Big Dog Day

Today was Big Dog Day at the animal shelter. Two Great Danes, a Saint Bernard that was only six months old but still as large as most of our dogs, and the biggest lab I've ever seen, probably 90 pounds. The picture of the lab doesn't really get across how big he is (although he knows "Shake!") but the Great Dane is pretty obvious.

The smaller Great Dane:


The larger Great Dane:

The six monthold St. Bernard:

The Labrador retriever:

Mandatory Update

My wife has forbidden me from reading until I update my blog.  She found out the hard way that after I get a stack of new books from the library, I'm not good for much for the next few days.

Mandatory update completed.

Mafia!!!

For last week and a half, Child and I have been playing an online version of Mafia. For those of you unfamiliar with the game, a small number of the players are chosen as the Mafia, while the remaining players are Innocents. The Innocents try to discover who the Mafia are and lynch them, while the Mafia do their best to convince everyone that one of the Innocents is in fact the secret Mafia and get them lynched. It's a very fun game.

Well, this past game, out of 15 players, we had three Mafia members. We lied, we deceived, we mis-directed, and by the end of the game, we came out flawlessly victorious with all three members still alive and the Innocents lying in a heap in the Town Square. I believe it was unprecedented--usually at least one Mafia member gets lynched by the end of the game.

I told Child to watch out--if I could get away with lying for that long, there was no telling what other secrets I might have!

...actually, she doesn't really have to worry. As a general rule, I'm not particularly good at lying, as she's found out in previous Mafia games. I just got lucky this time around, and figured out that the less I talked (and ironically, the less I defended myself against flying accusations), the better off I was.

Trapped!

Acouchi loves the outdoors. We made the mistake of taking her outside to look at the snow a few months ago and now she'll sit at the front door and meow or paw at it for hours. The problem is that she is very much an inside cat--declawed on her front paws, and terrified of anything that moves.

I finally came up with a solution--that laundry basket kennel. With a bucket of cat food for weight.

UCPets.com News Article

The local newspapers picked up the story on the UCPets website.

• Daily Herald
• Deseret News
• BYU Newsnet

Notice how the BYU paper doesn't have a link. That's because the article never got published. Yeah, funny story about that. Child hates BYU and everything BYU related. When the newspaper called, she answered my phone. When the caller said who they were, she put the phone against her chest and said "It's that crappy newspaper."

I talked to the girl at the other end, answered all her questions, then hung up and looked at Child. "Um, if you put the phone against your chest, the person at the other end can hear quite clearly what you're saying."

"Oh," she said.

The article never appeared in the paper.

Not that I mind; my thesis adviser has been "strongly encouraging" me to get my thesis done, and I'd just as soon he didn't see I've been spending time working on another website.

Super Tuesday

Yesterday, I went to vote in the primaries. Child drove me to the polling station, but when I saw the two-hour long line, I told Child that I changed my mind and I'd just vote in November. She countered with "Who cares about the presidential elections? Your vote only really counts in the primaries." I countered with, "This is Utah, and a Mormon is running for president. If you're voting for Romney, is your vote really necessary in either of the elections?"

Sure enough, Romney took the Utah primaries with 90% of the vote, followed distantly by McCain with 5%. Still, I guess it's a good thing to exercise your civic duty.

Anyway, Child left me to stand for two hours in the hallway while she went off and did other things. While slowly shuffling along, I got a little bored. Child saved the text messages I started sending her, but I'll reproduce them here for your convenience.

Lonely...I'm so lonely...

Day 3: it seems like I've been stranded here for months. The fluorescent lights are beating down...No water or food. No sign of rescue, but am building a fire.

Can feel myself going crazy--am contemplating voting Huckabee. Another survivor slaps sense into me...signal fire unsuccessful. Ate leg.

Reached end of hallway! Line curves and goes back up other wall. Am standing next to fire alarm. Temptation is strong. Realize evacuation would reset line. Bad.

Discovery: shouting "vote Huckabee!" at a Mormon polling station equivelent to shouting "fire!" in crowded theater. Also bad.

Actually, I really did shout "Vote Huckabee" while in line, just to see if I could get a brawl to break out, and from somewhere up the line, someone called back, "Vote Romney!" Child told me I should have called back, "OK!"

The main reason for the lengthy wait was that some genius in the election office decided to combine several precincts into one voting area, but they didn't increase the number of old people manning those books where they check off your name. The process wasn't very efficient either: the first old guy would ask your name, then put a checkmark next to it in a giant book. The second old guy would also ask your name, then write it down (a lengthy process since he was like 90 years old) in his own book. It seemed a little redundant.

The voting itself took about 30 seconds, and to back up my claim that the old people were the hold-up, there was only one, and occasionally two people actually at any of the five electronic voting machines at any given time.

E-Cards

My beautiful wife sent me an E-card, so I decided to send one back. While filling out the form, however, I came across something that seemed a little...wrong.

Step 4: Do you want to send this card to more than one person? Yes or No?

Well, when your sentiment is "You're the only one for me," probably not. Unless, of course, you're a player and have several irons in the fire; in that case, send it to your entire email list and see who responds.

It reminds me of the guy last year that I saw getting into his car at the flower store, carrying two bouquets. "Hey, nice work!" I called to him.

"Oh, no, one's for my dad to give to my mom," he said.

"Of course, of course," I said, giving him a knowing wink, and getting in my own car.

Snowstorm of Puppies

Along with the snowstorms of...snow that we've been having, the shelter is starting to enter Puppy Season, leaving us with a snowstorm of puppies. ...puppystorm? Either way, we had two litters last week, and another pregnant dog come in on Friday. Add that to the litter of kittens we'll start having, and we'll be keeping pretty busy.

Tangentially, I had another idea: PSAs. Public Service Announcements. When I worked at a radio station 10 years ago, we'd do PSAs for non-profit groups, like "Quit Smoking!" or "Keep your guns out of reach of your kids!" I'll bet we could find a few radio stations that would be willing to do some PSAs for the animal shelter.

Encounters of the Trojan Kind

When I got home from school today, I had an instant message from a friend. We only talk every few weeks, but I had just stopped by his work to see him that morning. Also, my name's been in a few newspapers because of articles about the http://www.ucpets.com website. The IM said, "Hey, isn't this you?" and had a link to what looked like an MSN news site.

"Why would the website story be on MSN?" I wondered, and clicked the link.

The IM had been sent by a virus on my friend's computer, and the link led to a malware website whose purpose was to install a Trojan on the victim's computer.

Fortunately, I use Firefox with NoScript installed, and my computer was safe. Just goes to show, however, that even the most paranoid computer user (myself) can be tricked.

Prayer

Several months ago, Child lost her scriptures at church. My guess is that some kindly soul saw them laying on a pew, decided to find the owner, then ended up taking them home at the end of the day when they couldn't find the owner. I'm sure they were planning on bringing them back the next week, but forgot or lost them.

Regardless of the circumstances, Child's scriptures were lost, and she was very attached to them. We visited the lost and found every Sunday, asked people, and did everything we could to find them. No luck, and the months went by.

Finally we realize--hey, we're religious. We believe in prayer. Four months after the scriptures were lost, we start praying for their return, and the next week they show up on a table in the hall at church. Thank you, God, for nudging whoever it was to remind them to bring the scriptures back.

17 Victims in Morgue Shooting Remain Dead

I just saw a headline on CNN: 1-ton Rodent Remains Discovered.

That's odd, I thought to myself. Is there some reason it would suddenly become...undiscovered? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm glad it remains discovered. It's always a setback to science when some previously-discovered rodent becomes undiscovered, but apparently it can happen. I just wouldn't have guessed that something remaining discovered would have been newsworthy. You know? It just happens all this time. For instance, I discovered that my Cinnamon Toast Crunch remained in our cupboard overnight, which was nice because I wanted it for breakfast. Apparently the internet remains discovered as well, because I'm using it right now. Not to mention about 30 billion other things across the world. Must have been a slow news day.

X-treme Sledding

Yesterday, our family went on our annual Sledding Behind the Van trip.

On this trip, we go to some plowed-but-still-snowy country road, tie six or seven sleds on ropes behind the family van, then dad will drive while everyone on the sleds tries to hurl each other into snowbanks.

Child got a couple pre-sledding pictures with my camera, but as soon as I can snag some during-sledding pictures from the parents, I'll post those as well.

Busy Busy Busy!

Wow, there's a lot on my plate right now. Let's summarize, shall we?

1. Thesis! This is actually my top priority right now. I'm at the stage where I'm a little stuck, and need to do some thinking about exactly what data I want to collect, and how I need to arrange the experiments to get it.
2. Finishing up the Utah County Pets website. If it weren't for the snowstorm outside, I could go down to the animal shelter and finish most of the stuff up. Soon enough, though.
3. Business idea. I have a product that I think would be interesting to produce, but no idea where to start and no time to do it, even if I did know where to start. However, as soon as I get time and really want to start on the project, I have a few relatives who'd be good resources, and I actually have a short get-together tomorrow with a mentor from the entrepreneurial center at school.
4. Writing. Wow, this is where I really need to get motivated. I have a ton of story ideas, but I haven't been very good at sitting down and pounding them out.
5. Apartment hunting. This is low on the priority list, but still at the back of my mind. We have a place, but we'd like a better place. It'll just depend on how much time/motivation Child and I can scrape together.
6. Planning fun stuff. I want to get together a couple friends and do some snow-caving.
   

Lost n Found Pets

I have a new website under construction at http://www.ucpets.com.

It'll be a place for people in Utah County to post lost or found pets. Steps to completion:

1. (done) Add administration pages.
2. (done) Set up Google Analytics
   
3. (done) Take picture of animal shelter for "Resources" picture on home page
4. Create script to periodically delete old pictures
5. (done) Clean out "test" listings
   
6. (done) Find good domain name and set up on new host
   
7. (done) Get endorsement by North/(done) South Utah Valley Animal Shelters
8. Help (done) NUVAS/(done) SUVAS set up regular uploads of all their animals
   
9. Get story on KSL/(done) Daily Herald/BYU paper/etc.
10. Add option to print a flyer?
    

Comments on features or problems are highly appreciated!

An Idea Actually Worked!

A few months ago when I first started fiddling around with Google Gadgets, I tried to think of something useful I could make. Then I got a Good Idea.

I went to a website that listed the top 100 sites of the internet, then started going down the list, checking to see if each website had an associated Google Gadget. Wikipedia did, CNN did, etc. etc. Then, I found one that didn't: Bloomberg.com. It's a financial website of some sort.

So, I made a gadget that simply displayed the headlines from Bloomberg's site, and uploaded it to the directory. Now it gets an average of 675 users a day.



(I was also just informed by Child that the entire time she read "Where the Red Fern Grows," she was picturing the two dogs as dachshunds.

...Dachshunds?)

Customers

Sometimes I envy Child's job, and not just because she works with massage chairs. She also gets to deal with "interesting" customers.

At lunch, I overheard her telling a customer that a cushion was made from Australian pigmented leather. "That means it's made from Australian pygmies," the man informed his daughter, completely straight-faced.

That evening, when I went to pick her up, a customer was trying out a massage chair. Waiting for Child to finish with him, I found a massage chair of my own and relaxed. I listened to her and the man discussing the chair, then there was silence for a moment. Then,

"Wow, look at my stomach jiggling."

Silence for another moment.

"That's not very attractive."

I had to laugh. A few minutes later he came to try out the massage chair next to the one I was in. After lying in it for a moment, he glanced up the built-in microphone. "What's that?" he asked. Child told him it was a microphone to give the massage chairs voice-commands, and he thought that was pretty fancy. "Pretty soon we won't even need wives anymore!" he exclaimed. "But it still can't get you a cold drink from the fridge," I pointed out, making sure Child was out of earshot.

BYU for the Win!

UCLA was down by one point with only seconds left on the clock. However, they were lining up for an easy 28-yard field goal attempt. They had already scored three other field goals during the game, including to 50-yarders. This was going to be a piece of cake. The whistle blows, they kick the ball, one of our players lunges into the air...blocked! The field goal spins away and misses the posts! Time expires! BYU with the win!

Go Cougars!

(Although that's about as close as you can get to a loss and still manage to pull it off...)

Shelter Updates

Spay or neuter your dogs. Somebody dumped off four pitbull puppies at the shelter this morning...now who's going to adopt those, especially with half the cities in our jurisdiction disallowing pitbull ownership?

...

One of the girls was on the phone with the shelter director, when a pheasant booked it across the parking lot. Being uninhibited and ebullient, she screamed at the top of her lungs, pointed at it, and shouted, "What is THAT?"

The poor director was probably deaf at that point, and from the tone of her voice I expected a tidal wave, raging forest fire, or possibly several platoons of armed ninjas sweeping down on the shelter. Fortunately, before I dove for cover, I glanced out the window and realized what she was pointing at.

"That...is a pheasant."

"A what?"

"A pheasant. You have never seen a pheasant before."

Apparently not.

...

There were a couple other things I was going to post about, but they slip my mind at the moment and my slip of paper with the reminder on it is not at my present location. Updates on the updates later...

Snow Shovel From God

Sunday morning, God put a snow shovel on our porch. It was well timed, since the weather had dumped 8 or so inches of snow the night before and both our landlord and his wife were sick in bed. After shoveling the walks/driveway of our fourplex, I shoveled their walk/driveway as well, since they live right next door.

I have to say, either God's on a tight budget, or he assigned some intern angel to create the shovel, because it was old, orange, and the corners were bent. I guess it got the job done, though.

Christmas Songs

There is only one month a year that we can officially sing Christmas songs in church. Apparently, our church does not realize this, singing Thanksgiving songs on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

My favorite Christmas hymn is Joy to the World. As I ran home from choir practice yesterday morning to pick up Child, I told her that since it was the first Sunday we were going to be late getting back to church, it would be the week that the opening hymn was Joy to the World.

Of course it was.