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Once upon a time there was a dog named Zeus. Before we met him, Zeus had a very difficult life, having been abused by two different owners. When my wife saw Zeus on a local tv station, and they said the Animal Care Society was going to be extremely careful about who adopted him next, she seemed to know that she had to take care of him.

As you can see from the following pictures, when we first adopted Zeus, he was very sick, with a horrible case of mange.

Very cool ... I just read in the UAA newspaper that Kodiak Island now has a hostel. A woman named Rhonda Maker has opened the Kodiak Island Hostel, which opened in late July, 2010. The hostel is large enough to hold 26 people, and offers hot showers, with plans to have washers and dryers in the future. Sorry, I don't have information on the hostel prices at this time.

Wow, for the last few days earthquakes have been pounding the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, including this 6.7 magnitude earthquake. With the larger rectangles showing larger earthquakes, this image from the USGS website says it all:

As I've mentioned here, I've been sick for the last six weeks, losing 30 pounds in that time, and during my visits to several Alaska hospitals and doctors, I asked why there are so many retirement facilities and "senior care" facilities in Alaska. I always knew there was a senior center in Talkeetna (near the Y), but when I was looking for a place to live this spring, I'd often think, "That place looks nice", only to find that it was either a low-income housing facility or some sort of senior care facility.

When you come to visit Alaska, don't be surprised to hear the terms "Cheechako" or "Sourdough". Currently I'm a Cheechako -- a person who claims to live in Alaska, but hasn't lived here for a winter yet.

Conversely a Sourdough is someone who has lived in Alaska for at least one winter, and more typically has lived here for many winters.

During the last few days I decided to redesign this website to give it more of an "Alaska look and feel", and what you're seeing now is the result of that effort. I wanted to created a website design that had a clean, minimalist look and feel, but something that also had a touch of Alaska to it.

A grizzly bear attacks a man -- twice -- and the man survives.

The Anchorage Daily News has a story of a 54-year-old geologist who was attacked by a grizzly bear -- not once, but twice -- and lived to tell his story. It's actually a very good story about how to handle a grizzly bear attack, because as the story says, a grizzly is usually just trying to "neutralize" you, it's not trying to kill you. (Note: If you visit a place like Denali, they will teach you things like this about grizzly bears, and also the differences between grizzly bears and black bears.)

I don't often write about my work on the devdaily.com website here, but since this application was largely written in Alaska, I'll mention it here. :)

I walked past a woman around 3pm this afternoon as I was coming back from the mailbox, and just as I was about to say hello, she says "Good morning". We both pause, and laugh.

The funny thing is that this has happened many times now, I just keep forgetting to write about it. I guess that's what 19 hours of sunlight a day does to people. :)