Author: Eugene

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Moo dogs

Lately the dogs have taken to grazing on the grass in the back yard. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s getting long and they think it’s fun to play with, or if they just have a grass munchy thing going on or what.

Usually they’ll bite off a few blades (Nala likes to go after the seed stalks), munch away and then hack it up a few minutes later if it doesn’t end up going all the way down (I guess it gets stuck in their throat and tickles it or something). Nala also likes to go after fallen leaves (maybe it’s a crunch thing). Some days it’s like I have a pair of small cows or goats.

I’ve heard some dogs will eat grass to make themselves throw up if they’re not feeling well. This doesn’t seem to be the case with Nala and Simba though. Judging from what I’ve read over on the Lab board, it seems like pretty normal (albeit odd) behaviour.

Maybe I should add some salad to their diet…

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Slow cooker roasting

For a slow cooker experiment (did I ever mention how much I love my slow cooker?), I thought I’d try roasting a chicken. Adapting a recipe from my Slow Cooker for Dummies book, I combined some jerk seasoning (Walkerswood is my favourite…it’s seriously hot and a little bit goes a long long way), lime juice and garlic together and smeared it all over the chicken inside and out (make sure to get it under the skin). Left it in the fridge overnight and then in the morning, stuffed a few cloves of garlic inside and placed it into the slow cooker along with a half cup of chicken stock.

When I got home 8 hours later, I was greeted with the fragrant aroma of roasted jerk chicken (yum). After turning the cooker off and letting it cool a bit, I checked out the results.

There ended up being more liquid and fat coming off the chicken than I expected, so it turned into more of a braise than a roast. All the meat was falling off the bone, making disassembly a very easy job. The end result was very tasty though. I have a tendency to be a little heavy handed with the jerk seasoning, but this time I got it right. The chicken came out nice and tender, with just the right amount of spiciness. Very yummy, especially with a cold beer to cool things off when it gets too spicy hot.

Next time, remove the skin, skip the added liquid and try cooking it breast side down.

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SIIM 2007 talk

I thought I’d post the talk I have at SIIM 2007 for posterity and in case anybody else wanted to see it.

Impact of Various Imaging Modalities on PACS Archiving and Storage

This version has a few slides and graphs included that I took out of the version I presented because of time constraints.

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Back from SIIM

Thanks to flight delays, I got back from the meeting about an hour later than scheduled. It seems the more flying I do, the more annoyed at it I get. USAir’s self check-in kiosks never work for me and timing for the flights always seems to leave me with 2 or 3 hour layovers. Maybe it’s just the places I’m going.

Anyway, the meeting was very interesting with a big focus on informatics rather than just PACS and different implementations. There were a few talks about developing radiology ontologies and using them to develop semi-intelligent systems to help with diagnoses. There’s a lot of datamining of radiology reports and journal articles that can be done to help radiologists, which is only just starting to be done at a few places. Sounds like really cool stuff.

A couple of talks about setting up big archive centers that kind of emphasized how far behind the medical field is with respect to technology. Learned about a lot of interesting sounding software that I’m looking forward to trying out at work.

The Rhode Island Convention Center where the meeting was held was a nice facility conveniently located near a bunch of hotels, although could have benefited from better WiFi coverage and more power outlets for us battery-impaired laptop users. There were power bars in the SIIM lounge, but it was too far away from the nearest hotspot to get anything more than a low signal. Maybe I just have a crappy wireless card in my 5150, but it seemed to me that the two WiFi hotspots in the building were pretty localized. If you weren’t in visual range of the hotspot sign, you were pretty much out of luck.

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Newly inspired

I’ve been getting lots of ideas and inspiration to work on and investigate new things at the talks I’ve been going to at SIIM 2007.

My talk went well and seemed to be very well received. Had a few people come up to me afterwards to ask for copies of my talk, including one person who was going to use it as ammo to justify storage cost projections to his higher-ups. That’s one of the things that makes you feel like your talk had an impact.

Off to another session, so maybe more later.