I had my 19 month MRI scan last Friday (Aug, 27 2010). I have looked at the images and found no new growth at the tumor site. Good news for me!

MRI Images

I am always searching for some simple scripts to make my life easier. Here are a few that I have used.

This script removes the spaces from file names and directories. It replaces them with the underscore "_". It must be run several times due to the changes in `find` when a directory name has changed.


#!/bin/sh
find . -name '* *' | while read file;
do
target=`echo "$file" | sed 's/ /_/g'`;
echo "Renaming '$file' to '$target'";
mv "$file" "$target";
done;


This script I have used to concatenate large numbers of ascii text files. It adds a column for the file name so the final output file has a reference back to the original file.


#!/bin/sh
for i in `ls *.[Rr][Ss][Ff]`
do
awk '{print "\"" FILENAME "\"\t" "\"xxx\"" "\t" $0}' $i >> outfile.txt
done


I finally took my dad for a ride to Emerald Bay. When I was younger, I promised to give him a ride to Emerald Bay when I bought a boat. I traveled by myself with the boat for the first time. I was nervous about launching since my boat buddy was not with me--she had to work. There was a mandatory boat inspection that I drove back to Meyers. The cost is based on boat length and horsepower. For a three day pass, it cost me $55 for my 320hp boat. While I was driving back to Meyers for my boat inspection, I had to stop at the inspection station leaving South Lake Tahoe. I was informed there that a fine of $350 could be issued if a boater was caught traveling with the drain plug still fastened to the boat. I have never traveled with the drain plug in, so I was free to go.

I had a mental lapse the other day and hit the reboot button while the system was loading. What an idiot! After rebooting the system, it would shutdown after 15-20 minutes of uptime. There were cases of excessive sync numbers and the partitions were flagged as "not properly unmounted". After some searches on the 'net, I remembered that for fsck to repair the damage, I would have to run it on unmounted partitions. This solved the problem.

You don't always need prescription medications to lower your blood pressure (hypertension). By making these 10 lifestyle changes, you can lower your blood pressure and reduce your risk of heart disease.
By Mayo Clinic staff

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as 'Euro-English'.

In the first year, 's' will replace the soft 'c'. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard 'c' will be dropped in favour of 'k'. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome 'ph' will be replaced with 'f'. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent 'e' in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v'.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!!


First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank Kool-aid made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because,

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day.And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes . After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem..

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms.......

WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

If YOU are one of us CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good.

While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?

We took Friday off from work and headed to my in-law's house on Thursday night. We had left the boat there for the past week so traveling with all of the loonies wasn't too bad. This weekend was going to be a small family reunion for my wife. Two of her aunts and uncles, cousins, her sister, brother-in-law and niece would be joining the group on Friday night. Thursday night and Friday were nice and relaxing. We put the boat into the water Friday morning and had a place on the dock to tie up. The lake was going to be very busy this weekend. The lake was already busy on Friday morning, but it was only going to get worse.

I went to the trap range with a co-worker on Wednesday for lunch. We each shot a round of trap with one other person. We took turns using my 870. I hit about 50% of the birds. That wasn't too bad for me--I haven't shot trap for over a year.

Finally, we were on the water! It was time to get together with family and friends over the long weekend.

We packed up the truck on Friday morning and headed over to Lake McClure. I had replace the battery a week earlier, I had it at home for a trickle charge. Our new radial tires were a little flat and I aired them up at the storage place. We were the first to arrive at the lake. Thinking ahead, we did the smart thing and bought the year long pass to McClure this year. Next time we come to the check-in station, we can blow right past it! Launching was easy, only two other boaters were near the launch ramp. The boat started-up nicely and Michelle took her out while I parked the car on the top lot.