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Every Saturday morning I usually take my girlfriend and head around town shopping at yard and garage sales. It undoubtedly makes for fun times when we send secret glances towards each other after spying some particularly funny item for sale.

Last week we didn’t even have to get out of the car to start cracking up. The big signs advertising this particular destination were all emblazoned with “Cat condos for sale!!” Not being pet owners, we were intrigued enough to want to see just how many cat condos it took to warrant such signage.

I’ll admit that we were both so blown away people were wondering if we were on drugs. We just could not stop laughing to ourselves, but we were doing it very much out loud!

Not only were there cat condos of every shape, size and color, but a whole section of the yard devoted to scratching posts. How much scratching does one cat need to perform?

Perhaps the gem of the entire stop, however was the selection of outdoor cat condos. When I was a kid we would have called these things forts. And if you placed them up in a real tree, they would have become tree houses.

My girlfriend and I left before we got into too much trouble. Boy that was fun, though!

Technorati Tags: cat condos, scratching posts

My mom and I recently visited an old acquaintance who had been out of commission for several years with leukemia.  Even after her last bout of chemotherapy, it was a long time before  she was strong enough to go back to work.  Fighting the disease off nearly killed her.

Because she was out of commission for so long, it’s been years since we’ve seen her — since before she was diagnosed, actually.  All of her hair has grown back, and she looks just the same as she did before her diagnosis, albeit a little older and more careworn.

Interestingly, one of the things she told us about was “chemo hair” — how her hair grew in thicker and even curlier after she was done with the chemotherapy.  It’s kind of funny how the cells and the hair follicles respond to chemo — it’s almost like by producing “chemo hair,” they are coming back with a vengeance.

It’s almost surprising, in a way.  You would expect the chemo to have a more lasting effect on the hair follicles, perhaps even killing them permanently and resulting in the person having to get a hair transplant.  But that’s just not the case at all.

It’s amazing how well the human body can rebound from something like that, don’t you think?

Technorati Tags: chemo hair, hair transplant, leukemia

My nephew was unable to attend our weekly Sunday dinner at my parents home and I inquired as to his absence. My sister told me that he had been very busy studying for an upcoming examination having to do with sleep apnea, bipap machines and other aspects of sleeping disorders.

Oh, I failed to mention that he is a medical intern and has been on a rotation where his focus is to learn all there is to know about the various diagnosis and treatments related to sleep loss. Given that I personally failed out of medical school, I’ve always done my best to support and encourage my nephew. Looking forward to our chats at Sunday dinner was always a motivator for my attending the meal.

My sister indicated that he was actually in the laboratory doing some hands on work with several CPAP machines and it was very important that he not only know how to operate these specific models, but also understand the theory behind them as well.

Given that I was a bit disappointed with his absence, I decided to do some research online so I could chat intelligently with him next week. I came across a great primer list of sleep apnea articles and knew that I’d have plenty of instructional reading to prepare myself.

Technorati Tags: bipap, CPAP machines

One of the things that I am really fascinated by is the increasingly ability of our technology to do things with little or no human involvement. Many people think that this is the stuff of the future but there are actually a lot of automated technologies that we’re already used to which are like this. In fact, there is a whole category of technology, known as Automatic Identification and Data Capture Systems (AIDC) which requires no human input to operate once they have gotten started.

AIDC technology has three parts to it. First it can automatically identify what an object is by some sort of scanning process. Second it can extract information or data from the object without any added information being entered by a human. And third, it can automatically input that information into a computer system to be stored and used by a business or individual in the future.

Sounds unreal doesn’t it? But if you think about it, it’s all around us. AIDC technologies include bar codes, smart cards and the magnetic stripes on your credit cards. Even voice recognition can fall into this category. As technology gets more and more advanced, we’re going to see this become even more common. It’s interesting stuff!

Technorati Tags: data capture systems