Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

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

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

The World’s Largest Carousel

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“You’re heading for I-90,” said Wednesday. “Follow the signs west for Madison.”*

That’s a route I’ve driven many, many times. And there are quite a few other familiar places in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, one of my favorite books. What’s not to like about a story that takes you all around the vast Midwestern wasteland, to places where the old gods have been living for all these years, and to an inevitable clash between the old and the new?

I’ve mentioned before that I am nobody’s fangirl, and that I really don’t have much emotional investment in anything that I’m not personally involved with. I don’t rabidly adore any sports team or celebrities. My only slight departure from this was going to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show fifty-plus times (heh, you didn’t know that about me, did you), but that was more about hanging out with my psycho emotionally-invested friends than being truly involved myself. I helped a couple of people sew some pretty authentic-looking costumes (you didn’t know I could sew, and actually very well, either, did you) and that was really my biggest fun. Oh, and time warping, but only people with no soul would think that time warping is not fun.

But back to American Gods and the fact that there is going to be an American Gods weekend. On Halloween weekend. OMG! At The House on the Rock. OMG!!

Like many who have lived in this sector of the vast Midwestern wasteland for any length of time, I’ve visited the House on the Rock. It was sort of unintentional as the destination on that trip was supposed to be Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin. I did end up at the intended destination, but was definitely glad to have taken the detour to see the strangeness and the wonder of the House on the Rock.

Wasn’t it worth it, worth anything, to say that you had ridden on the World’s Largest Carousel?*

The World’s Largest Carousel is one of the attractions at the House on the Rock, and plays an important role in American Gods. Normally, no one is allowed to ride the carousel, but reportedly a few lucky attendees of the American Gods weekend will be able to do just that.

Like I said, I am nobody’s fangirl. But if I could ride the World’s Largest Carousel, that might even change.

*from American Gods © 2001 by Neil Gaiman

(NaBloPoMo | April ’10: 6 of 30)

More randomness

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I’m having a little trouble focusing on dog training topics tonight, so I’ll need another day of semi-randomness, I think.

Even after a few warm spring days, I’m always hesitant to store away winter clothing until April is completely over. Tonight, though, it was rain, and large quantities of it, that put outdoor activities to an abrupt end.

We don’t leave the grill out year-round, so the first grilled food of the year is always a bit of a special treat, even if it’s something pretty basic like tonight’s bratwurst. As an aside, I really love our current grill, a Weber Performer. It is a charcoal grill with a propane starter, and I like it much better than either a gas grill or a regular charcoal grill.

Anyway, timing was almost perfect. The food was ready but the wind was starting to come up, so we went inside to eat. Just a little bit later, lightning was seen and thunder was heard and massive amounts of rain came pouring down, along with some hail for a short time. I say almost perfect, since the grill didn’t get put away before the rain hit.

The dogs went out for a quick potty trip during a break in the rain, and when I see their ears flapping in the wind, my mind always flashes for a moment to the Rottweiler who took a tornado ride a couple of summers ago. It didn’t get quite that bad tonight.

Still, the predicted weather means I’ll have to get creative with indoor training. This is supposed to be a serious training month for Freya. She seems to be laughing at me as I type that, though, so she might have other plans.

(NaBloPoMo | April ’10: 5 of 30)

At random

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  • We had Easter dinner with Dan’s sister Linda and her husband Casey, our nephew Travis, and 2,983,958 Border Collies and two Pit Bulls. Okay, there were only four Border Collies, but they keep moving so it’s hard to count them.
  • I didn’t think there was any possible way that it could take longer to drive from Rockford to Norwood Park than from Madison, WI to Norwood Park, but tonight it did.
  • Apparently I never set up this iBook to print to our current HP PhotoSmart printer. It was easy enough but it took quite a while to install all those files, a sure sign of bloated printer driver.
  • I tried to tell Freya and Axe that they chased away the Easter Bunny, but they apparently knew that the bunnies they chased out of the yard were just regular rabbits. They were not carrying baskets, so it was obvious!

(NaBloPoMo | April ’10: 4 of 30)

Un-doggy Saturday

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Saturday is usually all about Freya, with either a class or a competition to attend. Today, I considered taking her to a fun match or a rally obedience drop-in class, both held at locations we will be trialing at in May. But today was my best chance to catch up on a number of different non-doggy errands that have been put off for too long.

I closed the last of my accounts at a bank I have been with since my first job downtown. I’m not a very sentimental person in general, and I’m thinking it would be really hard for even a gushy emotional type to be sentimental about a bank these days. I’m mostly just angry and annoyed that changes they’ve made over the years, particularly in the last two years, have finally gotten to the point where I felt forced to seek a bank that is more friendly to the very small investor.

I dropped off my pretty red VAIO laptop at the Sony Style store for a warranty fan replacement. It will take about a week from the time the laptop actually gets to the service department on Monday or Tuesday. Since I also have an iBook G4, I don’t have to go laptopless. But computer years are like dog years, so this five-year-old laptop is showing its age. You see where it is a G4 and thus still a PowerPC, so I can’t run the latest and greatest versions of a growing number of applications. It’s old enough that a built-in webcam still wasn’t standard (although the SuperDrive was, thankfully).

I shouldn’t complain, I know. It’s like whining about a rather unexciting meal when there are people starving in other parts of the world or for that matter, in other parts of this city. My most-needed documents are cross-platform and saved to my giant-ass 1.5TB network drive. I have Mac versions of my most-needed applications (some provided by and for work, and others purchased by me… yes, being cross-platform comes at a price). So I’m not exactly suffering.

I know today is iPad release day, and since the Sony Style store is in the same mall as an Apple Store, I suppose I should have gone to check it out. I did walk by, and it was very crowded. Apple fanbois and fangirlz make me want to kill on a good day, and this probably would not have been a good day. So I kept walking.

Really, I just can’t get that excited over the iPad. Yeah, it’s cool, but it just doesn’t seem like something I need. But if a nice new 15″ or 17″ MacBook Pro fell out of the sky to replace my trusty iBook… now that would be exciting!

(NaBloPoMo | April ’10: 3 of 30)

Search terms again!

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Every so often, I like to look at the list of searches that have lured people to this blog. Some of them make sense, and others make no sense at all.

li hing mui margarita: This one surprises me only because most people spell it correctly. Or maybe that shouldn’t surprise me, because you probably wouldn’t search for it unless you’d had one and knew how tasty they are. I had one search that included “Chicago” in the string. I know I posted that I hadn’t found one here in Chicago yet, but you know something… that reminds me that I’ve been meaning to check one place that should have it… Roy’s Restaurant. And… it is in fact listed on the Chicago menu! I’ll have to call to confirm, and if available, this might require a downtown trip, as much as I usually tend to avoid the downtown area aside from work.

why does my rottweiler sit crooked: If I knew the answer to that one, we would not lose points in competition for crooked sits, now, would we?

rottweiler fonts: My professional background includes a lot of years as a typographer, but this still made no sense to me. I asked Freya and Axe what “their” fonts are, and they just looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. Their kennel and advertising fonts are the Fontdinerdotcom family from Font Diner and the Futura family designed by Paul Renner (we use the Adobe Type 1 version). Oh! The original inquiry does make sense once you see this: If Fonts Were Dogs. No Rottweiler, though!

(NaBloPoMo | April ’10: 2 of 30)