I think I’ll take out some of those frozen turkey bits from my grilled turkey and have them for dinner tonight.
Bloggers are a generous lot
Wow, bloggers and blog readers are a generous bunch. Over $230 000 in donations logged at TTLB as of this post so far and still rising fast. Fantastic!
Blog for Relief day
It’s Blog Relief Day today, an effort started up by TTLB and the Instapundit guy.
So in case you missed the big red Donate button from yesterday’s post, or it’s too far down for your lazy finger to scroll too, here it is again. My charity of choice is the Red Cross, but you can make a donation to whatever charity you want. Here’s a big long list in case you can’t think of one on your own. Just make sure it’s a good and reputable one. You want to make sure all or most of your donation goes to help the hurricane victims, and not to lining some telemarketers’ big behind.
Oh, and don’t forget the animals. They’ll need a hand getting out of this mess too.
I’ve already made my donations. How about you? Who knows, those people stuck there might be you some day. When you’re done, go here to log your contribution.
9 years ago: Detroit bound
9 years ago today, I got on a plane in Calgary and a few hours later, landed in Detroit Michigan. I was going to start a new job in a new city, and in the US of all places. I was leaving my home of 26 years with just two suitcases containing my most important stuff. I was supposed to have flown out a couple of days earlier, but got stuck in red tape at the airport. The INS guy processing my TN application decided that since my job title had the word ‘medical’ in it, he needed to know if I needed to be licensed or not, which wasn’t indicated in the letter from my future employer. That ended up delaying me a couple of days. But eventually I got there and ended up staying for just shy of 3 years. Definitely a memorable experience.
Going through a box of stuff, I ran into one of my journal notebooks and saw an entry about my move.
August 14/96 Wednesday
Well, I’m finally here in Detroit. Just over 2 hours to Chicago, then a short 1 hour hop over Lake Michigan to Detroit.
The first thing you notice when flying into Detroit is a bluish white haze. Could just be the weather. It’s pretty hot and muggy once you get off the airplane.
Found the airport shuttle to the Fairfield Inn, and discovered that they had no record of my reservation. Fortunately I managed to get a room because the guy who came in after me was told there weren’t any empty rooms left.
The next thing to do is find a way to get to work tomorrow. I’m told there’s a commuter service available.
I think I should have selected a place a little closer to Detroit. Went walking around looking for landmarks so I could locate myself on the map. Couldn’t rollerblade anywhere because there are no sidewalks and the only road is a major artery. Argh.
Another thing you notice is that a lot of the roads are made of concrete. From the air, they all look a sandy tan colour.
The first thing I see when I turn on the TV is a tornado watch for the entire area. Hmmm…
As for finding a place to stay, I’ve picked out a few places down near the river to check out. Rents are pretty reasonable. They’re pretty close to downtown though. Do I want to live there? Guess I’ll have to check it out tomorrow.
AAPM 2005 Day 2
On the schedule for this morning:
7:30 (PDT) – PET Physics and Technology
First topic was basic PET physics and detector technology. Pretty basic stuff. Second topic was reconstruction algorithms, which was interesting and probably deserved it’s own session.
10:00 – President’s Symposium
Very inspirational talk by Dr John Rigden about Einstein’s 1905 papers and what makes them so special and revolutionary.
13:30 – Computed Tomography
Hoo, lots of dry topics that mostly flew over my head.
16:00 – Dual modality imaging
Best session of the day. Learned lots of things to consider and think about for future image fusion work.
18:00 – AAPM awards ceremony and reception
I think I may skip this and go do touristy things down by the Market tonight.
Interesting note: there seem to be more women at this year’s meeting than I remember from past meetings. This is a good thing.
The wireless lounge is a nice area to hang out and get some Net access. The only problem with it is that it’s surrounded by windows and sometimes gets too bright to see a laptop screen very well. Every now and then the connection will drop too, causing page loading errors. Mildly annoying.