Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

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

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

Are you smarter than a two-year-old?

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This article on dog intelligence has been floating around for a couple of days now. According to Freya and Axel, the part where Professor Stanley Coren and team put the Rottweiler in ninth place on their list of the ten most intelligent breeds, has got to be totally wrong, since Rottweilers are obviously the smartest dogs on the planet and maybe in the universe. I happen to agree with them, but we are admittedly somewhat biased.

I’m not exactly shocked at too many of the findings. The fact that most dogs can understand as much language and math as a two-year-old human child is not surprising at all. Ask most dog owners how many nicknames their dogs have and respond to, and how many toys and people the dog can identify by name. Add to that the commands that even barely-trained dogs know, like sit and down, and that’s already a lot of words out of the 165 to 250 words, signs and signals that most dogs are supposedly able to understand.

This amused me, though: “A survey of more than 200 dog obedience judges in the US and Canada has also helped to reveal the most intelligent breeds.” It’s a good thing that an expanded version of the article linked does go on to mention that there is a difference between intelligence and trainability. My dogs are very intelligent, but I can’t say they’ve been particularly easy to train. Not for me, anyway. Maybe I’m the one that is not smarter than a two-year-old!

This statement, though, is something I’ve seen so many times:
“[Dogs] can also deliberately deceive, which is something that young children only start developing later in their life.”

When our first two Rottweilers, Heidi and Oscar, would be given treats at the same time, Oscar would usually finish his first. If it was a large treat, like a rawhide bone or a large biscuit, he’d finish well before Heidi. One day, he was watching Heidi still enjoying her treat. He got up and ran to the back door and barked a couple of times. We, and Heidi, of course assumed that Oscar wanted a potty break, so we all got up and headed to the door. Oscar ran back around to where Heidi had left her treat and grabbed it. And that was all he wanted. He was able to fool Heidi on several other occasions with this trick, but eventually she did catch on.

And this is probably more misdirection than deception, but every one of our dogs, past and present, has used the trick of parading some item back and forth and making it seem super happy fun to try and get a more coveted toy away from one of the others. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Intelligence, instinct, deception, whatever. It’s still fun to watch.

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 11 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 199 of 274)

Now where did I leave my linkage

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I almost never use URL shorteners except on Twitter. I like seeing the domain that a link is originating from, and as long as character count is not an issue as it is for Twitter or SMS, I do not want to click on a shortened URL and take the chance that it is not what it is advertised to be. I really like that TweetDeck gives you the chance to see the long version of the shortened URLs, and that FriendFeed expands the URLs for its feed. Sorry. Just paranoid, I guess.

So the closing of Tr.im won’t affect me much, if at all. Most of the shortened URLs I’ve used on Twitter, regardless of the shortener, are links to time-sensitive news stories and will probably expire within a few months even if I had used the full URL.

This did, however, make me think about linkage in general. It led me to backup my Delicious.com bookmarks, which I have not done in a very long time. I also scheduled some time to check my blogs and journals for dead linkage.

Of course, the big social media news of the day was that of Facebook acquiring FriendFeed. I’m still deciding what I think of that, probably because I don’t use either Facebook or FriendFeed to best advantage.

I am so sick of all the games and apps on Facebook, mostly the fact that game scores and quiz results are considered “news” for the news feed, that Facebook is mostly unusable to me. By the way, if you are a Facebook friend and have actually posted real news or better yet, photos, you might want to go old-school and email me or call me so I know that it’s worth digging through the so-called “news” to find whatever you’ve posted!

I joined FriendFeed a while back, but I haven’t quite figured out how it fits into my what-I-do online. Same with Ping.fm. I don’t currently use the social aspect of Delicious.com at all right now. I use it simply to make my most-used bookmarks available to me at any location. I suppose I should look into the sharing and social aspect as well. I guess I should take some time to update my social media social life in general. Talk about demented and sad, but social, huh?

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 10 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 198 of 274)

MiFi 2200: would be nice, but…

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I was at our local Verizon Wireless store with my husband on Friday. Our intended missions (possible early upgrade for his phone, holster to fit over a Seidio Innocase for me) both failed miserably. But I did get to check out the new-ish BlackBerry Tour (nice enough, but definitely not worth the early upgrade cost for me) and the MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot.

vzwmifi2200

The MiFi 2200 is something I’d like to have just because it is cool. But since Verizon Wireless doesn’t have a true unlimited mobile broadband plan any longer, it’s too pricey. The 5GB mobile broadband plan is about $60 per month, and with a low cap like that, I can’t justify it solely for the cool factor. The discounted cost of the device itself with a two-year contract would be $99, and that part is fine with me.

I’m scrambling to think of a way to cost-justify it, and I just can’t. Even if I were still attending and doing the show secretary thing for sieger shows, most discount hotels have free or inexpensive broadband available so I wouldn’t truly need my own wireless hotspot.

I still want one, though!

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 9 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 197 of 274)

Safe Haven

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I know this isn’t a current events blog, so I promise I’ll get back to the dogs and computers after just one more local news post. I saw this on the news tonight:

Baby Found In Garbage Can On Southwest Side

I am so glad this baby will probably be fine, but there were already some cases earlier this year where abandoned babies were not so lucky. With all 50 states and the District of Columbia now having some form of a Safe Haven Law, which allows for the anonymous safe relinquishment of infants to designated Safe Haven providers, usually including hospitals, fire stations, and police stations, it is hard for me to believe that anyone would choose to leave even an unwanted baby in a garbage can.

We have had a Safe Haven Law in Illinois since 2001 and it was made permanent in 2005. The Save Abandoned Babies Foundation is the local organization that spearheaded the drafting and passage of Illinois’ law and all of the information about our law is on their website. Still, there are people who are either unaware of the law or do not believe it is truly without consequences. I am not an A-list and maybe not even a Z-list blog, but if this post’s links can make a few more people aware of Safe Haven Laws in Illinois or elsewhere, I’m good with that.

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 8 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 196 of 274)

So it’s sorta social, demented and sad, but social

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So many of the words that have been written so far about John Hughes upon his death yesterday at the far-too-young age of 59 have been written by Gen-Xers who were in junior high school or high school when The Breakfast Club was released in 1985. I was nine years out of high school then, and maybe should have been too grown-up to care. But nine years isn’t nearly long enough to forget the hell that is high school. So much of the movie, and Hughes’ other teen flicks, still rang true to me both then and now.

You see us as you want to see us. In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That’s the way we saw each other at 7:00 this morning.

I never really considered myself truly a part of any group in high school. In hindsight, it was a defense against being rejected. I spent a lot of time making sure I was accepted by everyone, but never really trying to become truly a part of any one group. I really didn’t care (or at least I didn’t think I cared) to be embraced by any group, I just wanted everyone to accept me and not give me any trouble. I probably still do that now.

So yeah, this part really spoke to me, and again, both then and now:

You see us as you want to see us. In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain… and an athlete… and a basket case… a princess… and a criminal. Does that answer your question?

It’s obviously true. If there wasn’t something of every so-called group in me, my strategy wouldn’t have worked, would it? But enough about my demented and sad, but social, past and present.

As I’ve mentioned before, I will watch just about anything filmed in either of my two hometowns, even if it sucks. Thankfully, John Hughes’ movies didn’t suck. I always loved that he set most of his films in his home and mine, Chicago and the nearby suburbs. And even more so, that he lived here, rather than in Hollywood, even during the height of his success. Chicago and the north shore suburbs were really showcased well, and we always had fun either accidentally or on purpose finding the locations in the movies.

Given the name of this blog, I have to also express my appreciation for the decent amount of on-screen time given to Rottweilers in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Christmas Vacation. Freya and Axel say a big arf-ing “thank you!”

Hughes’ death might be the 2009 celebrity death that affects me the most. Please forgive me for being extremely lame and re-quoting probably the most-quoted Hughes movie line of the last couple of days (from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), because it’s just too true:

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

RIP John Hughes, and RIP to just a little more of my wasted youth.

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 7 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 195 of 274)