Author: andy

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Big Day

Meg’s ear appointment was supposed to be last Wednesday, but somehow, the hospital over-booked and we were bumped to today.  If you recall, we were getting ear tubes put in to help limit or eliminate her countless ear infections, hopefully spurring her to start walking and put on some more weight (she’s skinny!).  The procedure is outpatient surgery, something neither Brooke nor I have really had much experience with, so the whole thing was rather interesting.

We got a call yesterday afternoon that instructed us to have Meg here at 7:00 am.  So, Brooke and I got up at 5:30, got everything ready, then woke Meg up and hopped in the car by 6:15 to head down to Iowa City.  We got here a bit early, but got checked in pretty quickly and was moved back to the pre-op area.  All the nurses and doctors were very impressed with Meg’s demeanor, as she was being shockingly good compared with the other toddlers that they usually see.  Honestly, I was pretty surprised too, as Meg couldn’t have anything but clear liquids before going into surgery…and she could only have those clear liquids 2 hours prior to the surgery.  Therefore, Meg hadn’t actually ate or drank anything since 7:00 pm the night before.  That, and to get her there on time, we had to wake her up a good hour before she would normally wake up.  All things considered, she was very happy.

We had to keep her entertained for 30-45 min before they took her back for surgery.  She got her oxygen levels checked on her toe and her blood pressure done on her leg, all while I tried distracting her with a book.  Worked pretty well, really.  Meg did not want to be weighed, and wasn’t a fan of having a stethoscope on her chest.  Other than that, she did alright while being poked and prodded.

…but she was pretty upset when the doctors had to take her to surgery.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t accompany her back there unless one of us got dressed up in a surgical gown, etc., so we just let the doctors do their work.  Brooke and I had to sit in the waiting room for another 30 min or so while the work was being done, then the doctor called us in to talk about things.  Meg did quite well, apparently.  Tubes put in, went under anesthesia just fine, and seemed to be coming out of it well, too.  After Meg was awake, the doctors brought her in to a post-op recovery room where we had to sit while we waited for her to be allowed to leave.  They had to do the same oxygen, heart rate, etc. tests again, but nothing was different.  In the picture above, you can see the cotton balls in her ear, but we removed those shortly thereafter.

Oh, and Meg was very thirsty.  As in, 20 oz of apple juice in about 15 min thirsty.  And she liked the hospital graham crackers very much.  🙂

Because Meg was so good, the nurses brought in a few stuffed animals for her to choose between.  While I would have chosen the blue, furry monster, Meg went with the smaller, less interesting yellow bear (?) with sunglasses.  She didn’t ask me, though.  Oh well.

All in all, the whole morning went very well. I was still able to make it to the lab by 10:00 am to get some work done, and Brooke took Meg home, still in her pajamas.  We have some ear drops to use for the next week or two, and she should only need Tylenol today, but we’re told she should be mostly back to normal by this evening, already.

Hopefully she’ll sleep well.  She had a big day.  And did great.  🙂

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Flag Day

There are certain random dates I know of because of equally random reasons, and June 14th is one such day: Flag Day.  The only reason I know it’s Flag Day is because, around the time this post is going live, just about 15 years ago, my wonderful parents were driving me around in our old Chevy Suburban putting up the Stars and Stripes at various locations around Downtown Columbia, then going back later that night to pick them all up again.  I don’t remember the exact number, but I’m pretty sure it was close to 50 flags.  Our Boy Scout Troop put up the flags as a fundraiser on the different patriotic holidays throughout the year, and Flag Day is one of the common ones my family usually chose, as we were frequently available.

Flag Day always serves as a reminder of my time in Boy Scouts, something I haven’t really thought too hard about in the last decade (and then some) after completing my Eagle Scout rank.  It’s one of those things I kinda hope I can get back to some day, preferably with a son in tow.  In retrospect, it reminds me quite a bit of getting through graduate school.  In both processes, you select a committee, you present a project to them, you update the committee on your progress on a regular basis and they give you pointers and support to get you through it, culminating in one final test at the end of it that really isn’t much of a test, as much as it is a conversation about your experience throughout your time there.  Both are grueling processes, but I can’t help but think that my participation in Boy Scouts, amongst other things, contributed to my ability to get through graduate school.  Definitely not something I considered at the time, but worth telling future scientists working toward their Biology and/or Chemistry merit badges.

So, always remember: June 14th is Flag Day.  And if you see a kid putting flags out in Downtown Columbia, and his poor parents with their 32 oz coffee patiently watching and helping, tell them “thanks.”

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“…it’s a series of tubes.”

We’ve been fighting Meg’s various ear infections since, oh, last November or so. We think it started around the time she came down with strep, and thereafter, it just seemed like she had a (likely unrelated…) string of ear infections that just…wouldn’t…go…away… We tried at least 4 different antibiotics, nebulizer treatments, and once we hit Spring, even some allergy medication. None of them would ever, truly, get rid of the infections. Sure, while on antibiotics, she would improve, but a week or so later, she’d be back to her ear infected ways.

We didn’t even notice at first.  She went in for a regular check-up and they told us she had an ear infection.  She had been sleeping alright (relatively speaking…), never had a fever, no discernible hearing difficulties, and wasn’t pulling on her ears or anything: Meg wasn’t presenting with any of the typical signs, so we hadn’t even noticed.  Since then, we’ve paid a bit more attention and can usually tell when it’s getting worse.  Then, we make the appointment, get some more (or different) antibiotics, she gets better for a week or so, and then it gets worse again.

Finally, over a month ago, we scheduled the appointment with the otolaryngology department here at the University to check her out.  Took that long to get her in…  Yesterday, at the appointment, Meg did remarkably well!  The doc said she had some fluid in one of her ears, but definitely no infection in the other one.  In the end, she recommended going with ear tubes for sure, then if they pop out too soon (i.e. less than 6 mo; they can stay in up to 3 years), or the infection comes back, then consider “shaving back” the adenoids.  Others had told us that tonsillectomy could be in the picture, but this doctor didn’t think her tonsils were bad or anything (w00t!).

Now, what are these tubes going to do? Here’s the description and diagram:

Ventilation tubes allow fluid to drain out of the middle ear space and allow air to reenter. The risk of recurring ear infections is greatly reduced. Hearing returns to normal with the tube in place and speech development can get back on track.

So after this is done, and assuming it works, we’re hopeful that Meg will put on some more weight and start walking, as we think her whole system has been messed up, slowing her development.  She’s cruising just fine, can stand, and has even taken a step or two, but it just seems like her balance is off and is affected by the ears.  For example, she only seems to try taking steps when she’s only a day or two out from beginning a round of antibiotics.  Sure, correlative, but balance in a biped is greatly affected by the situation of your ears (specifically, the semicircular canal, a component of your inner ear).  So far as speech development goes, she’s making attempts at repeating words you say, and frequently she succeeds, but at 15 mo old, she probably should have been doing this more a few months ago.

Meg isn’t too far behind, but we’re hoping that getting tubes in will help her out.  Then she can start running around and terrorizing the chickens and her mother.  🙂

Oh yeah, and the title comes from the late, great Senator Ted Stevens…who described the internet as a “series of tubes.”

Sigh.

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Good Day for Baseball

We have been meaning to get to a baseball game in Cedar Rapids for awhile now.  Never quite made it last summer, but then again, we had a 6 mo old, so it wasn’t exactly the ideal place to be going on a hot, summer day.  However, with Meg staying with her Grandparents in Missouri this week, we took the opportunity on Memorial Day to take in a ball game at Veterans Memorial Stadium, home of the Cedar Rapids Kernels minor league team (a Los Angeles Angels farm team).

Firstly, let me start by saying that tickets are cheap for these games.  They range from $7 to $10, depending on if you want lawn, bleacher or standard seating.  We opted for bleacher seats ($8 each), though in retrospect, the extra $1 would have been worth it (more on that shortly).  The food/beer prices were also pretty good.  $3 for peanuts, $3.50 for nachos, $4 for a 16 oz beer and $7 for a 32 oz beer.  With regards to beer, while they had your standard A-B, Miller and Coors fare, they also had a selection of other varieties, from Fat Tire to Blue Moon to Leinenkugel’s.  Enough to suit just about any taste.

As you can see above, the stadium itself is relatively small.  Again, we were in the bleacher seats when I took that picture, but you can tell that we were practically sitting on home base.  Unfortunately, however, the bleachers have absolutely no shade whatsoever.  And when it’s 87 F and sunny, that can get tiresome.  It would have been worth the extra $1 to move to actual seats, with the promise of some shade.  We did have our 30 SPF sunscreen on, though, and for the most part, we got out of it unscathed.

The other downside that I certainly didn’t anticipate was the length of the game.  Granted, I tend to expect spending maybe 3 hours at a baseball game, though games are shorter or longer than that, too.  We were sitting there for 2 hours and we had made it through the 4th inning (we got there a bit early…but still…).  The problem, of course, was that the teams weren’t hitting anything – they would go through all counts, strikes and balls, and get bases loaded without bringing any of the runners home.  At the time, the Kernels weren’t doing all that well, and we were sun baked, so we decided to leave.

Of course, as can be expected, the Kernels ended up winning.  The Peoria Chiefs (a Chicago Cubs farm team) were up 0-3 when we left, and by the end of the game, the Kernels won 7-5.  I guess they just needed a few warm up innings?

All in all, we had a good time.  The prices were good, the stadium was easily accessible, and the atmosphere was pretty good.  I’d like to go back, but I’d either a). pick a night game, or b). spend a few bucks extra for some shade.  I can’t fault the team for those particular blunders on my part, though.

A good way to spend Memorial Day, though.  Sun, beer and baseball.  Can’t go wrong.

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Primer: Psychopharmacology, Part I

These posts, tagged “Primer,” are posted for two reasons: 1). to help me get better at teaching non-scientists about science-related topics; and 2). to help non-scientists learn more about things they otherwise would not.  So, while I realize most people won’t read these, I’m going to write them anyway, partially for my own benefit, but mostly for yours.

It’s crazy to think that I’ve been posting these things monthly since last June.  For my first Primer, I talked about Pharmacology, as I had just completed a Ph.D. in it.  Now, a year later, I’ll elaborate further on the subject that got me interested in it in the first place: psychopharmacology.

As I wrote back then, I took a class at Truman State based out of the Psychology department that taught students about psychopharmacology, defined as:

Psychopharmacology — noun

the branch of pharmacology dealing with the psychological effects of drugs.

In broad strokes, we’re talking about how a drug can change your state of perception, whether it causes or alleviates hallucinations, alters your mood, dampens your emotions, and so on.  Something that changes your “normal psychological state” to something else, whether that be therapeutic or “recreational.”

In order to grasp what happens in your brain when your mood is changing, you need to have a basic idea of the structure of the brain and neurotransmission, both subjects I have discussed in the past.  For example, much of your cognition happens in the brain region called the Cerebral Cortex, and it is dependent upon neurotransmitters like acetylcholine and dopamine.  Alternatively, emotions like anger, aggression and fear tend to be centered in another region called the Amygdala.  Bear in mind that the varying areas of the brain “talk” to each other, and if you affect the signaling in one area, you may very well affect another area.  This may well be the point of any pharmacological intervention, but frequently, you get undesired consequences we call “side effects.”

Let’s look at the Cortex first.  Schizophrenia, a disease characterized by delusions, hallucinations and disorganized speech or hearing, is thought to be caused by misfiring neurons in the Cortex that release dopamine.  Therefore, if your cortical neurons are releasing too much dopamine, for any reason, you can end up with hallucinations and delusions, etc.  Interestingly, you can induce schizophrenic-like symptoms in an individual if you give them amphetamine or cocaine, both of which also increase the release of dopamine, though on a wider scale throughout the body.  For those with Schizophrenia, you typically prescribe an antipsychotic, a drug that inhibits dopamine release or reception.

The trick with drugs like antipsychotics, however, is that you want to inhibit dopamine release in the cortex, yet you want to limit that drug’s effect on other areas of the body where you still need dopamine release, or other neurotransmitters like norepinephrine that are responsible for completely different things (hence, side effects).  For example, if you were to design a drug to limit release of dopamine, you could fix their symptoms of Schizophrenia, but you could also affect mobility, as dopamine is responsible for voluntary control of movement.

This is how we arrived at “typical” and “atypical” antipsychotics.  The “typical” drugs were the first-generation antipsychotics that did a reasonable job at limiting schizophrenic symptoms, but also affected other dopaminergic neurons in your body (i.e. your movement).  People on these drugs for decades frequently came down with a movement disorder called Tardive Dyskinesia.  The second generation “atypical” antipsychotics were more specific to the Cortex, and limited schizophrenic symptoms while mostly leaving other dopaminergic signaling pathways alone, thus alleviating dyskinesias.

As another example, Depression is a mood disorder that makes you feel sadness, anxiety, and general hopelessness.  This disease is thought to involve the limbic regions of your brain, which includes the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex.  Depression, however, is opposite of Schizophrenia in that it represents a lack of the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine.  The drugs of choice used to be TCAs (tricyclic antipsychotics), a drug that blocked the reentry of serotonin and norepinephrine into neurons, thus prolonging the activity of these neurotransmitters.  In short, it made your serotonin work longer than it usually does, thus alleviating the need for production of more.  As with Schizophrenia, this earlier drug class generated a large number of side-effects because it affected norepinephrine and serotonin throughout the body.  Because TCAs worked on norepinephrine, that also meant that its action would increase in your body, for example, affecting your blood pressure through action on your blood vessels and causing arrhythmias due to action on the heart.  Once SSRIs were developed, they rapidly replaced the TCA drug class because they were more specific toward only serotonin and not norepinephrine.

Both Schizophrenia and Depression are examples of psychological disorders that can be treated effectively with some kind of pharmacological intervention.  Frequently, a given patient will end up trying multiple different drugs over the course of their treatment, and sometimes in various combinations.  Unfortunately, there isn’t a single “silver bullet” for taking care of a given psychological disease, as most people manifest the disorders in different ways, with different drugs being more effective at treating different symptoms.  While an SSRI may prove useful in the short-term, it’s possible a doctor will prescribe a TCA later on after the SSRIs lose their effectiveness.  Antipsychotics act similarly.  And more research is being done on new classes and new modifications to old drugs in order to make them more effective, and especially more selective toward their specific target(s).

The larger point to all of this is that the study of psychopharmacology is an effort to control one’s emotions and behaviors while not affecting the other aspects of their day-to-day life (i.e. side effects).  These drugs typically manipulate neurotransmission to some degree, and hopefully have some kind of selectivity toward specific aspects of a given disease rather than affecting all transmission of that particular compound.  This can be difficult, and can take decades to fully investigate, but it is certainly possible.  As researchers develop more complex maps of the brain, with more detailed pharmacological profiles, new drug classes can be produced that are more specific to a given individual’s needs.

As this is more than long enough, and I still have more to say on the subject, stay tuned until next month when I hit up Part II.

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A Year Without Cable

I realized recently that, besides the fact that we’ve now lived in Iowa for the last year, it also means we’ve lived without cable television. After all that time, what have we missed?

Not a whole lot, it turns out.

Sure, there are some things that I would like to have.  Some deficiencies I figured we would see in this newfound lack of endless channels, but there are others I didn’t expect.  For one thing, I knew we’d miss having the ability to record a program on a DVR, as we’d gotten used to having one for the previous 4 years.  I thought that we’d be fine without it, however, as most of the shows we watch were on some kind of digital service, a la Hulu, etc.  And for most shows, we were right.

Unfortunately, a select few of my shows (e.g. Stargate Universe and Sanctuary) have some silly deal with SyFy that makes them show up on Hulu 30 days after premiering.  That, my friends, is an eternity.  Those shows, however, are the only ones that seem to have this problem.  Many of the others, in fact, show up the day after premiering on television, while others show up a week later.  These are time-frames we can deal with.

One thing I didn’t think I’d miss, however, was baseball.  I don’t really watch baseball religiously, but I do like catching the occasional game on a rainy Saturday or Sunday afternoon.  For the most part, many Cardinals games are actually televised up here in Iowa, using KDSK‘s feed.  This isn’t always the case, however, and sometimes, because we’re in Iowa, we get enough wind that the TV station’s antenna is cutting in and out, making my viewing of a game troublesome.  I have considered getting MLB.tv service, which would allow us to watch any baseball game throughout the season in HD through the PS3, but at $90 per season, I just don’t watch enough to make it worth it.

Other than that?  I don’t think we miss all that much.  We watch quite a bit of Netflix, streamed through the PS3 or Wii, and we have a few “standby” shows in our Instant Queue at all times when we get that “we just want to veg out in front of the TV and watch nothing specific” feeling, such as No Reservations, Man v. Food, Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs.  The best part being that we can choose which episodes we want to watch, rather than being at the mercy of whatever theme that particular station is running on that day.  And, no commercials.

We are still watching Hulu through the computer, but it seems to work alright.  I’d prefer to have it on the TV, but I don’t want to run a cable that far, and the 19″ monitor we’re using is “big enough” for our purposes.

In the end, I don’t think we miss cable all that much.  We can find little things here and there that would be nice to see live, but more often than not, we’re living without it.

Not something my parents could have believed they’d ever say, methinks…

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Looking For Improved Growth

Last year’s garden was remarkably successful, considering that we moved to Iowa in early-May and didn’t get much planted until later that month.  In the end, we had a ridiculous number of tomatoes and squash, but good yields of sweet potatoes, carrots, radishes, and green beans (if you count the latter as “good”…).

This year, however, we more than doubled the size of the garden, partially because everything grew too close together last year, but also because we wanted to expand into some different vegetables.  A few weeks ago, we borrowed our land lord’s tiller, which made short work of the existing garden, but also took care of the surrounding area we didn’t take care of last year.  Believe you me, Iowa dirt is quite a bit easier to till through than Missouri dirt.  I think it took me 10 minutes to go over the whole thing, and I did it again the next day just to make sure I got it all.  Since then, I’ve just used a spade fork to “turn over” the dirt and limit growth of weeds.  Then, two weeks ago, Brooke planted peas, broccoli and spinach, which are three things that we either didn’t grow at all last year, or didn’t find much success in growing.

This past weekend, however, we moved on to the other, larger items.  Brooke is pictured above watering tomato and pepper plants, though she also planted a few rows of two-color hybrid sweet corn.  If I recall,  she ended up planting over 20 plants in the plot she’s watering, and the vast majority of those are tomatoes.  Mostly romas, but also some that should make for reasonable sandwiches, etc.  Some of those plants we inherited from my Mom (thanks!), but the others she started in peat pots indoors awhile back.  I mowed the lawn the next day and saved the grass clippings to help surround the individual plants, hopefully limiting the growth of grass (that you can clearly see growing to the right of Brooke, where the broccoli, peas and spinach are).  Brooke also put some milk jugs around the tomato and pepper plants to help protect them as they get bigger.

The only thing(s) I know of yet to go in are the green beans and the soup beans.  Brooke is starting to plant herbs in pots up closer to the house over this next week, now that the temperatures seem like they’ll stay above freezing (finally…).  We’ll probably get everything else planted by Memorial Day, but then we’ve got a large amount of weeding to take care of, especially over by the peas.  We’ve got pea and spinach plants coming up, so it’s easy to identify the weeds around them.  The carrots, however, haven’t popped up yet, so we’ll have to wait for them.

On a side-note, Meg had great fun playing outside while we were doing all this.  I took some pictures while we were outside, as I tend to do when there’s a camera attached to my phone.  She discovered that eating dirt annoys her parents, though, so we’ll have to keep a close eye on her in the future…

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Two Hours Well Spent

As I’m sure Mom would tell you, I was never really eager to mow the lawn back in high school.  I would certainly do it, and do a reasonable job at it, but I was never asking Dad, “hey, can I mow the lawn for you?”  In the past year, however, I’ve found that I kinda missed it.  Back in Kirksville or St. Louis, I never had the opportunity or the need to mow any lawns.  For all intents and purposes, I hadn’t actually mowed a lawn in about 10 years before moving to Iowa.  A lot changes in a decade, and apparently, over that decade, I learned to enjoy mowing.

We have a pretty large yard up here in Iowa, and only a self-propelled push mower to do it with (plus an electric trimmer).  It takes me almost 2 hours to mow the whole thing, usually.  Thankfully, the yard is pretty flat, except for a plethora of molehills.  When I tell people up here that I do this lawn with a push mower, they get wide-eyed, probably chuckling in their heads with disbelief.  Somehow, I don’t really see it the same way.

Mowing the lawn has become an excuse to go outside for me and get disconnected.  No need for my headphones, no need for my TV, no need for my computer.  I can’t really use those things while I’m mowing (I probably could use headphones, but I’d have to turn them up loud enough that I’d hasten my need for hearing aides, so I’m avoiding them in this case).  It’s one of the few times that I force myself to go without any form of technology, let alone one of the few times I ever get any exercise.

I will probably change my tune by August, but right now, there’s nothing like sitting down with a beer while surveying a freshly trimmed yard after 2 hours of work.

Oh, and here’s a random picture of Brooke and Meg. 🙂

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Tough Choice

There have been various announcements over the past few months that got me excited about both options.  They both have some great benefits and the implementations are very functional, if not even downright awesome.  To some degree, it isn’t really a “tough choice” at all, as I already know which option I’m going to go with.

Of course, I’m talking about Google Music vs Amazon Cloud Player.

To be fair, as of this writing, I haven’t actually tried the Google Music Beta, though I signed up for an invite as soon as I found out that this thing exists at all.  I’ve been using the Amazon Cloud Player, though, and like it quite a bit.

I guess I should describe the pros and cons.  The Amazon Cloud Player was launched in late March, providing users with 5 GB of free storage space for their files.  MP3s, documents, pictures, videos, etc.  Any MP3s stored on this virtual drive, however, can be streamed over the internet through your web browser or smart phone (i.e. Android and iOS),  through what they call the Cloud Player.  If you buy any digital album from Amazon MP3, then your 5 GB of storage is increased to 20 GB – you can purchase additional space thereafter.  The service has worked well, from my perspective, and it’s nice to be able to pull up any of my albums and play them from practically anywhere, especially as I’m not carrying my laptop around with me 24/7 like I used to.

Amazon kinda shocked the world when they released this, however.  It was long expected that Apple or Google would go there first, but they were dealing with the legal rights to stream music over the internet.  The question, from a legal standpoint, is whether it is legal to purchase music, upload it to a different location, and then stream it like a radio station.  Does that violate the license that you agree to when you purchase an MP3?  No clear answer was given, so Google and Apple were trying to get things finalized before going ahead with their respective plans.

Amazon basically just said “oh well” and did it anyway.  And so far, to my knowledge, no one has sued them.

Therefore, it was expected that Google would make an announcement during their now annual I/O developer’s conference.  And as expected, Google announced their long-awaited solution: Google Music.  Since Amazon took the lead, they had to come forward with something to show their burgeoning community.  And show they did.

The Google Music Beta, rolling out piecemeal by invitation only (much like Gmail did), allows you to upload 20,000 songs to their cloud service, and then you can stream it to your Android devices or the web.  In that way, it’s very similar to the Amazon Cloud Player.  The catch is that Google Music should be capable of providing better sound quality, even over a relatively slow 3G wireless connection.  Right now, however, you cannot actually purchase music through the Google Music interface like you can from the Amazon system.  Therefore, for digital music, you still need Amazon MP3 or iTunes.

The kicker for me, however, is offline play.

With Google Music, you can “pin” a song, album, or playlist that will synchronize that music on your various devices.  It will automatically synchronize your “recently played” music, as well.  So, for example, if I want to “pin” Under The Table And Dreaming (and I will…), Google Music will download the album to my phone, allowing me to play that music even when my phone isn’t on an internet connection.  And this is extremely important for people like us that don’t have unlimited data plans, or that tend to drive long distances through areas that don’t have the best cellular coverage.  I can rely on streaming, but I don’t have to.

With a single, software-based approach, Google provided me with a good reason to abandon my iPod Nano.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love my iPod.  The thing is light, gets good battery life, and is tiny.  Or “nano,” if you will.  But, I have to physically connect it to my laptop to transfer podcasts and music.  This isn’t that huge of a deal breaker for me, to tell you the truth, but I’ve got its cute little 8 GB hard drive maxed out, so I’m constantly selecting which podcasts need to go on the hard drive and when.  And sometimes, new editions of my podcasts are released while I’m at work, preventing me from being able to actually add them to my iPod, because my iPod is only linked with my laptop.

Now, using my phone, I can stream all of my music (~15 GB?) over the internet, and save the ones I want on my phone’s mini-SD card.  Moreover, as my phone has WiFi on it and a wealth of apps, I can access most if not all of those podcasts without having to download them to whatever device I’m using.

So in the end, I think I’ll be using the Google Music offering.  At least, once I get an invite.  For the time-being, I’ll settle for the Amazon Cloud Player.  It’ll be interesting to see what Amazon does to compete here, as Apple will be announcing their own “iCloud” service sometime in the relatively near future, and if Amazon wants to compete, they’ll have to do some drastic things.  iCloud will be built into every iOS device, and Google Music will be built into every Android device.  And the legal drama certainly isn’t over, as the record labels are unhappy with Google’s plan, and likely won’t be all that happy with Apple’s, either.

Where does Amazon go?

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And the Oscar goes to…

Brooke has a friend that’s slowly making their way through all the “Best Picture” winners via Netflix, so we figured that, as we aren’t really devoted to a single show right now in our Netflix Queue, we can probably start heading that way, too.  We’ve seen quite a few of the more recent ones, so I’ll just highlight the ones below that we’re going to try and watch.  Movies that aren’t highlighted are those that either we’ve both seen, or one of us has seen and can’t convince the other to watch it (I’m looking at you, “Return of the King” and “Titanic“).

This will take practically forever to accomplish, but I figured it was worth posting.  We’re only going back to the year of my birth, at this point.  Once we get that far, then we’ll re-evaluate whether we want to go further.

Academy Award “Best Picture” Winners