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Rain 1, curb 1, car 0

The car took a bit of an ouchie today. Taking the left turn off Lockwood to get onto the bridge into West Ashley, the car hit a slick patch on the wet road and the back end fishtailed one way, whipped back around the other way when I tried to correct and we ended up slamming into the curb and up onto the grass. Very nearly took out a palm tree too.
Fortunately no injuries other than a bit of shock and surprise and no other cars involved. I’m sure it must have been a sight for the other drivers who happened to be around.

Camry20110225.jpg

It’s at the Toyota dealership now where they gave me a verbal estimate of about $2k to fix the broken brake lines, hub, mangled brake drum and rim.
I suppose that’s what I get for being complacent about driving in the rain. Pay attention to those wet roads!

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A week at SPIE Medical Imaging

Last week I went to my first SPIE Medical Imaging conference.

As conferences go, SPIE MI is a more technical conference, and the work being presented tends to be a little more on the bleeding edge of things than what you might find at RSNA or AAPM. Since most of what I’ve done in the past has been more clinical and not as bleeding edge, it’s not a conference that’s high on my list of ones I want to go to. This time though, it was an opportunity to present some of the preliminary Monte Carlo work we’ve been doing. There were three posters accepted from our group and I got to go present them.

SPIE MI bounces between San Diego and Orlando each year, and this year it was in Orlando at one of the Disney Resorts. I flew in Friday, and since the conference didn’t really get started until Sunday (something I didn’t realize beforehand, really) I decided to spend my suddenly free Saturday at Disney World Epcot. Fun place. Much, much fun. I could have easily spent another day here.

Epcot

The rest of the week was spent at the conference seeing what would be coming my way a few years from now and catching up on studying. I did get to spend a day wandering around Downtown Disney. A fun place to go people watch, especially in the evening.

Downtown Disney at night
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Toothpick Races

When I was growing up, the neighbourhood kids I played with were easily entertained.

Springtime brings warmer temperatures, more daylight and melting snow.

Streams of snowmelt in the parking lot in front of my house would make tiny little rivers of water as it flowed toward the storm drain.

So we had toothpick races. Or stick races. Or whatever-would-float races.

We’d find a nice little stream that was deep enough to float a toothpick and had some decent flow. Then two or three of us would drop our toothpicks in, and see which one made it to the storm drain first.

It was good, fun entertainment for a bunch of 7-9 year olds. I suppose it was kind of our version of Pooh sticks.

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Hooligan Moment #543

It was mid-week of one of the houseboat trips. Plenty of food left, but booze was getting low and we needed to restock.

We drifted up one of the arms of the lake to hit the store at the end. Joe, piloting the other houseboat pulls up to the dock and starts driving it back and forth, back and forth. We yell at him asking “Joe! What the hell are you doing?!”

Joe yells back “I’m parallel parking!”

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CSCLRC Supported Entry 2011

The first day of this year’s Charleston Kennel Club dog show had some excellent weather for the first time in the 5 years I’ve been going. This year the show was smaller than last year. Not as many people or dogs as there were in past years. Still a lot of fun today.

Yellow lab
Great Dane
A pair of Bichons