I’m pleased to announce that Skype is feeling quite well today. Last night was a little rocky with getting him comfortable and sleeping soundly, but today he’s pretty much back to normal. He’s fairly low key which is good - our veterinarian says he should take it easy for the next five days.
Skype is drinking tons of water (which is good), but it involves a larger than normal number of walks. Since I have to keep him low energy they have to be short so I’m feeling a little like I did the first week I brought him home when I had to take him outside once every couple of hours day or night.
On the topic of dogs one of The Strangers writers is obviously an insensitive and heartless soul: Erica Barnett posted a rude commentary on this story in the Seattle Times about an act of unbridled kindness.
From the Seattle Times story:
The fundraiser for Rhonda at a Fremont tavern netted about $2,300 for Dave DiStefano, who said he was overwhelmed by the generosity of those who were moved by his dog’s plight.
“It was an amazing night,” said DiStefano, whose dog is now in a Lynnwood animal hospital recovering from major esophagus surgery after she ate some brittle bones. “I figured I’d get $1,000 if I was lucky. I didn’t have any crazy fantasy, but this little piece is really nice and will take the edge off things.”
DiStefano racked up $15,000 in medical bills for his dog’s surgery.
Erica’s commentary basically boils down to: if you have the money to spend on charity do it on something other than ‘a freaking dog’. This strikes me as a frightfully horrible thing to say. I know for many people their pets are their children. I myself being a single guy regard Skype as a full member of my family and I do everything possible to ensure his good health. I would spend nearly any amount of money to ensure Skype’s health and well-being. I can understand why Dave would put as much love and effort into ensuring Rhonda’s health as any loving parent would for their human children.
While I will be the first to admit there are many great charities out there (the comments on the Slog post point out starving children and slowing the AIDS epidemic in Africa) I can think of none more noble as the pure act of kindness to help a stranger keep their family whole.
Parenting is a most difficult trial of love at times, but the rewards are unimaginable. Today I dropped Skype off at the vet’s in the morning to be put under anesthesia so they could get a biopsy to help diagnose his ongoing skin condition and clean his teeth while they were at it.
As usual while he was there I was a bit of a nervous wreck, and the moment they called me at 2 in the afternoon I raced to Broadway Veterinary Clinic to pick him up. He’s doing well - he has a few sutures and is still rather groggy from all the drugs they gave him.
He curls up next to me on the couch whimpering momentarily (it’s frighteningly easy to feel like a bad father every time he whimpers), and occasionally stands up, half wanders/half staggers around the room for a moment then comes back to sleep some more on the couch. Every time he wakes up I can tell there is a slight tinge of panic in his face until he looks up and realizes I’m there.
I can tell he’s coming out of the drug haze more and more each time he makes a round, and I’m not sure if I want to smother him in love for having gone through it, or laugh slightly when I see a big lumbering Pit Bull stagger. I think both is probably the best answer to that question. Let the loving ensue.
I’ve got a ton of painkillers, antibiotics, and steroids to give him for the next month so hopefully the sutures will heal up within a week, and after diagnoses comes back on the biopsy we can hopefully get his skin condition under control. I have to wait for him to start drinking water voluntarily before I can give him his medications for the first time, but hopefully he will start getting thirsty soon - he hasn’t had a thing to drink last night (as per the vets orders prior to the surgery) and I would think he would be rather thirsty by this point.
And yes mom and dad - It was a true “parenting moment” by your definition - having Skype under partial anesthesia has involved cleaning various bodily excrement from unusual places. I think this is lives way of getting me back for all those diaper changes you guys went through all those many years (oh god - almost 26 now) ago!
In the last two days I’ve gotten a nice auxiliary input installed into my car, taken Skype to the vet (which unfortunately will result in a follow up visit and some minor surgery on Tuesday), had an automatic shutoff value on a gas pump fail and spray almost a gallon of gas all over me and my car, thrown my back out sneezing from allergies, and celebrated not one but two birthdays - Brien and Dom (its a little creepy that they share the same birthday.
How’s that for one lightspeed run-on sentence?
Update: I managed to get roughly 14 hours of sleep starting Sunday late afternoon and ending Monday morning at my usual time. It made all the difference and helped my back out quite a bit. Big week at work here I come!
Last night was driver-racing-tastic! Mike picked me up a copy of Forza 2 and the Microsoft Wireless Racing Wheel for the Xbox 360 and boy is it fun! Forza 2 is not a racing game, but rather a racing simulator. Rather than focusing on being a fun game to play and tossing physics out the window it focuses on accurate physics simulation, and really creates a highly immersive and realistic racing experience. Forza 2 makes every effort to correctly calculate all the forces taking effect on your engine, car, and tires and calculates their interaction with various road surfaces and the laws of inertia to make your in game car handle identically to a real world car with the same conditions and engine tuning. The difference makes it much more difficult to control your car and takes the fun out of the game for people who just want to go fast and crash hard - but bumps up the fun factor for geeks like me!
The Wireless racing wheel only helps in this endeavor: the force feedback and ‘intuitive’ interface make for a drastic improvement in game play. I’ve never really gotten into racing simulations before - a few ‘racing’ games like Burnout Revenge caught my attention for moments here and there, but the true sims were rather boring without a steering wheel, paddle shifters, and gas/brake pedals. Being able to feel understeer and oversteer make all the difference in understanding the laws of physics and their effect on my car, and gives the driver a much stronger connection with their virtual car.
The icing on the cake? They have over 300 cars to choose from including the 2003 RS6, which is close enough to my real-life car to give me the chills. Obviously a single night into my Forza career I haven’t earned nearly enough in-game currency (credits) to buy the RS6 but the mere thought of buying, tweaking, tuning, and painting the car of my dreams keeps me coming back for more! Until I manage to come up with the 100,000 odd Forza dollars I’ll have to be happy with my starter car: a 1995 Volkswagon Corrado VR6 - a decent track car, and one that brings back fond memories of when my friend Eric used to have (and tinker with) a Corrado.
In thinking about my photography I often muse on how to exhibit my art. A proper exhibition is something I’ve never actually done, but may be doing at some point in the future.
I think of what kind of control I would like over the environment, the speed at which people moved through it, the lighting, the music, and so on. Obviously having this level of control allows an artist to complete his message, to really forge an experience out of it.
On the other hand most of my art gets displayed on people’s computer screens. It gets displayed in the manner which my viewer wants, on their schedule, their location - they control the experience. As the artist loses control over his (or her) artistic experience the viewer gains it.
Tools like Flickr and Youtube have opened up the viewer centric experience allowing almost any artist to throw their creations up on the net, available for anyone to experience on their own terms, and do with what they please. Our technological society has even created Creative Commons usage licenses to grant and communicate rights from the artist to the viewer.
Strange thing is I’m not entirely sure which one prefer. Part of me thinks that people can enjoy art more if they are in the right mindset - and when I control the environment and experience I’m more likely to help them into that mindset. Part of me thinks people would enjoy art more on their terms, in their favorite coffee shop with their laptop, or at home in the den on the big screen.
Which do you prefer? Does it really matter? Is it the work of art itself that matters more than the setting, or are both the design and the viewing experience combined required to make ‘art’?
My father at age 13 - He really does look eerily like I do age for age. For comparison here are some shots of me when I was 10 and 15 years older. We both have the same mischievous smile, elephantine nose, and horrid comb-over of a haircut!
“Jim at 13” by sparktography
Last night some experimentation with color and form has ensued. I explored through iPhoto looking for untouched shots that I liked for either their colors, or their form, but without care for other compositional details. I then dived into Photoshop to bring out what I considered to be the best parts of the photo, while reducing the worst. It was a somewhat successful experiment (I like the Blue walker rivets results a lot more) that I learned a lot from.
The Red Yellow Junko I selected only for it’s bright colors. I always liked the idea of giving that corner market the Lensbaby treatment but never really found an exact implementation I liked. A little bit of cropping makes this one decent, but it’s the colors that I love in the end.
Blue walker rivets was last week on my photo shoot with Rob of the Red Walker sculpture, but obviously heavily color processed. The curves all arcing to the center of the photo reminds me of something far more organic than a bunch of metal held together with rivets; more of an octopus or bird arcing into flight.
Is it really Monday already? The weekend seemed far too short, and I have way too much on my agenda for this week. I meant to go out shooting this weekend and get some new material to work with, but never seemed to have the chance between getting all my personal to-do’s checked off from the last couple of weeks. Such the sorrows of a successful life.
“Red Yellow Junko” by sparktography
“Blue walker rivets” by sparktography
