Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

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

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

Bad start to someone’s day

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My own day was fine, thanks for asking. It didn’t start out too well for a few other people, though. The corner just east of my house has more than its share of accidents. I’m really not sure why as it doesn’t seem to have any special obstructions or blind spots. You’d think that when the traffic light went in two blocks west that things would have improved, but there have been more accidents since then, or at least it seems that way.

This one resulted in injury to one of the drivers (the one that appeared to be at fault), one car up on a neighbor’s lawn (unfortunately not one of the jagoff neighbors that would deserve tire tracks on their lawn), and a number of gangbanger-looking family members of the involved drivers milling about the block. Police, fire, EMS, and tow truck all arrived quickly and this was a pretty typical accident for our corner.

The day got less exciting from there, and that was just fine with me.

(NaBloPoMo | April ’10: 16 of 30)

What’s my (network) name

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I haven’t looked at the list of wireless network SSIDs in my neighborhood in a while, since my laptops are set up to automatically connect to either my home or work network, whichever one is available. Since I got a new laptop last week, I had another look at the wireless network names in the area while setting up.

At the risk of revealing lameness, our home network name uses the kennel name we use for our Rottweilers. Obviously, our network is properly secured, and I don’t really care if people guess whose network it is. And even if it weren’t secured, how dumb do you have to be to choose people with Rottweilers to steal from?
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18 years ago today

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So you might think that the big dog-related news for today, April 14, is the one-year anniversary of the arrival of Portuguese Water Dog “Bo” at the White House. Well. That is far from the most significant dog event of the day. There is nothing, not one thing, more important that happened on this day in dogs than the birth of my Jake in 1992.

It’s hard to believe that he was born 18 years ago, and that he has been gone from this world for almost eight. I still think of him often, but there’s a reason for the term “heart dog”—no matter how long they are gone from this earth, they are always, always near in your heart.

I’ve written about him before, and if you haven’t been here before, you can catch up here and there.

One thing about Jake that I miss so much is something that was sort of annoying at the time. If I was reading anything, but especially the newspaper, he would insert himself between me and whatever I was trying to read and gaze up at me with a goofy look of pure adoration in his eyes. I would always tell him that one day I was going to really miss having a dog standing on my feet and knocking over my newspaper, but not right that minute. And oh, God, do I ever miss that dog.

Here he is, adoring me, oblivious to sister Missy relaxing on the lawn. One day in the far-off future, I know I’ll see that adoring gaze once again.

“I will stay in your heart and whenever you speak my name, I will live and live and live.” — Ken Brewer

(NaBloPoMo | April ’10: 14 of 30)

Scary things

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I don’t require my blog readers to register to read or comment, and I removed any visible links for registration or administration at the time I started the blog. So it was definitely a scary thing to receive an email claiming a New User Registration from an email address I did not recognize. I hoped it was just a spammy thing, and not a hacker-y thing. I deleted the new user, changed my administrator password, used phpMyAdmin to make sure there was nothing awry in the database (there wasn’t) and went off in search of more information.

Turns out that I was in very little danger since my WordPress General settings did not set new users to Editor or Administrator. These mystery registrations have been hitting a number of WordPress installations via bots searching for the usual address of the registration page. The WordPress forums address the issue:

Someone registered as a user on my wordpress blog – possible hacker?

If you, too, were visited by this bot:

1. Go to General Settings.
2. Under Membership, uncheck Anyone can register.
3. Under New User Default Role, select Subscriber (Subscribers cannot post to or make edits to your blog).
4. Go to Users and delete the unwanted user.
5. Go to Your Profile and change your password.
6. Go to phpMyAdmin at your host and check the wp-users table to make sure there are no unwanted entries there.

This happened right after returning home from another potentially scary experience. I used to have my hair done at the beauty colleges all the time during high school, college, and right after. I haven’t done that for a very long time, and I’m not even sure why. My worst hair experience was not at the hands of a student, but at a salon with some good recommendations from friends and acquaintances. This was in the early 80s, and I fell victim to an overly curly perm.

I never returned to that particular salon, but I didn’t go back to the beauty college either, until tonight. I went to the beauty college near my house that is affiliated with a salon that I have visited fairly often with good results. I don’t like color surprises, so I usually bring a copy of the formula for my favorite color. I had a bad moment upon learning that even though the salon uses that brand of color, their associated school does not. I almost considered bailing at that point, but the stylist and her instructor showed me how they would get to “my” color and it was pretty convincing, so I stayed.

This story has a happy ending that is not scary at all. The cut is good, the color is great. My stylist was a woman about my age working on a midlife career change. I enjoyed chatting with her. I still have money in my wallet. The total cost was about a third of what I would have paid at the salon. If I’d started doing this sooner, maybe I could have bought the MacBook Pro instead of the cheaper MacBook after all!

(NaBloPoMo | April ’10: 13 of 30)

It’s real, it’s real! Freya’s URO2

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I was so happy to get this in the mail today…

You’ll recall the small panic over Freya’s scores being recorded incorrectly, as well as my happiness at the speed with which Beth at UKC rectified the error.

Even considering my usual obsession with getting the online and physical proof of our accomplishments in hand, this one is a slightly bigger relief to actually have in my hands!

(NaBloPoMo | April ’10: 12 of 30)