Three Things

First thing.  I'm thinking about shutting down the Valdese Dog blog, and just putting my stuff about Pickles the dog in this blog.  Haven't decided yet. 

Second thing.   We do eBay stuff, mostly postcards, antique photos and stuff like that.  Since the beginning of this blog I've had a link out in the sidebar to the eBay store.  It said "Our eBay Store". That was it, very muted, just there.   I didn't want this blog to be about eBay or anything of that nature (tho I'm apparently not adverse to writing several long articles in a row about it, if the mood strikes me).  But I suppose there's nothing wrong with a little advertising, so for what it's worth it's there.  If you click on the picture you will go to our store.  It really seems to work, so be warned. 

I'll change the picture every so often, probably once a week or so, 'cause I get bored. 

Third thing.  I have way too many labels.  I have to do something about that.  

Well, Eugene.

Eugene the dog went back to his previous owners.  Sigh.  That was always part of the deal, if we didnt feel it was working out, we could return him.   

Well the pore ol' feller was terrified most of the time he was here.    He was afraid Pickles was going to eat him, I guess, and I can understand.  Eugene weighed 2 1/2 lbs, literally.  Pickles weighs 50-60 lbs,  and when she'd bound in Eugene's direction, it would terrify him.  

But Pickles is generally a submissive dog, and little Eugene found that out very quickly.  Eugene managed to create his own defense perimeter, and it was impressive to watch.  He became like teeth with legs, and he backed Pickles off.  I was very impressed, and have a new respect for Chihuahuas.   I didn't realize something that looked so delicate could be so ferocious.

However, Eugene wasn't eating much at all, and scarier, wasn't drinking.   He'd had a very serious episode several months ago, when he became too dehydrated - the little guy almost died. So we were worried.

Eugene would do better in a house without other pets, and probably without small children too. This is a dog who would be happy to sleep in your lap for hours.  In fact that's what he did as I did my eBay stuff in the mornings - he'd lay in my lap and sleep while I worked on the computer, ever now and then waking up and looking around or changing positions.   I liked Eugene a lot.

Maybe we didn't give it enough time, but it didn't seem that things were going to get better.   And the dog seemed to be scared most of the time.

I like the little dog an awful lot, and I feel bad about it, like a failure of sorts.   He may end up staying with his owners, or they may find another home for him, I'm not sure.   He's a good little huge eared dog.

Beware of a BBQ!!

When you go over to a friends house for a BBQ, you'll never know what you'll come home with. We came home with a Chihuahua.  Yep, Eugene the Dog is now being not so seamlessly integrated with the likes of Pickles the Dog and Snowchief the Cat.  Not to mention Mr. & Mrs. Valdese Blogger.

It was not planned.  The offer was made & we accepted - we've known Eugene since shortly after he was born.  He's just over a year old now.

So it was after dark when we got home.   Pickles & Eugene were introduced on the front porch. It was a very loud introduction - and set dogs off for blocks, at least.   Old Black, a neighbor's dog, just added to the confusion by waddling over from his house to see what was going on, barking his 2 cents worth.

Eugene spent the night in his little crate up in our bed room, Pickles spent the night in her usual location.   Snowchief the cat, who usually insists on his 1/3rd of the bed, did not come up stairs last night.    It was a confusing and unsettling time for all the animals and humans in the house.

Eugene is T-I-N-Y!!!!!  With a capital "T".  He's even small for a Chihuahua.  Pickles weighs in the neighborhood of 60 lbs.  

So, they've spent a lot of time standing not too far from each other and barking.  I finally began remembering some of my dog whisperer shows I watched, and began letting both of them know that neither of them were in charge of this "pack".  Eugene responds very well to a little hiss and a tap on the shoulder.   Pickles sits and lays down on command, and that really helps. 

The problem is Pickles wants to check Eugene out.   Eugene, tho very small, is surprisingly "persuasive" - he's backed Pickles up more than once.  Pickles is rough and tumble, wants to play, and this scares Eugene.   Eugene finds a good place to defend, like a chair, and defends it quite convincingly.  And he's such a little guy.  Pickles, part hound that she is, howls.  It gets very loud.

As the day has gone on there has been some improvement, hopefully over time they will sort things out and things will settle down.  If anyone has any suggestions on how to speed this along, I'd welcome it.

A Beautiful Mind: The Movie, The Book

I saw the movie several years ago.  I walked into it not knowing anything about it - I didn't even know who John Nash was.  I just finished reading the book by Sylvia Nasar a few days ago.

The movie (directed by Ron Howard) was entertaining, about a mathmatical genius from West Virginia who ends up in Princeton, and does great work, but becomes physcotic.  Movies are visual by nature, so it concentrated on the illness & the visual hallucinations, as opposed to other sensory halluncinations.  That's only natural.   Eventually he began to recover, and the hallucinations never quite went away, but he ignored them.  He won a Nobel prize in economics for some work he did before he became ill.

It was a lot harder to read the book than it was to sit through the movie, which I suppose, is the way it should be.   I have only very basic math training, and I found it difficult to follow some of the concepts discussed.  The book, quite rightly, spent a lot of time discussing Nash's accomplishments before he became ill, and these accomplishment were quite profound.  Who knows what would have happened if he'd had those 25 years of illness back.  The movie seem to spend more time on the illness - at least what I remember of it.

Some part of the book was spent on the nature of schizophrenia, and if Nash's case was typical or not.  Short answer - nobody's sure.  He was 30, when the symptoms exploded, which is late for the disease.  And he was eventually able to come out of it and control it (mostly by recognizing & ignoring the symptoms), and no one is quite sure if that is something people do or not either.  

The book is much more detailed than the movie, both about the math and the illness.   It would have been impossible for the movie to have that level of detail and still tell an interesting story.

So, the movie is intertaining.  The book I found interesting & very good, but not easy to read.   Lot of larger than average pages, each containing a lot of words, and a lot of math. 

The Valdese Blogger's Favorite Recipe For Soup in 10 Easy Steps

1. Go to the grocery store.

2. Purchase a some soup in a microwavable container.  I'm partial to tomato, but any kind is ok.

3. When you get home, place the container on the counter.  While holding the container with one hand, firmly pull the plastic top off with the other.  Set it aside.

4.  Carefully pull the metal lid off with the flip top ring & discard.  You will most likely splatter some soup on the counter & your fingers.  Don't worry about it.  As long as you didn't cut yourself, it doesn't matter.

5.  Place the plastic top back on the container of soup. Make sure it's snug.

6.  Place the container in the microwave.

7.  Heat on high for 90 - 120 seconds.  Experience will let you know which is best.

8.  When it's done remove from microwave.  

9.  Take the whole thing to the couch, and turn on the television.  You can add crackers to taste.  

10.  Enjoy.

And now you know where I'm coming from.

A little reverse engineering, Scarecrow?

Certain words and phrases irritate me.  I'm not sure why that is and I guess I may have to pay for some therapy if I really wanted to find out, so chances are I'll just have to live without knowing.   But I digress.

I started hearing the term "Reverse Engineering", roughly about 12 years after I began my second career as a programmer analyst/systems engineer/information analyst (and roughly 3 years before I ended said career).   I had never really heard the term before, at least not used in everyday language.  But then suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, I began to hear it all the time, from my co-workers who (like me) spent way too much time in cubes all day long, fighting with programs and systems.

During this period I transfered across the country (with the same company), and when I got to my new location over 1,000 miles a way and a world apart local culture wise, I still heard it.  As in, "if you can't figure it out just reverse engineer it".   That helped a lot, by the way.   A piece of advice on my very first day in a project I didn't really have a clue about.   I suspect the person who gave me that advice didn't know anything about it either.

People all over the country were using the term like they knew what it meant.

And I was wondering what book or TV show or memo I missed that suddenly required everyone to use this term in any situation.

To me, in my life as a PA/SE/IA, I assumed what people meant was they had some result (usually not good), and didn't know how they got it, so they were going to see if they could figure it out. In other words, de-bugging.  That was my assumption anyway, me of the missed "reverse engineering in everyday speech" memo.  No one corrected me, but then why would they?  They didn't know what it was either.

So anyway, I don't hear that term very much anymore, it's not current amongst the Valdese citizenry.  That could be because there just arent any good IT jobs in Valdese.

I think the next time I go downtown, I'll see if I can work it into a conversation.  

Until today

The last few days, until today, we've had what passes for cool weather in North Carolina in the summer time.   I think it stayed in the 80's, and there seemed to be a breeze blowing.  This gave the illusion of lower than normal humidity, especially if you're sitting in the shade.  If you were to grab a person from out west and plunk them on our front porch in Valdese, they would beg to differ about the humidity situation.  But it's all relative.  All in what you're used to. 

Anyway, we (and I include Pickles the goofy dog) manage to engage in our favorite past time of sitting on the porch and watching the birds every afternoon.

Here are some birds we know of that we've seen on our property:  doves, blue birds, cardinals, crows, purple martins, brown thrasher (we think), robins, hawks (one caught some little mouse like animal almost right in front of us the other day), finches, mocking birds, at least 3 kinds of woodpeckers, a heron (believe it or not), blue jay, barn swallows, flocks of black birds that arent crows but we dont know what they are, we heard an owl once after dark (didn't see it).  There are probably others, neither of us are bird experts by any stretch.   For the most part these are just your normal every day blue collar working birds.

They make a ton of noise during the day.  It's nice to have them around.