Haplocheirus sollers

Gonna need this paper, folks. It's a basal alvarezsaur in the new issue of Science. Whoever emails it to me first wins!

Edit: Ville wins, but thanks to everybody who got it to me. Man, you guys are quick!

Hey, guys, what's up?

So I've been busy. Really busy, as the photo above shows. Doing what? Building things with my Pixelblocks, of course. This would be Shantae, from the Game Boy Color game of the same name. But aside from that, I've been playing video games (mostly Assassin's Creed 2) and getting back into the drawing thing. But honestly, most of my time has been spent job-hunting, and I've discovered a very interesting, if annoying, fact: for every thirty resumes you send out, you get two or three responses. One place emailed me back enthusiastically and asked if they could set up a phone interview for the next day. Sure, I said. They never called, and didn't respond to emails from me asking what's going on. So, you know, awesome.

But yesterday I got a potentially awesome job offer from a law firm. There are some kinks to work out, including the starting pay, but they seem very willing to accomodate me. I'm a little worried that I'll have to accept a drop in salary for my first year (compared to my last job), but after that first year, I get to start billing time, which opens up a whole new pay grade. Hopefully it will all work out. And no, I still haven't seen Avatar. I did see Gamera the Brave, the newest daikaiju film starring everyone's favorite rocket-powered turtle, and I basically hated it. Some of the Showa-era films treated the character with more respect than this one did. Still, it's good to have in my collection.

I've also made a short list of cheap video games I'm going to buy when I get a job and start making money again: Let's Tap, Madworld, and Retro Game Challenge. The first two based on kitch factor, the third because I'm actually interested in it. The first game exists mainly for its awesome soundtrack whereas the second one looks like a video game version of Sin City. They're all stupid cheap, so it's a win-win.

I also participated in two podcasts this week, both over at Nintendo World Report. I did my usual color commentary for the NWR Newscast and a special guest appearance on the Radio Trivia Podcast, which is still being edited. Maybe I can entice the Radio Free Nintendo crew to let me join in this week so I can get all three in the same week, thus completing the NWR Podcast Ironman challenge. That's about it, then. I should have a substantial post up before...you know...too long. Maybe with some good news attached to it. Huzzah!

Big Boss died. I have no idea how.

Explain this one to me, dear readers.

Tonight, I checked on Big Boss, my wonder gecko, and was concerned because he hadn't been eating...in almost two weeks. I tried picking him up, and he squirmed a little but was otherwise compliant. This is highly unusual. He would normally be halfway to Timbukbu by the time by finger brushed up against his side. Anyway, I pick him up and start picking shed skin off his toes and legs that he hadn't gotten to yet. He was not putting up a fighting, just chillin'. So I get to his legs and notice that his vent (butt) has a kind of scabby thing stuck in it. That means he's impacted. So I sterilize my tweezers and try to pick it out. Again, he's not totally into it, but he's not going crazy, either. However, it's still hard work because Big Boss isn't having a great time. So I do what I used to do with Liquid--stick him in the fridge for a few minutes to cool him down.

So I do that. Big Boss comes out still sort of moving, but half asleep. I flip him on his back and get to work on the impaction. I actually manage to get a bit out, but it'll take more work. When he starts to wake back up, I give him a break and stick him back in his tank. Naturally, I start reading online about how to dissolve an impaction. Hey look--let him stand in a warm pool of water for about ten minutes. So I fill a shallow dish with warm water, get Big Boss out again, and put him in the water. Again, he's not struggling.

Then the trouble starts. While he was initially standing in the water, he quickly goes limp. The second his nose hits the water, I pull him out. This lizard is completely limp. No idea what just happened. The end of his tail is twitching, though. I put him back in his tank under the heat lamp and let him lay there. A few minutes later, I check back. He's changed positions from laying on his belly to a rather unnatural sideways tilt. I continue to watch, and then the freakiness happens: his body convulses uncontrollably--I can't tell if he's half-paralyzed or having a seizure. These convulsions are very short but occur once every few minutes. It becomes pretty obvious that his brain is not turned on right now. Eventually the convulsions stop and his body goes stiff. He's dead. I actually suspect he died in the bath, and the ensuing convulsions resulted from background electrical activity. Think about a lizard tail that's dropped--it flips around for up to an hour after it's separated from the body.

So here's my question: What the heck happened? And don't say metabolic bone disease (MBD) because he's a fat, active, healthy gecko aside from this impaction, which I suspect wasn't more than a week old. Any ideas? I'm sad, but I'm also just plain curious. I'm suspecting a heart attack or a stroke, but can lizards get heart attacks and strokes?

Not Dead Yet!

Happy New Year, Merry Squidmas, and all that jazz. I've been woefully neglectful of this blog over the past ten days, and I apologize for it. Between the holidays, the layoff, and my Quest for Reemployment, things have been understandably slow. I'm sad to report that the Big Interview I was basically set to nail did not go as planned. The job I was interviewing for wasn't really the job they were interviewing ME for, if that makes any sense. I left confused. I will hear back from them at the end of the month, and I instantly started shooting off resumes to other companies.

I'm relieved to say that I've interest has already been generated. I've signed up for unemployment benefits to cover the downtime, and I was relieved to hear that, since my last day was the 1st, my benefits run through the entire month. After that, I get very cheap COBRA benefits (like very cheap).

Other than that, I've been gaming pretty heavily. I got a lot of games for my birthday and Christmas, so I'm slowly slogging through my backlog so that I can get to the new material. I've been reading Scott Sampson's excellent Dinosaur Odyssey and doing an awesome feathered dinosaur puzzle. I got Gamera the Brave for Christmas, and Scott, we've gotta watch it together, buddy. You and Raven should come over sometime. We'll make food and watch daikaiju.