Mark Twain Highway

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I’ve been a tepid-to-moderate St. Louis Cardinals fan since I was a kid, and lived in St. Louis during the Mark McGwire (freak)show.  I still follow them from time to time, probably more than any other professional sports team.  It’s not that I’m unsympathetic to sports pride, it’s just not something I’m passionate about.

I was actually passionately angry when the following silly injustice was done, and I’m glad to see it might be undone:

Missouri Senate votes to rename McGwire Highway (Yahoo Sports/AP)

The Missouri Senate wants to take away Mark McGwire’s highway. A stretch of Interstate 70 in St. Louis was designated the Mark McGwire Highway in 1999, one year after the Cardinals slugger hit a then-record 70 home runs. But McGwire has now admitted he used steroids, and the state Senate voted unanimously Monday to rename the section of interstate the Mark Twain Highway.

For me, it was always an easy call.  Literary Hero and American Treasure vs. Guy Who Hits Ball.  Seems simple, especially when the road is already named after the Literary Hero and American Treasure.

But then it’s Guy Who Hits Ball With Faux-Musculature?  We must act!!!

Whatever it takes, I guess.

Shady Might Be Four

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Yesterday was the day we decided to call Shady’s birthday. She’s considered four, though she’s really a Permanent Puppy, and those are ageless.

Shady has a sweet face

One year ago yesterday, we miraculously got her back after this sequence of events:

  • Horrible life with previous owner (she lived under a bed for a year)
  • Return to the Humane Society
  • A couple of months alone in a visiting room with little attention (the main kennel was too stressful)
  • Nine days as a foster dog with Molly and Tess
  • Twelve hours placed with a potential adoptive home
  • One stupid decision by that potential adoptive home to put a special needs dog alone in a backyard with a crappy fence
  • Three weeks on the street in and around Cooper-Young in below-freezing temperatures, apparently including a few trips to some truly scary neighborhoods
  • A heart-stopping moment where we followed up a great tip from someone who saw one of our 200 signs and we actually laid eyes on her
  • A frustrating couple of hours of being chased by us and neighborhood kids around train tracks and abandoned scrap yards (she was too scared and freaked out to come to us)
  • Three days of being actively hunted by us around the clock
  • A full-on canvassing effort by several generous Humane Society dog-walking colleagues to locate and help catch her
  • Me seeing her cornered in a mess of scrap metal, climbing down in there, picking her up, and handing her to Molly

And now, she’s a wonderful, happy, well-adjusted snugglepuppy.  Her meds certainly help, as does being part of a pack in a protective and loving environment. She sleeps between the pillows in her puppy pocket, she snores and grunts and yawns like a beagle, she chases Tess around a huge (and extremely secure) backyard, and most of all, she truly seems to enjoy her life.

A life that started all over, one year ago yesterday.

Photos: Steven Bryant

I Did Not Know: pbzip2

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I just learned about pbzip2, which lets your multicore computer use more than one core when using the bzip2 compression algorithm.

On my Mac Pro at work, I installed it with MacPorts (`sudo port install pbzip2`). It is this kind of awesome:

$ ls -lh original.tar
-rw-r--r--  1 jmcmurry  staff   2.4G Feb  4 13:47 original.tar
$ time bzip2 -k -v original.tar
original.tar: 36.215:1,  0.221 bits/byte, 97.24% saved,
2604288000 in, 71911733 out.

real	13m3.313s
user	12m50.536s
sys	0m3.773s
$ mv original.tar.bz2 bzip2.tar.bz2
$ time pbzip2 -k -v original.tar
Parallel BZIP2 v1.0.5 - by: Jeff Gilchrist [http://compression.ca]
[Jan. 08, 2009]             (uses libbzip2 by Julian Seward)

# CPUs: 8
BWT Block Size: 900k
File Block Size: 900k
-------------------------------------------
File #: 1 of 1
Input Name: original.tar
Output Name: original.tar.bz2

Input Size: 2604288000 bytes
Compressing data...
-------------------------------------------

Wall Clock: 119.369207 seconds

real	1m59.612s
user	14m39.090s
sys	0m44.840s

Sweet. 6.57x faster by adding a “p” to my command line.

The resulting compressed .bz2 files aren’t exactly the same according to md5 (the pbzip2 output is a little larger, which makes sense due to the splitting of the work), but when they decompress, they’re both identical to the original .tar file.

See also: mgzip.

The Fish

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We have a small fish pond built into the patio in the backyard, with four small koi therein, mandatorily adopted when we bought the house. I have named them:

  • Spot is orange with a single white spot on his back.
  • Whitey is solid white.
  • Big Man is solid orange and bigger than Shrimp.
  • Shrimp is solid orange and smaller than Big Man.

I have determined using all available evidence (specifically, my imagination) that they’re all boys.  Give me a break: I’m already outnumbered five to one.

As you may know, it’s cold in Memphis at the moment and getting colder.  Tonight’s forecast low: 11°.  I have therefore decided to freak out about the health and safety of these small slimy wriggly fellas, all of whom have zero interest in me other than Getting Away and Hiding.

The pump is frozen, and there’s a 1″ thick sheet of ice on the top, but the water underneath is fine.  I know this because I just did some reading and decided to pour a few saucepans of hot water onto the side of the pond to melt the ice, allowing a bit of oxygen in and toxic stuff out.

No sign of fish, but hopefully they’re smarter about what they need than I am. I’ll be out there this weekend when (if) it’s above freezing to see what the deal is.  I’ll pretend that under the rock structure in the middle, they have a little fish dude party pad with a bar, leather armchairs, and a big TV.  And a heater.

Meanwhile, there will be lots of snugglepuppy indoors to keep all the warm-blooded warm.

Pearl’s Birthday

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Mama dog is reckoned to be 10 today.  She’s the boss.  She still acts like a puppy.

Why do we call her Peach?  Because she’s round and fuzzy and all sweet on the inside.