Rain. And Phone Books.

SUMMARY: Boost does some surprising fetching and is surprised by water from the sky.

It last rained in San Jose on March 15. Yesterday's forecast called for rain last night and this morning. An agility friend posted on her web site, "I wonder what rain feels like?" Anticipation lay low, humming, in the background of all conversations in the valley. Rain. At last.

Every morning, Boost fetches the newspaper for me from the driveway. Today, she woke me at 5:30 demanding to go out (drat, are we not over this yet? And it was going so well--). The ground was dry. Another wet forecast turning out to be all wet?

Since I was getting up at 6:00 anyway to go for an early hiking adventure, I opened the front door to see whether the paper yet sat in its plastic rain-bag at the end of my driveway. Nothing was there. But Boost burst past me, down the sidewalk, and skidded to a halt next to a dark, hulking, plastic-wrapped shape near the roses, and began to work at grabbing it. --What on earth--?

I walked out to the sidewalk, and discovered that the Phonebook Fairy had left the new phonebook for me, carelessly wrapped in plastic so that one end was protected from potential rain but the other end lay completely exposed. And dry. Boost was wrestling enthusiastically, trying to find some pages to grab, as the whole thing was, shall i say, a wee bit larger than even the usual Sunday-supplemented Saturday paper. I hurriedly aligned the phone book with the spine towards her, to prevent having the entire M section ripped out with a too-effusive effort to Get That Newspaper.

I didn't think she could actually manage it, but with several bits of assistance and several drops and re-pick-ups, she managed to get that whole huge thing into the house and deliver it to where she always delivers the paper. Quite an entertainment for her mom early in the morning.

As I gave her some thanks-for-fetching treats, the sky opened. How grateful was I now for being wakened early and also having the dog run out the front door without permission? Had she done neither of those things, I'd now have a sopping wet gigantic blob of former phonebook.

A few minutes later, Tika put up a big racket about Something Dangerous In The Front Yard. I peered out the door, and sure enough, the paper itself had arrived. So I fetched Boost, lined her up, said, "Ready....Get The Paper!" and released her. She blasted down the steps to the sidewalk--and skidded to a halt. She jerked her head and body left and right. She ran to one side. She stepped back. She looked at the roses like she might be about to spook. She started to wuff a "Danger! Unknown danger!" wuff, when I realized what was happening: She hadn't been rained on in 7 and a half months.

So I had to run out into the rain to reassure her, run with her down to the paper at the end of the driveway, and then follow her as quickly as I could as she dashed back inside, plastic-bagged paper grasped firmly in her jaws. OK, so now **I'M** wet, but at least the phone book is dry.


(I'll try to get my hike photos up soon. No dogs this time, though.)

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Aloneness

SUMMARY: Being alone is not the same as being lonely.

I'm staying at a hotel (in french: hotel) within the Hilton domain. Sure, the linens are luxurious and the setting is more than comfortable (in french: confortable...see how hard this is?). But what I really have enjoyed in my first 12 hours here is being alone and relaxing in my own room.

I am very fond of my dogs, and they are quite integrated into my life. However, these aren't dogs who go off to some other part of the house to sleep at night. Or who open half an eyelid but then return to snoozing when I get up and start moving around. No, these dogs sleep on my bed, and in my face if I let them. And who leap to their feet, eyes bright, tails a-quiver, whenever I make the slighted twitch that looks like I'll be moving around.

I am never ALONE in my house.

I travel so seldom without the dogs--maybe twice a year or so--but I always share a hotel room with someone. This is so nice!

But today I give up my aloneness to step back out into the world-- I have ambitions to explore miles and miles of Montréal to make up for a day of mostly sitting. (I'd have walked up and down the airport instead of sitting and waiting, if I could have, but I unexpectedly had to check my rolling suitcase, and my computer and camera/purse bag were so heavy that there was no way I could stroll comfortably for any length of time. Ah, well.)

See y'all this evening.

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I Hate Computers

SUMMARY: Why can't everything just be perfect AND easy so I can spend time practicing running contacts and going over obstacles that are in front of you?

Tika: "Mom--why are you pulling your hair out?" Note empty high-tech boxes. With Boost-chewed box corners ("take that you computer things").

I am trying to upgrade my computer and software a little bit. I can't upgrade it a lot because I can't afford it.

I want it to be FAST and EASY so that I can get back outside and work on agility activities in the sun with the furry beasts. But--this is computers--

For many months I've wanted to run Blurb's BookSmart because it sounds perfect for making books of your own photos. And now, ta-da!, it supposedly automatically slurps your blog from Blogger or your photos from SmugMug. This would be tres cool if it also sucks down all the text that I've typed for my smugmug photos! Because there's no way to get all that text into a book except by copying and pasting it from every photo individually. For thousands of photos.

But to run it, I need OSX 10.4.9 at least, plus Java 1.5, which needs OSX 10.4.something at least, and I am still on 10.3.something. Plus 10.4.something plus booksmart suggest that I have at least 6-zillion gigahoots dual processors, and mine are only 400-something megawhootz. Plus I'm out of space on my system disk, so no more room to put system upgrades OR more applications that won't run without the upgrades.

Plus my 15-year-old laser printer died, what's with that?

So here I went:

What	Process	Results
New laserjet printer	Two and a half hours of unstringing and restringing cables. The old printer setup was a little complicated.	Works pretty OK. Much faster than the old one and does double-sided much more easily. Except when it won't. Then it just prints pages of fuzzy gray lines. No way to tell what its mood is until you actually print. So I have lots of one-sided things printed on the backs of sheets covered with fuzzy gray lines.
New humongous external disk drive	External because I hate opening the computer and working inside. I haven't yet blown up anything when I've done so, but there's always a first time. And those warnings! DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING IN ANY WAY WITH ANY OBJECT OR THE WORLD WILL END ELECTRICALLY sorts, which scare me immensely. Anyway, plugged in Firewire cable and installed driver.	Works. Some farkling around to divide it into partitions, it seemed like a good idea at the time, and I'll probably regret it later.
Move system software to new drive	Downloaded a nifty tool that makes a bootable copy of your existing system drive. Except that it kept dying with some unintelligible error. Their site had online help forums, where others reported similar messages, but apparently the meaning can be divined only by the initiated. Fortunately, one of the initiated responded and all I had to do was to reinstall some things that had been working just fine to the naked amateur eye but apparently the nifty tool didn't like its attitude.	The copy finally worked but, not surprisingly, it took a very long time to copy 30 GB. So my old system is now working on my new drive. Because it's external, it's slower than it would be if I were to go out and buy ANOTHER disk drive of megahungus gigawhoo size and install it inside the box after taking out the old one and again using the System Software Copier to copy it all back... the cost and the time and the logistics just give me nausea. So it stays on an external drive for the nonce.
Upgrade processors	Rather than buying a whole expensive new computer, my company is just upgrading processors in all our office machines of roughly the same vintage, and they hope to get another 3 years out of them. So I buy a new superhuge dual-processor, at 1/5 the price. But first I have to upgrade the something firmware whoozie driver whatsit software. At least twice, maybe 3 times, because I've got all these versions of the operating system on different disks (including the old System 9). Oh, and there was the part where it wouldn't reboot under system 9 and I had to go find some sort of CD that it would boot under so I could try again, and it takes FOREVER to boot from a CD. But, OK, everything's happy now. Then I have to open the computer (ewwww... scary...), remove the old heat sink and old processor, and I'm shaking in my virtual shoes the whole time for fear I'll TOUCH SOMETHING WITH A BURST OF STATIC ELECTRICITY AND FRY EVERYTHING. But aside from losing a screw and taking a while to figure out how to get those clips off (they have detailed descriptions and photos and I'm still slow to get it), then "simply align the single connector" must have taken me 5 minutes at least, and then the box wouldn't relatch...	But it's in! And the system powers up! And it runs! And, wow, the computer really DOES run faster! Except now, sometimes, when the computer goes to sleep, there's this shrieking rising high-pitched sound like a jet engine revving or a solenoid about to explode (there aren't any solenoids in modern computers...are there?...). But if I hit a key really quickly, the noise stops. Maybe it's one of the fans on the new dual processor. Maybe it's something else that's coincidentally failing. Do I really want to go through taking the new one out and shipping it back and reinstalling the old one? No. So cross fingers and hope it's just a settling-in fluke.
Upgrade to System 10.4	(Which of course you can't just download--apple doesn't have it any more since they're now selling 10.5. So I have to go far afield to get a copy.) I put it into a different partition Just In Case, and it takes a couple of hours to go through all the hoops. Well, of course, that means that it doesn't understand ANY of my settings or application preferences from system 10.3.x. I checked with one of my gurus, and she said, "Why'd you do that? Just install it over 10.3." So I did. But updates are funny--many are serial, so after a very long system install, then I check for updates,and it installs those, then I chck for updates again, and there are more, and it installs those, and I check again, etc. etc. until now finally I'm up to system 10.4.11 and now finally the java updates start to install, and those seem to be sequential...	6 hours after I started installing 10.4, I'm now fully running on 10.4. There goes another day. It actually seems to be working fine so far (except that every application I run says "you're running this for the first time; OK?").
BookSmart install	NOW I can download and run BookSmart--except--their web site is down. It's down for most of the day. Have they gone out of business? I dunno! Can't find anything about it on the web anywhere. Finally I try once more, and the site comes up, and I download BookSmart.	Seems to run. So, OK, let's just play with it. First, you can use only preset page layouts. It has lots, but you can't design your own. I've tried laying out 3 pages of photos and already I don't like what I can't get. What if I have 5 photos and want to lay them out as if I have 6 but put text in the 6th box? Can't do it. Gahhhhh.... OK, it's a new product and still in beta. Be patient. Next I carefully resize the photos for the page layout. But then decide that I want a different layout. So I switch layouts. And it shoots all the photos back to their original sizes and I have to resize them all again. Same thing if I switch the position of two photos--have to resize them both again. This is not quite the easy-to-use thing I was imagining. But let's see whether it at least does what I wanted it to do.
Slurp SmugMug albums	With just a few button clicks, it brings down all the photos from my chosen gallery. Slick.	Well, guess what--it doesn't seem to slurp the text! I look all through their help and online materials, and I can't find anything. Why did I think that it would? I can't find that info on SmugMug, either, so maybe it was just wishful thinking. Since it doesn't do that, I can just use the photos that are right here on my computer. But I want the text! That's frustrating. There's a Windows utility (which I can run an emulator for on my system) that will slurp the photos WITH the captions EMBEDDED in the photos. Still have to open each one to see the text, but at least I'd have it. But does booksmart take any info out of the embedded photo info? Apparently not, not that I can find. Well, crud!
slurp my blog	Just a few button clicks again. I'm surprised that there's no way to specify which part of the blog you want to get, can't even specify certain labels or anything, near as I can tell. It's really going to slurp 1250 entries and hundreds of photos and put them all into one book??	No, of course it isn't, it keeps barfing after loading about 25 entries, saying that the blog is unavailable, try again later. Well, it's not unavailable, dagnabbit, it's right there and I can view everything. I post a help request on their site but have to wait one BUSINESS day. So there goes the weekend and any likelihood of creating a real book.
Blog labels	Instead, let's put more labels on my older blog posts (have been doing it only for a year or so, so 5 years worth of posts have no labels). I did a few topics a couple of weeks ago, using the Search box to find all relevant posts.	But now--what?!--the search finds only posts from the last few months! It's not finding ANYTHING older! It's not finding the posts that it found two weeks ago! I spend an hour on their site trying to find relevant info. It claims to be a beta search and it seems to be broken, but there's nothing posted about it anywhere, and searching their massive billions of forum posts doesn't bring up anything useful. Used to be when you reported a bug, the bug went right to their support folks...although I do remember having to search for the right page, like they didn't really want you to find it. Now their "report a bug" goes straight to a public forum with 85,000 posts in it and if you're lucky maybe a Blogger person will come by and answer the question. So I posted the question yesterday and have yet to get a useful answer.
Photoshop elements upgrade	Meanwhile, Photoshop Elements 6 has become available, and I bought it at a discount. I use this all the time, so it makes sense to buy it. It installs OK (except that it says "insert CD and follow the instructions on the screen", but there are no instructions, there's just the CD, so I have to find the right folder with the right thing to run...). But man, I think it took as long to install as the whole new operating system! MAN, it took a long time.	Then I start it up. And it takes up my whole blinking monitor screen. Welcome to the new software--there's no resize handle in the lower right. There are no min/max buttons in the upper menu bar. I just want a little tiny photoshop window so that I can view other things at the same time. I look everywhere, all the menus, all the icons. I try Help. I try the User Guide. I try their web site. Another hour down the tube and I've done nothing except trying to resize my window. I finally find a support place on their site where I can post a question, so I do. Now I have to wait for "1 to 2 business days"(?) for a response. It's probably something stupid that I just overlooked. But I hate this, HATE it...I've got over 20 years of experience on a wide variety of window-based applications, and I CANNOT FIGURE IT OUT!

Gah! I just want to scream.

Instead, guess I'll take the dogs for a walk and get my shoulders ripped out some more. It'll take my mind off the fact that I HATE COMPUTERS.

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What a Waste

SUMMARY: Recycling and doggie droppings.

Back in high school in the early 1970s (there, I admit it), I wrote a couple of speeches about ecology and the environment, and then I got all hot under the collar about Things We Can Do At Home To Save The Earth. This was back when recycling was something you did to get back on a bicycle. Or else weird counterculture stuff. I believe that I was the instigator for my parents to start recycling bottles and cans. This was back when you had to buy your own containers for recycling, if you wanted it separate from garbage, and then you had to go find someplace that would take your recyclables and transport them there, and sort them yourself into the appropriate bins, after crushing all the cans to save space, of course.

I think I let my parents do most of the actual work. Although when I moved out on my own I did all that stuff.

Also, just to be a good person, I have always picked up my dogs's messes in public. I used to get complimented because I'd walk around picking up after my dogs. Now people swear at me because my dogs poop in public. Weird world. Anyway. In your own yard (if it's not a giant ranch in, say, Marfa), you need to pick it up or else reencounter it in many unexpected and not necessarily pleasant ways.

Eventually, when I grew up a little bit, like in 1995 or so, I went through the program to become a Master Composter because I learned that soil is SO much happier with organic matter added, and besides it makes so much more sense to process your own yard waste. (Ask me someday for why. I'm a Master Composter. I have a very long list of reasons.)

Then there was the doggie droppings thing. When I walked out in public, we used to carry a trowel and a small paper bag. Then I'd scoop the poop into the bag and then throw out the bag. When I started doing Dog Activities with Dog People, I realized that plastic bags were way more convenient in so many ways: Moisture doesn't leak through them. Before use, they crush easily into a pocket. You can do the grab and lift and don't need a trowel. You can buy them on a very condensed roll and attach them to your leash.

When I had a Really Big Yard, during the winter, when it rained, we'd mostly leave the doggie deposits where they lay, as they'd fade into the soil under their own power. But the rest of the time, we used to gather it all into a large grocery bag and toss it in the trash.

So, Taj MuttHall Mom, What's Your Main Point?

And so, here's my main point. With my Concern For The Environment and finally being a Master Composter, I decided that I needed to find some way to deal with all of the solid waste produced by my canids.

So I bought a Doggie Dooley digester, which is basically a big plastic box with a lid that you bury in the ground, like a mini doggie-doo septic tank, and you periodically throw in your dog waste and some Doggie Dooley Digester Enzymes. It's supposed to just vanish in a trice and sink into the soil in an unobtrusive way.

Well, I tried for probably 3 years to get that thing to work. I added more liquid. Less liquid. More enzymes. A lot more enzymes. Fewer enzymes. I kept a big pole by the (very-rapidly-completely-filled) Dooley and stirred it and aerated it. A really fun thing to do on weekends. But I never, never got it to work. There were notes about clay soil not being perfect, but since our clay soil drained very well, I thought it wouldn't be an issue. But noooo--- I gave up finally.

I have corresponded with people in other parts of the country who have had good success with the thing. But not here.

So here are some other possibilities:

* Put in a plastic bag and into the trash. Actually, at least one agility site near here REQUIRES that the dog poo must be in plastic bags before it goes into their trash. But--all those plastic bags!

* Put into a paper bag and into the trash. However, some municipalities now apparently ban pet waste in the garbage entirely (hmm, trying to find a reference for that and can't. I believe it was Pacific Northwest somewhere). Plus, really, stuff that goes into the landfill gets buried so quickly and thoroughly that a lot of it just doesn't break down, or won't for centuries. I don't think paper or plastic really matters.

* Compost it. Ugh. Doggie poo (and that of most omnivorous/carnivorous animals) can or usually does contain all kinds of ugly pathogens that normal backyard composting won't kill and you don't want in contact with you, your vegetables, or your children. Not a good solution.

* Same applies, maybe, to leaving it lying around the yard to break down on its own, if you have a large-enough yard. But in this case, it would be far enough from where you're usually in direct contact with it that it wouldn't matter so much. But how many of us have yards that big?

* Flush it down the toilet. Gak, carrying that through the house?

* Put it into the sewer in some other manner, like build a sewer connection in your back yard. Expensive, although maybe cost effective for larger kennels. But now there's some indication that many of those pet pathogens are not destroyed in the water treatment process and are finding their way into the waters of the world. (Limited references available; mostly applies to cat waste.)


So what's an ecoconscious dog owner to do? I dunno. My current strategy is plastic bags into trash, both for public poos (small convenient-sized bags) and for backyard cleanup (one large bag weekly).

But someone just pointed out this gadget. Looks like an interesting idea, if it really works. And if you have $400 left over after doing dog agility. Anyone out there have any experience with this thang?

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Let Lying Dogs Lie

SUMMARY: In which I work and they don't.

One big advantage of working at home is that you're at home. One big disadvantage of working at home is that you're at home. At least I get to see that mostly the dogs just lie around and sleep all day, waiting for me to do something interesting, like eat a pretzel (then they get to have some) or look in their direction (which is very exciting for them, I can assure you) or maybe twitch (which doesn't happen often when I'm at the computer, or at least not until I've been there for at least 12 hours, when the twitching starts in earnest).

But mostly they lie around.

Sometimes Tika lies around at my feet under the desk, sighing dramatically and occasionally resting her chin on my feet, my shins, my knee, or my lap.



Sometimes they hang around by the sliding door into my office, monitoring both the visuals in the yard and the sound effects of me at my computer (has she stopped typing? did she swivel the chair? did she push the chair back? did the computer power down? is she reaching for a pretzel?).


I tell ya, it's an exciting life, working at home.

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