Rancid-Tea

Interesting Developments

admin — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 20:23:05 CST

The house immediately south of ours has been on the market since we started looking at our house, which was back in September of last year. As the price dropped and dropped, finally an offer was made by a couple; $30,000 was the going rate. Ethan and I had toyed with the idea of letting the house get to around $10K and just buying, tearing it down and having a double lot. I'm still hoping it will burn down in the middle of the night...

Seeing as the couple haven't really done anything with the property in the last few weeks since the 'sold' sign went up, we became a bit suspicious. Today a notice that the plumbing and sewer were being disconnected due to non-payment went up. Lo and behold, the house is back on the market for $22K. My hope is that we can find out how much it is to tear it down, and make a seriously low-ball cash offer and just buy the ugly thing. It would be nice to never look at it again, and actually have a real yard with space for a garden and room for Ludo (and maybe a foster dog) to run around in. We'll see what happens.

Snip Snip

admin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:11:15 CST

Last Saturday I actually got around to making an appointment to have Ludo neutered. I'm hoping he'll calm down a little once he's lost his balls. The big day is tomorrow, so this is his last night as a boy. Back when he was little I was thinking that maybe we could breed him once when he was an adult, but now that he's mostly grown, I'm not convinced he's a 'good' sheepdog. His front legs are a little narrowly set, and his teeth are a slightly crooked. In terms of responsible breeding, it probably would be a bad idea. Plus we get a $6 discount (woo hoo!) on microchipping if we get it done while he's neutered.

I'm hoping that afterward, if he calms down, I might be able to bring him to work with me some more. He really is a sweet and sociable dog, but I can't help but feel bad when people come to talk to me and he jumps all over them.

I've been looking at a dog training co-op in the cities that one of my co-workers is a member of. I would like to sign up for training there, but the procrastinator inside me is insisting this can be put off for another week or month or year, so it hasn't happened yet.

Oh Dear

admin — Mon, 4 Aug 2008 09:12:48 CST

Well, I just realized I haven't posted in two months. There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which is the project I've been on at work. Suffice it to say that if you ever want to torture yourself, build a web-based store in Magento (I'm not even going to link to it, because I'd hate for their Google Rank to go up a twentieth of a percent).

Since my last post, we've made some minor progress on the house. With a little help from me, Ethan hung a door on one of the upstairs bedrooms, which has been converted into Ludo's room for when we're not home. It's also the computer room, but the door was important to his being able to stay there during the day. Ethan also put up some shelves (again with a little bit of help from me) in the back entry so that we can store a whole bunch of food stuff out there. This means that we freed up a lot of kitchen space and were able to unpack a couple more boxes.

In more personal news, I got a tattoo (someday, maybe pictures, why not?), and we bought a Wii. Also, I'm running late for work. Hopefully it won't be another two months until my next post.

Walking Ludo

admin — Tue, 3 Jun 2008 22:32:03 CST

Ludo has gotten quite large, and being a highly excitable puppy with a strong herding instinct, he was a 'puller' on the leash from the very first walk we ever took. When he weighed 30 lbs and poor motor control, this wasn't a big deal, except the human at the other end of the leash had to listen to the strangled sounds of a puppy choking himself. As he's gotten older, he's also started lunging at cars, bikers, other people walking, etc. The combination of pulling, lunging and being a big strong dog was making it nearly impossible to take walks with him, so we finally decided to train it out of him.

The first major step was to get a harness for walking. This means less choking, plus he can slip out of his collar. On top of that any tension on his neck makes him instinctively pull harder. We bought the harness to transport him more safely in the car, because we can restrict his movements without the risk of severe neck injury in the event we have to stop suddenly. Once I realized that as he pulls I can pull back and lift his front legs a bit off the ground, enough for him to lose traction, I decided walks will be in a harness from now on.

Second, Ethan and I watched a lot of training tips on TV (It's Me Or The Dog, The Dog Whisperer), and read up online and in our dog training book. Having tips in hand we decided to skip walking on the sidewalks for now, until he gets better about leash walking and we have better control over lunging and take walks in the park.

Almost everything I read suggested that you turn a dog around when they're pulling, teaching them that pulling in one direction doesn't get them where they want to go. I tried this for about 20 minutes on a vacant stretch of path. We made it about 10 feet, back and forth, back and forth. Apparently, Ludo would just like to be moving, so that didn't work.

Next I switched to stopping when he pulled. This led to an unpleasant session of Tug-o-War on the leash, but once Ludo calmed down, we were able to progress very, very slowly into more highly trafficked areas of the park. By the end of our 1 hour walk, we were able to go for stretches of several yards without pulling. He was still having a lot of trouble with lunging though.

On our second training walk, a few days later, he got back into the groove of not pulling much more quickly, and was able to walk past some people and bikers without lunging. Large groups, particularly fast bikers, and people with dogs, are still challenging.

Today, Ludo walked with Ethan holding the leash, and it seems 'No Pulling!' transfers pretty well from person to person. I'm hoping that soon we'll both be able to walk him past obstacles/distractions without him turning into a frantic, leaping, barking lunatic, but it seems he is making very swift progress, so hopefully that day will come soon.

Going Green

admin — Thu, 1 May 2008 21:00:59 CST

I believe that no lifestyle change should happen overnight. If you want to lose weight, you can't start a drastic diet and expect to stick with it for the rest of your life. You need to make gradual changes to a healthier lifestyle. On that same vein I think that you can't just wake up one day and declare that all of your future behaviors will be eco-friendly.

Ethan and I are trying to live greener. We certainly have a long way to go, though probably less so than the average American. So far we both drive fuel efficient cars, we buy compact florescent light bulbs, we recently purchased an Energy Star washer and dryer, and in general we try to buy products with minimal packaging and recycled or renewable content.

Our most recent decision is that we won't be grabbing those horrible plastic produce bags at the grocery store anymore. I don't know why we didn't decide this sooner, but those bags are really just 'pre-garbage.' It's so easy to grab one for every type of produce you buy, then use them for a week or less, and throw them away. They aren't really good for anything else, because they're flimsy and have no handles and they're much harder to recycle than plastic grocery bags.

I'm trying to decide if there are reusable alternatives, especially for things like granola. It's important to put that in a bag, but there has to be a better way. Perhaps small paper bags would work. At least those are reusable and recyclable. And they are made from renewable resources, not petroleum products.

It's kind of fun trying to save the planet, one idea at a time.

Dogs

admin — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 09:05:29 CST

Yesterday at my workplace, two people brought their dogs in to work for the first time. They both had small dogs who both seemed friendly and calm. Since there was an explosion of dog at work, and Ethan got off early yesterday, he brought Ludo down for the weekly fiesta.

At first, Ludo didn't know what to make of the little dogs, who all crowded around him. The three he hadn't met ranged from 10 lbs to 30 lbs, and he currently weighs in around 60. After deciding that these little dogs were probably not a threat, and that they weren't very easy to play with, he began running from person to person, saying hello.

As it turns out, one of the small dogs decided it didn't like him at all, and gave him a few nips. Ludo's only prior experience with small, painful injuries inflicted from small, angry animals is with the cats, who happily whack him in the face whenever he gets too close. Much like with the cats, Ludo of course took this as an invitation to (exuberantly) try to make friends, which was obviously not this little dogs desire.

I amused to find that Ludo was so intimidated by such a little dog, and pleasantly surprised that he didn't so much as growl back while being bitten and snarled at.

Hair Excitement

admin — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:53:52 CST

Last weekend, I decided my hair was in rather bad need of color. I had at least half an inch of blond showing, and my color was getting a little dull. It was time to open a new packet from mehandi.com, but when I went to grab it, I found another open bag of henna. I was pretty sure it was from a box of Light Mountain Henna, which wasn't as easy to work with, but gave good color results.

After spending about an hour in a chair with Ethan applying the unwieldy paste to my head, I noticed that my drips were kind of blue, not orange. I figured that there must be some indigo in the henna, and decided to wait for the results.

As it turns out, it was all indigo. After rinsing my hair most still looked red, but my previously blond roots were electric blue! Thankful that I had gotten the process started I mixed up my Mehandi henna and spent another hour of Ethan's time having that applied.

Four hours later, there's no visible blue. My hair might be a little darker than before, but doesn't look technicolor. I guess this is why they always say to do a strand test before coloring your whole head.

Launch Time

admin — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:52:19 CST

Last week at work, we released a huge website that had a ridiculously tight deadline, was changed dramatically from day to day and was designed by a giant advertising firm that the company I work for is hoping to partner with, so we had to deliver on time. That meant that I put in almost 12 hours on Wednesday and 14 on Thursday. I got Friday off, but did have to field two calls to bug fix, one at 1 am and one at 8:30 am, and then another around noon.

As bad as that probably sounds, my coworker who called me at 1 am worked almost constantly from Wednesday morning until after noon on Friday. By almost constantly, I mean that he took off about 1 hour, twice a day to drive his girlfriend back and forth to work, because they share a car. He ate his meals at his desk and didn't sleep.

We have another project that I'm working on that's launching this week and another that was supposed to launch a couple of weeks ago, but still isn't ready and will launch whenever it's complete. Ugh. I guess I'm just going to have to hang on for the ride, and hope to get onto some more big projects that don't launch for a few weeks.

Ha ha! April Fools!

admin — Tue, 1 Apr 2008 17:23:29 CST

Being that parked cars are the deer of the inner city, sometimes leaping into your path when you least expect it, I shouldn't have been surprised when I walked up to my car this morning to see that one of the doors had been smashed in, with big stripes of black paint where once it had all been white. "Silly car," I said, "you shouldn't be jumping into the street in front of oncoming vehicles!" Alas, my car said nothing, but only looked sad and slightly ashamed.

I waited patiently for my car to pop its door back into its original shape and cry "April Fools!" but alas, that didn't happen.

Then I went back inside, and informed the police, my coworkers and the insurance company just how unruly my car had become, and what a situation it had gotten itself into.

No Sleep, Non-Profits and Websites

admin — Sat, 8 Mar 2008 10:28:18 CST

Last weekend I took part in the F1 Web Challenge as a developer. I arrived at 7:30am on Saturday morning, we started working at 9:00am and didn't stop until noon the next day!

The point of the whole thing? To create a website for a non-profit to help them achieve their goals without spending some of their limited funds for professional help. With 11 pairs of development teams and non-profits, they estimated that over $250,000 in time was donated!

It was very fun (I have to admit that I took a small nap around 5 am on Sunday, but only for half an hour) and we got an amazing site together. Our non-profit rep, Brian, was awesome to work with. He kept exclaiming that we were so cool for doing this for them and how they never could have had the website without us.

In the end, 11 non-profits got professional websites (all should be live within a month), 88 developers got to help out, and many volunteers provided food, entertainment and organization.

Afterward, I was in no condition to speak in sentences, let alone post something here, so I slept for about 16 hours, and went to work on Monday.