Update on Captain, my 12yo canine son

We visited the oncologist on Friday.  She did xray and ultrasound imaging. I'd written previously that one shouldn't read medical stuff on the internet, as it can upset you.  Badly. She told me that it has spread too far, too quickly.  Its on his liver, in…

A Tout Le Mond

This is a story I wrote today.  It is told from the point of view of my son Captain.  It is (as far as I know) true. “So as you read this note my friends, I’d love to stay with you all.  Please smile when you think about me.…

The endgame

I generally try to steer clear of politics on this blog, other than to criticize those who deserve it.  I am not associated with either major US party, I've voted for, and given money to, candidates from both parties.  I am an independent. That's the background.…

Moving to zfs, a journey

The background.  I've maintained a server for my home systems for more than 15 years.  Originally built as a Frankenstein system, with random available parts during my time running Scalable Informatics (RIP). Rebuilt a number of times since with parts procured from ebay.  This server runs a number…

10 years ...

A few days ago, on my daughters birthday, my wife turned to me and noted that that day, was 10 years after her surgery.  And she is still here.  Teaching math and science. There's an XKCD for this as it turns out.  It starts with 2 years [https:…

Scientific illiteracy and innumeracy are literally killing people

The omicron wave of SARS-COV2 continues, growing at a fantastic rate [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10340061/US-hits-second-daily-highest-average-diagnoses-rate-pandemic-began.html] .  The growth rate of this variant [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Omicron_variant#Contagiousness] is staggering.  Doubling the number of cases in 48 hours, or less. Meanwhile, on social…

Length scales and perspective in the universe

This is something I've thought about quite a bit recently, as I've been using high resolution images of galaxies as desktop background images.  The idea in short is, when you look at images of a galaxy Scaled Andromeda galaxy image. Original (https://esahubble.org/images/heic1502a/…

deleting IT departments?

Thus wrote a MIT Sloan school professor in a Wall Street Journal opinion bit [https://optionsmasterycenter.com/its-time-to-get-rid-of-the-it-department/], about the concept of removing a department he felt to be unaligned with the business it is serving.  His basis for making this assertion of non-alignment, is sadly, a strawman argument about…