This Old Blog

Ruby surprised us by surviving the weekend. Her diagnosis had been slowly degrading over the weekend, to the point where the vet on duty at the hospital told us she was borderline DIC . Her platelets kept dropping lower and lower, as well as her red-blood and white cell count. The definitive cause of her condition is now something of a mystery, but the doctors did the right thing by treating the symptoms as much as possible. I firmly believe if they had not given her what she needed she would have died and bled out that Saturday. Now she's on the way to Gainesville veterinary school, and the small animal emergency clinic that they run. We've been there once before, back in 1986, with a yellow male named Rhett. Rhett had become ill some months before, in the early part of 1986. The vet at the time tried one antibiotic after another, trying to knock out the infection. Finally Judy took Rhett to a specialist in Sanford, who then recommended Judy take Rhett on to Gainesville. Two...

Today was not a good day for Ruby. It started out early on a sour note; we lost power some time before 7am, and didn't get it back until 8am. I had planned to take Max and Ruby on an early walk before the heat got unbearable. That got pushed back until the power came back on. So we pushed off at 8:30am on a walk we've taken so many times before, but after sundown in order to avoid the heat of the day, usually because it's after I've come home from the job and worked a bit around the house. On those evening walks, I let them rest after their walk for at least 45 minutes, until I hear no more panting. Then they get fed for the evening. This morning was different. Judy had fed the labs at 6:30am, so they still had food in their stomachs, even two hours after being fed. The walk was the usual energetic walk, with Ruby checking everything and everyone out, and running to meet and greet two- and four-legged stranger alike. The walk normally runs for 45 minutes to an hour,...

Toy Story 3 Saw the 11:30am show today in 2D, and managed to keep the cost down to $5/person. It was a wonderful movie, although a bit late for my family's life. The first Toy Story movie was released in 1995; my girls were 9 and 7, which seemed to fit with Andy's age of 6 in the movie. Toy Story 2 was released in 1999, four years later. This also fit in with the girl's ages; a pattern was established in our family. The girls strongly identified with Andy and were looking forward to another Toy Story movie. Unfortunately there was an eleven year gap between Toy Story 2 and 3. Andy is 17 in this version, and getting ready to head off to college. The math doesn't quite add up at this point; if they'd kept to a reasonable timeline for Toy Story 3's release, then it would have been 7 years after Toy Story 2, or 2006. That would have placed it in the year my youngest went off to college, and two years after the oldest left as a college freshman. Oh well. Rega...

It's been over a week since Judge Stewart ruled for Novell and against The SCO Group (or tSCOG, as it's known). The court had already concluded in August 2007 that Novell was the "owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights." Judge Stewart went farther by stating: The Court finds that Novell had the authority under Section 4.16(b) of the APA to direct SCO to waive its claims against these SVRX licensees, that Novell had the authority to waive such claims on SCO's behalf, and that SCO was obligated to recognize such waivers. In other words all existing lawsuits that tSCOG had filed against IBM et. el. were not only pointless because Novell owned the Unix copyrights, but because Novell did own the copyrights, Novell had the right to shut down all litigation started by tSCOG, and tSCOG was obligated to comply. But the final paragraph in the ruling bears quoting: Further, the Court finds that SCO's claim for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair ...

I went shooting a few photographs in downtown Orlando on Memorial day with a fellow Olympus user. In the process I had a lot of fun and fellowship and learned to love the Olympus ZD 50-200mm zoom all over again. I picked Jim up at his place mid-day. We traveled downtown to Greenwood Cemetery. My friend Jim brought two E-510 bodies, one with a 9-18mm UWA zoom, and the other with the 70-300mm zoom. I brought my E-3 with a 50-200mm and my E-P2 with its 14-42mm kit zoom (along with just about everything else I own, including my tripod). In spite of being festooned with all that gear on the right, I managed to fire off a fair number of shots during the two hour period we were there. Nearly every shot today was taken with the E-3/50-200mm. Even though I've been using the E-P2 almost exclusively since the day it arrived at my place in December 2009, today was the E-3's day, or more specifically, the 50-200mm's day. Wide open or stopped down, the 50-200mm produces sharp ...