Making A MESS

I loved video games growing up.  Pacman and Donkey Kong reigned supreme with the general populace, but for me it was Defender that grabbed me hardest and wouldn't let go.  I remember once having a single quarter burning a hole in my pocket.  I jumped on my 10-speed and biked the couple of miles to the nearest arcade where that classic Williams' game awaited me.  I dropped in my quarter and suddenly became the pilot of that ship.  With its frantic gameplay and excellent graphics, I could have played that game for hours.

My First Love

Unfortunately for me, the game was fiendishly difficult and all I had was one quarter and no skill.  It was only a matter of moments before my butt was back on my bike seat and I was headed home.  I got a lot of exercise that way, one quarter at a time.

Today our computers have processors easily 1000x more powerful than the Motorola 6809 running at 1 MHz at the heart of Defender.  All of that processing power has been put to work in projects like MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) and MESS (Multi Emulator Super System) to deliver cycle-accurate emulations of the processors in these old arcade wonders.  These projects do more than just the emulation of the processors: many games have perfect sound and video emulations as well.  Dig up the original ROMs that were in these games, and you aren't playing just some reasonable facsimile of the game.  You are playing THE game.

There are many things I love about the MAME and MESS projects.

• They are intended as a preservation project rather than an emulation project.  The emulation is an accurate representation of the hardware, sans a few things like emulating transistor level stuff like programmable logic chips and a couple other exceptions.
• They are open source.  As a matter of fact, MAME and MESS joined forces a short while ago and now their code lives in a common repository.  Want to know how this stuff works?  Grab a copy, poke around, and try compiling it yourself.  It isn't hard.
• One look at their SVN Repository shows the project is very active.  There are additions and fixes going in all the time.
• The scope is enormous.  There are around one hundred processors and a similar number of sound chips emulated.  Thousands of games and old computer platforms are emulated.  Thousands.

Now let's change gears.  Something like three years ago, I bought myself a Davis weather station.  The undocumented expansion port at the back of the thing nagged at me.  With some knowledge of electronics and some helpful documentation from the manufacturer, I was first able to figure out how to interface to the weather station console with nothing more than a commonly available USB to LVTTL serial adapter.  A while later I sorted out how to build my own datalogger to store weather data for periods when the console wasn't connected to a computer.  These two projects were cheap and easy to put together.  They also faithfully duplicated the expensive equivalent sold by the manufacturer.

Other people then expanded on this work with projects of their own.  One person developed a way to connect the console directly to a WRT54G router and upload weather data without a computer in the middle.  Another developed a wireless interface with commonly available XBee modules.  One or two enterprising folk actually started selling low cost third-party designs to what could only have been a fairly limited audience of enthusiasts.  This gave the enthusiast crowd a low cost option for an interface to their console for their own data while the mainstream crowd could always buy a console interface off-the-shelf if they wanted one.  Everybody seemed happy.  Or so we thought.

Apparently, Davis is putting the hammer down.  There is a new version of the console firmware that prevents the DIY interfaces from working.  This is a pretty wrong-headed move if you think about this for a bit.  They are pissing off their biggest supporters by deliberately breaking something that would amount to a small fraction of their sales of these units.  These big supporters are the same people who recommend these systems to other people.  These supporters also buy a lot of Davis hardware in the first place.  So maybe, just maybe, Davis could lose money rather than make money by doing something like this.  Also consider that what Davis can do to differentiate their logger from a DIY version is very limited.  Efforts are already underway to see if the new logger can be reverse-engineered.  Given that the SPI interface between the logger and the console is easily sniffed, I don't expect this reverse engineering effort to take very long or be difficult to emulate.  Then we'll all be back to where we started, but with incompatible hardware versions floating around.  Brilliant.

This situation doesn't make me very happy.  Not happy at all.  In fact, it makes me kind of angry.  Angry enough to wonder if there isn't something I can do about it.

Maybe there is.  Followers of this blog will know that I've built my own receiver using a child's toy and can decode all of the weather related information transmitted from the ISS (Integrated Sensor Suite) outdoor unit.  There was still some work to do though: the ISS transmits a Frequency Hopped Spread Spectrum signal, and I was able to determine the hop sequence so I could write some code to follow its transmissions continually.  However, I only figured the hop sequence out for one of the eight possible transmitter IDs, and only for the version sold in North America.  Figuring out the hop sequence for the other IDs and the other regions would be a lot of work that I didn't feel like doing.

I then considered reverse engineering the firmware by disassembling it.  This is not a lot of laughs either.  The disassembler doesn't know code from data so you've got to tell it which is which, meaning that you need to figure that part out first.  Then you aren't able to actually run the code and get an understanding of how it works.

That made me think about emulation.  I had thought about writing my own CPU emulator for the Atmel ATMEGA128 processor running the console.  I had done this kind of thing before, actually.  I wrote an 8086 emulator in x86 assembly language for the old Retrocade arcade game emulator that brought Q-Bert to the party.  I learned a ton in doing so, but one of the biggest things I learned is that writing a CPU emulator is HARD.  Very hard.  The initial coding isn't so bad.  It is debugging it that is a killer.  A very simple error in the emulator can totally screw the emulation up, and often these errors are very difficult to find.

I didn't want to spend a ton of time writing my own emulator so I started poking around.  Atmel's own AVR Studio looked promising, but it was more suitable for code development than reverse engineering.  I also couldn't see how I'd be able to hook in functionality to the processor emulator for things like the console's keyboard.  Then it occurred to me that MAME/MESS might have a CPU emulator I could mess with.  And what do you know?  Looks like a lot of work has gone into an Atmel 8-bit CPU emulator that had potential for use in reverse engineering how the Davis code works.  I checked the SVN Repository which also showed that there were a bunch of recent fixes going into this emulator since the last official release.  And finally, I was impressed by the statement at the top of the code stating that this emulator could faithfully run code written for the "demo scene".  These demos (check it out) are written to push a platform to its absolute limits using every trick in the book.  The fact that demo code could work on this emulator spoke well of its accuracy.

Check it Out

Looking at the avr code showed me that the emulator itself ties in all kinds of MAME / MESS dependencies for loading firmware, enabling a debugger, etc.  I would have to work around all of that if I wanted to use this CPU emulator in a project of my own.  Then I realized that I was looking at things backwards.  Why consider this a project of my own?  Why not see if I could make this a part of MAME / MESS itself?  I had a week off between Christmas and New Year, so why not see how far I could get?

Click To Embiggen

What you are looking at is MESS running the actual Davis firmware in its debug mode.  The window in the upper left shows a disassembly of the code at the current program counter location as well as other good stuff like CPU register values.  The right side shows a view into the firmware, RAM, and EEPROM memory spaces.  I am now able to single step through the code and see exactly what it is doing.

Getting this far wasn't all smiles and sunshine.  MAME / MESS undergoes constant churn, so an accurate tutorial on how to add a new driver to the code base doesn't seem to exist.  And while the AVR emulator seems to be quite accurate, that doesn't necessarily mean it is complete.  Last night I had to code up the emulation of the ELPM (Extended Load Program) instruction.  That ended up being pretty straightforward based on the existing infrastructure, but it was just another hoop to jump through.  Never mind that there also seem to be some compiler bug triggered by MAME that had me doing nothing but segfault when I started out.

How far will I get with this?  We'll see.  It is certainly a powerful tool for deep-diving into the belly of the console to figure out how it works.  Working against me is that I have some stuff coming up that will severely limit how much time I can spend on this stuff.

What will I do with what I find out?  That is a topic for a future post assuming all goes well.  But it is cool.

Once Upon A Time In Mexico

Thanks to this gig I have called “work”, I am called upon from time to travel on the company nickel.  I am in the middle of one of these stints now.  Mexico City has been my home away from home for over three weeks now.  I have never been here before and did not know what to expect, besides what I had seen from watching “Once Upon A Time In Mexico”.   Don’t watch that movie before going to Mexico.

A Tender Love Story It Is Not

There are many things to like about this place.  One of my favorite things is food (I try to eat some of it everyday) and the food here has been great.  Food here is also inexpensive.  I’m reminded of a comment I heard when I was working in rural Italy regarding a local restaurant: “The food there is cheap, and it is good, so it must be the best”.  Indeed.

But the more time I’ve spent here, the more it has become apparent that something is going on , and it ain’t pretty.  I cannot fathom why the major news organizations have not taken this story and run with it, because it makes the fighting going on in Syria right now look like a Playboy Bunny pillow fight.  There is a war going on here.  A hidden war.  You might be thinking I’m talking of the war on drugs, and you’d be wrong.

The war I’m talking about is going on right under the noses of the citizen’s of this fair city.  Some seem to be oblivious to the battle, while others won’t talk about it because they know what is good for them.

The story is this: there exists a band of rebels known as the Mexican Anti-Sidewalk Coalition (MASC).  Their sworn goal is the destruction of every square inch of sidewalk in this town.  Sure.  Go ahead and laugh.  But I’ve got the pictures to prove it.  First, some background.

Driving in Mexico City is insanity incarnate.  It is a well known fact that many insurance companies won’t insure someone taking their vehicle in to parts of Mexico.  A taxi driver gave us shit the other day for opening the driver’s side door when getting out of the car because you can apparently get a ticket for doing so.  However, making a right turn from the leftmost lane and cutting off the other two lanes of traffic here is perfectly acceptable,.  Running solid red lights while barely slowing down won’t elicit a second glance from the local Policia.

For this reason we have drivers that take us to work and back.  These drivers take our lives into their hands twice a day, and do so with apparent reckless abandon.  One of these drivers (Mario, I’ll call him, for that is his name) would cross himself just as we’d start each journey.  At first this worried me that I thought he had to do that.  Now I’m thinking that I was glad that he was taking out that little bit of extra insurance.

The drive is a lengthy one, ranging from 40-95 minutes every day.  This gives us passengers plenty of time to stare out the window and watch the streets of Mexico City go by.  Sometimes we’d joke about that which was so different from where we were from.  Take this hole for example.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Now there are numerous differences between this hole and a hole back home.  The first thing that jumps out at you is that this hole is not round.  Far from it, in fact (the root cause is likely the spent toilet paper tubes used as concrete forms during its construction).  Second, note that the grass around the hole is neither green nor flat, despite having been laid just a week ago.  Third, this hole is ten feet deep and left uncovered in a well traveled area that, to boot, is unlit at night.  Here they call this hole a hole.  Back home, we’d call this hole a lawsuit waiting to happen.  But I digress, and quite substantially.

It was from these idle observations on the twice daily drive that we put the pieces together and realized just what was going on here.  Proof for my claims?  I have plenty.

The battles between the Federales Sidewalko (the government’s Sidewalk Police) and the MASC are intense and in close quarters.  Here we see the Sidewalko constructing their latest generation super-sidewalk, known colloquially as the “double-wide”…

The Next Big Thing In Sidewalk Technology

… while on just the other side of the barrier we found this.

Complete Distruction

Incredibly, these last two pictures were taken from within this walled federal compound…

These Dudes Mean Business

… where elite government forces would be more than happy to bring their .50 calibre friends to the party for so much as chalking “Joanie Loves Chachi” on one of their concrete masterpieces.

Say "Hello" To My Little Friend

The MASC usually conduct their operations at night.  Only smashed pieces of rubble are left behind to litter the street, just as warriors of old would put the decapitated heads of their vanquished enemies on a pike as a warning to the others.

The MASC Were Here

However, seasoned veterans of the MASC show their bravado by conducting the most difficult of operations in broad daylight.  It takes a man made of naught but nails and grit to take on something this size with nothing but a sledgehammer.

This Guy Has 'Nads

It is thus beyond imagination that he did so completely shunning the opportunity to bring a readily accessible piece of heavy equipment to the party.  You want to talk about making a statement?

This Is A Statement

The Sidewalko have made various attempts to disrupt the activities of the MASC.  They have placed boobytraps throughout the city at sites where they believe the MASC will strike next.  However, these boobytraps are totally ineffective because of their crude construction.  They are easily identified by sections of sidewalk that rise up from surrounding sections for no reason whatsoever.  They do nothing but trip the unsuspecting pedestrian, as happened to this citizen just moments before this picture was taken.

Hello Obvious

The guerrilla warface tactics of the MASC make it unlike that the Federales Sidewalko will put an end to their activities anytime soon.  At the same time, the MASC do not yet have the numbers to accomplish their goal.  The result is, predictably, a stalemate.  Each side can claim their share of battles, but neither can win the war.  Me?  I wouldn't mind seeing a little more grass on the boulevards of this town.

My Intrepid Field Assistant Risked Everything For This Picture

More on this story as it develops.

The Graduate

It has been a little more than a month since we brought our new dog Buddy into our home.   And like anyone bringing a new puppy into their home, we've had quite a ride so far.

My favorite story about Buddy so far goes back to My Lovely Wife, who would always say to our first dog Abby: "Abby, where's your food?!?!".  Abby of course knew where her food was and would run to the small hall closet where it was kept.  There she would wait for My Lovely Wife to walk over to the closet and get her some food, or maybe even a treat.  Out of habit, My Lovely Wife asked Buddy: "Buddy, where's your food?!?!".  Buddy took one look at her and then ran to that small hall closet.  The door just happened to be ajar, so he pushed his nose in and opened it wide.  Then he grabbed the bag of food in his mouth and started dragging the bag along the floor to her.

My Lovely Wife watched this in utter amazement.  At this point we had had Buddy for only four days.  Four days at our place and he is retrieving bags of food.  We had made no attempt whatsoever to train him how to do this.  I was stunned when I heard the story, especially since he had been living chained up outside his whole life before coming to live with us.  It is a good thing that Buddy doesn't have opposable thumbs or I think we'd all be in serious trouble.

Speaking Of Trouble...

One thing about Buddy that we noticed right away was that he loves chasing after bugs.  Dragonflies are great.  Grasshoppers are awesome.  He'll be following along beside us and the next thing we know he is chasing down a bug and eating it up.  We both thought this was pretty entertaining for a couple of days.  That was until I realized that he probably ate bugs to survive at his previous home because he wasn't given enough food to eat.  "Don't worry, Buddy" I told him.  "There will always be lots of food here to eat."  But he still eats bugs anyway.

Speaking of eating, he does this.  A lot.  He is a growing pup, and he's got some lost time to make up for the insufficient amount of food he used to get.  Buddy is putting on over two pounds of solid weight a week.  It seems like every day he looks a little bigger.  Every day he takes up just a bit more space on the floor.  Every day, the old collar of Abby's that he wears seems to fit just a little bit tighter.  To quote the Simpsons - "A dog like that, you've got to feed every day."

World's Largest Paws

He is coming along in so many ways.  He used to have very little confidence: the slightest touch and he would drop to his back with his paws in the air.  Now he'd sit there, get petted, and soak up the adoration.  His training is coming along nicely as long as there aren't a lot of bugs around.  And he is no longer deathly afraid of brooms; one day just after we got him, My Lovely Wife went to sweep the floor and Buddy instantly cowered in the corner.  Obviously, he was taught early on that a broom can be used for more than just cleaning the floor.  I'd like to teach his previous owners the same thing one of these days.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that he was house-broken almost immediately and was sleeping next to our bed after only three weeks.  And that he had free run of most of the house pretty much right off the bat, yet has not chewed any furniture or done any other damage (not counting one unfortunate Ethernet cable).  This despite the fact that he seems to have razor blades for teeth.

Needs A New Seat Belt

About the only thing dragging the little man down has been a bladder infection.  Symptoms of this showed up just a couple days after we got him, and my guess is it was somehow a complication from when he was neutered.  His condition improved almost immediately after being put on antibiotics for a two week run.  Unfortunately, the infection reappeared just a day after the meds finished up, so he went back on a different prescription for a couple weeks.  Those ran out just this past Thursday, and the symptoms reappeared the very next day.  We kind of saw this coming, so we were fortunate that the vet gave us meds for another five days to tide us over the long weekend we are enjoying now.  But we'll need to get Buddy in another appointment first thing next week to to see what the heck is going on there.

I'll tell ya though.  When that plumbing is working right, that dog can take one mean pee.  With Abby, I would count steamboats: "One steamboat, two steamboats...".  Abby would sometimes get to six and rarely to nine.  Buddy knocked out a 20 steamboat pee yesterday.  If I had to take a 20 steamboat pee, well...

It is that camel-like ability that brings another of Buddy's oddities to light.  Every dog I've ever known LOVES to go outside.  Going outside IS THE BEST THING EVER.

Unless you are a dog named Buddy.  Buddy could usually give two shits as to whether he goes outside or not.  The other night we had to actually drag him and his sorry ass off his bed to get him outside to do his business.  And then when he got out there, he had a poo.  And then he had another.  I'll tell ya... if I had two poos in me, I'd be breaking down that damn door to get outside.

And every morning is the same thing.  My lovely wife gets up first and goes to the bathroom.  Then she heads for the door to take the dog out and I get up.  Buddy would much rather sit at the side of the bed and demand my attention while My Lovely Wife waits at the door for him to go outside.

One thing My Lovely Wife was really enjoying was Puppy Club ("The first rule of Puppy Club is that you don't talk about Puppy Club").  Puppy Club is put on by our vet every Thursday.  They give a little talk about some aspect of puppy rearing, and then the rest of the evening is a wild free-for-all where the puppies cut loose and spend the night smelling each other's assess.  What's not to like?

What's not to like is when you can't go anymore.  Last time My Lovely Wife was there, they pointed out that Buddy best-guessed birthday of April 1st makes him six months old now.  That means that Buddy is considered "graduated" from puppy club after only going three times.

This graduation is one of those little markers in the course of owning a dog.  One minute they are nothing but fur and energy, the next minute you are left wondering how so many wonderful years went by so quickly.  Matthew Inman (perhaps the greatest cartoonist of our time) put it this way in this snippet from his incredible comic about dogs.  Click that link - you have to read the whole thing.

Buddy isn't quite the dog we expected him to be, but I think he'll be the dog we need.

You Don't Find The Dog, The Dog Finds You

Followers of my blog will know that we lost our faithful dog, Abby, in early August.  In my last post I talked a bit about our progress in finding another dog to fill the void she left behind, and how the search wasn't going that well.  I left you with this.

The search continues.  We have actually come close once or twice, but no cigar.  We'll have to be patient and wait until the dog that is right for us comes along.  Or, as the fellow we bought Abby from told us: "You don't find the dog.  The dog finds you."

As we searched, we focused on getting a rescue.  We liked the idea of giving a good dog a second chance, and we weren't hung up on the whole purebread thing.

Loved him in "Oh Brother, Where Art Though?"

As I mentioned above, we had a few near misses.  We fell in love with one dog at the local SPCA, only to find out that she had already been adopted out earlier that afternoon.  Strike One.  Later that week, My Lovely Wife dropped by the SPCA one afternoon and saw another great puppy dog with loads of energy that she was very excited about.  It was gone by the time I got there after work.  Strike Two.  Things were not going our way.

We spent a lot of time on Petfinder, a website that collects listings from rescued animals across North America.  They make it easy to find dogs and other pets up for adoption in your area, and it also lets you filter by criteria such as size (I always checked off "Large" and "Extra Large").  Since we weren't having much luck, we started to expand our search a little to dogs we considered as "maybes".  "Nothing ventured, nothing gained", I would say to My Lovely Wife.  Many of the descriptions on Petfinder were pretty terse, and it was very possible that a real gem of a dog could be hidden by a lousy description.

That led us to head out one Friday evening to look at "Sunny", who was being fostered at an acreage not too far from where we live.  Sunny was a good looking dog, make no mistake, but she just didn't have that spark we were looking for that made Abby the incredible dog that she was.  "Sunny" was also more submissive than we'd like and it didn't look like she would grow to the size we were looking for.  At least we tried.

While we chatted with The Nice Lady fostering Sunny, we learned that she was fostering something like 15 other dogs with a comparable number that she called her own.  Many of these were dogs with various difficulties that weren't really adoptable.  The Nice Lady is a real gem, not one of those crazy old ladies you think of that has a house with 100 cats in it.  These dogs lived out on her acreage, had a great big area to run around in, a pond in which to cool off, and lots of trees to grab some shade in.  All the dogs looked happy and healthy.

As we talked, The Nice Lady's husband tried to join us in the backyard with yet another dog trying to break by him and join us.  "Don't let him out", she yelled to him.  "We have enough dogs out here."

The Nice Man tried to push this one energetic puppy back in to the house, but seemed to be fighting a losing battle.  This puppy was strong and would not be denied.  The Nice Lady turned to us and said "That's Buddy.  He's going to be a monster when he grows up."

My Lovely Wife and I looked at each other.  "Could we see Buddy?"

Release The Hound!  The Nice Man let Buddy out and he immediately started running around all over the place.  He seemed to take an immediate liking to My Lovely Wife.  It was apparent that this was one solid puppy dog.

His Legs Are Larger Than Mine

We peppered The Nice Lady with questions about Buddy but she didn't know that much about him yet: the little guy had shown up at her place only the day before.  He wasn't up for adoption yet and so was not yet on Petfinder.  Nobody outside The Nice Lady knew about him yet.  We had tripped over Buddy by accident.

It turns out that this pup didn't have the easiest start in life.  It spent all day chained up in the owner's yard, and didn't get enough food to eat.  But it just so happened that Buddy lived only three doors down from the President of the animal rescue that The Nice Lady was a part of.  She had seen the treatment that Buddy was getting and finally convinced the owner to give him up.  Buddy had caught a break.

The Nice Lady was wonderfully forthright with her concerns about Buddy.  Spending so much of his early life chained up could have affected both his physical and mental development.  She was concerned that his hips hadn't developed properly because of the sway in his arse when he ran.  She also stated that she didn't think he wouldn't grow up to be "a rocket scientist".

More Looks than Brains???

However, "there was something about Buddy".  This was a phrase My Lovely Wife and I would use over and over again in our discussions later.  In our long drive home from the home of The Nice Lady, we didn't talk about Sunny at all.  It was all about Buddy, and how something seemed to click.  I wondered aloud if our dog had found us, rather than us finding our dog.

My Lovely Wife phoned The Nice Lady the next morning (Saturday) to express our interest in Buddy.  Unfortunately, she got the message over the phone that perhaps Buddy might not be the dog for us.  Dogs rescued from the area he was in get off to a tough start, and that can mean that the adopter might not appreciate what they could be getting in to.  Could he have some brain damage or other development disabilities that weren't apparent yet?  She had only had him for a few days and couldn't say for sure, but her first impressions suggested that Buddy could have some challenges ahead of him that we weren't really prepared to take on.  Strike Three.

This really put a damper on our spirits.  It was back to Petfinder but it was without a lot of enthusiasm.  We had considered and looked at a lot of dogs by now, and each time we found one that looked like the one for us, it went for naught.  The search was starting to feel hopeless.  I felt pretty down over the next couple of days.

Monday evening I convinced my wife to phone Buddy's foster mom back to touch base.  Maybe we had gotten the wrong impression?  I'm glad she made that call.  The Nice Lady had nothing but good things to say after getting to know Buddy for just a couple more days.  For one thing, Buddy escaped from the kennel the night we saw him while fifteen other dogs watched.  They found him the next morning curled up on their porch.  They then had to put him back in the kennel to watch him break out again so they could figure out how he was doing it.  Smart?  Check.

Buddy also jumped up behind her one day, knocked her over, and kept right on going.  Strong?  Enthusiastic?  Check.

Buddy was learning fast and doing well.  We were excited by this good news and wanted to take the next step.  In this case, it would be a home visit.  This rescue does its homework and makes sure that every dog they adopt out goes to a home that is safe and will take good care of them.  Our home visit turned out to be the very next day!  It must have gone well, because The Nice Lady asked us then and there if we'd like to write up the papers and put down a deposit.  Yes.  Yes we would.

There was just one more obstacle that Buddy had to get over.  He had a vet appointment scheduled the following week where he would get checked out and get neutered.  That was a long week to wait through.  We were worried that the vet would find problems with Buddy because of the early challenges he faced.  But there were no such problems: his heart was strong, his lungs were clear, and his hips were solid.  He was given a perfect bill of health, minus testicles.

Fast forward to this past Friday evening...

On His Way To His Forever Home

Our home is complete once again.  We know that Buddy will never replace Abby in our hearts.  Not possible, and not expected from him.  What he will do is make a place of his own in there, and for that there is plenty of room.  We look forward to many laughs and many adventures together in the years ahead.  I'll be sure to share a few of them along the way.

Oh hell.  One more picture.

Two Weeks...

I said goodbye to my best friend two weeks ago tonight.  At this time fourteen days ago, My Lovely Wife, Abby, and I were on our way to the Vet clinic on what would be the last truck ride of her life.  Abby had always loved going for a truck ride.  There were cows and horses to be barked at.  That was her job, but she just wasn't up for it that last time.

It has been a tough couple of weeks since.  However, time heals all wounds, and things here at home are getting pretty much back to normal.

I'm lying.

Things here at home are a shadow of what they once were.  For the feeling My Lovely Wife and I get walking around in our yard, we might as well be walking around Chernobyl.

Our legs and arms feel as if great weights are hanging from them as we force ourselves to go outside.  Any joy that we used to have in wandering around outside is gone.  The ever-present companion we had out there is no longer with us.  The deer come and go in our yard without fear of a four legged missile streaking towards them with bad intentions.

The gloom we feel outside is matched only by the cloud that hangs over us inside.  There is no barking whenever the slightest move is made towards the door.  Our house that once felt too small now feels much too large.  Popcorn night isn't popcorn night without Abby running up to get her treat for the evening as well.  The silence is deafening.

Those who have never had a pet might not understand how we would feel this way.  Those who have lost a pet they loved understand completely.  All of our friends have been very supportive as they knew how much Abby meant to us.  One couple very kindly invited us out to their new cabin at the lake last weekend to give us a much needed change of scenery.  We have also gotten many cards and wonderful words of support from our friends.  Some of these friends we have known for many years.  Others are friends that we've made over the net and have never actually met in person.  To all of those who have expressed your sentiments on our loss, please accept my heartfelt thanks with what is probably my favorite picture of The Pup.

A Very Photogenic Pup at That.

Much to our surprise, My Lovely Wife and I started looking for another dog very soon after Abby passed.  What we came to realize quite quickly was that it wasn't so much the physical attributes of the dog that was most important.  What we realized was that our next dog would absolutely have to have that same enthusiasm and zest for life that Abby had.  You see, we got Abby as a young pup from a pet store.  When we asked to see her outside of the box she was being kept in, she made the best of her opportunity and broke free.  She immediately picked a fight with a mop (and won!), and then tore off to chew the tips off the shoelaces of some innocent bystander.  All of this happened within the space of about 20 seconds.  She carried this enthusiam / bat-shit craziness throughout her life.  Where one dog might sniff around on a trail on the scent of another critter, Abby would crash through an impenetrable mass of underbrush to track that critter down.

This is indeed a tall order.  Many dogs don't have the spark Abby did, but it was this element that we'd miss the most if our next dog didn't have it.  We are reminded by everyone we've talked to that "there will never be another Abby", and we are well aware of that.  Abby was indeed one of a kind.

The search continues.  We have actually come close once or twice, but no cigar.  We'll have to be patient and wait until the dog that is right for us comes along.  Or, as the fellow we bought Abby from told us: "You don't find the dog.  The dog finds you."

Here's hoping...

Goodbye to My Best Friend

I type this and my heart is broken: My Lovely Wife and I are mourning the loss of our dear dog, Abby.

I wrote a post back in June about how we had a lump removed her abdomen.  We learned a short time later that this lump was a Mast Cell Tumor.  We had a second surgery done to have more of the tumor cells removed but it wasn't enough.  Another lump started growing back and got quite large after only a couple weeks.  The vet took a needle biopsy and determined that this lump was mostly fat but had some mast cells reorganizing to form another tumor.  He suggested that we consult with an oncologist at the University's Vet College to talk over subsequent courses of action.  That was only two days ago.

Yesterday morning we woke to find that Abby had thrown up downstairs.  She seemed otherwise OK.  She spent the day with me outside, wandering around the yard as I puttered.  Her energy level seemed a little lower than usual, but I was hoping that was just due to the heat.  Yesterday evening, she started pacing around restlessly throughout the house.  Then she threw up again.  We let her outside and she continued getting sick while keeping her distance from us.  Then she just laid down in the grass while clouds of mosquitoes buzzed over her.  Abby looked up at My Lovely Wife while she laid there with a look that said "Help me".  She was dying.

We got her into the truck at 10pm and drove her to the Vet College.  The half hour drive was quiet as My Lovely Wife and I were filled with the dread of what could happen next.  Abby lay there quietly, her head bobbing up and down.

We parked the truck at the front door of the Vet.  What happened next amazed us.  Abby jumped out of the truck and started sniffing around all over the place!  Her ears were up and she had a spring in her step!  It seemed like the sick dog we had just a short time ago was only a bad dream.

We debated what to do next.  Was this just a false alarm???  Maybe it was just something she ate and she was going to be fine?  We decided to have her looked at since we were there.

Sadly, the vet confirmed our fears.  Abby started fading again and the vet discussed our options.  None of them were good.  They brought Abby into a private room where we were able to hold her close and tell her how much we loved her.  We were with her as the vet helped her pass shortly after midnight this morning.

My only solace is that we did what we had to do and that was to put an end to her suffering.  Abby gave us eleven and a half wonderful years, a ripe old age for a dog her size.  And every day in every one of those years, Abby filled our hearts with joy.  Every.  Single.  Day.  When her day finally came, Abby used the last of her energy to trot into that clinic with her head high and ears up.  She epitomized pure grit.  I was so proud of her.

Grit

Throughout her life, I was always struck by Abby's strength, enthusiasm, and character.  She was a gentle giant around small children one minute, and a fierce protector of her owners and her property the next.  I've written about her adventures before, as has My Lovely Wife.  There always seemed to be so much to say.

We woke up this morning to a house that is too empty.  Too quiet.  We are reminded of her everywhere we look.  This morning, there is no one to take for a walk.  There is no one to chase the deer out of the yard.  There is no one to bring our slippers when we come in to the house.

Abby was my first dog.  She taught me the connection a man makes with his dog.  It wasn't something that happened right away for me.  Abby had a bad habit in the first months that we owned her of always jumping up on us.  One time she jumped up at me and I stuck my knee up.  She hit it hard and fell back in pain.  I felt terrible.  I knew then that I loved her, and I grew to love her more each day after that.

Abby was my psychologist.  We would go for long walks and I'd talk to her about things I wouldn't talk to anyone else about.  And I'm sure My Lovely Wife did the same.  Abby didn't understand, but it always seemed like she did.  That was all that mattered.

Abby was my companion.  We would get asked where Abby would stay, meaning if she was an "inside dog" or an "outside dog".  We simply answered that Abby was where we were.  She was at our side inside and out, day in and day out.

Abby was my bodyguard.  We would go for walks around the acreage and Abby would at times cut right in front of us and just stand there with her body physically blocking the path.  If we would try to walk around her, she would do it again until we turned around.  Now and then we'd catch a glimpse of coyotes or some other nasty critter on the path ahead.  We soon learned to put our trust in her and her nose for our own safety.

The Big Dog, On Patrol

Most of all, Abby was my best friend.  I would arrive home after work and My Lovely Wife would "release the hound", who would come running up to me with all the enthusiasm that only a dog separated all day from its owner can bring.  That would always and instantly melt away the earlier shit of the day and make me feel human again.  I am forever indebted to her for this alone.

Goodbye Abby.  You were the best dog we could have dared to hope for.  We were truly lucky to have had you in our lives.  I have shed many tears over you as I have written this and I will shed many more today and in the days to come.  We love you.  We miss you.  Rest easy, Pup.

Abby    January 2001 - August 2012

No Chalk at Your Gym? No Problem.

I am now in the dying days of two weeks off. I asked Google to define "vacation" for me. Here is what it came up with.

va·ca·tion/vāˈkāSHən/

Noun:

An extended period of recreation, esp. one spent away from home or in traveling.

Bullshit. Here is my definition.

va·ca·tion/vāˈkāSHən/

Noun:

Two weeks of ass-busting work, devoid of anything enjoyable. Makes one want to return to work immediately.

Living out on The Ponderosa means that there is a lot of jobs that need to get done every summer, and many of these jobs get penciled in to my yearly summer "vacation" starting in late July.  One of these jobs is grooming the trails that meander through the bush on our property.  Armed with only a whipper-snipper, coveralls, and gloves, this monster job takes days to do.  Let things get too out of control and the trails become filled with wild chokecherry suckers, tall grass, and weeds of all descriptions.  Apparently, one weed new on the scene happens to be poison ivy.  It happens that I am pretty much hyper-allergic to poison ivy given a nasty, nasty encounter from years ago.  Only a minuscule amount will trigger blisters on my arms, and somehow a minuscule amount got past my coveralls and gloves and on to my skin near my wrists.

Not Me, But You Get The Idea

The weather turned to crap one day and gave me an all-to-rare respite from my yardly duties.  I decided to get some deadlifting in.  There was only one problem.  I had long thought that I had the grip strength of a Japanese schoolgirl, and I had long been using 1-Ton Hooks to beef up my grip.  Otherwise, any weight over three-hundred pounds would tend to slip out of my hands.

Used by Weak People Like Me

Now picture these tightly wrapped around a wrist with several poison ivy blisters on it.  Better yet, don't picture it.  It gets ugly pretty fast.

It was time to use all the power of my brain and find a way around this.  Normal people use chalk on their hands to dry them so that sweat doesn't cause the bar to slip from their grip.  But chalk is not allowed in my basement gym, because that shit gets everywhere.

So I decided to try wrapping the bar with a very light resistance band that had broken in half some time ago.  They are made of some kind of latex rubber, I think, that is very, very grippy.  I had used these broken bands before wrapped around my chinup bar to help me grip the bar for that exercise.  Don't start thinking that these bands are the really thick, really expensive EliteFTS bands that can hold hundreds of pounds.  Think more like stuff not much thicker than dishwashing gloves.  Here is what I've got...

... and here is what it looks like wrapped on one side of my bar.

I use an over-under grip and wrap the band in the opposite direction on the other side of the bar.  Note also how I start wrapping the band just after the knurling starts.  This lets me center my hold on the bar much better than if the knurling is totally covered.  Normally I grip the bar an inch or less outside from where the knurling starts.

So how does this work?  Exactly how well will have to wait for another post.  But let me say generally that it works exceptionally well.  What I thought was poor grip strength was really a combination of two issues:

• no chalk that in turn makes the bar slippery from sweat.  The grippy nature of the latex rubber solves this completely.  The weight on the bar just seems to amplify the sticky grip that the rubber provides.
• nasty cross-hatching on my cheap bar that tends to tear my hands up.  The rubber effectively pads the bar enough to keep the hold comfortable, even under very heavy loads.

I immediately noticed that I was able to lift heavier loads with this setup than when I used the lifting hooks.  Not quite sure why this is.  Maybe because a freer grip on the bar makes it easier to get my position exactly right when setting up.  Maybe because the hooks added thickness to the bar that made the general lift heavier.  Whatever the reason, I was suddenly making an extra 50 pounds when deadlifting off of blocks, and it felt awesome  to make these lifts without hooks or straps.  I'll never go back to the hooks: there is just no need to anymore.  My grip is no longer the limiting factor in my deadlift.

This is a nice solution for anybody looking for a substitute for chalk when lifting heavy stuff.  The bands are cheap, reusable, clean, take up zero space, and would be allowed in any gym.  Best of all, it is your grip doing all the work.  You get the full benefit of the exercise without the shame of using a crutch.

Now go be like Konstantinovs and make it look easy.

More Beast Than Man