Thursday, 2 March 2006, 2010
after a while...After you stop making updates for a while, I start to put off making any updates. Which is stupid, really. Anyway, much has gone on. Gunnar is growing rapidly, and just had his 6 month checkup. 95th percentile head, 75th percentile for length, 45th for weight. He's shaping up to be a tad bit larger than Thorwald, who isn't the smallest lad.
Thorwald is four weeks into expansions, and handling it well. Dr. Wood has managed to fit about 120cc of saline into one of the expanders, and 80cc into the other. The smaller is giving some resistance, and we're having mild issues with the ports migrating across his back. Basically, the expanders shouldn't be moving, but in Thor, they most certainly are. It hasn't interfered so far, and we're keeping our fingers crossed that things will stay AOK.
And, on the requisite technical note, I managed to figure out how my silly Dell C810 Latitude works. Basically, I've had a problem for months upon months with screen resolution. The screen will do 1600x1200, but at that size I can't read it. When I dropped the resolution to a more reasonable 1024x768, the display wouldn't get any larger--instead, larger portions of the screen would just be turned off. In other words, the smaller screen size would have large black borders. Turns out the way to fix it was to hit the Fn-Font button twice. That finally woke the laptop video up so that I can read the screen.
Friday, 10 February 2006, 1726
Digital Pictures Added!I've been meaning to do this since 2003, and I finally got around to updating the layout of the digital pictures. You can check out the new link to the left, and find lots of pictures that just weren't there before. I've got another 2000 or so digital pictures from the last few years to put up, and that'll take me a bit, but in the meantime enjoy what is there. I know that most of the pages don't have thumbnails. I'll get to that. Give me time.
Friday, 10 February 2006, 0103
More dynamic layoutwell, things don't look different from your point of view, but believe you me--they are. This whole setup is a lot more dynamic than it used to be, complete with include files and whatnot. Thanks to the marvel of PHP, you won't notice any changes, but they are there. I've also archived January's stuff into it's own file, since it is now easier to do such things. Oh, this page is now fully XHTML 1.1 Strict compliant, as well. I'm working on 508 compliance as I have time
Wednesday, 8 February 2006, 1721
More on human-animal hybridsDo you oppose the mixing of human and non-human genes? If so, be sure to send your objections to the American Diabetes Association. Millions of people are alive and healthy today because we took human genes--those necessary for insulin production--and spliced them into bacteria. This lets us grow massive quantities of essentially hypo-allergenic insulin.
My son uses such a product. He needs it to live. What did diabetics do before these technologies were developed? They either used porcine (pig) or bovine (cow) insulin, harvested from slaughteryards, or they died. What happened if they were allergic to porcine and bovine insulin? They died.
These compassionate conservatives seem hell-bent on letting my son die. If you know a diabetic, if you care for diabetics, make your voice heard: this type of cloning gives millions a chance to live. I'm actually so upset by the State of the Union address that I cannot really get my thoughts together. Why does the president hate diabetics so? Why does he hate the infirm? He does everything he can to stop abortion--because he says he's pro-life. Yet, he's bombing the crap out of many people in Iraq (which doesn't seem very pro-life to me), and he's very much in favor of the death penalty. Furthermore, he opposes medicinal marijuana--which is the only thing that has been found to be effective for nausea-suppression in many people on chemotherapy. Is he in favor of life, but not quality of life? Why can't we use stem cell research to try to cure my son's diabetes?What is so unholy about the ill? Why must we pass laws to prevent research which can cure them? How many innocents have been killed in the crossfire in Iraq? How is this Christian in any way shape or form? I seem to remember some long-haired hippy who ran around CURING the sick, in that book which Christians tend to read.
Wednesday, 1 February 2006, 1557
Cloning is a GOOD thingBush opposes all forms of cloning. Why is that a bad idea? For a snicker and some real reasons, check out Pharyngula's scienceblog on our president's pandering to religious groups..