Dog owners soon learn that their dogs don’t need lots of toys, or expensive chew toys. Mine don’t anyway. They’re just has happy chasing an empty water bottle around and have just as much fun (if not more) doing it than with their toys. In fact given a choice, they usually go for the plastic bottle instead of all their other toys. Funny, but true.
It’s like kids and boxes. Forget the stuff that came in them. They have more fun with the box instead.
MT 3.33 security update
There’s a security related update for Movable Type that just came out. Patches can be found at the Pronet blog. Updating is highly recommended.
More is better
Is it really? For imaging equipment it can be sometimes, up to a certain point. For gamma cameras, more heads is better because it shortens the acquisition time. Once you get up to 4 heads though, you start to run into practical limits like weight and head size.
There’s a new CT scanner in the house from a big German company that starts with an S. It’s not just any ordinary CT scanner though. This one has two x-ray tubes instead of the usual one. I missed the installation phase when the covers were off so I didn’t get to peek inside the gantry to see how things were arranged. I would imagine that the tubes are arranged on opposite sides and slightly offset along the Z-axis (going into the gantry) so that instead of covering the regular 20-30 mm beam width, this thing probably covers twice that. That means it can acquire twice the data in a single rotation. It also means potentially twice the radiation dose to the patient.
Apparently a dual tube scanner proved useful enough to turn it into a commercial product. I’ll get my hands on it today and put it through a few checks. It will be interesting to see how this thing performs. Once the apps people come through and set up some clinical techniques, it will be very interesting to see how the radiation dose compares to our other scanners. The timing is pretty good, since it’s time for the annual survey on the CT scanners anyway. I’ll be able to get some current data for the dose comparisons.
Zappo’s
There’s this new pizza place called Zappo’s at King and Race St that we tried out yesterday. The wife says it’s the best New York style pizza around (she ought to know). She’s never been a fan of Andolini’s, the perennial City Paper Best of, because she thinks the dough is too sweet.
Zappo’s was a pretty decent pie. Thin crispy crust, slightly chewy (not as chewy as Andolini’s) and not too sweet (just the way the wife likes it). Being a deep dish kind of pizza guy, Zappo’s pizza didn’t seem too different from the others I’ve had around here. Reasonably priced though. Haven’t gotten around to trying the other items on the menu yet. It’s located pretty much on the way home from the dog park, so I have a feeling we’ll be stopping by on a quasi-regular basis.
Spent fire extinguishers
So what does one do with spent fire extinguishers?
I’ve got a small extinguisher for the kitchen, and a medium sized one for the garage that are both sitting at empty. The garage one just seems to have depressurized over time. The kitchen one I had to use to put out a small fire in the oven that started up from stuff spilling over.
The kitchen one says “Discard/Replace extinguisher if pointer reads empty” on the pressure gauge. The label also says “Must be discarded” in tiny bold letters (it’s a small label), so I take this to mean that this particular extinguisher can’t be recharged. So what’s the proper way to dispose of one of these? It’s probably still got chemicals in it, so I’m hesitant to just toss it in the trash. Plus it’s made of metal, so it could probably be recycled.
The pressure gauge needle on the garage one is sitting in the Recharge zone, and says “MUST BE RECHARGED” in slightly larger bold letters, so I assume this particular one can be recharged. I figure I can probably find a place in the phone book that does fire extinguisher service.
I should make a trip to the fire station down the road. I bet they can tell me what to do.