Happy Canada Day, eh!
141 years of Confederation!
CBC's Canada Day quiz this year is a tough one with a lot of current events questions.
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.
New laptop time?
The power connector on the motherboard side of my Dell laptop is starting to flake out. More often than not now, the laptop ends up running on battery power even though it's plugged into the wall. After a quick perusal of the Dell support forums, it seems to be a fairly common problem requiring a motherboard replacement.
So, do I see if I can get it repaired, or try to convince the higher-ups that I need a new laptop...
Big Bertha?
TD2 is out in the eastern Atlantic and looks like it could become TS Bertha soon.
Got a few days to watch this one.
From the 5AM NHC discussion:
THE BIGGEST LIMITING FACTOR ON THE FUTURE STRENGTH OF THE DEPRESSION IS THE COOLER WATERS AND MORE STABLE AIR IN ITS PATH. AFTER ABOUT 24 HR ON THE NHC TRACK...SSTS DROP BELOW 26C AND STAY BELOW THAT THRESHOLD FOR A COUPLE DAYS. THEREAFTER SSTS WARM SLIGHTLY AND MOST GLOBAL MODELS FORECAST AN ENVIRONMENT THAT WOULD FAVOR SOME INTENSIFICATION.
Hey, you in the beige SUV
Yeah, you there on the Ashley River Bridge.
Here's a smart little tip. Next time you want to cut across three freaking lanes, you might want to make sure the other two aren't occupied before yanking the wheel over, ok?
It's a good thing my highly honed defensive driving skills (drive like everybody else on the road is an idiot) kicked in because otherwise you would have ended up changing lanes into my engine, rather than ending up a foot off my front bumper.
Walking the bridges
Here's something that crosses my mind every time I drive over a bridge around here.
Is there some kind of law or requirement on the SC books that specifically requires bridges to have sidewalks? There are lots of bridges around here that have sidewalks on them, which is very nice.
The only problem is that for a lot of these sidewalked bridges, there are no sidewalks that lead up to the bridge.
So you can walk the bridges in relative comfort. You just have to rough it or put on your hiking boots to get there though.
What's up with that?
Touched
I think the Flying Spaghetti Monster visited me in a dream last night and touched me with His Noodly Appendage.
I was in that odd semi-awake-but-still-mostly-sleeping state that happens a few hours before the alarm goes off. A vision of His Noodlyness appeared and then I was transported to a place that was a mix of recent things, things from the past and things that seemed like they belonged in the future.
In my dream, I was looking for someone, but couldn't remember the person's name. First I was in the little building that was constructed for our PET/CT trailer (when it was still in the trailer). Underneath the building though was a basement with a tunnel leading to some kind of underground caves. The basement looked hundreds of years old with old, fragile decaying beams supporting the building above.
There were people around. Some I didn't know, some that I knew from here, and others that I knew from back home. Then from the cave below one of my roommates from when I was an undergrad student showed up. He climbed up the old beams to where I was and I asked him where I could find whoever it was I was looking for.
And then the dogs woke me up.
Mast cell tumour
Got a call from Nala's vet today who told me that the lump on the back of Nala's neck is a mast cell tumour (MCT).
Supposed to start her on Benadryl and she's got an appointment on Tuesday for bloodwork and a chest x-ray to look for any other MCT sites. The following Tuesday she has another appointment for surgery to remove the one on her neck.
Hopefully this one hasn't spread around anywhere else and that removing this one will be the end of it.
Mostly normal
Heard from Nala's vet today that her blood work results came back fine. No increase in circulating mast cells, which is good. However there was an incidental finding of slightly decreased thyroid hormone levels which would certainly explain why Nala's such a mellow, relaxed dog and why she likes to sleep all the time.
The lump has shrunk considerably since starting her on Benadryl. Tuesday is surgery day where the lump will be removed and hopefully that will be the end of Nala's MCT problems. I'll have to make sure to give her a good going over every now and then to make sure no others pop up though.
Thanks to everyone for their well wishes for Nala.
Sea turtle release
Next week, July 17 at 12:30PM, the SC Aquarium will be doing its first sea turtle release of 2008.
North Litchfield, a loggerhead sea turtle who entered the South Carolina Aquarium's Turtle Hospital in April, 2008 has been cleared for release by the Aquarium's full time veterinarian, Dr. Shane Boylan. On Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 12:30 p.m. join Aquarium staff at Folly Beach County Park to share in the excitement and honor one of the Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Rescue Program's finest volunteers, William Carlton (Billy) Warren II, who sadly passed away this past March.
WHLR Pet spa day!
Hey, dog owners!
Wild Heir Lab Rescue and Worthy Creatures (formerly Kreature Comforts) are holding a Pet Spa Day this weekend, July 12 from 12-4PM.
Bring your pet by to be pampered with doggy baths, nail trimmings, doggy massage and even microchipping. Purchase individual treatments, or select from a variety of spa packages. Special event discounts on all grooming supply purchases is also available.
Worthy Creatures is located in the Shoppes at Seaside Farms, 1960 Riviera Drive, Mt Pleasant, SC.
Physics can do everything
We physicists are getting into everything. Now, it seems there's something called 'social physics'. There must be something to it because so far this week I've come across two articles in this 'social physics' field.
The first paper is related to food, specifically the staying power of cultural and national dishes.
Abstract:
Food is an essential part of civilization, with a scope that ranges from the biological to the economic and cultural levels. Here, we study the statistics of ingredients and recipes taken from Brazilian, British, French and Medieval cookery books. We find universal distributions with scale invariant behaviour. We propose a copy-mutate process to model culinary evolution that fits our empirical data very well. We find a cultural `founder effect' produced by the non-equilibrium dynamics of the model. Both the invariant and idiosyncratic aspects of culture are accounted for by our model, which may have applications in other kinds of evolutionary processes.
The second article from the July issue of Physics Today. It's a more general news article about how social networks are starting to attract physicists and mathematicians.
From the article:
Researchers studying self-organizing social networks look at how links are formed between individuals, whether some individuals or nodes are better connected than others, and the collective action or behavior of the entire network. In the past social scientists relied on surveys and questionnaires, but on the Web "social behavior is self-documenting—it leaves traces behind," says Microsoft research sociologist Marc Smith, who studies and designs improvements for social online applications.
Some condensed-matter physicists are drawn to social network modeling because it is similar to a many-body problem, says Huberman. Like spin-glass materials that have disordered and unpaired magnetic spins, individuals have conflicting interactions with their neighbors, and their uniqueness leads to disorder, says Université de Paris-Sud physicist Marc Mézard. It's a patent from Mézard's spin-glass theory work that is now paying off for Microsoft: He, Chayes, and collaborators are using that patent to solve optimization problems such as sending messages from one node to others, bypassing intermediates.
See, there's physics in everything!
DIY Photovoltaics
That's the fancy schmancy word for solar power.
This month's issue of Physics Today has (in addition to the blurb on social physics) a neat article on how to set up a small solar power system for your house to run things like the TV or other appliances. Even if you don't have the skill to put one together yourself, the article is an interesting read that shows you what goes into a PV (photovoltaic) system and how they work. It's not a comprehensive guide though, but is still very informative. The author emphasizes the fact that you don't need to make your house fully dependent on solar (going off the grid). Even if the system you build only powers a few appliances, you have the satisfaction of being able to use power generated by the sun and not from some power plant somewhere.
From the article:
By offsetting electricity bills, properly sized grid-tie systems can recover the cost of installation in as little as 8 years in states with rebate programs—though 15 years is a more typical time frame. Small standalone PV systems will likely not recover installation costs at today's energy rates: Many components are necessary or desirable whether the system is large or small, but they cost similar amounts in either case. Still, few PV owners are motivated by purely economic reasons. That couldn't be more true for me. I opted to build a small standalone system to power my modest living room, which includes a TV, DVD/VCR, stereo, and lighting. My goal was to learn the ins and outs of a personal PV system, characterize performance, and experiment with various configurations. The sense of satisfaction I get when watching a movie or reading a book using stored solar energy is reward enough.
Hey, Charleston Linux users!
There's a meeting of the Charleston Linux Users Group going on tomorrow at the Muddy Waters over in West Ashley (1331 Ashley River Road). Come on by and hang out with a bunch of Linux geeks. Everybody's welcome whether you're a pro, starting out or just curious and want to learn more.
Spa day fun
Had a lot of fun at today's WHLR Pet Spa Day. A bunch of dogs came by for bathing, grooming and other spoiling. Square Onion provided some very tasty people food and a great time was had by all.
The pet spa stations
This little guy found a comfy spot in the store
Yummy people food provided by Square Onion
Bath time!
Bichon post-bath
See the rest of the pictures over here.
Recovering at home
Nala's back home recovering from her surgery to remove the mast cell tumour. With the Benadryl therapy, the mass had shrunk quite significantly so by surgery time it was pretty tough to find. The vet took a big chunk of skin and tissue out to make sure she got everything so now Nala's got a shaved neck and long 6 or 7 cm incision.
It should heal up nicely. The hard part will be keeping Simba and Mel away from it and keeping Nala from scratching at it. I cut the legs off some old pajamas to slip around her neck and act like kind of a scarf which should help.
In two weeks, she goes back to the vet to have the staples removed.
Dog TCO
With Nala's mast cell tumour and resultant vet bills, it got me thinking about the costs involved in pet ownership, something that most people usually don't think much about when they first get a pet. Most people tend not to think much past the initial cost of the dog, whether it's from a (hopefully reputable) breeder, rescue group or shelter.
Once the dog is home though, there's a whole list of recurring expenses: food, vet care, toys, supplies, training and kennel costs to name a few.
Since I use Quicken to track and categorize everything I spend, figuring out what the
Note how large the food and vet slabs of the pie are. Food is a large chunk because I feed the dogs a fairly high quality kibble (California Natural Lamb & Rice). No cheap grocery store crap for them. Medication includes any prescribed medications, along with heartworm preventative (Sentinel). Pet Supplies includes thinks like collars, leashes, crates (probably some toys) and flea/tick repellent (K-9 Advantix), supplements and anything else that I might consider a pet supply. The Other Pet category is kind of a catch-all category, but includes the cost of the dogs ($1700).
Boarding (Kennel) is a fairly significant cost for me as well. Have to put the dogs somewhere when I go away on conferences or vacations that I can't take the dogs along on.
Fortunately Labs are wash and wear type dogs, so I don't spend much on grooming.
Here's how the expenses break down monthly.
Monthly expenses average about $390/month but can frequently exceed that.
The total over the past 3.5 years is just under $16.4k or about $4600/year. This is for two well bred Labs without very many health issues. For dogs with health problems, this can be much, much higher. Your own analysis may yield different numbers, but I suspect the overall distribution of expenses will probably be fairly similar.
But you know what, I wouldn't have it any other way. I consider it all money very well spent. My Labs are my kids.
Sing me to sleep
Chuck sent me the link to this video. Thought it was pretty cute.
Clean bill of health
Got a call from Nala's vet today with her biopsy results. Looks like they got all of the mast cell tumour and characterized it with a low likelihood of recurrence. I'll still need to watch out for any other bumps that might form, but she's looking in pretty good shape. Now all we need to do is wait for her to heal up and get the staples removed, unless she manages to do that herself (she's already managed to get rid of two staples).
Cristobal christened
NHC has made TD3 into TS Cristobal with the 2PM update.
Judging from the radar loop, it looks like the most we'll be getting is some breeziness and maybe little rain from the outer bands.
From the 2PM NHC advisory:
CRISTOBAL IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHEAST NEAR 7 MPH AND THIS GENERAL MOTION IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS. ON THIS TRACK...THE CENTER OF THE TROPICAL STORM IS EXPECTED TO MOVE ALONG THE COASTS OF SOUTH AND NORTH CAROLINA TODAY AND TOMORROW.
Water + PDA = Hosed
After wondering where my PDA had wandered off to, I found it in my pants pocket.
The pants that I pulled out of the washing machine and was about to toss in the dryer.
Oh. Crap.
This is what it looked like when I put it on the cradle.
See the pretty cloud background? That's not a background image.
I was actually quite surprised it even turned on.
Then it did this
The T3 only has power when it's on the cradle, so I suppose that means it's pretty much dead.
I guess this will be my chance to ugprade. It's too bad Palm doesn't have anything I want to upgrade to. Guess I'll be surfing the internets looking for a used T3.
Shuffling along
I think the running is starting to get a little easier. The first lap is getting a little easier to get through and I'm still sucking wind at the end of my mile, but the in-between parts feel better. I think my pace is getting a bit faster too.
The heat still makes it tough to run although today was a little cooler than Monday's run. Now up to doing a 3 lap warm up walk, jog/shuffle 6 laps, a 3 lap cool down walk and then 3 more laps on the indoor track to finish cooling off. Total distance of 2.5 miles.
Definitely feeling much better about running than when I first started out, but it's still tough.
Birthday pair
Heather and Mr. Heather/Tim were nice enough to host a party for themselves and invite a few people, so I made the journey out to Moncks Corner to join them.
Birthday girl Heather
Birthday boy Mr. Heather/Tim cutting the cake
Mike giving Wallace some attention
Mom and daughter
Luau for the dogs
It was a busy evening for me as I shuttled myself between a couple of events last night.
First up was WHLR's Bow Wow Luau fundraiser event.
It was hosted by the folks at Down to Earth, an outdoor garden/living space type place that had a lot of neat stuff: plants, fountains, outdoor furniture, that kind of thing.
There were some nice beachy tunes being played and some great food provided by Square Onion.
There were some great baskets being raffled off and everybody there seemed to be having a good time.
Check out the rest of the pictures here.
Explore the universe with NASA Images
The NASA Images site is so full of awesome that I think I'm going to bust.
Really, it is. Positively overflowing with awesome!
NASA Images is a service of Internet Archive ( www.archive.org ), a non-profit library, to offer public access to NASA's images, videos and audio collections. NASA Images is constantly growing with the addition of current media from NASA as well as newly digitized media from the archives of the NASA Centers.
The timeline on the home page is pretty slick, taking you from 1968 all the way up to 2008 with little thumbnails of significant items that pop up as you go from year to year. You can select a keyword to browse through (Gemini, Skylab, Apollo, etc) or choose from one of the four main categories above (Universe, Solar System, Earth, Astronauts) to start your journey. You can also search keywords on your own.
Browsing the images is pretty easy. On the left side are lists of keywords that you can click to narrow the selection of images displayed. Click another keyword and it's added to the search criteria list. Click an image and you're taken to a page that shows the image along with a bunch of meta-information about the image. Scrolling the mouse wheel while the cursor is on the image zooms in and out (or use the zoom selector placed over the image). Panning around a zoomed image is as simple as clicking and moving the cursor around. The box with the image meta-data can be expanded or collapsed when you're finished reading.
A potentially very cool feature is the ability to create your own media groups and presentations, allowing you to collect, share and show off your favourite images. You can also explore media groups and presentations that other people have created too.
Yeah, this is going to be a fun site to explore.
Opening the Apple
The dogs and I cruised downtown to check out the hubbub surrounding the opening of the Apple store on King St.
We got there to discover a pretty long lineup stretching from the store, around the corner and down the block. It was a pretty long line
Not only were there lots of people waiting to get into the store, there were also plenty of people watching the people waiting to get into the store.
And finally, a little after 10AM, the store opened to much applause (mostly from the employees)
I didn't bother to go into the store because, quite frankly, there are many more things that are way more fun than trying to navigate a crowded store with 3 dogs. And besides, it'll still be there tomorrow, probably without the lines.
You can see the rest of my pictures here. I'm sure Jared will have more pictures and video from inside the store.
Movie conjunction
The Terrace Theater (which just happens to be up the road from me) is showing Casablanca through Thursday. They're also showing the new X-Files movie too! Never one to pass up seeing Casablanca on the big screen, tomorrow I'm making a point of indulging in a double feature. At 1 PM, I'm planning on going to see Casablanca, which should finish up just in time for me to catch the 2:50PM showing of X-Files.
I'm so giddy I'm about to explode :)
Feel free to join me there.
Lowcountry dog park tour: Hampton Park dog run
A while ago, the idea popped into my head that I should do a tour of the area dog parks and blog about them. I'm going to start the series off with the one I go to most often, the Hampton Park dog run.
Located at the corner of Rutledge and Grove on the Charleston Peninsula (above the Crosstown), this dog park is a large fenced in area providing a large tree for shade, several benches lining the perimeter and a water fountain so the dogs can get water. Bushes line two sides of the dog park, and there are two gates (dog-lock style) opening into the parking lot and onto Grove St on the other side.
You'll find lots of local residents from the surrounding neighbourhood at the dog park during various times of day. The busy times tend to be early morning and late afternoon between 5-8PM (depending on the season). It's a nice place for both dogs and people to socialize. An ample supply of tennis balls is ever present and new ones seem to appear out of nowhere periodically. If you bring your own balls or dog toys, prepare for them to be come community property for the duration of your stay.
The dogs that frequent the dog park are all friendly, but it's always a good idea to keep an eye on your dog because you never know when a scuffle might break out.
There are a couple of poop bag stations that are usually filled most of the time as well as a poop scooper for cleaning up after your dog, but it never hurts to bring your own supply of bags for the rare occasion the bag stations are empty.
Here's a Google Map of the area around the dog park. The dog park is in the middle.
Dog Park USA
Serendipitously, the day after I started my Lowcountry Dog Park series, I ran into Dog Park USA via a link posted on FriendFeed.
The site is geared towards providing a directory of dog parks around the US, and from the looks of things already has a pretty good collection of them.
Each dog park has it's own page with map and brief description. Registered users can log in to submit photos or reviews of a dog park and rate the park as well.
One neat feature is the ability to form and join groups for a little bit of social networking I suppose.
Navigating the site is pretty simple. Haven't seen a whole lot of content on the site yet. There are a few articles, a low (for now) activity forum and a few other things. I think there's some good potential for the site, especially for people traveling or on the move and looking for a good dog park to go to.