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Category: dogs

Friday, 28 September 2012

09:04 – I’m still hard at work on the documentation for the life science kit.

It’s easy to understand why so many Border Collies end up in rescue, often at about the age Colin is now. For the last few months, Colin has been breaking house training, always in the hall bathroom. As a puppy, he decided that because his humans used the hall bathroom, he should as well. We finally broke him of that, and for many months he was reliably house-trained. Now he’s back to his old habits. Fortunately, the bathroom floor is ceramic tile, so it’s actually easier to clean up in there than it is to clean up outside. Still, this is unacceptable.

It’s not a matter of us missing signals or expecting him to hold it too long. When we go outside, that’s the last thing on his mind. He wants to sniff. He wants to play. He wants to stare at anything remotely interesting, including people standing two blocks away. He wants to play stick and tug on the leash. He wants to do anything except what he’s out there for. I think he’s holding it intentionally until he gets back inside.

This morning, for example, I took him outside at about 0645. He sniffed around a bit, peed a couple of times, and then headed for the door. He did his usual morning routine, including licking the milk out of Barbara’s cereal bowl. Then I took him outside again and walked him around the yard for several minutes, encouraging him to do something. Nothing. We came back in because he didn’t want to miss Barbara leaving for work. Within a minute of us coming back in, he’d shit in the bathroom. Barbara yelled at him and told him he was a bad dog for doing that in the house. I cleaned up. Then, a few minutes after Barbara left for work, I walked him up and down the street, encouraging him to do something. Nothing. All he wanted to do was sniff and play tug-of-war with the leash. I finally brought him back in. Within literally two minutes, he’d shit on the bathroom floor. I hate to do it, but I think I’m going to have a chat with him about what happens to dogs who shit on the floor. They’re expelled from the pack.

11:11 – Boy, can Brother ever make things come out even. The last time I was printing a bunch of container labels for the science kits, the black toner cartridge ran out on my Brother color laser printer. So I ordered a replacement black cartridge, along with replacements for the cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges. I installed the black toner and printed one page. Everything worked fine. Then this morning I started to do a real print run. The printer printed one page of labels and then the Data fault light came on. Sure enough, the display was telling me the color cartridges were out of toner and needed to be replaced. Not just one of the color cartridges, you understand. All of them. The display specifically said to replace the cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges. How did they manage to make all four cartridges run out of toner within a space of two or three pages?

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Sunday, 23 September 2012

08:29 – Barbara arrived home yesterday afternoon. She called when she was about half an hour out, so I left the front door open so that Colin could lie there at the door and watch for her. Eventually, I heard frenzied barking, immediately followed by the sound of the door opening and Barbara’s voice. He’d watched her arrive and stand out at the curb talking to Marcy for several minutes without saying a word. It was only when she actually got to the door that he started barking. He does that with the mailman and UPS guy, too. Lying in wait to pounce. He scared the crap out of the FexEx guy the first time he did that.

I started writing lab sessions for the life science kit yesterday. The one I decided to write first, which will actually be in the four or fifth lab chapter, is about observing osmosis and plasmolysis in plant and animal cells in hypotonic, isotonic, and hypertonic saline solutions. I’m using a red onion as a source of plant cells. I’d originally intended to use a smear of ground beef as a source of animal cells, but while I was giving Colin a pill the other day I had what may be a better idea. Barbara buys containers of very thinly-sliced lunch meat at the supermarket. I’m going to try using that.

11:39 – Border Collies have some truly bizarre quirks. Colin loves sticks, which is normal. When we return from a walk, he’ll often grab a stick and indicate that he’s ready to run around in circles like crazy. He often maintains a 2- or 3-minute mile pace for several minutes, until he’s gotten at least a couple miles of running and I finally get dizzy from turning around and around.

The only problem is the sticks. After he finishes running, Colin often comes in coughing and choking from the bark and wood chips he’s swallowed. So a week or so ago, I decided to make him some running sticks. I got an old broom from Barbara and we cut the broomstick into convenient lengths. The first trial didn’t go well. As I was getting the leash connected, Colin completely ignored the running stick. We went out the front door, and he continued to ignore it. I held it up to him and said, “Stick!” He put his ears back. I tossed it out onto the front walk, where it made the ringing sound of dried hardwood. That scared him. He finally approached the running stick, very cautiously, and sniffed it. I threw it a few feet into the yard, he chased it, stood looking down at, and then turned and walked away. Hmm.

After some effort, I finally convinced him that the running stick was not his enemy. He finally picked it up and carried it down the street. As usual, he dropped the stick when he noticed something more interesting. He did pick it up on our way back to the house. So, we’re standing in the front yard with him holding the stick. I said my usual to get him started, “Let’s run around like crazy in circles!” He took off at a slow trot, did half a circle, dropped the running stick, and looked at me, expecting me to pick it up and throw it for him. Apparently, he decided that the running stick is a toy-to-be-thrown rather than a stick-to-be-run-with.

So I tried to convince him otherwise, over many sessions over several days. I keep repeating “Stick!” hoping that he’ll change his mind. At this point, he’ll pick it up and run in circles with it, but only very half-heartedly. I’m lucky if he’ll do two full circles at a slow trot, versus 50 or 100 running dead out with a “real” stick. Geez.

I am at my wit’s end trying to get my new den system to run Linux, any Linux. I’ve tried Ubuntu, Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS, and several other distros. I’ve even tried Fedora. I’ve actually had Linux Mint up and running twice for most of an evening each time. I disabled the screensaver and power saving mode and everything appears to be fine. Then the next morning there’s no video. This is driving me nuts. Normally, I’d figure there was a hardware problem, but I’ve run into this before. This is definitely a problem with Linux video drivers or some other software.

Just to rule out hardware problems, I actually considered installing Windows. The trouble is, the latest version I have is XP, which I don’t think would install on this hardware. Some time ago, someone offered to send me a Windows 7 disc and activation key, saying he had a group of keys and plenty to spare. The trouble is, I can’t remember who made that offer. If he reads this and is still willing to mail me a disc and activation key, please let me know.

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Friday, 21 September 2012

08:49 – Barbara’s been gone two days now, and Colin is taking it pretty well. At night, he’s taking advantage of her absence by stretching out full length on her side of the bed–with his head on her pillow, yet–instead of having to curl up in a little dog ball at the end of the bed. Still, he’ll be happy when she returns home tomorrow, as will I. I made it through seven episodes of Heartland last night, S4E17 and 18 through S5E5. That leaves 13 episodes of S5 and S6E1 remaining, which I won’t get through before Barbara returns.

I finally took the time to install a DVD writer in the new system sitting in the den. I’d used a borrowed optical drive to install Ubuntu on that system. It appeared to work fine, until power-saving kicked in, at which point I could no longer get any video even after a cold start. So last night I installed a new Samsung optical drive I’d gotten from Amazon.com and installed Linux Mint. Everything went as expected, and I immediately turned off power-saving mode. I used the system all evening, and finally decided to re-enable power saving to kill power to the display after 10 minutes. I watched the clock ticking down. At 10 minutes, sure enough, power saving kicked in and cut power to the display. I moved the mouse, and the screen came up normally. Success. Then, this morning, I moved the mouse again. The video was dead. So when I have a moment, I’ll try restarting the system. If it comes up, I’ll disable power saving entirely. There’s something going on with Linux power saving and this Intel Atom motherboard, but I’m not sure what. Worst case, I’ll just manually power the display on and off as needed.

I’m working on a core set of prepared microscope slides for the Life Science kit. I think we’ll include that core Slide Set A with the kit. It’ll be 10 top-priority slides of specimens that are difficult to prepare at home, things like onion root-tip mitosis, cross-sections of monocot and dicot stems, and so on. Then, as an option, we’ll offer another 10 or 20 slides as Slide Set B, which’ll include second-priority slides.

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Wednesday, 19 September 2012

09:12 – Barbara just left with her friend Marcy for a trip to the mountains. They’ll be gone for several days, leaving Colin and me to our own devices.

Speaking of Colin, I’ve noticed something interesting. Border Collies seem to support the Libertarian Party overwhelmingly. Since we’ve lived in this house, we’ve had four Border Collies: Kerry, Duncan, Malcolm, and Colin. Every presidential election year, without exception, the BCs pee on every Democrat and Republican campaign sign they encounter, but not one of them has ever peed on a Libertarian campaign sign. Ever. That can’t be a coincidence.

12:58 – I just dropped everything to deal with an inventory emergency. As of this morning, we were down to one chemistry kit in stock. The most time consuming part of assembling a kit is bagging the chemicals, so I just went downstairs and bagged up 15 sets of chemicals. Well, 30 sets, really, because there are two bags per kit, one of regulated chemicals and one of non-regulated. At any rate, I did enough for 15 more chemistry kits. Final assembly and boxing up those 15 kits will take maybe an hour tops.

I made one small procedural change. In the past, I bagged up the regulated chemicals in a quart ziplock and then bagged the non-regulated chemicals in a gallon ziplock, putting the regulated chemicals bag inside the bag that held the non-regulated chemicals. The idea was that that would provide a second level of protection for the regulated chemicals. That’s not required by regulations, and the disadvantage to doing it that way is that I end up with a single chemicals bag. That means I have to have two SKUs for the US and Canadian versions of the chemistry kit. By keeping the regulated and non-regulated chemicals in separate bags, I need maintain only one SKU. By default, a chemistry kit is the US version. When I get an order for a Canadian version, I can simply pull the regulated chemicals bag from the box and replace it with the bag of substitute chemicals that ship with the Canadian version of the kit.

I’ve also changed the bag type. Instead of using ziplock bags, I decided to start using the “Thank You” bags sold by the box of 1,000 at Costco, the type typically used by retailers to bag small purchases. I originally used the ziplock bags because they’re made of heavier plastic and I thought the ziplock would provide a more secure seal than knotting a Thank-You bag and cutting off the excess. The thicker plastic isn’t required by shipping regulations; the only purpose of the bag is to contain the absorbent and prevent liquid from escaping. And, as it turns out, the seal is actually better on a tied-off Thank You bag than on a ziplock. And the thinner bags result in a more flexible subassembly that’s easier to box.

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Sunday, 26 August 2012

08:07 – Barbara returned mid-afternoon yesterday from the visit to one of the retirement facilities she and her sister had short-listed. The good news is that her parents loved the place and are excited about moving in. This is the facility that has one unit dedicated as guest/trial quarters. The actual unit her parents would be moving into isn’t ready for occupancy yet, so the facility manager suggested that her parents could move temporarily into the guest unit while the unit they’ll actually occupy is being cleaned up and painted. The monthly cost is a bit more than their monthly income, but VA will pay a portion of that cost and they do have savings and other assets, including their house, which will offset the difference. Barbara is going to talk to the VA Monday to find out exactly how much they’ll pay toward the monthly cost, but it looks doable. Now the trick is to get things rolling before Barbara’s parents have second thoughts or another medical emergency occurs.

While we were walking Colin last night, he stood and urinated for about a solid minute. Barbara commented about the strong smell of his urine and wondered if he had a urinary tract infection. He’s been acting a bit strangely for the last week or so, including having accidents (solid, not liquid) in the house. That’s one possible symptom of a UTI. UTIs in dogs can be very subtle, so I decided to start him on amoxicillin immediately. I gave him 1,000 mg as a loading dose last night. When he urinated this morning there was no strong odor, which suggests the amoxicillin has already knocked down the infection. We’ll give him 500 mg tid for the next few days, and then I’ll do a microscopic examination of his urine and an occult blood test. If that’s clear, we’ll assume the amoxicillin is working and continue it 500 mg bid for a couple more weeks. Then I’ll do a urine culture, just to make sure.

We’re making good progress on the first batch of 30 forensic science kits, and should be able to start shipping them by the end of the month.

15:47 – I decided to boost Colin to 750 mg tid. Years ago, I treated another of our dogs for some sort of infection. I followed the canine recommendations of the Merck Veterinary Manual, which IIRC were 5 to 7.5 mg/kg amoxicillin bid. The infection did not clear up, and when we took the dog to see Sue Stephens, our vet, she said that dosage was very low. So I looked elsewhere for the amoxicillin dosage for canine UTIs, and came up with a range of 10 to 25 mg/kg bid. For Colin, at about 32 kilos, that’d be 320 to 800 mg bid. So, although 500 mg is well within that range, I decided to go nearer the upper end. In fact, Colin tolerates a 1,000 mg dose without any problem, so I decided to go with 750 mg tid for the first couple of days and then 750 mg bid for the remainder of the two weeks or so.

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Friday, 8 June 2012

08:16 –With the Roku box not working and therefore no Netflix streaming, Barbara and I watched the last disc of Heartland series three last night. Colin watched as well. When Heartland’s Amy is training horses, she frequently tells tells one he’s a “good boy” in the same sing-song voice that Barbara uses to tell Colin that he’s a good boy. Colin loves to be told that he’s a good boy, and he likes hearing it from Amy as much as he does hearing it from Barbara.

We’re getting short on chemistry kits again. We sold four yesterday. We’ll work on making up another batch of 30 this weekend.

Fitch downgraded Spain’s sovereign debt by three levels yesterday, to one level above junk bond status. Although a three-level cut seems dramatic, it actually wasn’t nearly enough. The reality is that Spain is bankrupt, and its credit rating should reflect that fact. Spain is widely expected to request a bailout over the coming weekend, although as usual the amount of the requested bailout will be nothing more than a band-aid. The reality is that Spain needs to be given (not loaned) at least $500 billion over the next year to 18 months. That amount simply isn’t available, nor is there any prospect of it becoming so. Expect further cuts in Spain’s sovereign credit rating after this weekend, and expect the pressure to move next to Italy.

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Saturday, 26 May 2012

07:08 – Here’s a fun video of a city-girl reporter visiting Amber Marshall’s farm. Ms. Marshall seems an interesting young woman. She’s the star of the excellent TV series Heartland, which just finished its fifth season. She bought a farm near where the series is filmed and lives there with her collection of animals: horses, cattle, chickens, turkeys, pigs, cats, and no less than four-count-’em-four Border Collies.

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Tuesday, 8 May 2012

07:25 – Election Day today. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t bestir myself because there’s nothing on the ballot of much interest. Except Amendment One, the hateful attempt to write discrimination against gay people into the North Carolina Constitution. Unfortunately, if one believes the polls, this contemptible piece of fundie slime is likely to pass. Well, if it does, it’ll be despite Barbara’s and my votes.

I don’t understand how any decent human being could vote in favor this amendment. The obvious answer is that they couldn’t. As long as they were at it, I don’t understand why these fundie assholes didn’t expand the language of Amendment One to require Jews to live in ghettos and wear yellow stars of David. Hey, come to think of it, they could also have included language to return all these descendants of slaves to their rightful owners. Geez.

09:55 – Well, that was interesting. I just took Colin for a walk down to the corner. As he was sniffing around the corner yard, what should he notice but an evil C-A-T lying in Kim’s yard next door? So Colin tried to pull me over to see the evil C-A-T, but I forced him to stay near the curb. When we arrived in front of Kim’s house, the evil C-A-T was still lying there near the house, about 50 feet (15 meters) from the street and a couple meters from the walk between the street and Kim’s front door. Colin and the evil C-A-T stared at each other for a minute or so, with neither of them moving.

Then, apparently deciding that with the cat distracted it was a good time to make a break for it, a chipmunk sprang out of the grass near the evil C-A-T and made for Kim’s walk. The evil C-A-T pounced and missed, and the chipmunk sprinted down Kim’s walk toward Colin, with the evil C-A-T in hot pursuit. Apparently, the evil C-A-T realized that charging into Colin’s range wasn’t a good idea, because it clamped on the brakes and skidded to stop. Meanwhile, the chipmunk ran right up to Colin, noticed that it’d escaped one predator only to approach a Fearsome Predator. It scurried into the grass next to the walk. Colin approached it closely to sniff it, but took no hostile action. Eventually the chipmunk just couldn’t take it any more, so it made a break for the walk and ran down the walk the few feet to the street. Colin, of course, was in hot pursuit.

But, as I’ve said before, Border Collies have had all the kill instinct bred out of them, so Colin showed no interest in the chipmunk as a potential meal. Instead, he herded it, circling around it and crouching just as he would for a sheep that wasn’t cooperating. The chipmunk dashed this way and that, with Colin cutting it off at every turn. Eventually the chipmunk, snuggled up right against my boot, where it was apparently ready to put down roots. I called Colin off. Well, actually, I pulled him off. The chipmunk jumped up on the curb and scampered down toward the corner, with both Colin and the evil C-A-T watching its progress.

Then the evil C-A-T rose and began stalking toward the chipmunk. Incredibly, Colin moved to block the evil C-A-T, protecting the chipmunk. I am not making this up. Each time the evil C-A-T moved toward the chipmunk, Colin moved to put himself between the evil C-A-T and the chipmunk. Apparently, the fact that Colin had been herding that chipmunk for a minute or so was sufficient to make the chipmunk a member of Colin’s flock. So naturally, he had to protect a flock member from a predator, which he did in spades. Eventually, the evil C-A-T gave up. Colin watched the chipmunk finish its journey to the corner and go down a storm drain, and then we walked home.

11:07 – When I voted at 10:15, I was voter number 172 for our precinct. That’s a pretty heavy turnout for that early in the day for a primary election. That’s good news, because a light turnout skews things in favor of older people, who tend to vote regardless and also tend to support Amendment One. The heavy turnout favors issues supported by the less dedicated voters. Unfortunately, it’s started to cloud up and drizzle, which tends to discourage liberals, young voters, and others who’d tend to oppose Amendment One. Still, I’m cheered by the relatively high turnout so far. In past primaries when I voted around the same time of morning, I’d usually be voter number 60 or thereabouts. At least so far, the turnout appears to be two or three times heavier than usual.

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Saturday, 5 May 2012

08:13 – Barbara spread about 3,058,180 mL of the mulch yesterday, leaving a gigantic 37 mL (2+ tablespoons) pile of the stuff in the driveway. While she was working, we had Colin on a tie-out in the front yard. Someone came down the street walking a dog, and Colin charged out to see them at a dead run. So much for that collar. The plastic quick-release snap connector fractured. We have a drawer full of old collars, and I was going to replace Colin’s collar with a very robust one that used a standard buckle instead of a quick-release plastic snap connector. Barbara pointed out that if Colin had been wearing one of those he might have broken his neck. So we replaced his collar with another snap connector model.

I finished up the bloodstains stuff yesterday and got started on the group of lab sessions on impression analysis. If I have time, I’m going to add a session to that group. Just about every recent cop show has the cops standing around a whiteboard in the squad room, using dry-erase markers to add information to it. Well, it may surprise some people to know that criminals are also big users of whiteboards and dry-erase markers. And, like most people, criminals usually use erasers to erase the stuff on those whiteboards.

But using an eraser on a whiteboard doesn’t actually erase what’s on it. All it does is remove the microscopically thin layer of dried ink powder, leaving traces of the carrier on the board. Those traces can be dusted with fingerprint powder to make them readable. Although I can’t find anything in the literature about using iodine fuming to make those latent traces visible, I suspect that might work at least as well as dusting. I’ll try it. Meanwhile, smart criminals use a paper towel soaked in isopropanol to wet-erase their dry-erase boards. I’ve already tried that, and found that it makes dusting useless to recover latent traces.

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Friday, 4 May 2012

07:27 – I finished the group of lab sessions on revealing latent fingerprints yesterday, and got started on blood. I think we’ll include only one or two sessions on revealing bloodstains. The problem is that, with the exception of Kastle-Meyer reagent, blood reagents are (a) extremely expensive, too much so for a kit, and/or (b) very hazardous, and/or (c) require specialized equipment like a forensic alternate light source, and/or (d) just don’t work very well. Meanwhile, stuff for the forensic science kits is starting to accumulate in large piles.

Barbara is taking a day off work to run errands and get some stuff done around home. She had a pile of mulch dumped in the driveway yesterday. I estimate there’s about 3,058,207 mL of the stuff. Right after the guy left, Colin ran over to the pile, sniffed it, grabbed a mouthful, and ate it.

If you want to grab any O’Reilly ebooks, today’s the day. They’re having a 50% off sale on all titles, and all of them are DRM-free.

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