News and Views

In early August the surgeon released me to play basketball, and things were going well. I was shooting at a good percentage, feeling good and getting stronger.

Then around the first of September I started feeling pain in my shoulder again and getting weaker. One day I could hardly lift my arm, and it hurt to try. When I felt good enough to try to play basketball, my shot was way off. I thought I might have torn the repair.

I had been playing basketball every day the previous few days, and the doctor thought I was probably just overdoing it, but he sent me in for an MRI just to make sure.

MRI results show that the repair is completely sound and healing well. But there was inflammation in the tendon and also inflammation in a nearby shoulder muscle. The verdict was that indeed I had been overdoing it. What a relief!

I’m back playing ball again, but trying to rest at least a day in between, and using ice and NSAIDs. It’s just going to take time before I’m 100% again.

I spent the last 10 days in the far east — New York and Pennsylvania. The main event was a four-day hike in the Pennsylvania “wilderness”, but I also got to meet Jennifer’s family and ride with Dale on his delivery route (twice!).

It was great to finally meet Louis, Vinnie, Carmen and Lucy, after hearing so much about them. They are an energetic bunch, and could tire out a marathon hiker in a short time! They’ll only be in Buffalo a few more months. Once Jenny finishes her degree they will be moving out of their little house in the city.

It was lots of fun riding with Dale on his route. He knows all the pharmacists on his route by name, and they seem to all know and like him. I learned how to keep delivery records, and we had some good talks on the way. And on the weekend we drove through Cuba and saw my childhood haunts again, and then made a quick trip to Niagara Falls. It never fails to impress. Here’s Dale:

(Note: To see larger images, Right-Click the picture and select “View Image”.)

The big event was the four day hike in Pennsylvania. We went to Sproul State Forest in North Central Pennsylvania. Karen drove up from Pittsburgh and met us at the town of Renovo the night before we began.

I was worried after reading Dale’s blogs about hiking in the east. It seemed like there was lots of mention of rain and water on the trail. Having hiked only in the west before, I wasn’t very familiar with these conditions, and it didn’t sound like much fun. But I figured we would probably be lucky and hit a dry spell. I was wrong. Boy, was I wrong!

Every day of hiking, within 1/2 an hour I began to feel moisture in my socks. Within an hour or so my socks were wet enough to wring out, and they stayed that way the rest of the day. On two nights we were able to somewhat dry our shoes by a camp fire, but on the first night we couldn’t find enough dry kindling to start a fire, so the next morning there was nothing to do but put on soggy shoes.

Here’s one of the lucky nights we got a fire going. Notice the shoes around the fire.

We crossed about 40 bodies of water. About 6 of those had some kind of bridge, which made it easy. Here’s Dale crossing such a bridge:

About 25 times we were able to hop across a stream or creek on logs or stones, though this was dangerous because everything was very slippery.

About 6 to 8 times (it varied between us) we had to take our shoes off and wade across in our Crocs. Here’s Karen doing just that:

Here’s another creek:

And worst of all, there were a few times, especially on the last day, when we ended up wading through a swamp in our shoes. After a while you just give up trying to avoid the water. The goal then becomes to minimize the amount of pants that are wet by choosing the shallower spots.

The capper came Sunday morning. Saturday evening we went to bed with a light rain falling. It continued off and on all night, sometimes heavier. In the morning I heard a tent unzip, and then shortly later Karen called out, “It snowed!” It sure had. We packed up our wet gear and started the final slog out.

Here’s what the cars looked like when we finally got back.

From this description it sounds like we had a terrible time, miserable throughout. But that’s not true. I actually had a wonderful time. I couldn’t have asked for better hiking companions, always cheerful and ready to do more than their share of the work. And the challenges made the experience an adventure.

Karen was a little bit supercilious about her abundance of dry socks, but I didn’t complain when she lent me a bowl to eat out of and made most of the meals.

Dale was so observant, pointing out that we were hiking on an old railway, or naming the different trees. We could have been hiking with a ranger.

I might have enjoyed it even more if my feet had been dry, but that’s a small price to pay for a few great days in the wilderness.

I went for a short hike in the desert this morning with my friend Les. Hiking along a wash, we saw an old mine shaft up on the hill and decided to check it out.

We climbed up to it, and it looked like it went back in for a ways, at a slight downward slope. I didn’t have a real flashlight, but I used the Flashlight app on my Android phone and started down. The mine shaft was only 4 feet wide. I was watching where I was going, but there were lots of largish rocks that I was stepping on, and I couldn’t see down into the shadows very well.

About 20 feet in, I heard a rustling sound by my feet. I couldn’t see anything, and then I heard it again, slightly behind me. I finally saw the 3-4 foot long rattlesnake, about a foot away, between me and the entrance. I jumped forward, further into the mine and it let out a strong rattle, pulling its head back with its neck in an “S” shape, ready to strike.

So there I was, down a narrow mine shaft with a rattlesnake between me and the exit. The shaft was too narrow to get by him, and the shaft ended about 20 feet further in. No exit that way.

The snake sat there, semi-coiled, facing towards me, and it was a standoff. I tossed a small stone towards him and unfortunately hit him on the tail, which caused him to come towards me a little. I climbed up on a ledge, out of his reach and pondered the situation.

I found a few more stones and tossed them at the snake, trying to hit between him and me, to scare him into going the other way. After a few stones he turned and started to move away. I lost sight of him as he crawled under a rock, but Les was watching from the outside and assured me that he was under a large rock and should be safe for me to come out past him, which I hurriedly did.

It made for an interesting morning!

(Above) Looking down into the mine, after I had escaped. You can see the snake just right of the center of the picture, on the right side of the mineshaft, draped over the rock. You can just see the edge of the left side of the shaft on the left edge of the picture.

Next week Dale, Karen and I are going backpacking in the east somewhere, probably western Pennsylvania. We should be gone 4 days/3 nights.

This will be my first experience backpacking back in the east, but I understand it is nothing but non-stop rain, mud, chiggers and leeches. I’ll humor my back-east relatives by pretending to enjoy it anyway.

I’ve posted before about Apollo having occasional seizures. These are full-blown grand mal seizures, lasting a minute or so, then taking 5 – 10 minutes to fully recover.

The vet diagnosed epilepsy, not uncommon for huskies. He averaged maybe one seizure every two or three months, and the vet said as long as they don’t happen more often than once a month, nothing needed to be done. Just live with them.

It went on this way for about 3 years. Then about two months ago, he had a normal seizure. A month later another one. A week later, again. Then 20 hours later. Then 3 hours later. We didn’t like this trend at all, so we took him to the pet emergency room, where he spent the night under observation. No more seizures that night, but they said it is time to start treating him.

After a visit to the Veterinary Neurological Institute (which fortunately happens to have one of their two national centers about 10 miles from our house), he has started taking twice daily doses of phenobarbital. I knew phenobarbitol was a depressant, but looking it up on Wikipedia I see that its main use now is as the “first line treatment” for seizures, in both humans and canines.

Unfortunately, it has side effects. The first week or so it made him hyper (which the vet said to expect). He stayed up all night whining and yipping, and broke out of the kitchen and woke us up by jumping up on our bed one morning. Then he transitioned into a sedated state, spending most of the day lying on the floor. When he tried to stand his legs sometimes slid out from under him and he walked very slowly.

After two weeks he is starting to get used to it, and is a lot more normal the past couple of days. He seems to have regained a passion for playing fetch with his ball, dropping it at our feet multiple times a day, saying “Let’s go out back and you throw the ball for me!”.

Unfortunately, the vet said that he is due for an increase in dose. I hesitate to put him back in that groggy state again, after seeing the old Apollo showing up, but I guess we should follow medical advice. We’ll probably wait another day or two.

So far no seizures since that bad day. Let’s hope it stays that way — if he starts to seize again, we will have to increase the dose, or even put him on other drugs with worse side effects.

Devon is part of a big ad campaign for “Peacock Cookies” in Taiwan right now. Here’s his face on the side of a bus:

And here’s an ad. This first shows a Flash application. You can click the various links at the bottom (all in Chinese) and see a couple of scenes showing Devon, but the most interesting is the link labeled “TVCF” on the lower right. That will run the two TV commercials, one after another (repeating infinitely).

The commercial is for a kind of cookie. The guy in the suit represents the “cool mint” flavor. He’s supposed to be “cool”. Devon represents the “warm” flavor. The girl tries to decide between the guys/cookies.

Devon said the ads are running frequently on Taiwan television, several times an evening.

Crazy, huh?

I received an email this morning that looked like spam — Xerox_Document.zip. Looking inside the zip file was a file like this:
  Xerox_Scan_phyexe.doc

Looks like a Word document, right? NOT! The sender used something called “Right to Left Override”. It was originally implemented to support languages such as Arabic that write right to left. If the code is inserted in the middle of a string, the following letters are reversed. So if you could see the RLO character, it would look like this:

  Xerox_Scan_phy[RLO]exe.doc

and if you removed the RLO, you would see the real name like this:

  Xerox_Scan_phycod.exe

Clearly an executable program, and that’s how Windows would interpret it if you tried to open it. It would then install trojans, viruses or other malware on your computer and you would have a mess.

Here’s another example.

So that’s a warning. If you get a file you aren’t expecting, even if it looks like a harmless Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, a .jpg picture, or even a .txt text file, don’t willy-nilly open it. The bad guys are getting better at hiding their evil intent. Check with the sender first to make sure they really did send you something, and that it is safe.

HP announced a couple of days ago that they were going to discontinue their “TouchPad” tablet. They decided to clear inventory by reducing the price to $100 for the 16GB, or $150 for the 32GB version. The web and retail stores immediately were hit by a buying frenzy that is still going on.

Most of the stores are sold out, but you can still find them online. I bought three — one for me and one for each of my kids. I bought the first two directly from HP last night — their server was so overloaded that it took me about 2 hours before I could finally get to the confirmation page. I got the third this afternoon from Amazon. They are now sold out, but Barnes and Noble still has a few.

They are not quite as cool as the Apple iPad, which is why they weren’t selling well at $400 and $500. But at $100 and $150, they are a great deal.

They won’t get here for several days. I’ll post my review here after it arrives.

The surgeon today released me to play basketball.

He said I can do pretty much whatever I want, but to not push too hard for another couple of months. I don’t need to go back and see him, and my official physical therapy is over, though I will continue the exercises at home.

He said I am 3-4 months ahead of schedule as far as flexibility and strength, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the healing is also ahead of schedule, so I will be easy on it.

It’s been a long 19 weeks. I hope I still remember how to play!

I didn’t do or read of any surveys, but based on the discussions and questions, I brought back the following impressions from the Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas.

The focus on the meeting was “Science, Skepticism and Critical Thinking”. Many different topics were discussed, but the beliefs of the participants probably roughly went this way, from fewest people believing to most people believing:

Probably less than 1% believe in:
Talking with the dead
Fairies, gnomes, trolls, etc.
Moving objects with your mind
Mind readers
Power bands (bands worn on the wrist that increase your strength)
Ghosts
Bigfoot, Loch Ness monster
The moon landing was faked
Obama is a Muslim
9/11 was an inside conspiracy (i.e. Bush, Cheney or Jews, etc.)

Maybe 5% or less believe in:
Homeopathic medicine
Aliens visiting the earth (might belong in the 1% category)
Creationism
Vaccines may cause autism

Maybe 10% believe in:
Acupuncture
Chiropractic medicine can work for other than bones and joints
Intelligent life probably exists somewhere else in the universe
God or Gods
People possess a soul, something other than the physical body

Maybe 50% believe:
Chiropractic medicine can work for bones and joints
Life probably exists somewhere else in the universe
Science can help make moral decisions about right and wrong

Maybe 80% believe:
Humans caused global warming
All mind and mental activity is completely based on brain function

Maybe 90% believe:
Global warming is real, whether caused by humans or not
Science can help determine what is true

Maybe 95% believe:
Life evolved on earth by natural selection
If a God exists, it doesn’t interfere with the world. Everything happens by natural causes.
Science is the best way to determine what is true

These numbers reflect what I believe too, roughly in order of probability.

What superstitions or valid beliefs did I leave out?