Axodys

Mary and I saw Gangs of New York this afternoon with her parents and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Lots of brutality and violence, but Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance as Bill “The Butcher” Cutter was top notch and Leo put in a decent turn as well as Amsterdam Vallon.

Out-of-body operation banishes tumours

bq. For the first time, cancer has been treated by removing an organ from the body, giving it radiotherapy and then re-implanting it. The out-of-body operation allows doctors to administer high doses of radiation to widespread tumours without affecting other organs.

bq. Doctors in Italy used the technique to treat a 48-year-old man with multiple tumours in his liver. One year after the operation, which took 21 hours, the man is alive and well. His liver is functioning normally and the latest scans have not revealed any signs of tumours.

According to the article the patient was similar to my father in that the cancer originated in the colon and then spread to his liver. I’m not sure if this type of operation could would have actually worked for my dad, but I was pretty excited that they’ve come up with such a promising new approach for people with similar cancers.

Work has been uneventful so far today as expected, although there are actually a few people around the building. I’ve always kind of enjoyed working during the winter break while everyone’s away on vacation; feeling relaxed and productive is a nice combination.

I was pretty disappointed when it became obvious a couple days ago that Cougar football coach Mike Price was going to take the Alabama job just weeks before the Rose Bowl. As a WSU alum and a die-hard Cougar fan, losing a coach who is such a good fit for the school after 14 years of loyal service is hard to swallow. However, a funny thing has happened today. The more I’ve thought about it and the more news I’ve read and heard about the situation, the more I’ve found myself feeling a completely different emotion. Instead of being down in the dumps I’m actually beginning to feel a little bit excited. Mike Price is getting a tremendous opportunity and as a 14 year fan of the man and the coach I’m rooting for him to make the most of it.

Of course Mike Price is only half the story. I’m really excited for Bill Doba to get his shot as the new Cougar head coach. He’s been alongside Mike Price leading the Cougar defense for the past 14 years and doing a very fine job of it. Coach Doba has more than earned his shot at the promotion. In some ways his defenses have played at a consistantly higher level than the Cougar offenses over the last ten years. In fact the 94 defense carried a very suspect offense all the way to the Alamo Bowl.

At this point the only thing I’m really unhappy about with the entire situation is that apparently Coach Price is still set to coach in the Rose Bowl. As much as I love Mike Price I say no way to that one. He forfeited the right to that opportunity when he took Alabama up on its offer. WSU owes it to its players, fans, and alumni to move forward.

One pleasant discovery I’ve made as a result of the unseasonably rainy weather we’ve been having lately is that the sun room area of our house doubles pretty well as a rain room. The sound of raindrops on the angled glass roof panes are positively sublime. Last night I was temped to just roll out a sleeping bag and turn in right there.

We had some really big flakes falling this morning as I got ready for work and the roads were pretty well covered on my drive into Gonzaga. The temperatures were right around 32° making things especially slippery and wet on the drive down the hill. Traffic wasn’t too bad and most people drove prudently.

It’s supposed to warm up today so hopefully most of the snow will melt off the streets at least. In fact I wouldn’t mind if the snow melted off completely as Mary and I still have some yard clean up to do before our new puppy arrives in January.

Funny, I just noticed my last entry was about the weather and roads. Guess I’ve had too much stuff going on lately to talk about anything besides the weather.

The drive to work was pretty slick and icy thanks to the crazy freezing fog that we’ve been having all weekend, but I didn’t see any accidents. Most of the people driving around during the 6 o’clock hour seemed to be pretty sensible and once I got down off the hill conditions improved quite a bit. Of course once I got to work I found about a quarter inch of snow on all the nearby streets so go figure. I’m probably going to need to pick up a couple snow tires soon.

Emila is a MacOS X indexing and search tool for your email (assuming you use Mail.app) inspired by ZOE.

I played with ZOE several months back and thought it was a cool idea at the time, but didn’t really like how it worked in conjunction with my email application. Add the Java issues that caused it to crash periodically and I quickly tossed it. It looks like Emila is a much more practical approach to the email indexing and search space. Perhaps Emila will have a little more staying power in my application toolbelt.