Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

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

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

CS5: mixed feelings

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I never did get around to writing about Adobe Photoshop’s 20th anniversary back in February. We, as in my company, were not on board from the very start. But the first version we used was 2.0, and we have been using it continuously ever since. Along the way, it evolved from an infrequently used semi-novelty to a critical piece of software that is absolutely essential to the continued existence, let alone the success, of our business. It’s also been an increasingly essential part of my personal computer toolbox (and by that, I mean a legally obtained, paid-in-full personal copy) for about five years now. My particular prepress production area of expertise is typography and page layout, so my Photoshop skills are clumsy at best, but I still love me some Photoshop even for the very basic work I do with it.

Even as a longtime mostly happy user of Adobe products, I still have mixed feelings about the upcoming release of a new version, CS5. This version will no longer work on PowerPC (non-Intel) Macs. Since our small shop still uses quite a few final generation PowerPCs, the upgrade will have a significant financial impact upon us. In this still-shaky economic climate, I am not looking forward to that part at all. Our upgrade timing will be closely tied to that of our clients. Some are small design shops whose financial concerns will be similar to ours. Others are corporations: now that could go either way. Some will not want to do an upgrade over hundreds of machines, and others will have a budget to burn. Guess what I’m hoping for, at least to buy us some time.

I do have to say, though… my feelings for this one new Photoshop feature are not mixed at all. Even though I upgraded from CS2 to CS4 only a year ago, and spent more money than I cared to at the time to do so, I’d consider upgrading to CS5 for content-aware fill alone:

That just blew me away.

(NaBloPoMo | March ’10: 25 of 31)

Review: Pet Botanics Healthy Omega Treats

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Although I mainly use “people food” for dog training treats, I am always on the lookout for high-quality and healthy commercial treat options as well. So I was delighted to have the opportunity to test and review Pet Botanics Healthy Omega Treats, thanks to manufacturer Cardinal Laboratories.

Rottweilers are generally chow hounds that will eat anything, so you may be wondering why treat selection is even a question in our household. We do have a few special issues here. Freya has a very mild case of IBS. She does not require a prescription diet and suffers only a few flare-ups each year, but we still have to be selective about what she consumes. Natural foods and treats with a limited number of ingredients are usually the most successful. Also, Freya gains weight a little too easily, but Axel has to be watched pretty closely to make sure he doesn’t run too much weight off. So calorie count of food and treats can be important.

With a short list of eight ingredients (NO grains are included, a good thing), and the low calorie, low fat designation (9 calories), Healthy Omega Treats looked to be a good fit to our needs. Main ingredient is meat (our sample was Duck, and the other available flavors are Chicken, Salmon, and Tuna), followed by sweet potato and cod. “Omega” refers to the Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids, which are beneficial to dogs’ skin and coats.

Assistant reviewer Oliver Kittyweiler helps display the unique layered look of these bite-sized treats.

As for taste, reviewers Freya and Axel both gave these treats a big “paws up.” These are definitely a high-value treat to them. The high value, small size, and low calorie count make them almost ideal as rewards during training. I say “almost” because my personal preference is for an even smaller and softer treat during training. It was easy enough to break these in half for our training sessions, though.

Freya was able to fully enjoy the Healthy Omega Treats with no bad effects despite her mild IBS, so we can now add this to our list of Freya-friendly treats.

We’ll definitely be checking our local retailers for these treats and are looking forward to trying the fish flavors in particular. They are also available for online purchase:
Crazy Pet Shop
Amazon.com

Cardinal Laboratories provided a free 6-oz. package of Pet Botanics Healthy Omega Treats, Duck flavor, for us to sample. I thank them for the opportunity to test and review this product.

(NaBloPoMo | March ’10: 24 of 31)

I don’t think I actually broke it

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But no one was seeing what I’d written over the last few days either. I don’t know why all my posts were still set in Draft mode, but you should be able to see them now.

Sorry if you are getting this via a feedreader or e-mail! I didn’t mean to drown out anyone else’s words at all!

(NaBloPoMo | March ’10: 23 of 31)

One, yes, ONE championship point!

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This was not one of the more successful rally obedience trial weekends for Freya and me. But even though it was disastrous in many ways, we did not completely fail. While we did NQ twice, we also Q’d twice albeit with some very lackluster scores, and earned two legs toward the ten we need for the APDT Level 1 RL1X title.

Oh, and ONE point toward the ARCH Rally Champion title. I will absolutely have to remember to get a screenshot including our ONE lonely point once the scores are posted online for this trial.

Most of what went wrong for us can be attributed to training issues, and if you recall, being overscheduled and thus underprepared. I have only myself to blame for not making some time to practice on what was a totally new thing for us, artificial soccer turf, something that was a much bigger problem for us than I had expected. I also know I don’t put as much time into training for heavy distractions as I should, and that is on the priority to-do list as well.

However, I do think that the heavy distractions we faced at this trial were out of the ordinary: ongoing light construction and setup, erecting a swimming pool, and agility lessons and practice going on in the same room with only a tall mesh fence separating it from the rally trial. Kudos to those of you who successfully train your dogs to work through stuff like this. Although it is obviously what we should work toward, it is a little beyond what Freya and I can handle consistently at this point.

As a small business owner myself, I can understand why the facility owner may not have wanted to cancel scheduled classes, especially in the current economic climate. As a competitor, I wish I had a more accurate picture beforehand of what the trial site would be like. Again, I am not saying that I should not have trained harder. What I am saying is that in general, I would like to have enough information to make a good decision about whether a particular trial venue is right for us.

Winter is just ending in northern Illinois, so I would choose to avoid outdoor trials until we have some opportunity to train on grass again. I can choose obedience- and rally-only trials, rather than trials held in conjunction with large all-breed shows. I can choose venues that run a single ring rather than several rings concurrently. And at this point in our training, I would have chosen to skip a trial held with agility lessons, or an agility trial, going on in the same building… that is, had I known about it.

That’s enough whine to go with our string cheese (best training treat ever, loved by dogs and people alike). On to the next trial weekend, which will be our last for about a month. We’ll take a break, and now that we’ve identified some more definite issues, we can get back to training.

(NaBloPoMo | March ’10: 21 of 31)