Thursday, November 27, 2014

Vet called with results of Loki's biopsy

To sum it up: not bone cancer.

Detailed information: The bony growth is the type normally found in larger breeds of dogs. The weight on such a thin-ish joint causes rubbing/grinding and can (an does) cause a bone spur or bony growth, causing pain and limping.  Loki is very large cat. Not overweight, just BIG. 

The good news is it can be treated by anti-inflammatories.  If the spur rebuilds up, it will be removed again.  And as a bonus, treatment is covered by pet insurance.

Yup.. nailed it.

"If you are more outraged at poor plack folks in Missouri looking stores than rich whites on Wall Street looting your future, you have been duped." Pete Dominick @petedominick

Monday, November 24, 2014

Post Surgical Check up for Loki

Vet was very pleased with how well the surgical wound is healing, and very happy to hear "What limp?"  as the reply to her question about the limp that brought Loki to the vet.  That in all probability means that the lump is a callus from an impact from a bad landing.

Loki has a few small abrasions on his paw, but it's from his trying to groom, and getting scraped on the edges of the "Cone of Shame".  Surgical elastic gauze put on the edges, and I have some ointment for that.  They gave him an injection of antibiotics so I don't have to stress him out anymore today.

Right now, Loki is curled up on the sofa behind me.  Me, I'm still exhausted from photo workshop yesterday. I was so tired last night, when I went to sleep, I dreamed about climbing into bed and falling asleep. Next thing I knew, it was 7am and purr kid was bugging me to get up.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

The Lure of Banana/Peach/Passionfruit Yogurt

Still works on Loki.  He had his antibiotics in the yogurt, and 10 mins later, I put his single daily dose of pain meds in a gravy-ish cat food.

He wants to go outside, but not until the stitches are out.  Poor moggie. Watching him trying to scratch his ear through the "Cone of Shame". 

Friday, November 21, 2014

Loki back home, but not too happy

Vet/Radiologist report:

Radiographs of the forelimbs: wrist, elbows and shoulders The front wrist on the right side showed a bony change (different to the left) coming off the distal radius. The change is smooth and doesn't appear to be an aggressive lesion like an osteosarcoma or fungal infection.

A sample for this - as much as possible without weakening the distal radius was taken. Small cat fight wound was clipped and scrubbed.

Fairly certain the small cat fight wound was when he chased a trespasser from the front yard. Wing is out getting some Banana/Peach/Passionfruit yogurt to sneak Loki's medications into. Did that with him when he had broken leg, and he still loves the stuff. And getting him a few shrimp. Have to do a wee bit of pampering.

 

I

'm going to hope for the best, as the vet said it didn't have the 'moth eaten' appearance of being bone cancer. (looks at the bill) This is why I got myself an 'emergency credit card' and also why we have pet insurance.

Call from the Vet

Dr S said that the lump is a piece of bone, but not from Loki's wrist.  No idea where it has come from.  It isn't spongy, nor does it have the 'moth eaten' look of bone cancer. It's just a piece of bone.

That being said, the vet wants to remove it, and send it off for testing. 

So, with luck, we will end up bringing a grump, annoyed with us cat, home this afternoon.

Waiting..

Brought Loki to the vet around 9am, for a hard lump on his right 'wrist', and limping. On advise of the vet, he is there for x-rays and tests. 

I know some will say "It's 'only' a cat". But Loki is my cat. I've had him since he was 4 months old. I nursed him through a badly broken leg and long recovery time.

He curls up with my at night for a cuddle, follows me around the yard. He greets me in the morning, headbutts me for attention.

Now, I'm waiting to hear from the vet, hoping for the best.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Proof that Solar Energy is viable & does save money

Previous bill, and the graph in the bottom right hand corner shows just how much we cut the electric bill.  It has been cut over half.

 

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

In a market of competing software

There are sometimes too many choices, and it can get confusing.

Many people felt coerced into getting CS6 or Creative Cloud because of new camera raw formats, even though their earlier versions of Photoshop worked just fine, but Adobe didn't update camera raw data base for those versions.

One great work around with this is using CaptureOne.  It's less expensive then 'renting' Photoshop, and if you took up their free offer of CaptureOne version six, upgrading to v8 is even less expensive than Adobe Lightroom.

The tools in CaptureOne is like taking Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe Bridge, Lightroom, and some aspects of Photoshop and making them into one neat package. it can be a bit overwhelming with all the menu choices, but taking your time and get familiar with them, and you will be developing a workflow that will become second nature. 

Thursday, November 6, 2014

After a few hours of trial and error, and a wee bit of swearing...

I got OnOne Perfect PhotoSuite 9 for Photoshop installed and running.  The problem I had after that was getting odd errors. Clicked on "Browse in Bridge" and I would get Javascript error.  I couldn't load multiple images into layers to, and attempting to photomerge would result in the same Javascipt error.

You can't pick what installation of Photoshop to install OnOne 9 into.  Yes, I still have CS5 running, with OnOne 8 because I have certain tools that just do not work in CS6 (astronomy based actions/plugins/addons). I tried uninstalling and reinstalling v8. Still kept getting the errors.  I had no way to install or keep it in just CS5 during the install. I also couldn't pick which version of Photoshop I wanted to uninstall OnOne Suite from.  ARGH!

Solution: Installed OnOne 9 leaving OnOne 8 fulling installed.  Then, what I did was go into CS6 and moved the plugin folders out of the CS6, launched, and TaDa! Javascript/PhotoMerge/Browse From Bridge works and I still have v8 installed for CS5.

Then another problem: after the installation, different OnOne tools that I use in conjunction because some of the features and options aren't in the PhotoSuite, stopped working.  It took about 4 hours to get that fixed, as both PhotoTune/PhotoProfessional tools had to be reinstalled, and my 'work arounds' applied.

I'm quite tired now.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Not overly happy..more like annoyed

I was forced to upgrade to newer version of Firefox. I haven't had any security issues, nor was it working improperly, but because certain websites have changed their coding, and Firefox doesn't quite function correctly (example: pulldown menus not pulling down)

Of course, the latest version GUI/Look is a gagger, so I had to fix that. (If I wanted to use something that looked like Chrome, I would use Chrome, thankyouverymuch).  Then worked on the addons (Thank you Nightly Tester for making that somewhat easier) and then customizations.  

(looks at Firefox) Well, close enough for government business.