Token

About six and half years ago, I wrote a blog post about a family dog dying. I got more time with Token than I ever did with Scout, which probably means that I'll miss him even more. I'd been spending time with my family, so I put this one off for a couple of days. But it's time. I wish I had something more pleasant to write about. Well, here we are.

In 2008, my brother Josh got a puppy. He named his new puppy "Token" after the character on South Park, although it became apparent that he didn't actually have a good grasp on what the word "token" meant, nor why the South Park character was given that name. Also, he didn't know how to spell it, so the first name tag that the dog had read "Tokin." If I'm making Josh sound like a dumbass here, I'm maybe a tiny bit sorry for that, but he kind of was. He's doing better now, though.

Token was Josh's dog, but was more reliably looked after by our mother, who referred to him as her "grandpuppy." She spent a lot of time with him. Her dog, Asiak, was still young and healthy enough at the time to be a playmate to the tiny puppy. My mom would also take Token with her on car rides. When I was working on finishing my A.S. degree at Green River and was going to have my mom pick me up from campus to take me to my first day at my new job at the Covington library, my mom was late showing up and I was freaking out. She pulled up to the curb with Token in the passenger seat of her car, explaining that she'd had to make a detour home because she couldn't bear the thought of leaving the puppy at home with no companionship. I was livid, but then it turned out that some minor incident at the library had management so distracted they didn't even notice that I was late, and shrugged it off when I brought it up myself and apologized.

Later that year, when Josh brought Token to his girlfriend's house, her cat ambushed Token. Josh punted the cat. I had Token home with me before my shift at work and noticed some residue around his eye. I called Josh and told him that I thought his puppy might have an eye infection. Then I learned about the cat attack. Perhaps because the first veterinarian to inspect the eye mistook the wound for a shallow laceration and prescribed medicine that was insufficient for a deep puncture wound, or perhaps because the puncture was just too severe anyway, the eye grew worse and had to be removed. In the same visit when Token was neutered, his left eye was removed. It was at this point that Token became the Dreaded Cyclops Puppy.

Token was naturally skittish and afraid of strangers. We'd take him on walks and people would see this terrified pit bull missing an eye, so they sometimes asked if he'd been rescued from a dog-fighting operation or something. Nope. He was just a spoiled dog that lost an eye when he was a baby and also might have been slightly schizophrenic or something. Seriously, sometimes he'd bark at nothing observable.

Whenever Josh wasn't home and didn't have Token with him, Token would snuggle with me and sleep on or near my bed. But usually, Token wanted to be wherever Josh was. So I'd try to get Scout to snuggle with me instead, but my teddy bear was extremely fluffy and preferred cooling his body on the coldest floor tiles that he could find. I forget when, but Josh's path in life took him across the country. He moved to Florida and then moved to New Jersey to be with Alex (they're married now and still live over there). He did not take his dog with him, so I became Token's full-time snuggle-buddy until my mom moved out of the house and took the dogs with her. We were reunited when I moved over to Rachel's house, and again when my mom moved in to my house and brought the dogs (Token and Chief) with her.

The last time (so far) that Josh visited Washington was in July of 2019, for Rachel's wedding. I took Josh to my place so that he could visit Token for a bit. About a month later, Matt moved in with me, so Token didn't have Josh, but my mom, my youngest brother, and I were all living with him. In September of 2020, Matt and my mom got a house together and moved out. They took Chief, but left Token with me. We remained snuggle-buddies and went on walks together around Les Gove Park.

Token was born on February 29th, 2008. So he was about to turn 13. I knew that age would catch up to him at some point, but I hoped that I could give him a good life in the meantime. And it seemed to be going really well. A week ago, I took him to visit my mom and we walked with Chief around part of Pipe Lake. Token seemed perfectly healthy at that time. He'd devoured Chief's food, so my mom convinced me to get a bag of that same food at the store where she got Chief's food. On Monday, he ate a bunch more of that food, but seemed agitated in the evening and I was worried that he was sick. After we went to bed, it was clear that something was wrong. He kept crying and wanting to go outside. I let him out three or four times and eventually he climbed into the recliner in my living room and fell asleep. Later that morning, I texted my mom. She came and picked Token up, then scheduled him for a vet appointment the next day. She speculated that maybe he was allergic to the new food. Token had his appointment on Wednesday, and we got the bad news on Thursday: cancer in his prostate and lymph nodes.

I'll miss him. Or rather, I'm missing him. Partway through typing this, I absentmindedly turned and looked at my bed to check on the dog. I've been randomly finding myself thinking to check if he has enough water in his dish or if he needs to go out. This sucks.

Crap from Facebook: February 18th, 2021

 

This was posted with the notion that the comment in black text on a white background is silly and unscientific, while the comment in white text on a black background is a rebuttal. However, both comments are a bit weird and lacking in nuance. In case I lose the image, here's what was said...

First person: "It's a bit cold outside this morning in middle America... Aren't you glad you aren't heating your home with a solar panel like nitwit Socialist @AOC is demanding?"
Second person: "Do Solar Panels work in the cold? YES! Solar Panels work by absorbing LIGHT from the sun, not heat. In fact, the chemical reactions that occur w/i the solar panels are more efficient at cooler temperatures. Also, white snow can act like a mirror to reflect MORE light onto them"
My friend: "The war on science"

So, the first comment seems to conflate rooftop solar with ground-based solar facilities. Most people don't have rooftop arrays on their houses, and people who heat their homes with electricity can get that electricity from anywhere on the grid. Also, AOC is a U.S. representative from New York's 14th district. She's not in "middle America" and attempting to mobilize "middle America" against a representative from another part of the country is just bullshit political drama, and has no bearing on the facts here.

The second comment does get one thing right. It is true that solar panels are more efficient at cooler temperatures. Solar panels work using the optical bandgap of semiconducting materials to excite electrons in their photovoltaic cells. For every material, the bandgap has a temperature coefficient. Material gets hotter, fewer electrons can cross the bandgap. Material gets colder, more electrons can cross the bandgap. So far, so good. But the materials selected for making PV cells in commercial solar arrays are selected, in part, because they're less sensitive to this effect.

We could make solar panels that would only worked in super-cold temperatures, but they wouldn't do us much good. Also, solar arrays use passive systems (and sometimes active systems) to keep panels cool. In some cases, those technologies falter in major heat waves, but ordinarily, they get the job done. I can assure you that if you're standing outside in the desert sun next to a working solar array, the insides of the panels are nowhere near as hot as the air around you. That's kind of the point.

Remember: solar panels need light. In severe winter weather, there's way less of it. Even a regular cloudy day can ruin the electricity yield of a solar facility. Snowstorms are worse still. Panels can become buried in snow or accumulate a layer of ice, either of which render them useless. Blizzards can also permanently damage these facilities, necessitating expensive repairs. When power providers know that a major snowstorm is coming in, they're not counting on solar facilities to keep the grid electrified, and for good reasons. It doesn't work that way. We're talking about some extreme cold here. -16 °F? That's -26 °C! If it's that cold, we can be sure that not a lot of sunlight is reaching the surface. I don't know if our second person in this exchange understands or remembers this fact, but light the light reaching the surface that causes solar panels to function is the very same light that causes the surface to warm up. Ergo, there ain't as much of it as normal. Ipso facto, solar panels are fucked in this situation. Q.E.D.

As for snow acting like a mirror and reflecting light onto solar panels, there are two major problems with that idea. Firstly, commerical solar panels are purpose-built to capture direct sunlight. They can absorb reflected light too, but there's a drop in efficiency there. Secondly, and more obviously, solar panels are at their most efficient when they're pointed at the sun. If they're tracking the sun properly (not a guarantee in winter storm conditions, by the way), then they're not going to be oriented to capture much reflected light.

It seems that almost everyone who saw this exchange interpreted the second comment as a strong takedown of the first one. In reality, both are pretty bad.