Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

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

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

Searching for the truth, or… something

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When my dogs are doing nothing cute or productive, nothing newsworthy is happening in my hometown(s), and my muse is AWOL, I can always turn to my search terms stats to see what questions I should have answered here!

Rally sign holders: I think I did actually answer this question for at least some of my searchers! Rally obedience signs: the illustrated version! is my most popular post to date. I guess I should try giving actual information with helpful pictures a little more often, huh? The irony is that not only am I not a dog training expert, I’m just barely getting started in rally obedience. Hey, but I have great practice signs!

I know my answer is disappointing to those who need indoor sign holders. I am currently trying to find the best price on small cones (think soccer or rugby cones) which can work well indoors, and you will need cones anyway to set up your spirals and serpentines.

And if you were looking for rally signs as in protest signs… sorry!

vps vs laptop: I didn’t really understand this one, unless VPS stands for something other than virtual private server. You wouldn’t generally compare a virtual private server and a personal laptop computer, so I’m still mystified. Sorry, guess I couldn’t answer the question after all. But I will take the opportunity to plug my most excellent VPS provider WiredTree, and state my preference for Apple and Sony laptops, and that still keeps me on topic, sort of.

Why do so many restaurants serve tilapia: Beats the heck out of me. I won’t eat it, and I explained why a while back. But even the word “tilapia” makes me laugh, so that’s a benefit for me.

(NaBloPoMo | June ’09: 23 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 150 of 274)

I wonder why I kept this

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After a good deal of encouragement from Dan (and I know I am totally at fault for the long delay), our oldest desktop computer is finally on the way to silicon heaven (or more likely, silicon hell). A not-so-new (see above, long delay) Dell Dimension took its place. Since it is old enough to still be running Windows XP, it had no issues or problems for me to deal with, except for hauling a boat-anchor CRT monitor from one side of the room to the other. Oh, and removing the free included and so totally not worth it WordPerfect office suite and replacing it with the far from free and also so totally not worth it, but at least more compatible with the rest of our computers, Microsoft Office suite.

I went to find Office in the box o’ software, manuals and other stuff. This is what I found instead (Office did turn up later at a completely inappropriate location):

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That would be the freshman “pig book” with a good number of the Class of 1980 of Northwestern University. We all received this sometime during the summer before our freshman year.

We were obviously not concerned with identity theft or personal privacy, with full addresses published. We are obviously also from a time when dinosaurs still walked the earth, because you will notice that no email addresses are included in the listings. The Internet is something that wouldn’t happen until way too late to help me graduate. And I didn’t, but hey, I made something of my life anyway. But don’t be like me, finish college, okay?

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I don’t know how my former classmates would feel about being in my blog so they are blurred out. Forgive me for my own modern-day paranoia, but my parents still live at that blurred-out address. I still like writing (see, look I’m doing it now) and music. The meeting people part, not so much, but there are notable exceptions.

This is one of the few times when I am actually glad for my stupid hair. It was (and still is) too heavy to hold a Farrah flip, and didn’t take a perm well either. My reward for having stupid hair is not having photos of myself with blatantly ’70s hair, which is a good thing indeed. I wish you all could see the whole book with all the fine examples of male and female ’70s hair!

Actually, I have been pretty skilled at entirely avoiding photos of myself, so the only semi-recent photo I could find for comparison is still a few years old:

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Have I changed much?

If anyone reading this happens to be a more recent Northwestern alum: Do they still do the pig book? Do they still call it the pig book? And most important of all, are Medill students still called Medilldoes?

And on a totally unrelated note: wow, I am the suckiest typographer ever. It took me this long to notice that all of the footers saying (Month) ’09 have the wrong single quote in front of 09. By the time you see this, I might have corrected them all. Or not.

(NaBloPoMo | June ’09: 22 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 149 of 274)

Motorcycle musings

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Although I haven’t ridden any motorcycle except as a passenger in a long while, I’ve owned at least one for the last thirty years. I’ve kept my “M”-for-motorcycle (duh) license current, although all that means here (and probably most states) is answering a few more multiple-choice questions on the written test when that comes around every few years. I’m thinking that it might be time to get one of my current bikes out of mothballs.

It would probably be this one:
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The photo is pretty old. I’m somewhere in Nebraska, about 16-17 years ago, and was lucky not to fall asleep while riding because was that ever a boring stretch of road. My husband took it with a cheap point-n-shoot 35mm camera while riding alongside me. Since that photo was taken, the bike (1989 Harley-Davidson Sportster 883 Hugger) got a different seat, a larger windshield, and really cool big-bike looking floorboards.
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I really enjoyed riding, but things have changed out there since I last rode on a regular basis, and changed a huge amount since I learned to ride way back when I was twenty-something, immortal in my own mind, and too stupid to realize that maybe learning to ride a motorcycle on the side streets around the City of Chicago was not the best setup for a safe and happy experience. It was actually very happy. I am positive it was not safe in any way.

Distracted drivers scare the hell out of me. I know that horrible incidents like the nail polish killer are probably not as common as I fear. But jagoffs like that are still out there, and the roads are way more crowded than they were even a few years ago. And there are so many more distractions to keep drivers from paying attention to what should be their real task at hand: getting down the road and not hurting themselves or anyone or anything else.

There were not all that many women who rode their own motorcycles when I first learned to ride, but I was light years away from being a trendsetter. Other women did that years before and in much better style than I ever would have. Plus, I didn’t want to be a trendsetter anyway. I didn’t learn to ride because it empowered me or made me feel free, and certainly not because a Harley is like a giant vibrator. Yes, women have actually written statements similar to the previous words, for publication no less, and I’m sorry, it just grossed me out. If you wrote that, please do not sit on my bike ever, thank you very much.

I just thought that riding a motorcycle looked like fun. Also, when I was 22, I had enough money to pay cash for a decent small motorcycle, but would have had to get a loan for a decent car. That’s it. No big statement, no grrrl power crap. I just thought it would be a fun way to get around that would not saddle me with loan payments.

I’m actually amazed how, and how much, motorcycles are marketed to women these days. I guess that’s okay. Some of the changes are really great, if you are talking about how it is easier to get good quality riding gear in small sizes, or accessories that can safely lower a bike, or make the clutch pull lighter. Some are just stupid, like just making things pink. Pink should probably be a color choice (for someone else, not me), but it should not be my only choice for something being marketed to women.

Since I don’t have a sidecar, and don’t really feel comfortable about adding one to a bike as small as a Sportster (yeah, I know they make them, go back to the part where I don’t personally feel comfortable about it), it would cut into time for the dogs. That’s the only downside I see so far. We’ll revisit this whole motorcycle question. On a day like today, so nice and sunny, seems like the answer is obvious!

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 20 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 116 of 274)

Where did Friday go?

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I’m not quite sure where Friday went, but somehow I find myself here with only a few minutes left before midnight. One wouldn’t think that getting the minivan set up to dog transporter mode from people transporter mode, and putting a bunch of digital photo printouts into extremely cheap frames would eat up the whole evening!

The canine temperament test starts at 7:30 a.m., which means I will have to be on the road no later than 6:30 a.m. So this will be really short. I’ll be back tomorrow after the test to tell you all about it!

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 8 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 104 of 274)

Random follow-ups (16 of 30/82 of 274)

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Tonight I’m not up to leading, so I’m just going to follow up on a few things I’ve posted about this month.

  • The Honolulu Heart Program at Kuakini Medical Center, which is home to the longevity study that my dad is part of, has received additional funding. My mom tells me that she and my dad both went in last week for follow-up interviews. Out of the more than 5,800 middle-aged men who started in the study in 1965, about 800 are still alive today. The youngest is 89 and the oldest is 106. No word yet as to whether my dad has that longevity gene, or whether I inherited it from him.
  • Tripawds, the wonderful support site for canine cancer patients and accident victims who have or need amputations, is one-third of the way to their server upgrade fundraising goal!
  • Is it just me who is irritated by the media sources who are reporting that First Dog Bo Obama is on his fourth home? They count the breeder as #1, first owner as #2, trainer as #3, and White House as #4. Sorry. WRONG. You don’t count the breeder, and you don’t count trainers or handlers as homes either. Bo is on his SECOND home.
  • I was very happy to get the news that K9 University has started drop-in Obedience/Rally Obedience classes on Wednesday evenings. That should help greatly with our quest to get Freya’s Rally Obedience titles.