Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

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

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

Saturday Pet Blogger Blog Hop, Week 2

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The weekend is here, and so is another edition of the Saturday Pet Blogger Blog Hop, co-hosted by Life With Dogs, Two Little Cavaliers, and Nip and Bones.

Today, please say hello to the other resident Rottweiler, Axe.

Axe is 3½ years old. He can actually catch the frisbee as well as chase it, and since he was raised by a cat, he sometimes tries (and occasionally even succeeds in) catching it between his front paws. He earned his AKC championship and Rally Novice title in January. His most important job, however, is just being our dog.

Saturday Pet Blogger Blog Hop

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No, it’s not Saturday. In fact, it’s Monday. Sorry about that! I’m just behind the curve as usual, and I was happy to see that the inaugural edition of the Saturday Pet Blogger Blog Hop is remaining open for a few days for us stragglers to join in!

Life With Dogs, Two Little Cavaliers, and Nip and Bones just started hosting this new Blog Hop on Saturday.

I’m looking forward to “meeting” more pet bloggers and pet blogs! This is not a 100% purely pet blog, but I hope that most of you enjoy visiting here anyway! You can use our “Topics” dropdown in the right sidebar to go straight to our pet-related posts under “Rottweilers” and “Non-Rottweiler Pets and Animals.”

Today, let me introduce you to one of the resident Rottweilers, Freya.

She is 6½ years old and came to us as a 7-week-old puppy. She was a gift from her breeders, sent to help us heal the broken hearts left by the unexpected passing of our first Rottweiler, Heidi, on Christmas Eve 2003. As you can see from our header, Freya has been honing her computer skills since the age of 9 weeks. Lately, she has been more involved in Rally Obedience competition than blogging (EDIT FROM FREYA: If I had my way, I’d be blogging and not following Mom around some stupid obstacle course!), but perhaps she’ll choose to be involved in some of the Saturday postings from here on out!

Search terms!

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I’m running out of time and energy, so let’s look in the site stats and see what search terms have brought visitors here lately:

disguise macbook as pc: Okay. Now why on earth would you want to do this? One of the most appealing aspects of most Apple products is their stylish appearance, and to disguise a MacBook just seems wrong. I say this as someone who uses both PCs and Macs, and definitely not not not as a fangrrrl.

white sox dog day 2010: Thursday, June 3, against the Texas Rangers. I wouldn’t be surprised if tickets in the “Dog Zone” are already sold out. I thought that Dog Days was usually held earlier in the season to avoid the heat, but I could be wrong. I’m not a baseball fan so I haven’t paid that much attention.

ipad rottweiler: I think this might have been Freya. It’s not enough that she hijacks my laptop whenever she can (see header graphic). No, Freya, you are not getting your own iPad. Well. Maybe, when you earn your UKC rally championship. Then you can have one. Deal?

i think my dog ate a press on nail: I’m not even sure what to say to this one, except that I hope everything came out all right. Ouch.

(NaBloPoMo | April ’10: 29 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?
[Read more…]

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)