A Carnegie Mellon University professor's rants and raves on research, human-computer interaction, Internet of Things, usable privacy and security, Pittsburgh, and teaching.
GPS for Dogs
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Just when you thought you've seen it all, Garmin is selling a GPS for dogs. No, not to help the dogs navigate (that would be scary), but to help owners find their dogs.
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Anonymous said…
Read this story, Jason - I wish that Moses had a GPS when he wandered out of the yard.
> Hi Everyone, > > > > This is an update for those of you who know about Moses and a note to > those who have not heard yet. Thanks to everyone for all the phone > calls and emails. I have not been able to get back to everyone who has been calling. > Just wanted to send an update to everyone all at once rather than > repeat the story over and over. > > > > On Thursday, Moses was in the back yard of a home in the Bay Area for > about 10 minutes stretching his legs after a long car ride. When I > went to get him, the gate was open and he was gone. The gate opened > into an alley and commercial area. Myself, some of the staff from the > home, and some friends of mine searched for Moses all evening and the > staff even made flyers and posted them all around the area. There > were a few sightings of him, but were were not able to find him. > Jamie and her family came back and helped me search until after > midnight. I then continued to search for him most of the rest of the > night. It was pouring rain the entire time and very cold, so we hoped he had found some shelter. > > > > In the morning, some staff came back and helped me some more. Making > 100s of flyers and driving all over and posting them and asking people > if they had seen him. We got a few calls from the flyers and the > police dispatch about sightings and we chased the sightings all over > Redwood City until about 2pm on Friday (23 hours from the time he went > missing) when the police called to say they had found Moses, but he had been hit by a car. > > > > They took him to the nearest vet and we met them there. When I was > able to see him he just started crying for about 20 minutes straight > with relief and sadness. He was in pretty bad shape and was > transported from there to a surgical hospital in San Mateo - the best > in the area - where he had surgery and spent 2 days in recovery. > > > > The main concerns were 1) a bladder burst due to blood coming from his > penis > - but they were able to determine there was no damage to any internal > organs. 2) His right eye had been popped from his eye socket and he > was blind in that eye. The doctors felt he would have a better chance > at recovering from the trauma if they removed the eye completely so he > only has > 1 eye now. 3) Possible internal bleeding in the brain due to blood > coming from his nose and mouth. This is not surgically treatable in > dogs so he was given medication and put under observation. But as of > today, they think he is out of danger. > > > > After 2 days in the hospital, I was able to bring him home today. He > can walk a little - just enough to go pee, but is still very sore and limping. > He is pretty heavily medicated. His eye socket has been sewn up and > is still very swollen and bruised, but he is not crying as much. We > are just lying together and resting and I think he is just relieved to > be home after his ordeal. He even gave a few weak wags of his tail > after I gave him a sponge bath. > > > > The nurses at the hospital gave him a new nickname because of his eye > - "Rocky Balboa". > > > > He will need to be under 24 hour supervision for the next 14 days to > make sure he does not reopen the eye. He is wearing a cone, but even > with that, there is a danger of the eye reopening. After 14 days, he > will get his stitches out. He has antibiotics to help prevent an infection. > > > > I am so happy that he is going to be ok and that we will have many > more years together. I will be busy nursing him back to health for > the next few weeks. I am also about to loose about 3 toenails from > close to 20 hours of walking looking for Moses, so trying to stay off my feet a bit. > > > > I wanted to say a special thanks to some people who helped me get > through this - special thanks to the first 4 people on this list who I > don't think I could have gotten through this without: > > * Jamie Rivera and her family - Jamie and her family came out to help > me search late into the night and Jamie was there with me all day on > Friday until Moses came out of surgery. She had a picture of Moses > and made the 100s of flyers and even a large banner for the car that we used on Friday. > She drove and walked around tirelessly. Her family brought me > blankets, dry clothes, and a whole care package. She was able to stay > focused and know what to do next when I was too overwhelmed and > hysterical to know what to do. > * Connie DeGuzman - Connie and her family also helped me tirelessly. > On Thursday, Connie and Jackie printed out pictures of Moses and put > them all around the area. The first tip we got on Friday morning was > from a picture Connie posted in a far outlying area that we would not > have expected he could have traveled that far. Connie also drove > around all day on Friday in the pouring rain looking for Moses. > * Jackie Baas - Jackie and her family helped me search all evening on > Thursday and all day Friday as well. Driving around in the rain, > printing out pictures and making flyers, passing out and posting > flyers, chasing Moses sightings all over the city. Even her little > daughter helped write phone numbers on the posters and call for Moses from the car window. > * The Redwood city police - dispatch kept calling us with sightings > and they were the ones who finally found him and took him to the > nearest vet. > * The staff at McGarvey - a number of staff assisted with the search > on Thursday afternoon and evening. Driving around looking for Moses, > going to businesses and asking if he had been seen, etc. > * Tiffani Andrade - Tiffani called the local SPCA and got all the > information on how to make a report and gave me the information to get > to the SPCA to look for Moses and be able to call the dispatch there > to ask if he had been found. She also took care of cancelling a > number of work and personal appointments for me so I could concentrate on looking for Moses. > * Paula and David - Paula and David came out to help look for Moses on > Thursday evening and Paula listed him on Craigslist as missing. > * Everyone who was calling concerned about Moses and praying and > sending positive energy to us. It worked. We found him and he > survived in spite of being lost in a strange city for 23 hours in the > pouring rain and on high traffic streets. Thank you all. > > Thanks again to everyone for your support. If I am unable to get back > to everyone's calls and emails, it is only because there are so many > calling and Moses and I are both very tired and can't keep up with it all right now. > Please forward this to anyone I have forgotten. I just wanted to > update everyone at once and let you know that Moses is in good hands > and I will be taking very good care of him. > > > > > > Michelle M. Kersten, M.S. > > Director of Clinical Services
This problem needs a higher pagerank, so I figured I would post the solution here. If your Toyota Camry trunk won't open, one possible reason is that it is set to valet mode. Valet mode means that you cannot open the trunk using the release lever inside the car. To set valet mode, you put the key into the trunk lock and turn it counterclockwise. You will know that your trunk is in valet mode if the lock is horizontal rather than vertical, and if you cannot open the trunk using the lever near the driver's seat. Of course, a problem is that sometimes the Camry can get stuck in valet mode, such that you can't use your key to get out of it. (You can see how I spent part of my Sunday morning ...) The solution turns out to be WD-40 . Spray some WD-40 on your key and on the lock. Put the key in, and jiggle it around, and happiness ensues. From an interaction design perspective, it sort of makes sense to have a valet mode. After all, the point of having a valet key is to limit the...
I've been chatting with many of my friends and colleagues about an issue that's been bugging me for a while, namely whether academic research has any role to play in the emerging Web 2.0 . I've been slowly coming to the conclusion that the answer is not much. I had a similar discussion with other researchers at HotMobile a few weeks ago. When the web first came out, pretty much every systems researcher ignored it because it was so ugly. The web was not very sophisticated in terms of distributed systems, HTTP lacked elegance, HTML conflated many different ideas, and so on. There were also not any really new ideas with the web, as evidenced by the fact that Tim Berners-Lee 's first paper on the Web was (probably rightfully) rejected from an ACM conference on hypertext. I'm sure one thing that really irked researchers about the nascent web was that it completely ignored the large body of work in hypertext and distributed systems that had preceded it. Even in 1997, as ...
I've always thought it would be fun to compile a list of famous rejected research papers, ones that later turned out to be highly influential. For example, in My Life as a Quant , the author tells the story of how the famous Black-Scholes paper (which describes how options should be priced) was rejected several times. The work eventually led to a Nobel Prize in economics. (Yes, I know, there technically is no Nobel Prize in economics). Then there's George Akerlof 's work on asymmetric information . I don't recall exactly, but I think the reviewers thought it was too simplistic. It also led to a Nobel Prize in econ. And then there's Tim Berners-Lee 's original paper on the World Wide Web. He describes his experiences in his book Weaving the Web . I think it was submitted to a hypertext conference, but was accepted only as a demo. I'm guessing reviewers didn't see much novelty in the work, which probably was correct from a research perspective.
Comments
> Hi Everyone,
>
>
>
> This is an update for those of you who know about Moses and a note to
> those who have not heard yet. Thanks to everyone for all the phone
> calls and emails. I have not been able to get back to everyone who has been calling.
> Just wanted to send an update to everyone all at once rather than
> repeat the story over and over.
>
>
>
> On Thursday, Moses was in the back yard of a home in the Bay Area for
> about 10 minutes stretching his legs after a long car ride. When I
> went to get him, the gate was open and he was gone. The gate opened
> into an alley and commercial area. Myself, some of the staff from the
> home, and some friends of mine searched for Moses all evening and the
> staff even made flyers and posted them all around the area. There
> were a few sightings of him, but were were not able to find him.
> Jamie and her family came back and helped me search until after
> midnight. I then continued to search for him most of the rest of the
> night. It was pouring rain the entire time and very cold, so we hoped he had found some shelter.
>
>
>
> In the morning, some staff came back and helped me some more. Making
> 100s of flyers and driving all over and posting them and asking people
> if they had seen him. We got a few calls from the flyers and the
> police dispatch about sightings and we chased the sightings all over
> Redwood City until about 2pm on Friday (23 hours from the time he went
> missing) when the police called to say they had found Moses, but he had been hit by a car.
>
>
>
> They took him to the nearest vet and we met them there. When I was
> able to see him he just started crying for about 20 minutes straight
> with relief and sadness. He was in pretty bad shape and was
> transported from there to a surgical hospital in San Mateo - the best
> in the area - where he had surgery and spent 2 days in recovery.
>
>
>
> The main concerns were 1) a bladder burst due to blood coming from his
> penis
> - but they were able to determine there was no damage to any internal
> organs. 2) His right eye had been popped from his eye socket and he
> was blind in that eye. The doctors felt he would have a better chance
> at recovering from the trauma if they removed the eye completely so he
> only has
> 1 eye now. 3) Possible internal bleeding in the brain due to blood
> coming from his nose and mouth. This is not surgically treatable in
> dogs so he was given medication and put under observation. But as of
> today, they think he is out of danger.
>
>
>
> After 2 days in the hospital, I was able to bring him home today. He
> can walk a little - just enough to go pee, but is still very sore and limping.
> He is pretty heavily medicated. His eye socket has been sewn up and
> is still very swollen and bruised, but he is not crying as much. We
> are just lying together and resting and I think he is just relieved to
> be home after his ordeal. He even gave a few weak wags of his tail
> after I gave him a sponge bath.
>
>
>
> The nurses at the hospital gave him a new nickname because of his eye
> - "Rocky Balboa".
>
>
>
> He will need to be under 24 hour supervision for the next 14 days to
> make sure he does not reopen the eye. He is wearing a cone, but even
> with that, there is a danger of the eye reopening. After 14 days, he
> will get his stitches out. He has antibiotics to help prevent an infection.
>
>
>
> I am so happy that he is going to be ok and that we will have many
> more years together. I will be busy nursing him back to health for
> the next few weeks. I am also about to loose about 3 toenails from
> close to 20 hours of walking looking for Moses, so trying to stay off my feet a bit.
>
>
>
> I wanted to say a special thanks to some people who helped me get
> through this - special thanks to the first 4 people on this list who I
> don't think I could have gotten through this without:
>
> * Jamie Rivera and her family - Jamie and her family came out to help
> me search late into the night and Jamie was there with me all day on
> Friday until Moses came out of surgery. She had a picture of Moses
> and made the 100s of flyers and even a large banner for the car that we used on Friday.
> She drove and walked around tirelessly. Her family brought me
> blankets, dry clothes, and a whole care package. She was able to stay
> focused and know what to do next when I was too overwhelmed and
> hysterical to know what to do.
> * Connie DeGuzman - Connie and her family also helped me tirelessly.
> On Thursday, Connie and Jackie printed out pictures of Moses and put
> them all around the area. The first tip we got on Friday morning was
> from a picture Connie posted in a far outlying area that we would not
> have expected he could have traveled that far. Connie also drove
> around all day on Friday in the pouring rain looking for Moses.
> * Jackie Baas - Jackie and her family helped me search all evening on
> Thursday and all day Friday as well. Driving around in the rain,
> printing out pictures and making flyers, passing out and posting
> flyers, chasing Moses sightings all over the city. Even her little
> daughter helped write phone numbers on the posters and call for Moses from the car window.
> * The Redwood city police - dispatch kept calling us with sightings
> and they were the ones who finally found him and took him to the
> nearest vet.
> * The staff at McGarvey - a number of staff assisted with the search
> on Thursday afternoon and evening. Driving around looking for Moses,
> going to businesses and asking if he had been seen, etc.
> * Tiffani Andrade - Tiffani called the local SPCA and got all the
> information on how to make a report and gave me the information to get
> to the SPCA to look for Moses and be able to call the dispatch there
> to ask if he had been found. She also took care of cancelling a
> number of work and personal appointments for me so I could concentrate on looking for Moses.
> * Paula and David - Paula and David came out to help look for Moses on
> Thursday evening and Paula listed him on Craigslist as missing.
> * Everyone who was calling concerned about Moses and praying and
> sending positive energy to us. It worked. We found him and he
> survived in spite of being lost in a strange city for 23 hours in the
> pouring rain and on high traffic streets. Thank you all.
>
> Thanks again to everyone for your support. If I am unable to get back
> to everyone's calls and emails, it is only because there are so many
> calling and Moses and I are both very tired and can't keep up with it all right now.
> Please forward this to anyone I have forgotten. I just wanted to
> update everyone at once and let you know that Moses is in good hands
> and I will be taking very good care of him.
>
>
>
>
>
> Michelle M. Kersten, M.S.
>
> Director of Clinical Services