winter snack: Hot chocolate.

Most likely Favorite thing to eat for lunch: Chili and fries

Least likely to eat for lunch: Liver and onions in the cafeteria.

Makes me gag: Cilantro

Food tradition I don't like: Anything made with bean paste

Saturday night food: Don't really have any regular saturday night foods.

Favorite wild foods: Any kind of Pacific Salmon

Favorite medicinal food: Honey

Food that reflects my heritage: Dim sum

Food most like me: Chocolate. Simple, sweet and melts when warm.

Favorite raw food smell: Does chocolate count as a raw food?

The perils of procrastinating

So it seems a group of people at Ottawa Hospital in Ontario has just had a paper published in JNMT that covers pretty much the same material I worked on and just submitted to the same journal. My contact at GSK told me it was something they also sponsored (like my project), but wasn't aware they had submitted it for publication.

Trying to get my hands on a copy of the article so I can read it and see what they looked at. Fortunately they come up with the same conclusions and results I did. From the abstract it seems like some of the things they investigated were different from what I looked at, so hopefully it's different enough from mine that the reviewers decide it's still worthy of publication.

My abstract:

Objective: Residence time measurements obtained by serial whole body conjugate view imaging are commonly used in patient specific dosimetry for radioimmunotherapy (RIT) applications. In order to determine the effect of collimator selection on residence time measurements for ¹³¹I, the accuracy of ¹³¹I half-life measurements using multiple gamma camera and collimator combinations was investigated. Method: Serial anterior and posterior whole body images were acquired over a period of 15 days using 4 different gamma cameras with medium and/or high energy collimators. Background corrected geometric mean counts from the images were fitted to a mono-exponential curve to determine the half-life of ¹³¹I for the different gamma camera/collimator combinations. Results: An average half-life of 8.15 days with a standard deviation (SD) of 0.07 days was obtained from all camera/collimator combinations. A half life of 8.12 days (SD 0.11 d) was obtained for the high energy collimators, and 8.18 d (SD 0.04 d) for the medium energy collimators. These values are all very close to the 8.02 day ¹³¹I physical half-life and were not found to be statistically different (p=0.44). Similar results were also obtained for the measured half-life for single head gamma camera configurations (mean half life 8.15 d, SD 0.12 d). The therapeutic ¹³¹I-tositumomab dose resulting from the differences in measured half-life ranged between 2.58--2.6 GBq (69.8--70.4 mCi). Conclusion: There is no significant difference in ¹³¹I half-life and residence time measurements made using medium or high energy collimators in dual head or single head imaging configurations.

Their abstract:

¹³¹I-Tositumomab has been used in treating patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. It is generally recommended that high-energy collimators be used to image patients before they receive ¹³¹I-tositumomab therapy, to determine the effective half-life for therapeutic dose and gross biodistribution. Because many nuclear medicine departments do not possess high-energy collimators, this study was designed to assess the suitability of using medium-energy collimators. The effect of scanning speed was also investigated, in an attempt to optimize the acquisition time. Methods: Measurements were taken using an elliptic anthropomorphic torso phantom and an organ-scanning phantom fitted with fillable spheres (1-5 cm in diameter) and organ inserts. Three phantom studies were performed with differing initial ¹³¹I concentrations in the organs, the spheres, and the thoracic and abdominal chambers. Images were acquired with both high-energy and medium-energy collimators and at acquisition speeds of 20 and 100 cm/min. The half-life for each combination (study/collimator/speed) was calculated from a linear fit of the data. The contrast of the tumor sphere was assessed using 2 identical regions, placed on and beside the sphere, and averaged over several time points. Biodistribution and image quality were visually assessed by 2 independent observers. Results: Measured half-life values and visual assessment of biodistribution showed no significant difference between the 2 collimators (P = 0.32) or acquisition speeds (P = 0.85). A significant difference in the contrast of the tumor spheres was observed between the 2 collimators (P < 0.01) but not between acquisition speeds. Visual assessment of the images showed increased noise on the image acquired at 100 cm/min, although this noise did not affect lesion detectability. Conclusion: Measured half-life is not significantly different between the 2 collimators; hence, calculation of the residence time would be nearly the same. Medium-energy collimators can be used to accurately calculate the ¹³¹I-tositumomab therapeutic dose and detect alterations in biodistribution.

Journal Club: Simultaneous Acquisition of Multislice PET and MR Images: Initial Results with a MR-Compatible PET Scanner

Today's journal club article comes from JNM and talks about some new bleeding-edge tech alluded to in the previous journal club article: PET and MRI.

The technology presented in the paper is pretty bleeding edge and represents 2 years of instrumentation and development work. They present a prototype PET unit for use in a small animal MR magnet operating at 7T. Their solution to solving the problem of detecting light from the scintillator crystals was to use position sensitive photodiodes, which are less prone to distortions from magnetic field effects. In order to reduce electrical noise in the detectors, the authors used a cold nitrogen gas to cool the detectors. This is understandably a significant limitation for real world clinical work, but not insurmountable. Several interesting effects were noted with using the photodiodes and fiberoptic coupling and are nicely illustrated with sample images.

Some very interesting development work here that shows a lot of potential. It's not the first PET/MRI hybrid unit developed or the only one being worked on, but the design and implementation the authors have come up with has the potential of retrofitting existing MR scanners with the capability rather than having to get a new magnet. Obviously it's still several years away from any kind of implementation for human use, but in the meantime a working unit for small animal imaging would probably yield some very useful information for researchers.

Ciprian Catana, Yibao Wu, Martin S. Judenhofer, Jinyi Qi, Bernd J. Pichler and Simon R. Cherry, "Simultaneous Acquisition of Multislice PET and MR Images: Initial Results with a MR-Compatible PET Scanner", J Nucl Med 47: 1968-1976

Abstract:

PET and MRI are powerful imaging techniques that are largely complementary in the information they provide. We have designed and built a MR-compatible PET scanner based on avalanche photodiode technology that allows simultaneous acquisition of PET and MR images in small animals. Methods: The PET scanner insert uses magnetic field-insensitive, position-sensitive avalanche photodiode (PSAPD) detectors coupled, via short lengths of optical fibers, to arrays of lutetium oxyorthosilicate (LSO) scintillator crystals. The optical fibers are used to minimize electromagnetic interference between the radiofrequency and gradient coils and the PET detector system. The PET detector module components and the complete PET insert assembly are described. PET data were acquired with and without MR sequences running, and detector flood histograms were compared with the ones generated from the data acquired outside the magnet. A uniform MR phantom was also imaged to assess the effect of the PET detector on the MR data acquisition. Simultaneous PET and MRI studies of a mouse were performed ex vivo. Results: PSAPDs can be successfully used to read out large numbers of scintillator crystals coupled through optical fibers with acceptable performance in terms of energy and timing resolution and crystal identification. The PSAPD-LSO detector performs well in the 7-T magnet, and no visible artifacts are detected in the MR images using standard pulse sequences. Conclusion: The first images from the complete system have been successfully acquired and reconstructed, demonstrating that simultaneous PET and MRI studies are feasible and opening up interesting possibilities for dual-modality molecular imaging studies.

Maybe it'll still get accepted

Got my hands on a copy of the paper that beat mine to publication.

The end result they come up with is the same as mine, although their work was done on just one gamma camera and had a little more focus on image quality than mine did. I was able to do some cross-camera comparisons with my data and had a little more analysis on the core question (is T_1/2 the same between collimators). I think mine still has a good chance of being published. Hopefully the reviewers will also think it's a worthy addition to this other paper. I just won't have first post bragging rights.

Save the hard drive!

Uh oh, the boot drive on the computer at home has decided to disappear. I don't know if it was something I did when I put in a new DVD drive, or if it just happened to be a coincidence. BIOS claims there's nothing attached to any of the on-board IDE channels, so it's either a problem with the cabling, the drive or the motherboard is pooched. Computer POSTs fine, so I don't think it's the motherboard. I may have knocked something loose putting in the drive.

Time to crack the case open again and check things out.

Computer ressurection

Well, after trying various permuations of IDE interfaces, cables and drive connections, it seems the boot drive doesn't like it when anything is connected to the secondary IDE interface on the motherboard. Very odd. Doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the secondary channel because the boot drive is detected fine when I put it there. Whenever I have the boot drive on the primary and something on the secondary the system refuses to detect anything on either IDE channel.

Good thing for the IDE card I stuck in the computer a couple of years back or I'd have to give up the CD and DVD burners on the secondary channel. With a bit of creative wiring and a tiny bit of cable stretching, I was able to take the optical drives I had on the secondary and plug them into the IDE card.

Everything booted up just fine and all was good once again.

I guess it's time to start thinking about replacing the computer soon. Purchased it 5 years ago right before 9/11 happened (the suspension of air traffic for the few days afterward delayed shipping of the computer). I'd been planning on upgrading the CPU with a Powerleap PL-P4N and matching CPU to nearly double the processing power from 1.5 GHz to 2.6 or 2.8 GHz. Now with this latest finickyness (can I use that word?) I'm thinking maybe we should bite the bullet and go with a full system replacement instead. The way our budget is currently, it'll be at least 6 months before we can think about budgeting for a new system

Just one more thing to work in I guess.

You know the humidity is low when...

you keep getting static electric shocks from vacuuming.

The low humidity is nice, but man, I'm getting shocks from everything I touch. Sometimes I feel like I'm getting ECT treatments.

Life with two black dogs

or Why I Love My Dyson

Before

After

Scolded for inappropriate content

Due to spousal complaints, I had to remove yesterday's post showing off the hair the dogs leave around their crates. The wife objected and said it's not right to put pictures of the messes in the house online, even if there's a nice clean 'after' picture to go along with it. She says it's too much like airing our dirty laundry. I don't really see it. I just figured it was a good testament to the power of our Dyson.

Censorship! I'm being repressed!

:)

So much for the battery

While the battery in my laptop hasn't quite burst into flames yet, it looks like at least a few cells in it have gone bad. After just over two years, the once mighty laptop battery that used to be able to carry me through at least 4 hours of work and equipment testing now drops down to 7% within a few minutes of unplugging it from the wall.

Kinda puts a serious damper on mobility.

A new one from Dell is $170 while a refurb from Dell is $115. Time to go figure out who to talk to at work to see about getting a new battery.

Simba's got a bad knee

Did you know in dogs the knee joint called the stifle?

Yesterday we noticed Simba was favouring his back right leg a little more than usual and not putting much weight on it. It was something we noticed a few times at the park a few weeks back, but he never did it consistently enough to make us think it was much of a problem. Yesterday he was doing it a lot more, so it was off to the vet to check it out. Fortunately they weren't too busy so it didn't take too long.

The vet clinic isn't one of Simba's favourite places (oddly enough Nala loves going to the vet) so he was pretty mellow. The vet moved his leg around, poked, prodded and pulled and had some x-rays taken. He said all the joints seemed pretty stable, but he did feel a little bit of clicking when the stifle/knee was manipulated. He thinks Simba may possibly have partially torn or injured his ACL and that the clicking in the knee might be a result of some collateral damage to the cartilage.

So now Simba's restricted to just going out on the leash (no more dog park for a little while) and some Rimadyl to help with any inflammation on days he seems to be limping more. The vet also recommended adding some glucosamine supplements to his diet to help with the joint problem.

Hopefully he heals up well, but it's going to take a while. We'll keep a close eye on him for the next month or so and then follow up with the vet if we don't see much improvement.

Tape to tape 2: Cooking with smoke now!

Our home-built, cobbled-together-from-scrounged-parts data recovery service has reached a significant milestone. After much wrangling with SCSI cards and bad cables, we finally managed to bring up a Fedora 6 box with two LTO tape drives attached to it. Both drives were high voltage differential SCSI, which meant we needed to dig up an appropriate SCSI card. Managed to find one being sold through Amazon Marketplace and picked it up for $15 with shipping. Card worked fine. Ended up spending several days messing with various combinations of LTO drives and cables before getting something to work.

Now the system is up and running and both drives are recognized by the system. Hoping dd(1) would be all I needed to create a copy of the original tape, I put in
dd if=/dev/st0 of=/dev/st1 bs=256k

10 seconds later, I got a message that a whopping 240 bytes were copied from one tape to the other.

Crap. So much for the simple solution. I'm guessing I'm missing something that's not letting me see the rest of the data on the tape.

But at least it works! The data in that 240 bytes seems to indicate that it's some kind of tape header. Now I just have to figure out how to get to the rest of the data on the tape.

What Christmas Ornament Are You?

Nabbed from various LC bloggers

I need another weekend.

It was definitely a busy weekend for us. Friday was the wife's final exam for the semester and the annual department holiday party. She skipped the party, but I went. Then it was back home to assemble the mac and cheese, prepare the turkey and clean house for the dinner party the wife was having for her classmates.

Saturday the in-laws arrived for the weekend, we went out to cut down the Christmas tree we picked out a couple of weeks ago and then back home for more cleaning and cooking. There was a pretty good diverse and entertaining crowd of students for the party. The wife made everybody earn their supper again this year by putting them to work decorating the tree. Last year we bought a bunch of crafty-type things, took pictures of everybody and let them make their own ornaments to put on the tree. Some of those people came again this year and seemed pleased to be able to put their ornaments back on the tree again this year.

Then Sunday it was up early to tidy up the house, head off to the dog park and finish off some more cooking because we were hosting the board meeting and Christmas party for the CSCLRC. It was a pretty small turnout this year, with a couple of members having family or work commitments, and one other helping to deliver puppies. That made the gift exchange a little less wild than last year but it was a nice social gathering.

So after that whirlwind of weekend activity, I need another weekend to recover. If it wasn't for all the catch up stuff I have to do a work, I'd probably take a couple of days off this week. Bleh.

Bye Bye Physics Building

I was just reading that demolition has started on the physics building I pretty much called home for my undergrad career. It's all to make room for the new CCIS building. Judging from the webcam perched on top of the BioSci building, it looks like about half the building is gone already.

It's nice to hear that the Physics department will finally be getting some nice new modern facilities to work in, but it does make me a little bit sad to hear the building I practically lived in for 5 years is going away. There are a lot of memories in that building.

The demolition method being used to take the building down sounds kind of cool though. Take the insides out by plowing through all the interior walls with a Bobcat, then perch a backhoe on the roof to take the rest of the building down level by level. I'm sure there are more than a few former residents/students that wouldn't have minded being the bobcat or backhoe operator.

For five weeks, bobcats were driven on each floor, taking down walls and leaving only the basic concrete and steel supports in place.

Then, to take down the exterior, a single backhoe was hoisted onto the roof with a crane. Armed with a hydraulic "cruncher" -- basically a big pair of scissors capable of cutting through solid materials -- the backhoe began ripping up the roof.

Piece by piece, the top was dismantled until the backhoe was sitting on a tiny "island." The operator then used some of the debris to build a ramp down to the next floor. Once safely down, the backhoe pulled down the island.

Crews now plan to repeat this process, floor by floor, until nothing remains. The job is expected to be complete in early February. Some observers might think a wrecking ball would be a faster approach, but Ferguson said it can actually take longer because it is less precise that the backhoes.

This year's Christmas Tree

This is the tree they decorated. Not quite as big or tall as last year's but it's a nice tree.

Grown-up puppy

This is my 1200th entry. Yay me! :)

Simba is 10 months old tomorrow. Here he is looking all grown up, but still a little puppy-ish.

Review: Happy Feet

Went out to see the IMAX version of Happy Feet tonight. Cute movie with some great tunes. Cartoon musical I guess you could call it. The animation was great (even better on IMAX) and the songs and dancing were terrific. Robin Williams' characters were hilarious as were the crew of rock penguins. I think they kind of stole the show once you met them. Elijiah Wood, I don't think I liked so much in this movie. He just didn't seem penguin-y enough. There was even an environmental message squished in there, but it was more of a side plot and largely took back seat to the singing and dancing.

Skip the regular theater. Go see it on IMAX. It's fantastic there.

4 stars out of 5.

Holiday LED cheer

A dog and his bone

Five little known things

Heather hit me with this. I'm not sure I know 5 people that read this blog to tag though. I'm not even sure there are 5 little known things about me. I'm sure there are, but I already know them. I just don't know if other people know them. I guess I'll just pick out a few random things that I think people might not know.

1. I volunteer at the SC Aquarium about every other weekend. I work with the birds: preparing diets, cleaning out their cages, setting them out on display. It's a lot different from what I normally do which is probably why I enjoy it.
2. I played viola for about 8 years between grades 4-11. I was pretty good at it too and probably would have been better had I practiced a little more.
3. I used to be an avid road cyclist back home in Edmonton. With all the bike trails criss-crossing the city and the river valley, it's a great place to ride. It started with a high school bike trip through the Rockies around the Jasper National Park area. I haven't ridden since I moved to the US though.
4. I didn't own my first car until I was 26, when I moved to Detroit. Before that I either rode my bike where ever I needed to go or took the bus. I knew my way around town better on a bike than I did in a car.
5. I started my undergrad career with the plan of getting into theoretical astrophysics. Stellar and galactic evolution was something I found very interesting. But like most undergrads, I ended up changing my mind and deciding that medical physics would be a much more interesting field.

I think I'll try tagging (if any of them are reading...):

• Tom
• Geoff
• Rick
• Mike
• whoever else happens to be reading this

When does winter get here?

4 days before Christmas and it reached 23°C today.

Forecast calls for rain through the weekend but it's still going to be in the 20s for Christmas. While the warm weather is nice, it's just so un-Christmas-y. It's weird and unnatural. Unnatural I say!

An odd x-ray wave form

The other day I was doing some routine testing on one of the pediatric portable x-ray units (a Siemens Mobilette Hybrid XP). When I looked at the kV and radiation output wave form, I saw this odd stepping behaviour (radiation output wave form is the green line).

Normally I expect to see a pretty flat curve, maybe a little bit of a decline depending on the type of generator. While I don't know the particulars about the Mobilette's generator, I'm thinking at least part of it is a capacitive discharge type generator, which would explain the drops. I'm going to have to investigate this a little more to see if it's normal.

Where the spices are

I was watching the Good Eats fruitcake episode last night which features a segment where he visits a spice shop. So it got me thinking: with all the variety of cuisine and the long culinary tradition in Charleston, why isn't there a decent spice shop around? And if there is, why haven't I found it yet?

So what's up? Where, besides the local grocery store, are you supposed to go for good quality spices and people who know what they're selling?

Christmas greetings

The dogs would like to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday filled with lots of treats, biscuits and chew toys.

Christmas feasting

For various scheduling reasons, we ended up having the Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve instead. Rather than the traditional roasted turkey, we ended up doing a rib roast and salt dome fish.

The salt dome fish was something we did a few years back for another Christmas dinner with the family in LA. Had a much larger fish back then, but this year it was just as tasty.

First you start off with a good sized bass, or in our case, 3 smaller ones.

Then you make up the mixture of salt (kosher of course), egg white and water

Lay down a layer of the salt on a sheet pan and put the fish on it

Then cover it all up with the rest of the salt and bake for about 40 minutes at 350°F

When it's done (stick a thermometer into the middle and if it's 130°F, it's done), pick off the salt dome, remove the fish, brush off any extra salt and serve.

Contrary to what you might think from being baked under so much salt, the fish doesn't really turn out very salty at all, but it does stay nice and moist and oh so yummy. It's received rave reviews from the family both times we've done it so far.

The rib roast turned out very tasty too.

I have the best wife ever

because she gave me this for Christmas

Happy Birthday Nala!

Nala turns 2 today! Two years ago Nala was born/whelped and a couple of months after that we brought her home with us. Hard to believe all that time has gone by already. Seems like just a short while ago we were waking up every 2 or 3 hours to take her outside to go to the bathroom or watching her scamper around the apartment being a little puppy. Now she's a big grown up mellow dog who likes nothing more than to have someone throw a ball for her or give you lots of kisses.

Here she is at about 14 weeks old

Here she is now

IOP sunset

Institute of Psychiatry IOP, not Isle of Palms IOP

Caught this view on the way to the car a couple of weeks ago. Turned out a little different than I thought it would.

Mystery callers

The home phone still gets a lot of telemarketing calls, mostly from the phone company and the credit card companies we deal with. On the caller ID they usually show up as a toll free number without any name associated with it. We hardly ever answer the home phone anymore anyway.

Today I thought I'd run a few of the numbers through Google to see what came up. Stumbled on a very interesting site, whocalled.us, that tracks all kinds of numbers that people submit, and allows people to comment on the numbers. The top of the web page says

The phone is ringing, and I don't recognize the number,
All Caller ID says is, "NAME UNAVAILABLE".
Please help me figure out who is calling and what they want

The home page has a list of phone numbers ranked by the number of calls, number of comments and the states that were called most. You just enter the phone number and up comes a list of dates that people reported a call from that number. Usually one of the comments will provide a clue as to who the caller might have been. There's also a Google Map showing where calls were reported from.

Kind of an interesting site, but there's no indication of who's behind it or any other 'About Us'/'About this' type of information.

Coinage haul -> satellite radio

While the haul from my little box of coins wasn't nearly as big as Mike's, I did manage to net about $120, which was about twice what I was expecting. Taking a cue from Mike, I also decided to take the dough in the form of an Amazon.com gift certificate from the Coinstar machine. Getting all that change counted took me about 15 minutes or so feeding it through the little slot. I can't imagine how long it took Mike to get his haul counted.

With the dough and a couple more Amazon.com gift certificates received courtesy of my sister, we got the wife a pink Pioneer Inno XM radio receiver. Just waiting for it to arrive now.

Which Superhero Are You?

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 90% Spider-Man 70% Green Lantern 70% Robin 64% Hulk 60% Iron Man 60% Supergirl 52% The Flash 50% Batman 45% Wonder Woman 32% Catwoman 30%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...

Found at WWdN: In Exile

Purveyors of Pooch Paraphernalia

On a walk with the dogs, I noticed that Palmetto Paws and The Good Dog Bakery have joined forces to open up a new location in the James Island Center at the corner of Folly and Maybank (the little strip mall where the Piggly Wiggly, J'Paulz and Barberitos is located). The store is located underneath the big yellow NEXTEL sign, so presumably it's taken over the spot of a former NEXTEL store.

GDB is a perennial favourite with the dogs whenever we're at the Farmer's Market with all kinds of tasty treats and snazzy bandannas for the dogs. Their new location puts it a nice walking distance from us, so now the dogs can get a nice little snack and catch a break before heading back. Palmetto Paws always has great doggie stuff and is always a fun place to go with the dogs.

Now if only that sidewalk along Maybank was a little wider...