My friend...

When I first moved to this area, the girl I was dating at the time worked at a pet boarding facility. Part of her job was to go to the local veterinary hospitals to pick up medicines for the pets that were boarding with them. One evening I was asked to go to a veterinary hospital to pick up some medicine. While there a gentleman came into the hospital with a very scruffy and dirty dog. The gentleman wanted to have the dog spayed and when was told the price, the gentleman was all but happy. The man complained that the dog was not even his but had found her living under his barn. While the dog was there she had a litter of puppies (for which he boasted having "taken care of them").

I was appalled at how the man was very open about his actions and I feared what he may do with the dog he had in tow. So I did what I knew was best. I offered to take the dog and pay for the spay myself. The man didn't even say anything to me. He just handed me her leash and left.

Since I wasn't supposed to have pets due to my lease agreement, I took the dog home to my small apartment late that night. I got her into the bathroom and filled up the tub with hot water and gave her what was apparently her first bath in a very long time.

After a long bath and a quick drying, we headed downstairs and I realized. I have nothing in this apartment for her to eat. Looking in the fridge I found some hot dogs. So, we sat in the living room and at a few hot dogs and kind of scoped each other out.

I lived at that time, about two or three blocks from a grocer so I walked down to the grocer and picked up some dry dog food and a squeaky toy (a nice plush green frog). Getting back to the apartment, I found the poor dog lying on the couch sound asleep.

After that point Chloe and I were the best of friends. I took Chloe with me everywhere I could. She would go with me to the park every evening for a walk around the grounds. Afterwards we would go to McDonald's for a cheeseburger and fry. Weekends were a lovely time in the dog park running and walking.

I lived with the girl that I was dating at the time for a while. And when she and split up, Chloe was the first that went with me on my new life journey. My life started to revolve around Chloe. "I have to hurry up and do what I'm doing so I can go check on Chloe" and the such. I then met my wife who shared my love for Chloe as well as all animals.

As my wife and I lived in our home we had 3 dogs and 2 cats. We first lost our cat Roxy, not long after that our White Lab, Molly passed away. Not even a month later our Water Spaniel, Marley was stricken with cancer and passed away. On September 29th, Chloe passed away in the caring company of myself, my wife, Dr. Janet and Frank.

Chloe was an amazing dog. She was blind, deaf, had hip problems and arthritis. At one point in her life she had Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and survived that. The one thing that I could not save her from though was time. Chloe lived until ripe old age of 14. She was a great dog, a great friend and I will miss her more than anyone could possibly ever know.

No Effort Required!

No Effort Required!
An observation of the woo with fitness

Around 3 years ago, I stopped smoking, and then a little less than 2 years ago I made the effort of becoming more fit. I first started doing small general workouts until a friend of mine introduced me to Tony Horton’s P90X. Being a skeptic I was hesitant about such a routine that was advertised as much as it is on Sunday morning TV. But, I gave it a go and quickly fell in love with the workouts. Not just the workouts, but the methods of gradual progression on how to do the workouts. During the moves, Tony goes through and explains the proper method of how to do these workouts as well as modify them if you are not used to working out. Great idea! Since I started “getting fit”, I have completed P90X twice and have now moved on to other self tailored workouts with the help from my friend that introduced me to P90X to being with. But this is not about P90X.

Here is my problem. I was watching TV the other morning while eating breakfast like I always do, when a commercial came on advertising a new “Spa” that opened up. This spa is filled with all of the weight loss woo that any skeptic can have a hey-day with. They have “Body Wraps”, “NuCell-u-Smooth”, “NuLazer Lipo” as well as “NuWave Lipo”. Their website even makes the claim “Imagine yourself with a new body. Imagine losing 12 to 39 inches in just one hour... without dieting and without exercise!”. Without dieting and without exercise...

There are many things that I find fault with this spa. Among them being the lack of information on what they actually “do”. Probably in part because it really does nothing. If we look at one of the treatments they offer “Nu Lipo-Ex”, it states that it “uses a safe and painless bi-polar and mono-polar radio frequency technology”. Well, that’s pretty vague really. “...radio frequency technology”??? What technology? Radio Frequencies?

But there is a deeper frustration with this type of advertising besides it just leading people to believe that they can loose weight and become a fit person without working. I spend an hour to an hour and a half five days a week exercising as well as two to four hours on a weekend biking to keep fit. Also, I have adjusted my eating so that I am not eating processed foods and tons of sweets. It’s a lot of work at first but it becomes a life style after a while. This is not “doing nothing”. It is a shame that companies actually have the audacity to take money from people telling them that they don’t have to do anything but sit and the weight will just fall off. Just so that two weeks later the weight comes right back and the customer makes another appointment to achieve the same result. Ending is a vicious cycle.

It has become my goal to learn as much as I can against these types of treatments. I feel it necessary that people know the truth about “Nu-Light” and “Radio Frequency Treatments” and the such. No, I am not a scientist, but I do know this is nothing but another scam and weight-loss woo.

With our heads in the clouds : Thoughts on Cloud Computing

When cloud computing first came about, I admit I didn’t really get what it’s purpose was. It was never really clear to me what "The Cloud" was. And even after I somewhat understood what it was about, I didn't clearly grasp what we could do with this technology. Not to mention if it was safe and the data that I was "sending to the cloud" was protected or not.

Today it is much different. More and more I find myself, just like now as I type these notes, that I use cloud computing. I use Google Docs to type my notes and organize them before I actually type them into the blog. Over the past few months I have been using cloud computing in conjunction with two friends to correspond about workout routines and schedules. This has proven to be quite valuable in fine tuning the workout routines and schedules. Recently I introduced my wife to the cloud computing service, Dropbox, to transfer files from her work computer to our home computer. This method has saved her from having to carry around a USB flash drive to transfer her files from work to home.

Services such as Dropbox have been in the news questioning their terms of service. But that does not stop us from using it, just more cautious as to what we store there. Other services such as Amazon’s AWS was offline for two days causing a lot of business be dead in the water. Just recently, Google introduced their “Music Locker” which is still in Beta and by invitation only.

In the end, the thought of "Cloud Computing" that was once a question in my mind as to what it was, has proven itself as a valuable service. One that I would have a difficult time doing without.