Monday, November 28, 2005

Keyodee

I bought a cat in college and named him Keyodee. That is one of the stupidest names i have ever heard of. but, i wanted something unique, and there you have it.

His name is Archie now. that is, if he isn't in Kitty heaven...

that is an excellent segway into a story that most of you all know:

See, Keyodee was a free spirit. He liked to explore and run away for days on end. Actually, I am sure he just wanted to get away from me. You see, this cat hated me with a firey vengance. The only relationship I had with him was when he wanted me to chase him around the house or put in grocery bags, which, in hindsight, I don't think he liked at all. I had him my junior and senior years of college, and halfway into my 9th semester. the first year of our realtionship got off to a bad start because he had to live in a house that was about 1000 square feet with 5 other men who disliked him.

he has never forgiven me.

he would randomly knock over full cups of liquid without warning for no apperent reason. So, he didn't get much attention, and I didn't think cats really needed toys that badly (i thought they entertained themselves) so, he got bored real quick in that house. While i was gone that summer, i entrusted his well-being to two friends, who i am sure did a fabulous job, but Keyodee got a taste of life outside his usual domain, which sent him down a slippery path. I was told that he would wait by the door for hours until someone opened the door and he would spring forth and run away, not to be seen again for days. He then lived with me in another house, with two roomates. He still fiended for the outside world. I can still remember the way he would put his top paws on the door and look at us and meow while we watched TV.

the time came in my 9th semester when i had no free time whatsoever. I was very very busy and keyodee's well being was really just an afterthought. I was very stressed as graduation neared and I began to just let him out with no qualms after about 3 minutes of his insessant crying. so, he began to be a big hit around the apartment complex. Other people I had never met before would knock on my door with him in tote. my neighbors would feed him. I would leave for a entire weekend and not see him. I really just didn't know what to do. he seemed to be okay. he would come around every three days or so, i would take him in for a night until he started meowing at the door again, and i would let him go. until one time, after 3 days or so, i finally started to get worried about him, so i talk to the apartment manager about his whereabouts. after a lecture about proper pet ownership, she tells me john in 4A has him. So i go over there and walk in john's apartment.
Holy smokes!

This guy had every cat toy seen by man. he had elborate contraptions like kitty jungle gyms and scratching posts. There was a harem of fake mice, and the worst: a cabinet of moist kitty food!

I think Keyodee didn't even know about moist food.

This really explained alot. No wonder Keyodee hated it in my apartment! he was living like a king over at john's house, and apparently was renamed "archie". Which, by the way, john had no problems calling him right in front of me. He didn't even ask his rightful name. I can't believe this guy went and bought probably $40 of cat food and toys on a cat who he didn't even know to whom he belonged. it was a setup from the jump...


When i saw Keyodee over there, we met eyes, and he looked like he saw a ghost. He had the look of "please don't take me away from here".

but, i did.

Listen here, that is my cat. you are not going to take my cat away by tempting him with moist food and calling him archie you goddamn homewrecker!

so, i took him back to my apartment, and I had him in there probably 2 minutes, and he is back at the door, leaning on it and looking at me with burning hatred...

alas, I knew when i was defeated. It was obvious that John was who archie loved... I couldn't take his moans, so I let keyodee out. When i talked to john the next day, "archie" evidently went straight over there that night like the hussy he was. we decided that it was best for him to take him. so in the end, i guess it was a happy ending.

We'll miss you archie. Even if somedays you drank and hit us*.
















the origins of this picture was to identify a "beer kitty" for a party. that is where you put your beer, like in card games. get it, beer... kitty? no seriously, keyodee was a lush.

doughnuts are awesome

There isn't a whole lot i dislike about krispie kreme doughnuts.

Just hearing the name makes me feel good. The day before thanksgiving the wife and I decided to get a dozen of Krispie Kreme doughnuts. The intent was to share it with my inlaws for breakfast on thanksgiving. Although I don't remember the exact numbers, i think i recall that my wife had 3 (one the day before), my in-laws shared 2.5, which means i ate the remaining 6 and a half that very day. That is 1300 calories in one sitting. A half dozen Krispie Kreme doughnuts is enough for any man, but to make things worse, this my friends, was thanksgiving day. This is the day where your average american doubles his daily intake of food, in one meal. I thought I would push the envelope of consumption that day. I really just wanted to give my body a forshadowing of what delicious hell was to come. And it worked.

As I was eating them and drinking my coffee that morning I was actually try to think of a way to make some kind of turkey-doughnut sandwich for thanksgiving dinner.

so, i guess the main idea of this post is that Krispie Kreme doughnuts are the shiznit, and eating them is an activity I enjoy from time to time.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

research update

Hello,
I thought I would talk a bit about my research, for those of you who care. If you don't care, please find your way to the back button.

Actually, I will try to make this short. I want to give a brief synopsis, but still give enough details so that everyone is properly satisfied and not confuseled.

What I have been doing for almost 2 years now is working on a research PET scanner. PET scanners detect radioactive emissions that are injected into a patient. In a clincal setting, they are often used to detect cancerous lesions, b/c some flavors of injected radionuclide will go where there is a realitive high metabolic need and/or high blood flow (most tumors). An example of that is below. you can see a higher intensity green spot that suggests cancer. btw, this is a coronal slice of a human patient with a diagosis of breast cancer. the bladder is at the bottom and you can make out the lungs and sholders pretty well. (the bladder has "hot spots" b/c the radioactive molecules are beginning to be excreted, it is not bladder cancer)













In research, PET is used for all kinds of stuff. In fact, I don't even want to talk about it there is so much. our group is focusing on PET applied to cardiac/circulation system. There was a state-of-the-art extrememly high resolution PET imaging system built here on campus for use on research in small animals (rats, mice). It was just up and runnign this summer. IT was my task to preform what is known as "gating". where generally, one signal is timed with another. in this context, the images are timed so that we get 8 PET images that represent a 8th of the cardiac cycle of a rat. That sounds easy, but it isn't. What makes it tricky is that the "events" that make the image are captured for about an hour. it is like setting up a camara and opening the aperature for an hour and allowing light in that long. so obviously, the heart beats many times in that time frame, so the "events" that are recorded have to be organised by when they occured in the cardiac cycle. the image below should clear things up. it is color coded to signify each 8th of the cardiac cycle. an ECG is used to determine the cardiac cycle. and those 'S' things, well, those are precursors to images, so just think of them as images.






















so as you can see, the events are orgainsed to different "bins" by when they happened in the ECG, and those events are then "sorted" into "sinograms"(the S things) and then directly turned into images. woohoo!

so, that allows sweet images like these:

(download this, open it)

this image is rotating so you can see all angles (I didn't do that) and also gated (I did that part). this is what is commonly called a "blood pool" image. the radioactive molecules I spoke of earlier go where the blood is. the moving blob at the top is the heart and the two decending things are the vena cava and the decending aorta (i think) of a rat. the bigger moving blob is the blood moving in and out the left ventrical, and the smaller moving blob is the blood moving in and out of the right ventrical. So, simply put, i did that. i made it look as though the heart is beating. before, the iamge wouldn't be moving at all and the motion would cause a smearing effect that would make the heart look kinda always open (diastole). this specific kind of image is mostly just cool to look at, it doesn't have much clincial use. Although, from gating, we can do all kinds of stuff. the best thing about gated images of the heart is that it is a more accurate representation of the heart. and from it, we can measure things like ejection fraction and myocardial viability, which are useful to physicians.

the end.

leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

snickers

Hello,
I have some posts on the way but i am having some troubles posting some images, so once i resolve that you are in for a treat!

in the meantime, here is a old email string that i thought was mildly amusing between mike and I, who frequents this blog. I have erased the headers and added who said what. this is all i got for right now.

Foo:
I gave someone here a candy bar and he didn't
eat it. he left it on his desk. so, when he left for the day i ate it.
Mike:
That'll teach him to not let opportunities go by.
Foo:
precisly. let that be a warning to you as well. it was a snickers, they are the most popular candy bar in the US and Russia*. although, in russia they are not called snickers b/c laughing is forbidden.
Mike:
Do you want to see Digable Planets on Nov 6? It is a
Sunday $18. I'm going with people from work.
Foo:
pass. what would they call snickers in Russia? I think they would be called "scowlies".
Mike:
In Russia, Snickers bar eats you.
"frownies" or "Snikovskis"



The end

* I had receently watched a documentry on candy bars.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

funny words

I was leaving some comments on Bleach's blog, and the anti-spam thing you have to do, you know, where you type in the random letters that you see on the screen, well... it looked like this:
















If you have ever seen the episode of The Simpson's where Homer becomes a missionary to escape some debt, this is funny. He kept on calling Jesus Jebus... and he was a missionary! He kept on saying "Help me Jebus!" when he would get in trouble.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

the hungersite

hello.
I wanted to take the time to tell you about a website that I go to. It is called "the hunger site" and if you go there and click a little button, they donate money to a orgainization such as "mercy corps" that donates food to starving people. It used to be that every click of the button donated one "cup of food" whatever that is, but now they don't say that. When you click on the button (you will see it, it is yellow and obvious) it sends you to another page where you can see advertisements, so I assume those sponsors generate the revenue for the donations. you can only click it once a day.

anyway, it is easy, and I set it as my homepage and try to click it everyday before I do whatever I am going to do on the internet. it adds maybe 2 seconds to my life.

check it out.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

procrastination

Rather then do a pesky project for school, I am writing a meaningless amaglimation of stupidity for everyone to enjoy. I wish I could get credit for writing in my blog...

In fact, I have no real topic to speak of. What follows is a hodge podge of random crap that happened on accident when i mashed on the keyboard with my palms.

topic one: My yard grew back.
Yes sir, it sure did. Please feast your eyes on these tantilsing pictures:












































For best effect, please make sure to constrast them with my last blog about how i killed my yard.

If you haven't seen what it looked like, or don't remember, be ready for the shock of a lifetime.

I am very happy about this. It took alot of work, but now I am proud of my yard. you are proud too.


Topic two: My glamerous pup coop got his cute puppy nose stuck in a shoe.

this time, we got it on film:














Even in this compromising position, he is still very glam.

Topic three: More halloween pictures.

To add support to the premise that Mike can't seem to keep his eyes open when he is drinking, here is a good picture that was overlooked:
















Luckly, val was there to keep his mouth open, or else we would have had no expression at all.

This is the end.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

my anger towards hats and the hatted men who wear them


I saw someone wearing one of those fedora-style hats the other day. From what my dad says, and what I can glean from movies, those kinds of hats were very popular back in the 40s. Most men wore them if they were dressed up. And although those hats are pretty slick, I think young to middle aged males (anyone younger than 50) has no business wearing them.

I have a real problem with this.

I do make sure to try them on when I go to department stores though. but i would never buy them. I know better than try to single-handedly bring back a style that has been out of date for 6 decades. Still, people do this. Very rarely (maybe once a year) I see some fella struting around in 21st centry clothing, but wearing a crisp felt fedora on his head. What happened? Did his head go back in a time machine? why not wear a Fez? That makes just as much sense as a fedora on your head young man. I think these people are clearly making a statment, but what is the statement they are making? Are they making some kind of tribute to previous generation? Or did they just really like the way Harrison Ford looked in Indiana Jones? That reminds me of something I would do as a little impressionable kid. I would try to impersonate movie stars b/c they had cool outfits or whatnot in the movies, but Christ! you are grown men!

Have you ever watched Myth-Busters? While that is a decent show, the fact that one of the guys wears a beret and the other wears a fedora sickens me. that is an odd-hat anomalie. To find two dorks on one program wearing strange hats is rare indeed. That would be funny if they hired a guy that wears a coybow hat and another guy that wears a terbin. or if those original two switched hats from scene to scene with no explanation.

I wonder if that was part of the screening process for the show. "one final question, can you wear a silly hat?"

"why yes!"

and then the interviewer opens a closet door and it is full of silly hats and the guy shrieks in glee.

the end

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

haloween party de 2005

Hah-woah...

So it is high time that I post the pictures from mike's halloween party. My two friends Mike and steve and I decided to go as the Beastie Boys from the sabotage video. If you have never seen it, it is a parody of old 70's detective shows. We decided that big hair, avaitor sunglasses, mustaches, and old school short sleeve shirts with ties were a must. we opted not to wear any suspenders or jackets, although that would have been nice.














Unfortunatly this is the only decent picture with all three of us in it at once, and it didn't really capture how "solid" we really were. But it did display our silliness in a very obvious way.















Also equally unfortunatly, I managed to not look in any way like a single one of the guys from that video. I ended up not getting to the party until very late and i didn't have time to make that wig look more like a cop from the 70s and less like an lunatic. The hair was supposted to be like a helmet, just big and combed over. Just like Stephens. Big props to him on that. I understand that his mommy dressed him. how cute.

I think i looked more like a cross between Harpo Marx and Wyatt Earp. Actually i think the hair was awfully reminicient of Dr. Gonzo in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas".













Look people, I didn't have time. By the time I got there, everyone there had been hitting the sauce for some time and I didn't want to waste precious drinking time on combing a wig. I went with it. It was for the greater good of all of us. Plus, Derik made some dip that was pretty hard to get away from.

There are way too many funny pictures for me to post, but below is a smattering. I noticed that we all had a trademark facial expression that we would use throughout the night to fit the 70s cop personana. Mine was an open mouth, acting as if I were saying something, or yelling. And then it one point I started looking kinda light in the loafers for some reason. Stephen went for the suave approach. He must have been the ladies man of the trio. Mike was hopelessly drunk, so his eyes were usually closed or at half-mast and leaning on someone. He was clearly the party animal. Actually for some reason I didn't have many pictures of mike. I will make sure to share more if someone gives me some.

most of these pictures are of me, or have me in them. i hope no one thinks i am a egotist because these are the ones i choose to share. the truth is the majority of them were of me becuase they were taken by my wife. so there you have it.

enjoy!





































































































and here is a picture of my wife looking cute with her pregnant belly painted like a pumpkin.

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