News and Views

This morning I got up and saw lying in the back yard the bottle of insecticide that had been up out of Apollo’s reach — or so I had thought.

The bottle was almost empty, and there was a hole chewed in the bottom. There was a new puddle on the porch of unknown composition, but undoubtedly the insecticide.

Apollo seemed to feel fine, but we called the vet anyway, who told us to rush him to the veterinary emergency room.

They fed him activated charcoal to soak up anything remaining in his digestive system and kept him for observation. Symptoms to watch out for are vomiting, diarrhea, agitation, tremors, and convulsions. He seemed a little agitated while we were there, but he is an excitable puppy anyway so not sure if that means anything.

The vet was optimistic that he hadn’t eaten much and probably would be fine, but they are going to keep him until this evening. The insecticide was specifically for spraying on dogs to treat mites (from his early puppy-hood), and was quite dilute. Hopefully it didn’t taste good either.

Apollo is still growing. I don’t have a picture — I’ll try to get one up, but he isn’t visibly much different from the one a month ago.

Still a very good natured dog — I’ve never seen him angry or upset, though he does get very excited when it’s time for a walk.

Everywhere we go people exclaim over what a beautiful dog he is. “Gorgeous” and “Beautiful” are the most common adjectives.

We’re headed up to Greer for the weekend, to stay in a cabin owned by the Bates family. If you don’t know, Greer is a tiny village in the White Mountains south east of Showlow.

Next week Devon is flying back to Southern California to interview with a Geophysics company. Sounds like it could be an interesting job for a year or so until he is ready to move on to Graduate School, though he plans to apply elsewhere also before making a decision. They sound very interested in him.

We just got back from California where Devon received his BS Degree in Physics from Harvey Mudd College.

In case you’re thinking, “Harvey Mudd College?”, it was rated by US News and World Report in their annual college rating issue as the number one undergraduate science and engineering college in the country.

Devon graduated with “High Distinction”, which is as high as they go.

He’s so glad to be out of the pressure cooker that he plans to take a year off before starting graduate school in Fall 2008. He’s looking for an internship in the mean time.

Congratulations Devon!

Apollo is now just 5 months old, and weighs just 50 pounds.

He goes through 20 pounds of dry and maybe 5 pounds of canned puppy food in about 2 weeks; nearly that much comes out the other end (Derek probably thinks it’s much more).

You are supposed to be able to start them pulling a sled or scooter when they reach 45 pounds, so I think it’s time he got to work. He gets bored pretty easily, which means digging or chewing or howling or whining. We try to take him to the dog park every couple of days, but I don’t think that’s often enough.

This picture doesn’t do him justice — he seems bigger than he looks here! The picture is also a little blurry — I’ll try to get a better one up.

There’s a new version of the Thunderbird email client available here; Version 2.0.0.0.

I’ve just installed it and can’t say how stable it is yet. There are a few new features. For example, you can tag messages with different categories (Important, Later, etc.), there are custom folder display options, saved searches, and viewed message history, along with improved security.

They aren’t making it an automatic upgrade for another week or two, maybe to get a better understanding of stability, but if you want to be an early adopter, now’s the time.

If you do download it, you will find that junk mail options are in different locations now and may have to be reset, though I think it retains your learned statistics. Look under Tools, Options, Privacy, Junk for some options, and Tools, Accounts, Junk for each account for other options.

Yesterday I felt pretty good. However this morning I woke up and the world was spinning around wildly. It was the worst vertigo I have ever experienced. Fortunately it only lasted a few minutes, but for that time I just closed my eyes and buried my head in my pillow. If I opened my eyes or moved my head I immediately felt nauseous almost to the point of vomiting.

It almost cleared up in a few minutes, then hit my about an hour later, then a couple of hours later again.

I decided this was enough, and headed off to the emergency room (Gisele driving, of course).

Chandler Regional Hospital is great. The ER was not very busy, and we got in right away. Still, by the time we got all the tests done and got moved from room to room we spent about 4 hours there.

They did a CAT scan (CT Scan) which showed no damage or other problems with the brain. They concluded that the trauma had messed with the inner ear, and that was causing the problem. A dose of “Meclizine”, and I felt a lot better.

They sent me home with instructions to take Meclizine whenever I feel dizzy and not to play basketball until all symptoms are gone.

I can live with that.

I was playing basketball this morning when I started sprinting after a loose ball. Somebody else was also sprinting after it from another angle. We collided and I got knocked into a cement block wall, head first.

The next thing I knew I was lying on the ground with everybody in the gym standing over me. I slowly came to my senses, and within 5 minutes stood up and walked a little. They said I had been out for just a few seconds.

That was this morning, and I think it’s safe to say that nothing serious is going to result — any brain swelling or bleeding would be evident by now. I’ve got a nasty bump on my head and a mild headache, but otherwise I’m OK.

Things like that happen so quickly. It could have been much worse.

There is a new version (2.1) of WordPress that has some advantages over the previous versions.

One significant improvement is that it is much better optimized in accessing the database, so it runs faster and has less impact on the server.

Unfortunately, it requires a newer version of the database than we have installed. So if you try to upgrade, it will not work.

It’s likely we will be upgrading the server soon (a few months?), but until then I wanted to get this warning out.

Gisele, Derek and I went to “Body Worlds” this week.

If you haven’t heard about this, it’s an exhibit of real human bodies that have undergone a process called “plastination”. Water and fats from body tissues are replaced with plastic “polymers”. The result is bodies completely preserved and natural looking in various poses and levels of disassembly.

The skin is always removed so that in most cases the muscles are all visible. In many cases the chest and abdomen are opened so the internal organs are visible, or sometimes even removed from the body as a whole assembly.

It was fascinating. I learned a lot about the body, and have a much better understanding of how it all fits together, and where the internal organs are.

It probably sounds gruesome, but I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all — all my senses told me that I was looking at plastic models instead of the real thing. Gisele was bothered by it a little, though she also felt that it was fascinating and well worthwhile.

All the bodies were donated by their owners before death, of course.

It will be in Phoenix through May 28, and is showing in other cities around the country and world. Go see it if you get a chance.