The new year has started and I told myself that I’d write more often in my blog. And guess what — I haven’t! I have a bunch of half written blog posts and it seems like I never have any time to finish them. Oh well. Such is life. In the meantime, check out my gallery again. I’ve posted a bunch of photos from the cruise we went on over Christmas. It was a blast!
–Pete
Here’s another cool command that you can do from the command line in Mac OS X. The command is screencapture. Take a look at the man page for it or simply go to the Macworld site for a quick summary of what you can do with it.
–Pete
One of the reasons I love this time of year is the music. I’m a big fan of Christmas music. The other night I was exploring the iTunes Music Store to see what I could find for Christmas Music and ran across a gem that reminds me of my childhood. It was the soundtrack from The Charlie Brown Christmas Special. I love the jazzy versions of some of the classic Christmas songs as well as some new classics, like “Linus and Lucy”. With that, I’m off to do that little Peanuts character dance they all do.
–Pete
Those of you who have lost a pet have probably heard the story of the Rainbow Bridge. This is the place where our pets go to wait for us until we can be reunited again. Early this morning, another one of our animals, Maggie the horse, arrived at the Rainbow Bridge. Her death was completely unexpected, and that has made it even harder to swallow.
Last evening we had been out at the farm stacking hay for the winter. After several hours of hard work, we all decided it was time to go into town and get a nice meal. As we were getting ready to go, I realized I had forgotten something in the barn and went out quick to retrieve. On my way out to the barn I found Maggie laying in the fresh snow in the pasture. This in itself seemed a little odd, but even more odd was the fact that she didn’t immediately jump up when I approached her. After a moment of me calling her name, she finally jumped to her feet and ran off. I went into the barn and got my forgotten item and came back out again. I was once again greeted to Maggie laying on the ground. I knew something was wrong. I quickly went back to the farm house to get the others so we could all assess the situation.
It seemed obvious that Maggie had a condition called colic, which in equine terms means that she had abdominal pain. There are a bunch of causes of colic, but one of the scariest is a condition called an intestinal entrapment or intestinal torsion. Basically that means that a portion of her intestine gets twisted, and cut off from circulation. If that happens, immediate emergency surgery is required or the horse will die.
We got the vet out immediately and he evaluated Maggie. He thought she was in quite a bit of pain and gave her a bunch of pain killing medication to quiet her and then did a thourogh exam. At the end of the exam he said he didn’t find any evidence that she had a torsed intestine, and did the standard treatment of pumping a gallon of mineral oil into her stomach and then told us to keep her up and in an hour or two she should be better. He drove off with us feeling hopeful that this would resolve really quickly. It didn’t.
After hours of walking her and giving her additional pain medication, we had the vet come back out and check her again. He did another rectal exam and immediately found that her condition had dramatically changed. He said she had a torsion somewhere in her intestines because he found several sections of dilated colon that were causing her tremendous pain. The options were limited at that point. The most humane choice was to have her euthanized, which we reluctantly did.
Her time with us was too short. We had only had her a year.
–Pete
Today I ran across another really cool command line tool for tweaking Mac OS X machines. The command is pmset and it allows you to set power management preferences on a Mac OS X machine. This includes setting how long a machine waits until it sleeps to scheduling startups and shutdowns. For more information on how to use it, open the Terminal application and type:
man pmset
An example of pmset would look like this:
pmset repeat shutdown MTWRF 15:00:00
The above command would set a preference that would schedule an automatic shutdown of your Mac at 3:00 PM on Mon-Friday.
If you have Apple Remote Desktop as part of your arsenal of tools, then this is really handy. Using the “Send UNIX Command” with ARD, I could set a new startup or shutdown time, sleep interval, etc to hundreds of machines at once.
Cool, huh?
–Pete
When I was at the farm this afternoon, my wife and I were cleaning up some stuff in the barn. While we were working, one of the young barn kittens was furiously playing with something off in the corner. After watching her play with gusto for several minutes I said to my wife, “What is that cat playing with?”
She walked over and picked up the object and said, “Oh yuck. This is a rabbit’s hind leg. The barn cats must have killed another rabbit this weekend.”
Ewwww…..
–Pete
My wife and I buried Daisy today — at least Daisy’s ashes. We had her body cremated when she died. We buried her ashes on our friend’s farm. We’re going to plant some bulbs on that spot as well to remind us in the spring of her love for life and her love for the playtime she had at the farm.
As I was staring at her box of ashes this afternoon and missing her soft, furry face, I remembered a story that one of my friends told me about his dog when she died. For the sake of this story I’m going to call this friend “George”.
George had a dog named Harriet that he had raised from a pup. Harriet was a special dog. She was a mix of a Great Dane and something else — Labrador I think. She looked mostly like a Great Dane. She was a great big dog with a crooked tail and a big lovable personality.
When Harriet was around eight years old, she developed a cancerous mass in her chest. Only a month or so after the diagnosis, it was clear to George that it was time for her to go. Like with Daisy, he arranged to have her die at home. She was laying on her bed, out in the sunshine, with her head resting on the lap of George’s wife Karen. After Harriet had died, George said he felt relieved that it was over because he knew that she was no longer in pain and that he’d see her again in Heaven.
As the next couple of weeks slipped away, George began to miss Harriet more and more. Then one day a terrible thought occurred to him. What if dogs didn’t go to Heaven? What if he’d made a mistake and let her go too early and now he’d never see her again? This thought ate at him over the next week. He wasn’t sleeping well and his heart ached for his beloved dog.
One evening, a few days later, George was the last one at the office. He was packing up his stuff and making sure the doors were locked and the lights were off. He walked to the front of the office to check the reception desk. He was astonished to see that standing at the reception desk was his brother Phil. This was astonishing because Phil had died ten years earlier when he was struck by lightning. Standing next to Phil was Harriet.
Dumbstruck by what he was seeing, George just stood there and stared, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Phil looked over at Harriet and she began to walk over to George. He reached out to touch her and the velvety smoothness of her fur once again filled his fingers and her unique dog smell once again wafted to his nostrils. He looked back up at his brother, trying to figure out what this was — what he was seeing. Phil didn’t say a word, but just looked at George as if to say, “Don’t worry George. I’m taking care of her until you get here.” At that moment, the question of whether dogs go to heaven drifted out of George’s mind and the vision of his dog and brother faded away.
When George told me this story I was speechless. He said, “I can’t explain it Pete. I can’t explain what I saw. The scientist in me says that what I saw couldn’t possibly have happened — but I know what I felt. What I can tell you is that I know in my heart that Harriet is in Heaven and that she’s being taken care of until I see her again. You have no idea how much peace that gives me.”
Me too George. Me too.
–Pete
In the comments of one of my earlier “Cool Software” posts, Nathaniel mentioned a piece of software called “Spirited Away” that he loves to use on his Mac. I’ve been testing it for the last few weeks and I see why he likes it. The basic idea behind this one is that when you have multiple applications open, you can end up with a huge number of windows open all at once. These start to clutter up your screen, and so Spirited away quietly hides applications that haven’t been used in the specified period of time. For more information, point your browser here.
–Pete
One of the things that we loved about Daisy was her very distinctive bark. Her bark was not harsh and biting like so many dogs. It had soft, rounded edges and she only did it when she was excited and happy about something — like getting served her supper. The best way to describe it is that it sounded like, “Woo Woo!”
I recorded it in her last weeks of life and you can listen to it by downloading it here.
–Pete
Daisy died last night.
She lived much longer than anyone thought she would, but in the last couple of days, it was apparent that it was time for her to leave us. My vet, who is also a close personal friend, offerred to come to our home last night so Daisy could die in the comfort of home, on her own bed, surrounded by those who loved her. She died peacefully and painlessly while I held her in my arms.
In lieu of flowers or cards, we would appreciate it if you would consider donating to Helping Paws in Daisy’s memory.
–Pete
P.S. I’ve added a few more photos to her gallery. Check them out.
I’m in Grand Forks, ND tonight on a business trip. It is snowing like you wouldn’t believe right now. The wind is really howling and the snow is literally blowing sideways. Wow! This is incredible considering it is only October 5.
I wonder if this is a preview of what our winter will be like this year. Hmmmm…..
–Pete
It is 2:00 AM right now. I’m laying in bed, listening to the sound of soft Labrador snoring, and listening the sound of a Fall rainstorm outside. I have the window open a crack and the smell of the rain is filling the room.
You’re probably thinking, “What is he still doing up???” Good question. Have you ever had one of those evenings where you start working on a project and you get into a groove and just don’t want to stop? That was me tonight. I was working on filing the massive pile of papers in my office — something I haven’t taken the time to do for quite some time. I was making huge progress and it was very personally satisfying to see that pile start to dwindle. So — I just kept working…..and working…..and working……and working. And here we are at 2:00 AM. It isn’t quite done, but I’m now exhausted so it is time to cash it in for the night.
Good night!
–Pete
Our next cool application is called ClamXav. This useful little application is an anti-virus software package for Mac OS X. It is based on Clam AV, the popular open source anti-virus for Linux/Unix.
ClamXav can scan your hard drive or any other type of drive for viruses. This works much like the other types of virus scanners you are used to, especially if you are Windows user. The part of ClamXav that I think is so cool is that it can now do real-time virus scanning – a feature called ClamXav Sentry. This is amazing, considering that this product is donationware, meaning you pay the author what you think the software is worth and what you can afford.
Check it out!
–Pete
If you aren’t watching the new Battlestar Galactica on SciFi, WAKE UP!!!
I’m sitting here watching episode #10 of Season 2 and I’m absolutely spellbound. The writing for this show is top notch. The acting and directing are supurb. What are you waiting for?
–Pete
Note: The Season 1 DVDs are now available. If you don’t get SciFi, then I’d highly recommend you buy the DVDs and start seeing what you are missing. You won’t regret it.
Our next app is a nifty little application called Delicious Library by a very unique software company called Delicious Monster. Delicious Library is the answer to your problem of keeping track of your books, videos, etc. Come on. You all have loads of books, a mountain of DVDs, and even a few VHS tapes laying around your house, right? If you are like me, you want to be organized enough to have a database of all of those things so you can keep track of who borrowed what book and when. If you are also like me, you mean well, but there aren’t enough hours in the day to actually enter all of the info into a database so you could actually do all of that.
Enter Delicious Library.
The best way to describe this software is that it is an electronic card catalog for your home media collection. It stores records of all of your stuff, and you can check things in and out to your friends, family, neighbors, etc. You’re probably thinking, “So what? I could design a database like that in Filemaker Pro in about 5 minutes.” You’re right. You could. But you’d still have to enter in all of that data. Wouldn’t be easier if you all had a barcode scanner and you could just scan the barcode on the item and have it download information about it on the web? You all have a barcode reader, right?
This is where Delicious Library shines. You can take a camera, like your iSight for example, and have it act as a barcode reader. Just point the camera at the barcode. One it has the barcode, it looks up the material on Amazon and downloads the catalog information as well as the cover art and any reviews. Data entry is now done! Cool, huh?
Check it out. You won’t be sorry.
–Pete
I was talking with my friend Tim Wilson a few weeks ago about some of the cool software we had recently come across for Mac OS X. After we had gone over about a dozen pieces of software between us, I came to the conclusion that one of us should blog about our “finds” and share them with the world. So — I volunteered to do the blogging.
The first piece of software I suggest you check out is called Comic Life by Plasq Software. Comic Life allows you to create comic books out of photos on your Mac. The comic books can be printed, turned into PDFs, turned into images, turned into web pages for .Mac, etc. It is integrated enough with iLife that it can directly read your iPhoto library (by album even) and you can drag and drop your photos from there. If you like, you can also point it to folders of pictures and browse them that way.
This nifty little app is a great way to have some fun putting captions and/or a story line onto a group of pictures. Kids love it. Adults love it just as much. It does have quite a bit of value in a school environment. It could be used for storyboarding, graphic design, and a number of other cool things.
It is relatively inexpensive as well. The list price is $24.95, but they do have educational and volume licensing available. The fine folks at the Hopkins School District, my old stomping ground, purchased a district license and are loving it. Plasq does have a 30 day free trial, so check it out. You won’t be sorry.
–Pete
Today is the anniversary of the September 11 Terrorist attacks on New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania. I remember vividly what I was doing when I found out that the trade towers had been attacked. It still gives me chills to think about it. It all seemed so surreal — and still does.
On a related note: Tonight on the History Channel there was a documentary called “Grounded on 9/11” about the FAA ordered ground stop that occurred that awful day. As a pilot, I was interested in the details of this documentary. It is amazing to me that in three hours time, the FAA controllers were able to get 6500 airplanes safely to the ground. I was also amazed to learn that there was no published procedure for doing this — the controllers were “winging it” so to speak. It is almost inconceivable that they were able to pull this off successfully.
— Pete
OK.
I admit it.
I grew up in the 80’s and I absolutely LOVED REO Speedwagon and Styx when I was growing up. This weekend I got a chance to relive the past a bit by going to the REO and Styx concert at the State Fair.
Let me start off by telling you that the weather was miserable. I went to concert in a full rain suit, as it had poured rain all afternoon at my house and the concert was in the State Fair Grandstand, which is only partially covered. It was a good thing I brought the rain suit too. We spent quite a bit of time outside waiting for the concert to begin.
The concert started late. The Fair officials were reluctant to let us load up the Grandstand because of the lightning that was going on. Instead, we crowded into the interior of the Grandstand building, which is actually a pretty good storm shelter. The building has been there since the 1930s and is constructed of concrete, steel, and brick. Once the concert started it was a lot of fun…..until they stopped it 30 minutes into REO’s set because of lightning. They made us all evacuate the Grandstand and go back inside for another 30 minutes while some more lightning moved through.
Because of all of the interruptions, REO’s set was short and a little flat. They played a bunch of their old classics, and I enjoyed them, but you could tell they were a bit rattled.
Styx, on the other hand, was absolutely AMAZING. Like most bands of that era, they have gone through their share of changes. The current lineup includes only Tommy Shaw and James Young from the original members. Dennis DeYoung, who did lead vocals and keyboards is no longer with the group. As the concert started, I was really skeptical that they would still be Styx even without Dennis DeYoung. Man was I pleasantly surprised. DeYoung was replaced by a guy name Lawrence Gowan who, it turns out, is a very talented musician. In addition, he can do an UNCANNY imitation of Dennis DeYoung’s singing voice and was almost indistinguishable from DeYoung in some of the classic Styx tunes like Come Sail Away and The Grand Illusion. WOW!
I was also pleasantly surprised at the level of skill and musicianship from the current Styx drummer Todd Sucherman. Todd replaced John Panazzo, who died in 1996. As much as I hate to say it, Todd is a MUCH better percussionist than John was and easily replaces John with a steady beat and an excellent performance.
And with that…I’m going over to the iTunes Music Store to download some more Styx!
–Pete
Geek moment:
One of my all time favorite pieces of software is called Request Tracker. It is an open source software package that was created by Best Practical and is designed to be used for issue tracking. A common scenario is for tracking tech support requests. I’ve always thought it was a great piece of software and today I discovered that O’Reilly Media has published a book called RT Essentials. If O’Reilly publishes about anything, you know it is good. If you haven’t checked it out, what are you waiting for?
— Pete