reposting of first posts

Here is the text from when this blog began. I did recover a few of the pictures, but not too clear. I had thought I needed to keep the volume down, so had removed the early ones... I find that isn't true, so here they are again.. But without all the pictures.
Interfaces archive

January 26, 2008
Continuous Learning

Maybe old dogs can learn new tricks, as long as the tricks are simple. So, here is yet another adventure into the unknown. I happen to be one of those people who know just enough about computers to be dangerous. Through the years, I have gotten fairly proficient at Adobe Photoshop, knowing that I have just scratched the surface of that great (and expensive) program. My latest effort was to try to help a student understand the radiographic diagnosis of canine hip dysplasia... I took the original radiograph, cut out the femoral heads, and moved them to where they should be.... coloring diagnostic differences. Watcha think??? Steve Martin, move over.

January 30 Interfaces explained

These images may not be right where they belong, but hopefully they will help convey the concepts. So, it's early in the morning. (Well it was when I started this.) I've had my shower and a great Hampton Inn breakfast. After braving a 50 degree drop in temperature and ungodly wind while driving to this place, we were whipped when we arrived. Weather looks promising today, including snow maybe all day long. That thought brought joy to the heart of my bride of 44 years… Her dream is to get snowed in, just like we did at home in northern Indiana as kids. Another long story for another time. Anyway, she isn't quite ready to brave the day yet, so I thought I would take the time to explain the name of this site; interfaces.  In my work trying to help veterinary students understand radiographs (x-rays to you non-medical folk), there are now several thousand veterinarians who have had the concept of interfaces beat into their heads by yours truly… How's that for a sentence?

All body parts fall into opacity categories based on their ability to stop x-rays. The more "dense" things like bones stop more rays (opaque to rays = radio-opaque), leaving a white area on the film to represent the bone, while less "dense" things which are less radio-opaque are represented by more dark grey or black areas of the film. In radiology (the study of x-ray) there are 5 different opacity categories;

Gas (in the lungs, stomach, and intestine… ie. Impending farts)

Fat (we all know where that is)
Soft tissue and fluid This is muscle, organs such as kidneys, heart, and liver as well as fluids such as blood and urine.

Bone

Metal (such as bone plates or screws)

Looking at the first image, notice the marbling (fat) in the steak. Why would we think that the top radiograph was taken in the summer or the south? (See the fish-hook?)

Now if all of these things were the same opacity, we would not be able to see anything on a radiograph. However it is the INTERFACE between these things of different opacity that allows us to see that they are actually there. In the very thin dog or cat, for instance, you cannot see the edges of the liver or kidneys because there is no interface as all of these soft tissue structures are lying against each other. Most dogs and cats (especially today) have deposited enough fat in their abdomen (belly) that there is fat surrounding nearly all organs. It is this fat/soft tissue interface that allows us to see these organs.
This last radiograph is of a young bulldog who loved to chew on things. You can see the gas in the stomach and bowels. You can barely make out the kidneys as there is just enough fat around them to provide interfaces for their visualization. If you look in her gas filled stomach, you can see a "GI Joe" running toward you. He is made of plastic which in this case is somewhere between soft tissue and mineral opacity interafacing with the gas. There you go with your first lesson in radiographic interpretation. You can see that without opacity interfaces, medical x-rays would be impossible to interpret. We depend on them… And interfaces between people are inevitable. Let's try to keep them as positive as we can. I hope some people get some benefit from this, my feeble attempt to interface with you. Skk

January 31,2008 Two Ply Toilet Paper

This morning I recieved yet another lesson from the most basic source. I got the opportunity to load a new roll of toilet paper in our "home" on the road. Somehow I got it started "between" the 2 plys and I wasted quite a bit before I got it on track. Surely you've faced this dilemma. If not, perhaps you've been rushing through wrapping a present and all of a sudden, the Scotch tape tears obliquely and you lose the end. As you scratch and swear, you're throwing away tape because you can't find the beginning... My experience with the toilet paper reminded me that to some of you whom I have invited to share this interface space, as well as those of you that unsuspectingly stumbled to this place, I have placed you between the plys, and you have not idea where I'm coming from, or going.
After Over 30 years of teaching veterinary radiology in veterinary colleges, I have recently retired. During that time, there were 2 parts of my work that "turned me on". First is the "I got it" expression of students to whom I am attempting to impart understanding of this exciting subject of veterinary radiology. The second most favorite part of my work has been the thrill of the hunt. A radiologist gets to do the discovery work in figuring out what is ailing a patient, while the primary clinician "gets" to manage the case. When I retired, 2 things spurred me to get into the "locum" business. First, I feel I still have something to offer, and second, we want to travel (even outside the USA) and that will take money...
Now I have to take you through another hoop. I am a second generation veterinary radiologist. The pioneers who taught me were the first veterinarians to specialize, creating the first specialty group in the American Veterinary Medical Association, the ACVR. http://www.acvr.org/

During the early portion of my career, veterinary specialists were all in the veterinary colleges, just as many of my collegues are today. About 20 years ago, veterinary specialists, including radiologists began leaving the "hallowed halls" and setting up private specialty practices. These have fluorished doing 2 thing. First they offer specialty veterinary medicine to clients all over the nation (in fact world) in locations far from veterinary colleges. The second affect was that at present veterinary colleges are having considerable difficulty attracting veterinary specialists because private practice is more lucrative and to those who are not driven by the bent to teach or do research, there are fewer "headaches". This is the situation that places me where I am now. At my retirement, I offered myself to veterinary colleges to fill in doing locums *there's that word again. Time for another side trip.
Locum Tenens (shortened to locum) is temporary employment for physicians (and veterinarians?) It's usually a temporary position where you're filling until the position can be filled permanently. However at many veterinary colleges, these positions are filled by a parade of people like myself who are able to move about. So far since June, I have had the opportunity to work at some very neet places, like Purdue University, the University of Illinois and Michigan State University.
Now my bride and I (A term I borrowed from the great veterinary radiologist "Tim" O'Brien) are heading to Oregon State University where we will spend 6 weeks in a locum in addition to finishing a basic radiology course to their students which I started (by remote, web based learning) One fupaw I may have committed is that the first time these students see me in person, I will be administering their first test.... poor planning on my part; hopefully they will get over it.
While we are gone our great neighbors and our children will be watching and somewhat occupying our home.
There, do you feel like you are back at the correct starting place on the roll?

As I started this, I realized that I was at a serious crossroads in which I was about to counter one of my life commandments. I explained the need to bring you up to speed so that you weren't starting in the middle of the movie. However, to some of you, I have broken my "no repeat" rule. There are few movies or TV shows that I can tolerate watching again. A few that slip through for me are "a Christmas Story", "Blazing Saddles", and "Young Frankenstein". Those I can handle. Oh Yes, also "The Villian" ( http://www.imbd.com/title/tt0080097/.
So those of you who already knew all of this are now saying, "why didn't you put that in the beginning so I wouldn't have to read through all of that to find out something I already knew. Hey, I'm just learning. I will share one little experience. Here on the western side of CST, it doesn't get daylight until after 7:30 am on January 31.
For another perspective on our travels, see: http://georgia-wintersong.blogspot.com/

January 31, 2008 Plans interrupted produce blessings
After the long drive yesterday, we got a bit of a late start today. Everything was clicking along just great. We had reservations in Rock Springs, Wyoming, which would have put us ahead of our goal and deep into the mountains. We could take our time and not worry about getting a room, etc.. Then we stopped to fill up and grab a bite on the west side of Laramie... Although we had been listening to traffic radio, we were't prepared to hear that I-80 was closed.. So finding there was a Hampton Inn in Laramie, we called, reserved a room and asked them to cancel our reservation in Rock Springs. I'll let Georgia fill in the details, but we were directed to Grand Avenue Pizza in Laramie.... Wow! was that good. Now we're settling in hoping to get a good start tomorrow (Friday). Here are some pics captured from the web to let you know what we almost got into. That's it.. no wit, just the facts, skk aarrgghh!!! I'm tired of fighting placement of these pics, Sorry, they're going to have to stay as they are

February

attempt at reposting early post second group

Interfaces (Blog of Steve Kneller) archive 2
Sorry some pictures didn't copy

A trip on the Brink
In my last post, I was light-heartedly relating our tale of being stuck in Laramie, with the promise of catching up today. All of the locals we spoke to said, "Oh yes, it will be open tomorrow. Hmmm. It's tomorrow. Check out the pics. First you can see Laramie in the bottom right corner of the map. Arlington is indicated about half way between Laramie and Rawlings. Next look at the road closings in the second picture, then the camera of about a half our ago shows why.

The plan is to hold our room until about 1pm. By that time, if the roads don't open, we wouldn't make it across before night,,, probably; so we would stay the nite, hoping to move on tomorrow (Sat) More later, hopefully from somewhere else. We really enjoyed experiencing Laramie; but we're ready to move on.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2008the saga continues

Not much else to do right now. While waiting to see what was going to happen, we balanced the checkbook using our online banker and now my bride is taking a nap.. I think the stress is overbearing. Several of you have mentioned that you were praying for us. I guess we have you to thank for being stuck here, right? Well, if that's true, it's most likely a good thing. We wouldn't want to be in a mountain pile-up. I thought the images from the cameras on the wyroad.info site were interesting. when I saw this first one after being advised to "stay over, I thought, "well doesn't look bad to me" Then someone explained that just to the right of the green sign should be an exit ramp which seems to contain about an 8 foot drift. That settled my jets for a while (I hate making wrong decisions, especially when their big ones.) So we stayed, yadda yadda like I explained earlier. This morning while again trying to make decisions, the same camera was displaying this second image. Well this got my attention. Notice that the road is now white and "thick". The drifts from the ramp area seem to be coming out into the road. and those trucks are snowplows. I get the idea that the middle one is actually a snowblower. The problem is that this picture was up for several hours. I kept checking back to see if I had made the correct decision (at least I thought I had the power to make the decision???) Then finally about 3pm, the closing page made a sudden change to this, so I went back to see how things looked at the original site. Wow! the road is clear and there is a truck going through the closed road. Well, even if this section was good enough to get through, we still had to go west from Rawlins... Not good. Maybe tomorrow.

We're off and running

You can imaging my joy when I checked in with my recent favorite web site last nite to see That there were no roads closed and I could see the nite traffic passing through the nasty part. Then again this morning I can see traffic moving through.. As you can see in the morning photo, there is traffic moving through our "favorite" site, but wait,,,, I was again mis-informed. The exit appears to be just to the left of the green sign, not to the right... From previous photos, you could not have proven it by me.

So, for us it's an early start on the road to see if we can get over before the next promised winter storm hits this place. Hasta La Vista til later. skk

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2008

1600 down; 500 to go
We did get out of Dodge, I mean Laramie.
To prove it, see the photo on the right. That is the same sign I have shown you the last few days indicating one of the nasty spots between Laramie and Rock Springs. Well, we snapped this picture as we wizzed by at 75 mph (yes we've had the blessing of speed limit of 75 for a while.) I'm told that will end when we reach Oregon. You see, I don't speed, because I believe angels are so pure and honest that they wouldn't go faster than the speed limit... and I don't want to outrun my angels.

Finally we get some real scenery. I'll let Georgia show you the bulk of it or I might put it on my netfiles. We had forgotten just how awesome it is across the Rockies. Here is just a taste. As beautiful as it was in western Wyoming, Utah going up I-84 was even more breath-taking.
We ended up stopping at the Hampton Inn in Rock Springs (where we were supposed to stay Thursday nite.) Angelina, the manager on duty went out of her way to help us. Not only did she make and confirm our reservations for tonite (I'll tell you where later... patience, Gertrude.) but she reprinted our directions to Corvallis, which we misplaced and sent us away with snacks for the road. Although we have noticed that Hampton Inn people are "problem solvers" (You have a problem, let us help you solve it.) She was above and beyond. She even helped us with the "how far can we stand to travel today vs how far do we need to go. It was supposedly 14 hours to Corvallis, so we decided to drive 5 of that today, leaving hopefully 9 for Sunday. She set us up for the Hampton in Twin Falls, Idaho.. we have never been to Idaho before.. Wow, another nice place, except that as it grew dark, although we had enjoyed the snow since Iowa, we hit the first "problem" snow. It got so we had difficulty seeing the lines in the road and we had to reduce speed to about 30 mph. We got nervous until a semi went around us and cleared the road until the snow stopped. This nite shot of the snow at the Idaho rest stop gives you some idea.

So we made it to Twin Falls, Idaho and hope to arrive at Corvallis somewhere around 6pm Sunday. Of course the superbowl will be essentially over and we will have missed nearly all of the new commercials. However, assuming we arrive alive, we won't have missed that much. The good plays will be played on ESPN for a week and the new commercials will also play over, and over, and over, and... This last shot was one of my attempts to be artsy-fartsy. I wanted to show the mountains ahead of us as well as those behind us (in the rearview mirror). The result was less than stellar. But at 75 mph in the mountains... did I say I wanted to arrive alive>>>??? nuf sed for today.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2008Whew!

It's Monday nite about 6pm in southwest Oregon. We made the trek from Twin Falls, Idaho to Corvallis, Oregon Sunday, pulling in about midnight. We drug into bed and I "jumped up" to get to "work" this morning. A real eventful day; gave 2 hourly exams (written and practical) got introduced to lots of nice people and procedures. Didn't even have time to get my computer out til I got home. On one of our blogs, we will post pictures of the Snake River Canyon near where Evil Kneivel (sp) tried his jump in 1974.. an awesome sight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Falls,_Idaho
We drove across miles and miles of Southwest Oregon ranchland and more beautiful "hills". Then we hit the Cascades at Bend, Oregon and saw more snow than we have ever seen before. Interesting thing is that the locals say this is more snow than they have ever had. Snow loving Georgia has done it again. Gotta settle in. Thanks to all for your prayers, it was a rather harrowing ending, but we are here. Since we went through about the most beautiful part of the trip in the dark, we will definately need to make a weekend trip back the 100 or so miles to see. It all started at a little town called "Sisters".. http://www.el.com/to/sisters/  I also see from maps that there is a "Brothers"... will have to see what that's all about some time.  OK, back to 2010.

Gothenburg revisited

We are making another trip west, following the same route as we did when we first birthed this blog. Because of my naivity, I thought my blog had too much stuff on it, so I removed the first few posts. As time permits, I will repost those early ones as new posts for anyone who really wants to follow this from the beginning. (maybe 2 people???) On our first trip, we were traveling I-80 at the end of January, so the scenery was pretty stark. This time it is GREEN. Seeing horses and cattle grazing is a beautiful sight. So why did I choose Gothenburg as the starting point of this trip?  We spent our first night in Des Moines and honestly, for us there wasn't much to "write home about". so far. Gothenburg hold interest for 2 reasons. It was where the first Pony Express station was built and part of it still stands. We have pictures.  The most interesting note about the Pony Express is that as much notariety as is given to the Pony Express, it only ran for 18 months. Some presidents have served for 4 years and we don't know as much about them as we do the Pony Express. Here is the URL for Gothenburg's history site.  http://www.ci.gothenburg.ne.us/

The other reason Gothenburg sparked our interest is that Georgia's mom got her first teaching job in a one-room country school (12 grades) in Gothenburg. At the Pony Express station, we saw a museum across the street which we thought might have been the school, but we met one of the museum "committee" who was mowing the grass and found that it had been a "Plymouth meeting house" for a religeous group that settled here and built the meeting house. However, this guy (Dick Larson) was so nice that he gave us the e-mail address (oh, the museum was closed for the day) and name of the historian, so hopefully we can get some more information on that. He did say that at that time (1940) there were several country schools in the area, so we don't know if the building still stands or not. He took me inside to get some information, so I got to look around a bit.  We'll see where that takes us.

We "bunked" in North Platte last night in the same Hampton Inn we stayed in on our first trip. Right next to "Fort Cody".. We find it interesting that there is all this Buffalo Bill stuff here, yet, a post from last fall shows us in the midst of Cody stuff in Cody, Wyoming. I did fine out that Buffalo Bill Cody established a reputation of Western hospitality when he used his Scouts Rest Ranch here near North Platte as headquarters for his famous Wild West Show. .  Guess he got around. Tonight we hope to land in Rock Springs, Wyoming. That Hampton Inn holds a special place for us because we stayed there over a weekend coming home from our first trip out because a transfer case went out on our explorer and we had to be towed back to Rock Springs and wait for it to get fixed on Monday and Tuesday. The people there were wonderful to us. Today we begin our "suaree" in the Rockie Mountains. To us plains dwellers, this sounds exciting.

Another session for memories

This post is primarily for my family. If you're out there and I don't have your e-mail address, please send it to me... if you don't mind. Several people in my dad's family meet at the junction of Indiana state roads 9 & 14 the first Friday of the month for lunch. Today it worked out for me to attend. What a joy for me as I hadn't seen some of these folks since at least 1988. My dad's sister Edna (Curly) and husband Duane were there along with my cousin Becky and husband Roger, cousin Donalyn, her brother Lon and his daughter Kadie. Lon and Kadie apparently make the July meeting each year on their annual trip back from Texas. It was also good to see my sister and Gary again...wow twice this summer.  Apparently my cousin Monica (not the one from Oklahoma) and cousin Pam often attend, but were unable to make it this time. Another small, roadside eating establishment with good food, but the food was secondary to the rich conversation. As uncle Duane said to summarize the gathering, "most of what was said was probably true"... We recalled much from 50's and 60's including the outlandish stunts that were pulled. It is a wonder some of us made it through those years. For my kids and grandkids, if I ever stop tweaking my "Peppermint, Potatoes, and Pigs" recall of my childhood, you will get to read many of these stories. Having not made any family reunions since 1988, renewing these few family ties is precious to me. Have fun figuring out who is who. Of course, family members can get answers via e-mail. Just ask. Remember; the pictures get bigger if you click on them..

Next wave of blooms

In a previous post, I showed you the first wave of blooms in our yard. It has now been spring for a few more weeks and new and different flowers are gracing us with their shining faces. That is part of the fun of perennial flower gardening, trying to set it up so that there is never a time when something isn't blooming. It's a challenge, but fulfilling. Of course adding a patch of zinnias helps mix in some color. You'll see here that the zinnia patch is photographed first as it is just budding, then this week as it started blooming. You'll see the front porch without, then with the Boston ferns that give it such a breezy appearance. The next challenge will be to keep them alive when these torrential rains stop and it gets hot and dry. That sounds like a fairy tail as I listen to the thunder crashing for yet another night.  I hope you enjoy these flowers half as much as we do. Remember with blogspot, if you click on the pictures, they get larger. Blaine's poor copper arch is now completely shrouded in wisteria vines, which I have to keep trimming back to keep them off the satellilite dish. Oh, in some of the pictures, the wegalia is still in the pots... oops!