tim merritt [dot] net

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Peachtree Street at Upper Wall Street, 11:36 a.m.

Recycled Racers, a greyhound adoption group in Colorado, has a great trove of information about greyhound adoption in their online Greyhound Care Manual. (It’s all about you, Gracie.)

We’ve got the bed, brush, toy, raised food dish, leash, and soon will have the compostable poop pick-up bags. We’ll see if we need a gate for the longer days she’ll be alone. So far she’s a bonafied cutie pie.

Update: Found more information at The Greyhound Project. So many greyhound-loving folks online – friends we haven’t met yet.

Saturday is one of two days a year that Decatur accepts just about any kind of electronics for recycling. We’ve got an old coffee maker that’s missing the carafe, a decrepit PC with a bad power supply, some old big batteries, cell phones, and some other odds and ends. Some of these things are toxic, and we don’t want them in landfills, and we’re very glad Decatur provides this opportunity.

You can probably do this in your town. Search for recycling centers in or near your zip code at Earth911.com.

Today we welcomed Gracie to the family. She’s a 5-year-old brindle greyhound who raced successfully for a long time in Florida and had her last race in January. The group that offers the dogs for adoption has lots of info, and screened us pretty well to make sure we’re committed to the needs of a greyhound. I thought we’d get her a week ago but today turned out to be the day!

Gracie – who raced under the name Nimby Midge – was spayed just Wednesday and has to have her staples out next week. In the mean time we’ll start learning to adjust to each other’s rhythms, but we’ve already gotten very attached. She’s so easy-going but I’m sure she’s also tired from effects of her surgery Wednesday and overwhelmed by all that’s new.

We’re so glad to have her. We also have Jeanie visiting from Charlottesville, a long-time friend Ellen knew from her time there in the early 90s. It’s a fun day at our house.

Must give this free Raw Photo Processor a try.

Clark’s Trading Post needs a new Wolfman! Auditions are this weekend. The Union leader has a story here. I know Janine and Janne used to drive by Clark’s and scream “Free the bears!” and that Janine at least has taught her kids to do the same….

I found the link at Making Light, a website I read pretty regularly. It’s a group blog mainly written and edited by a couple who are both editors at Tor Books, one of the biggest SF publishers. Another of the regular contributors is Jim MacDonald military officer and a current Nationally Registered Wilderness EMT-I who lives in New Hampshire and often writes at Making Light about life in the Granite State. He’s an EMT (and publishes fascinating posts at Making Light about emergency care for lay people), a published SF author, and all-around Smart Person.

These guys are terrific—amazing energy, great musicianship. They play the hell out of it.

We are going to see if we can adopt a greyhound tomorrow. We’ve been talking about it for a few months now, ever since we saw some adoptable greyhounds one Saturday at a Petco. Ellen’s already spotted a few eligible dogs, to the right, which she found here.

Ellen loves the idea that they mostly want to lie around for up to 16 hours a day, and get hugs and take a walk here and there. I kind of hope we can get a second one – these folks say that two keep each other company very well for working people. There are dozens of videos about greyhound adoption, too. I haven’t lived with a dog since before I was out of high school, and I’m pretty pleased with the idea.

The adoption folks seem devoted to helping adopters find suitable dogs, and adoptable dogs find suitable owners. It’s remarkable how committed they are, and it seems that greyhounds make terrific companion dogs. More to come!

This seems like a good link to keep around.

The Guide focuses mostly on the federal health privacy rule known as HIPAA. This federal privacy rule establishes a baseline of protection that applies to health care providers and health care insurers throughout the United States. The guide also discusses other federal laws that cover some medical records. This guide does not offer detailed, technical explanations for every provision and every nuance of HIPAA. Instead, this guide concentrates on those parts of HIPAA that will be most helpful to real people. This guide does not offer a review of state law, and you need to know that a stronger state law can provide additional privacy protections.

via World Privacy Forum: Patient’s Guide to HIPAA.

“The Japanese never let me down. Never.” And he says it for a reason.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome exercises that really work – Boing Boing.

Tried these briefly while watching, and they’re worth trying for sure.