Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

Archives for November 2009

Am I (or my blog) invisible?

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NaBloPoMo’s blogrolls are listed by category as of this month. This is a new development, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing. While there is a set initial list of categories, participants can suggest categories to be added in future months. So I was not too put off to see that neither of the primary categories into which Rottweilers Ate My Laptop would naturally fall (Pets/Animals and Technology, in case it is not obvious as I think it is) was included in the initial batch.

However.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve considered signing up for a few other blog network social whatever things. None, count ’em, not one of the ones I happened upon have included a Pets/Animals or Technology category. All right, it wasn’t a huge number, but four out of four still seems a little odd to me.

So. Am I invisible? Is my blog invisible? Or was I just unlucky enough to stumble on some sites that really don’t want my kind in their network? “Get away, you horrible IT person who also participates in dog sports! We don’t want your kind around here! We only want mommybloggers and crafters and celebrities and stuff!”

More than 50% of the blogs in my feedreader are animal-related or technology-related, so I’m more surprised than anything. Even if my blog is invisible, which it very well could be, several of the blogs I read in those categories are widely read, known to the general public, and definitely non-invisible.

Oh, I did sign up for NaBloPoMo (repeating the obvious, sorry), but not for any of the others just in case they really didn’t want my kind.

(NaBloPoMo | November ’09: 6 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 251 of 274)

Urban wildlife

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We’re on the lookout for urban wildlife once again!

squirrelnest_0196

This rather messy and chaotic creation is the nest of a squirrel. The window is that of a seldom-used office on the fourth floor of a six-story office building in the River North neighborhood of Chicago. The photo is taken from our office, across a little courtyard that’s not really a courtyard.

I saw the squirrel go into his? her? all right, its! nest late on Monday afternoon. Since then, we’ve seen it out and about in the courtyard area and on the second floor deck every day, but we’ve not yet seen it entering or emerging from its nest.

We set up a video camera but haven’t caught it yet. Still trying, though, so maybe tomorrow.

(NaBloPoMo | November ’09: 5 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 250 of 274)

Eleven days till our rally trial

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Wednesday night would usually be our night for rally obedience, but this week our class was moved to Thursday night instead. With just eleven days to go before the trial, I know I shouldn’t try any drastic changes. So I am just trying to work on the areas that could lose us the most points.

First and foremost, of course, is leash handling and the all-important loose leash. This is a very weak area of mine and I am really trying to work on my tendency to automatically choke up on the leash when I feel I’m losing Freya’s attention, rather than getting her attention back with her name, a command or a hand signal. I have done things like throwing the leash over the my shoulder, or working off-leash or with a short tab. The problem is definitely me fiddling around with the leash.

I’ve ordered a 4-foot leash so I won’t be unconsciously folding and refolding excess leash. Yes, I do already have one. No one can go through several dogs and obedience classes without having at least one; in my case it’s actually a 42″ leash. But Axel took it with him on the road. That’s a story for another day, but he always takes at least one piece of equipment with him on road trips that wasn’t really supposed to accompany him. I know that getting a new leash this late in the game might not be the hot setup, so I’m also going to try the trick of tying a knot in my 6-foot leash to mark the point below which I should not grab in order to keep enough slack in the leash.

We’re still having some trouble with finishes. I did not do a very good job of impressing the different commands and signals for left finishes versus right finishes in Freya’s mind. Since she learned the right finish first, and we did not add the left finish until much later (rally obedience is the only sport in which you have to use both left and right finishes), sometimes she’ll do the right finish even if I ask for a left finish.

If you remember our first trial in July, you’ll remember that the left finish was a source of concern for me back then, and with much better reason. Things are better now, but still not reliable enough to inspire true confidence.

We did a little work on attention and left finishes tonight. Freya still seems a bit depressed with Axel gone, so I tried to keep it very short and very cheerful. We’ll do some video at class tomorrow night and see what’s working and what isn’t.

(NaBloPoMo | November ’09: 4 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 249 of 274)

Belated Saturday Freya

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Were you looking for Saturday Freya? No? I knew that title just wasn’t catchy enough to stick!

Saturday’s class was pretty uneventful. Freya works a lot better in her Saturday class than her weeknight class. I’m sure it has a lot to do with the fact that she gets to play for a while at home before we head out to class. For an early weeknight class, I’m running her out the door within 20 minutes after getting home and neither of us has time to relax.

We’ll have to work through it, though. For the upcoming trial, the Sunday 9:00 am start time and a very short drive to the trial location means we should have ample time for proper warm-up (including mental warmup, especially for me). For our weeknight class this week, I’ll have to hope for a slow day so I can try leaving work a little bit earlier and get in an actual warmup before leaving.

(NaBloPoMo | November ’09: 3 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 248 of 274)

So many online places… so little time

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A couple of days ago, I noticed a Photobucket placeholder image that was a little different than the one we’ve all seen that appears whenever an item stored on Photobucket has been moved or deleted. This one said “Account inactive” in red text, followed by “[username]’s account has been inactive for 90 days.” It has been close to 90 days since I logged in to my own Photobucket account, so I went to check in on my own files.

I found this in the Photobucket FAQ:

Why were my linked images deactivated?

If you do not log into your Free account within a 90-day period (three months), Photobucket deactivates your linked images on other websites. These linked images will be reactivated when you log into your account.

Important! If you do not log into your account within a 365-day period, your account will also be deactivated. If you go Pro, your account and linked images to third-party websites will remain active for the duration of your Pro subscription.

Ooookay. Good to know. I don’t know whether email notifications of the policy change were sent out or not, just that I do not remember getting one. I’m not upset, because everything I have on Photobucket (or Flickr, or YouTube, or Facebook, or… anywhere) also lives on a CD, DVD, thumb drive, the giant-ass external hard drive, and/or the internal hard drive of one or more computers. Hey, I didn’t say I was super organized about my data. But I do back it up somewhere, even if I’m not always 100% sure where. It just makes me wonder how often I should check in on my semi-dormant online places, or whether I should dump some of them completely.

Speaking of dumping online places, back in September, I completely left the VZones virtual worlds where I had been a member for over five years. I spent a fairly large amount of time there when I was a member (in fact, I originally joined to have something fairly time-consuming to occupy idle moments on days when my husband was at the firehouse), but strangely enough, I don’t find myself missing them at all.

I’m not sure whether it’s even worth caring about, because you can delete almost all of your personal information before quitting, but there are sure a lot of places, mostly forums, that do not physically delete your account when you quit. I am guessing they have to keep the member count artificially inflated to keep the advertisers happy. There are no technical reasons to prevent you from deleting an account from the database that I know of. So yeah, your accounts won’t be consecutively numbered any longer, but that doesn’t — or shouldn’t — actively screw up anything.

Just going through my bookmarks, I can see a bunch of places that I don’t visit much any more. I’ll really have to decide whether they should be dumped permanently.

(NaBloPoMo | November ’09: 2 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 247 of 274)