Satellites

I took Max for a walk tonight, a little after 11 p.m. While we were making our way around the block I spotted two satellites whizzing through the sky. The first one I saw was moving almost straight west to east, and well to the north of me, considering how low in the sky it appeared to be. A few minutes later I spotted another satellite. It seemed to be much higher up, because it wasn't nearly as bright as the first one. It was on a more north to south path as well. I have no idea what sort of satellites they were. All I can say with confidence is that they weren't communications satellites. Still, it's always neat to see something like that.

Where there's smoke, there's the fire department

As I was getting ready to go to bed last night, I smelled smoke. It didn't smell like leaves, or wood. Rather, it smelled like paper was burning. Naturally concerned, I checked around the house, but didn't find anything smoldering. I had some windows open, so I checked to see if the smell was coming from outside. It didn't seem to be. Deciding the whole thing was no big deal I turned in. I hadn't been in bed a few minutes when I heard sirens. They grew louder, until it was clear they were coming into my neighborhood. Looking out my bedroom window, I could see blue and red flashing lights illuminating the backs of the houses behind mine. Dressing quickly, I headed for the front door. Outside, at least two fire engines and two ambulances were slowly making their way down my street, sirens now off, lights still going. They never stopped, just rolled slowly along until they came to the next intersection. One turned south, one turned north, and two kept going straight. Then, apparently, they went back to the fire station. I don't know if there was any connection between their arrival and the smoke I smelled, but it was an odd coincidence.

Spring

Spring may be my favorite time of year. Today, for example, is just perfect. It's sunny, but not too warm. I have my windows open, and don't need to run my furnace or my air conditioner. I love it. The only downside is that allergens are at some kind of all time high, but that's what Zyrtec is for. I'm happy to say I haven't been bothered much in the way of allergies, because I'm taking my pills for a change. In advance, too. I usually wait until the symptoms are unbearable, and even then I often manage to convince myself that it's a cold or something. Not this year! Best of all, Zyrtec no longer needs a prescription, and there are generic versions available, so I only pay $0.61 per pill, instead of $2.50 or more.

Off to the park.

I took Max to East Park today, for the first time in a long while. He was so excited to be there that when I set him on the ground while I was getting his cart out of the car, he went tearing off, dragging his hind legs behind him. Fortunately he's not nearly as speedy or agile as he used to be, and I was able to catch him easily.

Once I got his cart onto him, we spent quite a while exploring. Max likes the bridge that carries Carolina Avenue over the Winnebago river on the west edge of the park, so he sniffed around there for a bit, before heading east into the park itself. I suppose we were there for an hour or so while Max reacquainted himself with everything. Not a bad way to spend the middle of the morning, and good for both of us.

Also, it seemed to me that Max was moving his hind legs a little bit as he wandered around. Not very far, but back and forth, like he was walking. That's something I hadn't noticed in the past. Hopefully it is a sign of things to come.

Max's new wheels

The cart/wheelchair I ordered for max showed up yesterday. It's pretty neat, weighing in at less than two pounds, with some ability to be adjusted.

Most important of all, Max doesn't seem to mind it one bit. We took it for a short walk yesterday, and a much longer walk today (around the block). Max didn't move very fast, probably because he's still getting used to this new way of getting around, but he made it the whole way on his own power.

Now all I have to do is make a ramp for the front porch, and Max will be able to go in and out on his own, at least in the summertime.

Max Update

Just to let you all know, Max is doing much better now. He still can't move his hind legs, but he's eating his usual dry dog food. He no longer dribbles urine (at least not often), but still needs me to squeeze his bladder empty several times a day. His stools have firmed up, and I've learned to recognize the signs that he needs to go: he whimpers a bit, and his tail starts bobbing up and down. Speaking of Max's tail, he can wag it bit now. He also gets around by dragging himself with his front legs. This morning when I asked him if he wanted to go out, he scooted from his bed to the front door in no time flat. Also, the doggy wheel chair I ordered for him arrived today. Somewhat to my suprise, Max took to it right away, without any fuss. We even went for a short walk to try it out. I don't know if Max will ever be able to walk normally again, but he should enjoy a reasonable quality of life despite his handicap. That's pretty cool, and a great relief to me.

Max Update

Just letting everyone know how Max is doing. Saturday he hurt his back again, this time by jumping off the couch. At least that's what I think. I didn't actually see what happened. Seeing that he was in pain I gave him a little baby aspirin, and that seemed to help. He was at least able to rest that night.

Sunday morning he was hobbling around, again in pain but able to eat, drink, and go outside and relieve himself. By noon, though, he was unable to move his hind legs. I medicated him the best I could, with aspirin for his pain and benadryl to calm him down (it works as a mild sedative in dogs), and Monday morning I took him to the vet. There, Max got a shot of steroids and tranquillizers, and I got prescription pills to dose him with at home. Once home he commenced resting again, zonked from the drugs, and spend the night in relative comfort.

I say relative because he's having trouble urinating on his own. I tried to "express his bladder" as they say, but I was squeezing in the wrong place. So today I had to take him back to the vet to learn how to do it right. The Doc had Max peeing like a racehorse in no time, and from the volume I'm sure max was in plenty of discomfort. One good sign is that once the Doc got him going, Max was able to assist in the process to some degree.

The Doc also wants me to flex Max's hind legs on a regular basis, which leads to another good sign: while I was doing so today Max resisted a little. I could feel it as I moved his legs back and forth. This all makes me more optimistic that Max will pull through this. He might end up needing one of those doggy wheelchairs, but that's far from the worst that could happen.

Lots of Snow

As you can see from the above image, from Sunday night, through all of Monday, and into Tuesday morning, we got about six inches of snow. My roof is piled deeper with snow than I think I have ever seen it before. The snow on my front lawn is two and even three feet thick in places, and the same goes for the back yard. My neighbor across the street, with whom I had a brief chat whilst taking this picture, is eager for spring because he is running out of places to put all the snow. My front yard is bigger than his, and there is a lot of open space to the east of me, so I don't have that problem, but I heartily agree with him. My main problem is my driveway. It has been cracked in many places ever since I bought this house, but this winter it has a terrible case of frost heave. It's so bad under the garage door itself that today the door didn't want to close. I finally managed to get it shut, but I imagine I'll have to adjust the closure of the door if things get any worse. One thing is for sure, come spring I'm patching as many of those cracks as I can. I know of a kind of tar rope that you shove down into the cracks and then melt with a torch. It's much better than caulk or plasti-crete.

As if that wasn't enough, my car is in the shop for a leaking brake line. I borrowed the truck from Chris (actually, legally its mine, so I guess I just reclaimed it), but it's being difficult, running its battery down and not wanting to hold a charge. I suspect it needs a new battery. What it really needs is to be taken to the scrap yard and replaced with a much newer truck, one that doesn't drink gasoline like there's no tomorrow and leak transmission fluid.

On the bright side, though, I did get the truck to start today, when I thought it was done for. I had gone out to start it, but it would only crank, not fire. On the third try it kept cranking, even after I turned the key off, until it died. Amazingly, an hour or so later, when I tried it on a lark, it turned over and caught. Strange.

Avatar (review incl. spoilers)

Just got back from seeing Avatar with Chris, and wanted to share my thoughts on this movie that seems to be taking america by storm. I give it 5 out of 10 stars, for its impressive visuals. And they are impressive. James Cameron did a great job in that area. Chris and I saw it in 3D, which was...okay. It was my first 3D movie, and while at first the effect startled me a few times, it quickly became amost unnoticable and/or annoying. Also, there was some kind of artifact in the center of the screen, like a cloud of insects, that was visible whenever that part of the screen was light.

It was too long, the characters were one dimensional, the plot was predictable, and said plot had gaping holes.

On the characters, the bad guys were so obviously bad that I never even suspected that they might have changes of heart; while the good guys were so obviously good that I never really doubted they would lose. Even the nominally bad guy chick pilot was set up from the get go as a sheep in wolf's clothing.

As for plot predictability, there were no real surprises. Not a one. Oh, there were some visual surprises, but no plot plot surprises. Head Badass proves Too Tough To Die before The Final Duel; check. Scientists side with the natives, check. Lone outsider becomes part of the tribe, check. And so on and so forth.

Plot holes. James Cameron has a very broad imagination, but not a deep one. If he did he would have realized... Well, it was said in the movie that "The aliens were sent back to their dying world." The implication was that Humans had wrecked the Earth (natch). The thing is, a race capable of rapid interstellar travel (six year journey from Earth to Pandora, where there is an economically viable mining operation that exports back to Earth) would have no trouble at all engineering their world into a garden paradise. Terraforming the Earth, Mars and Venus would be trivial compared to travelling to even the nearest star. And any race capable of genetically engineering something like Human/Na'vi avatars could probably create from scratch any lifeform they needed back home. That's the biggest plot hole.

Others include: ever hear of shaft and drift mining? No need to bulldoze the native village, we'll just tunnel under it, and they'll never know we were there.

That deposit of unobtainium (that's what they actually called it) under the native village is the biggest within two hundred klicks, but is it the biggest on the whole planet?

Gotta destroy a native village or a secret sacred place? Send in the atmospheric flyers (so the natives have a chance). Or, how about a nuke, or maybe a kinetic strike (drop a rock on 'em from orbit)?

When telling a story, if a character or side is capable of doing something, either by explict description or by implication from other explict capabilities, then when it is appropriate or logical for the to do that thing, they'd better do or at least try it, or you better have a good explanation why they don't. James Cameron didn't.

The Old Home Town

I went back to my home town of Lake Mills, Iowa, today, partly to apply for a job, and partly to see it again, as I hadn't been there in five or so years. The job was a bust, for now, as the starting pay was only $10.50 an hour. That's not worth an eighty mile round trip every day, not until I get desperate.

What was interesting was that the job was at a company called Dielectric Corp. I hadn't heard of such a place before, and it was much bigger than I expected. I thought it might be like a tool and die shop operating out of a pole shed not much bigger than a two car garage, but instead found a good sized building made of cast concrete. It seemed to be doing well, judging by the number of cars in its parking lot, and it wasn't the only one. Lake Mills appears to be doing quite well, business-wise, both manufacturing and retail. There are four convenience stores, a supermarket, large auto parts and hardware stores, restaurants, and so forth. It wasn't anything like the ghost town I expected after I heard Cummins, the largest employer, was shutting down its plants there. I don't know if they changed their minds or what, but the place seemed as busy as ever when I drove by it.

There were changes, of course. There are a lot of new houses, some of which I would describe as mansions. The old Holiday Bar and Grill on the southeast corner of Main St. and Lake St. is gone, replaced by apartments. The Dairy Queen is gone, its building taken over by Norsemen Trucking. The park by the Post Office with the Sherman tank has been remodelled. The funeral home that was just west of said park is also gone. Don's Motor Mart, where I spent a lot of time playing video games, has been completely rebuilt and is about three times bigger than it was before, as well as set back a bit farther from the highway.

Change, for good or ill, is inevitable. The changes I saw in Lake Mills are, I think, for the good. The town is trying to grow, and seems to be succeeding. Mason City could learn something from my old home town, methinks.

Bleach smells like bacon...

How do I know this, you ask? Well, today I had to run out to Menards to get a new filter for my humidifier. When I removed the old one to install the new one, I noticed a coating of yellowish goo in the bottom of the humidifier. Apparently there is some kind of bacteria that likes humidifiers, and that is what the yellow stuff was. Since I already had a sink full of hot soapy water from doing the dishes, I went ahead and washed the base. But the yellow stuff didn't come out quite as well as I'd hoped. So I ran some more hot water into the base, poured in a splash of bleach and let it sit for a few minutes. A quick rinse and reassembly later, the humidifiers was doing its thing. Then I noticed an odd scent in the air, a scent that reminded me of bacon. Sure enough, it was coming from the humidifier. Why that should be is a mystery, but that's how it is. Weird.

Taxes

Preliminary indications are that I'm going to owe the Feds some money come April 15th. I got my W-2's and a couple of 1099's in the mail today. Not all of them, of course. I still need my mortgage interest report, for example, amongst others, though I doubt I'll be able to itemize. If I have to, I'll wait to send my money until the very last day. Oh well, it could be worse. I could be one of those chumps that gets a huge refund every year and thinks it's a great thing, not realizing that he's letting the government use borrow his money interest free.

What a difference...

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday we had howling winds and blowing snow so thick that it caused two multi-car pile-ups in north central Iowa. Businesses all over cancelled their second and third shifts, highways and interstates were closed, and pretty much every hotel room was snapped up by stranded travellers.

Today, we have no wind to speak of, clear, cloudless blue skies, and brilliant sunshine. You might think that's amazing. No. It's just typical Iowa weather.

Big pile of snow

I was at Hy-Vee East a week or so ago when I noticed a veritable mountain of snow, piled up from clearing the rest of the Eastbrook Mall parking lot. A big pile of snow isn't that rare around here, but some clever person had planted a U.S. flag at the peak of the thing. I've been meaning to snap a picture ever since, but only got around to it today. I reckon that pile is at least twenty-five feet tall, and may have been even taller before the rain we got on Saturday.