The Atlantic tells us that a growth industry in NYC and other crowded cities is training dogs to sniff out…bedbugs. Dogs who can tell live bedbugs from dead earn as much as $325 an hour, and work for kibble. I got some peculiar bites on one side of my right leg while we were down [...]
Posts from ‘May, 2009’
INC Whew
Well. A few minutes ago I found myself staring at the last line of the last page of the last chapter of Assembly Language Step By Step, Third Edition. I’m sure it’s a feeling a little like that described by some of my friends who took their time getting through college, and one morning at [...]
The Sugar Bowl Is Back!
While going over to get my shirts back from the cleaners last week, I noticed with delight that the Sugar Bowl has reopened under new ownership, having been closed since early 2007. The Sugar Bowl is a venerable restaurant in downtown Des Plaines, a little to the east of the even more venerable Des Plaines [...]
Marvell’s SheevaPlug
Two years ago, I discovered PowerLine networking and have used it ever since, first to cover a CAT5E “dead spot” in my Colorado house, and more recently to finesse Wi-Fi outages at Carol’s sister’s house. The Linksys PLE200 Ethernet bridges work fantastically well within our house, and have sufficient bandwidth to stream HD video. With [...]
Odd Lots
I like nuns (most nuns, if perhaps not all nuns) and I’ve said good things about the few that helped me get started on the road toward personal discipline and basic thinking skills. Over at the Make blog, they’ve got a few photos of an offering left at a monument dedicated to one Sister Nicodema: [...]
For Small Values of “Thumb”
The last time we had the nerd gang over, Eric Bowersox gave me a couple of the smallest USB thumb drives I have ever seen. The unit shown above right is 1 3/8″ long X 1/2″ wide and holds 512MB. It was a promo giveaway branded with AMD’s logo, containing tech spec PDFs for AMD’s [...]
Cranky Insight
I haven’t posted for eight days, and people are starting to send me notes asking if I’m all right. I am, though I’m not sleeping well and don’t have my usual energy. Whatever time and oomph I haven’t had to devote to family issues here I’ve been pouring into the book. I’m now 161,000 words [...]
Odd Lots
The rest of Bichonicon was uneventful enough (and I was tired enough) that I decided it wasn’t worth a whole ‘nother entry. Aero won a ribbon on Saturday, but did not win points. Carol and I ate too much fast food. We came home. End of story. I did briefly run into St. Louis native [...]
Bichonicon, Day 3
Things kicked into high gear today at the Bichon Frise National Specialty here in St. Louis. The seminars are over and the judging began bright and early at 8:30 AM. There are quite a few different classes: Puppy dog (and here, “dog” means “male dog”) puppy bitch, junior handler, open dog, and open bitch, among [...]
Bichonicon, Day 2
Last night was the awards banquet and rescue auction for the Bichon Frise National Specialty show here in St. Louis. All the bichon powers from the Denver/Springs axis were gathered at one table, plus a couple of old friends from as far away as Pittsburgh. As that sort of dinner goes, it was exceptional: We [...]