Mike Yon reports an extremely interesting development in the city of Hit, An Anbar provice, Iraq. A must read.

Long time, no posting. I'm somewhat on a blog vacation. Not sure if/when I'll pick it up again. But things are okay, rest assured. I won a poster award last Friday at a poster session here at MDACC. I will use the $250 to take my lab out to lunch; since I couldn't have done the work w/o their help. I also won the ABTA fellowship, supposed to start in July. It's a two year fellowship but I only plan to use one year of it. Next June J's residency is up and we'll have to find new employment; her first real job and whatever I can find. Speaking of employment; i've been applying for jobs on occassion but not much luck. I had an interview a month or so ago at a local biotech company; it was somewhat of a joke. The company was a 4 person operation, with enough funding for a year of work. Every piece of equipment was as old as I was. The people I would be supervising did not have college degrees (helpful for hi-tech jobs). Anyway i'm looking around. Boston or St. Louis or San Diego are possibilities, due to a high concentration of biotech companies. I decided i did not want to apply to a startup, but rather to a larger company with at least some chance of survival. So, big pharma, yeah. Big biotechs yeah. Mid-size biotech, fine. If that doesn't work out i'll look for teaching opportunities at smaller colleges, or another postdoc wherever jen can find a position.

Mike Yon reports from Iraq. I send him a few dollars now and then, so i get these preview emails every once in a while. Things seem to be going better than we think.

Greetings,

Interesting developments in Iraq.

A new dispatch, Maysan, is published on the site.

Next in the queue is a series of dispatches called Death or Glory, which is also the motto of the Queen's Royal Lancers, the British unit I met up with as the ceremony described in Maysan concluded.

I am currently near Haddamiya in Anbar Province with a small team of our Marines. In the last week, there was one attempted IED, but the locals tipped off the Iraqi police and together with the Iraqi Army, a handful of Marines captured one of the suspected perpetrators.

Other than that minor event, there has been no drama whatsoever in this area for more than a week. I hear more birds singing than bullets flying. Of course, that doesn't make for exciting news, so that might explain why I don't see many reporters out here in Anbar now.

Interest in the war is waning back home, I'm told, and that may also explain the thinning ranks of reporters over here. But without reader support I can't continue indefinitely.

Reader support keeps my boots on the ground here and my readers will determine how long I am able to continue this work. I have not taken a penny from Fox, any television or other outlets to fund this year-long trip.

Ironically, with fewer reporters here every day, it seems even more critical to insure that the news flows from those sources we do have on the ground. So, please continue to spread the word about my work and please consider supporting this site by clicking here.

Very Respectfully,

Michael Yon

Trailer here. Hail to the king, baby!

Cool video of turtle/tortoise/whatever squaring off with a house cat.

Eric recently made available to the public (under GFDL license), his linux courses. Should be useful for users seeking to migrate from Windows Vista/XP.

From Vodkapundit, covering the republican debate.

7:08 Thompson looks like he's playing under a handicap - answering questions while drinking a glass of water. With a live ferret in it. Could he be more uncomfortable?

Not if he's got a warm weasel in the cut. Seriously, we're, what, a year and a half away from the election? Another few months until a change in presidency. I know Bush is a lame duck, but this is ridiculous. By all this presidental politiking (as Clinton once said), it distracts from opportunities to get stuff done at the national level. Hard to do your actual job while touring the country, giving speeches, eh senators (yes i mean McCain, Clinton, Obama, et al)

I get more spam (phone calls, junk mail) from BOA than anyone else. They are pretty evil, but the largest bank in the region, so we deal with them. Anyway after today's spam i had enough, and found this online form to opt-out of all of their spam.

Maybe someone will find it useful.

Interesting article here. It's pretty old, but the gist is still true.

Last weekend was J's commencement, and her parents, siblings, and my dad and step-mom journeyed to houston to attend the commencement on Saturday. It was a fun but busy weekend. Actually, it was incredibly stressful due to Luci (my ferret) getting extremely sick and having to be hospitalized at a emergency vet over the weekend. She developed severe diarrhea, ataxia, and dehydration on Friday. I fed her Ensure throughout the night to get her hydration/energy levels up. I took her in Saturday, and they did x-ray, which were negative. We feared obstruction or enteritis, but fecal samples were negative for bacteria, and there was no evidence for obstruction via x-rays or ultrasound (not like there would be one). Best way is a barium swallow or something similiar.

She returned to us on Monday, hydrated. Immediately she began eating again (abnormal for sick ferrets with enteritis or after surgury), and immediately, again, there was diarrhea, and she proceeded to go downhill again. Tuesday I had the bright idea of suspecting her new food (Zupreme ferret), which we bought last Sunday. The ferrets receive a 50/50 mix of Zupreme and Science Diet Hairball (they really like this, surprisingly). So i put her on 100% hairball food, and immediately (within 4 hours) her diarrhea cleared up and her energy and hydration states returned to normal.

So, it was the food after all. Contaminated? Not sure, but check out the Wikipedia reference to the 2007 pet food issue. Note our other ferret, Angel, didn't get noticeably sick. I think if there is a next time I'll maintain prophilatic care over the weekend until Monday, when the regular vet opens. The emergency stuff was extremely expensive, but they also provided a much higher level of care than my normal vet. Probably if we took her to our normal vet she would have died (they don't have a great track record for in-clinic hospitalization of my ferrets).

I guess i'm surprised that a) Luci's symptom onset was 5 days after the new food appeared. b) Angel didn't get sick. Maybe it's a food allergy, it could happen. I'm going to switch out for iams kitten and see if she tolerates that and the hairball mix. The hairball diet alone doesn't have enough protein for her.

Update: The recall list is here.
Zupreme isn't on there, but several types of Hills Science Diet food is (mostly in pouch/can form).

Rudy Guiliani, former mayor of NYC, hates ferrets, and they are baned in NYC. Here is a cool CNN story about this, and why he called a ferret owner a 'freak'.

This is from the much-hated CNN (I've ranted about them on here from time to time, too lazy to search). Its enlightening that a very liberal arm of the media would dare to splash this on their front page. Must have been a tough decision (seriously). I think they're right, and I also think that Iraq is definitely on the upswing (whereas a year ago, half a year ago, it definitely was civil war. But you won't hear that from the media.

From, guess who. If you said the Gipper, you're right.

Everyone needs one. Well, everyone who routinely washes their thumb-drive or cell phones in the washer & dryer (honey, what's that thumping sound, oh wait, it's the cell phone). My current thumb-drive has been washed once (its rubber and can take a beating), my previous one, amazingly, survived something like four washes; i don't remember who made it, but i gave it to all the guys in my wedding. Maybe they still have it. Alas, my cell phone, washed this weekend, didn't hold up so much. I'll have to buy a better one. They should really stopping making such cheap crap; can't even withstand a little water, heat, extreme turbulence, soap...

First, it's this. (Thanks to the hexkey blog)
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0

This is a hex code to bypass HD-DVD digital rights protection. Essentially it means that the HD-DVD isn't any more secure than DVDs, just more annoying.

And the MPAA is sicing lawyers and threatening lawsuits for anyone who publishes it. I say, bring it on.

Update: Slashdot has more on the story. Wired has a news story on what this means (essentially as I described, but in more depth).