Canada is 144 years old today. That is 12², or a dozen dozen. I am four dozen years old, and spent the last two dozen of these years here in Canada. Wonder what else is divisible by 12 this year.
Jul 012011
Jun 042011
I am an atheist. To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as heaven, not even kitty heaven. That means that when a cat dies, it is truly dead.
That does not stop me from imagining, though, that in a sense, our two cats Marzipan and Tarka are still with us, perhaps watching our house while we sleep, as these cats do in a wonderful New Yorker cartoon titled Vigil:
May 232011
And then, there were only four. Cats, that is… our oldest cat, Tarka, our last 20th century cat and the last cat that actually knew our first cat, is no longer with us.
We adopted Tarka over 11 years ago, during the winter of 1999-2000. Shortly thereafter, she settled in a cardboard box that was already a few sizes too small for her. We still have that box.
Good bye.
May 072011
Tarka is our oldest cat and she is not doing very well. Her kidneys are failing.
The day before yesterday, her appetite suddenly vanished, and she became lethargic, urinating outside the litter box. I became rather worried, so yesterday I took her to the vet, who determined that in addition to the ailing kidneys, she may also be suffering from hyperthyroidism. They took a blood sample (we’re still waiting for the results), gave her some fluids, and some new medication, and sent her home.
What can you do? In an ailing organism, as one subsystem after another begins to fail, they struggle to keep up and compensate for the failures of one another. It’s like the ever narrowing flight envelope of a high altitude airplane; if you’re a little faster, the airplane breaks apart, if you’re a little slower, it falls out of the sky, and the difference between the two velocities becomes more marginal the higher the airplane flies. (This, combined with a faulty airspeed indicator, may have been one of the causes of the Air France tragedy two years ago.) So how do we keep Tarka flying true for at least a while longer?
I don’t know… yesterday, after I got her back home, she was doing better, eating more than the day before. But today, she hasn’t eaten anything yet and she’s even more lethargic. Is it time to get seriously worried yet? Another visit to the vet may accomplish little beyond exposing her to yet more stress.
Mar 172011
Today, a Home Hardware store just across the Rideau River here, one we visited frequently, went up in flames, along with several other businesses, as the whole building was demolished by firefighters combating a toxic column of smoke. I don’t yet know if my favorite barber shop, Lester’s, which is right next door, survived or not.
Feb 012011
Two weeks ago, I took a stray cat to the Humane Society. I thought it was the right thing to do; we already have five of them, no friend of ours wanted a cat, and this stray was obviously not going to do well outdoors (when we first saw him, he was eating some scraps off the pavement in the middle of a street frequented by city buses.) He was also young, healthy, and friendly, so we had every hope that he would be adopted.
Our hopes were in vain. Today, I found out that he was put down after contracting a viral respiratory infection and some secondary bacterial infection that did not respond to antibiotics.
All we have now is this last picture, courtesy of the Humane Society:
Well, that’s the end of one little life. Wasn’t worth much, I guess.
Not sure what to do next time. Would he have had a better chance outside in -30 Centigrade weather?
Damn.
Jan 252011
I just ran this on my main server:
$ uptime 08:13:32 up 365 days, 19:56, 4 users, load average: 0.07, 0.05, 0.06
Yes, this means I last rebooted this server one year and 20 hours ago. (What was I doing, rebooting at 4 in the morning?)
Mind you, it won’t run uninterrupted much longer. An updated server is waiting to take its place, so that I can then take this guy down, thoroughly clean it (removing one year’s worth of accumulated dust and cat hair) and upgrade it as well.
Jan 152011
This morning, I took this little guy to the Humane Society:
This young, unneutered tomcat showed up at our doorstep during the holidays, obviously homeless and hungry, but otherwise in good shape and friendly. We took care of him but the weather is getting colder, and spending much of his day in our tiny entry hall isn’t exactly a solution. We already have five cats, so adopting him was not a good idea.
On the way to the Humane Society, as the sun shone into the car, I noticed that he had blue-ish eyes. He was obviously part Siamese, but the blue eyes were news to me.
I hope he finds a good owner soon and lives a long and happy life.
Dec 242010
My Linux systems are all configured with an ages old program, fortune, giving me a “fortune cookie”, a random greeting or quotation from a database with thousands of entries, every time I log on.
This morning, I logged on to one of my Linux machines and I saw this quote from the immortal Sam Clemens, aka. Mark Twain:
“The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.”
If I didn’t know any better, I’d be tempted to think that the computer has a twisted sense of atheist humor and chose this greeting after looking at the calendar. Not that Mr. Clemens was wrong!
Anyhow, although I am an atheist, I hope I am not twisted, so I just wish a Merry Christmas to all my family and friends, and indeed, all good people.
Dec 162010
It’s official: the work we are doing about the Pioneer Anomaly qualifies as popular science according to Popular Science, as they just published a featured article about it.
I admit that it was with a strong sense of apprehension that I began reading the piece. What you say to a journalist and what appears in print are often not very well correlated, as politicians know all too well. My apprehension was not completely unjustified, as the article contains some (minor) technical errors, misquotes us slightly in places, and what is perhaps most troubling, some of the work that it attributes to us was done by others (e.g., thermal engineers at JPL). These flaws notwithstanding (and this article fares better than most that appeared in recent years, I think), it is nice to have one’s efforts recognized.
Dec 132010
In the pre-Internet days, when I traveled to a city that I never visited before, the first thing I did was to buy a copy of the local newspaper, and then read the local pages and some of the classifieds.
Now, thanks to the Internet, I can time travel the same way, without leaving my chair. For instance, I can browse the pages of the Ottawa citizen from 1973, the year my Mom and I visited this fine city. Not sure what is weirder… how much has changed or how much remained the same.
Nov 212010
This sunset above an eerie landscape of orange-lit clouds looked much nicer to the naked eye than it looks in a picture:
Yes, it means that I am back home. As a matter of fact, I arrived back home some 2.5 hours early. My flight from Mexico City landed 15 minutes early in Toronto, and after dashing through the airport like crazy, I managed to make it to an earlier Ottawa flight… which had ONE (!) seat left. Talk about luck.
It was an interesting conference. Useful discussions, good people to meet. I had a chance to talk about MOG cosmology to a not altogether unfriendly audience.
Still, it’s good to be home. Sleep in my own bed and all that.
Nov 182010
This is John Moffat, talking about blogs, dark matter, and the Bullet Cluster:
It’s going to be my turn Friday. Of course I won’t be able to take a picture of me.
Nov 172010
Here is a fine view of Ciudad de Mexico from my hotel window:
The building up front, housing the corporate headquarters of several multinational companies, is aptly named by the locals: they call it the “washing machine”.
I am used to seeing architecture like this in vintage futuristic shooter games, like Duke Nukem.
Nov 142010
This, really, is just a test, to see if WordPress works on my freshly updated Xperia X10 phone, letting me post to my blog.
OK, it works. Android 2.1 is nice, well, much nicer than 1.6. At least now I can Skype or use Acrobat to view PDFs.
One thing I need to figure out is how to stop this blessed thing from replacing every word it doesn’t recognize with a silly guess (WordPress=Sorceress?)
Oct 312010
The other day, my wife and I visited a restaurant in Gatineau. We were not disappointed; the quality and selection of “Le Buffet des Continents” was quite excellent.
But then, there was this fine piece of socialist realist art greeting us upon entering the establishment:
It won’t prevent us from going back, though.
Oct 302010
I am 47 years old, but up until last week, I never ever painted a room. I knew more about how paints behave on spacecraft surfaces than on drywall.
Well, this is no longer true. I just finished the walls, window, door, and floor in our small bedroom:
Yes, I am proud of my handiwork. Our cats appear to be satisfied, too:
But no, I am not planning to give up my day job.
Oct 142010
Caught on a Web cam, two very worried kitties in my wife’s room, listening intently as workmen were demolishing an old furnace in the basement:
The other three cats were in hiding.
Sep 132010
So here I am, posting to my blog from my new smartphone. Neat. I suppose it was time for me to join others and acquire my very own 21st century toy… I have to confess though, the touch screen is nice but it’s much easier to type on a real keyboard…
Sep 122010
As of today, our marriage with Ildiko can legally drink and vote. Well, at least in some jurisdictions, insofar as the drinking part is concerned. Here in Ontario, our marriage could now be employed in a liquor store, but it’d have to wait another year before it is actually allowed to buy the products sold there.