My Schipperke won't play fetch

My schipperke won't play fetch. It's always confused me. She'll follow the ball as I play with the other dogs. She'll even lean towards me as if to anticipate my tossing of the ball. She'll gladly take the ball if it's handed it to her, only to scurry off to a corner, frustrating the other dogs (they dare not take it from her). Don't even think of tossing the ball to her. She'll simply watch it bop her on the nose, look up at you, and walk away with a hurt feeling in her eyes.

This particular quirk has confounded me for some time. She's actually a very playful dog. She likes to be held. She likes to have her belly rubbed. She particularly likes to push back with her feet while on her back, prompting me to grab her feet and rock her back and forth. She loves this game.

Still, it seems like a dog should want to play fetch.

Another quirk, this one more concerning, is that sometimes when I reach to pet her, she hops back, only to come back waiting for me to reach out for her. My first reaction was that this was part of a suspicious streak common in skippies. She does it less often with my wife, so I haven't been too worried.

Well, the other day I figured it out - she likes to play chase - alot! Alot!

I'll reach for her. She'll lurch back. I'll wave me hands in a big scary gesture, and make like a monster, coming after her. The next several minutes are spent taking turns chasing each other around the house, culminating in a huge round of hugs and happy dog.

So the other day, I came up with a new game to play with our dogs. I get the tennis balls out, toss them out across the floor. I play soccer with the other dogs while Zim and play chase with each other. The other dogs are happy as I kick the bright yellow balls around the room, scurrying around to catch the balls. Zim is happy as long I can maintain a good game of chase while all this mayhem is going on.

After a good round of this game, the dogs are happy, and Zim happily comes up and sits next to me on the couch, content that her owner finally figured out how to play a good game of chase.

Humidor Cluster

Humidor Cluster

Not much attention is given to clusters in the case mod world. My own Uberschwein project is a cluster, as is this project. I like how he created a compact package for the cluster. Nice job Jeffrey!

Osmos wheel :: roue orbitale - orbital wheel :: GlobeHolding

Osmos wheel :: roue orbitale - orbital wheel :: GlobeHolding

This is great! Hubless wheels. Just look in the gallery. Nothing else to say.

VGA over Cat5

VGA over CAT5

Ever wanted to use structured wiring for other signals? You can use baluns to do it. This link references a vga balun, but there are others. The connectors referenced here aren't cheap, but sometimes that doesn't matter.

I'm thinking of using something similar at home, but I'll probably be hunting down a way to build them myself.

Virtual Bubblewrap - Pop Now! Pop bubble wrap online - since 1996

Virtual Bubblewrap - Pop Now! Pop bubble wrap online - since 1996

I found this one on boingboing.

Stress relief is an important part of System Administration. Here's an alternative to ballistic techniques. :-)

An Introduction to Cluster Ballooning

An Introduction to Cluster Ballooning

I saw this on slashdot.

It only goes to show what you can do with clusters. :-)

My schipperke - a pretty good picture

schipperke_security.jpg (JPEG Image, 648x487 pixels)

Here's a picture of my schipperke, Zim.

David Monaghan took the picture and did the photo manipulation for the final product.

It's surprising difficult to take good pictures of a schipperke, due to the hair. It's an intensely deep black color, with seemingly no highlights of other colors. Outdoor lighting seems to work better than others. Interestingly, David took the picture using a digital camera set for indoor lighting. The picture came out with a blue tint, but was adjusted in post-production. The final picture still has a slight blue tint, but the subtle tones in the fur are nicely visible.

A Joyous Return from a 4-day Weekend

Ok, so here is how it works. I spend a very nice 4-day weekend at home. Since I didn't want to be cheated out of one ounce of the weekend, I didn't end up getting to sleep until 1am. Ok, so Monday morning arrives. I drag my butt out of bed, and somehow manage to navigate to work. How that works is still a mystery.

I arrived at work a 6:45am, or so. I somehow manage to handle a user problem related to a duplicate IP address. I think the same mysterious part of my brain that handled the morning commute is somehow at play here, but I was too tired to ponder it at the time. I manage to catch up on my email, then I checked my calendar for the day.

Egad! I got two all-day meetings with out-of-town visitors. Neither group has a solid agenda for the day, but it's ok with me if it's ok with them. I spend all day bouncing between two all-day meetings. One would think that this little bit of excitement would be enough to vanquish my fatigue...

But no... For some reason the lights seemed slightly dimmer than I remembered. I'm sure it was all in my mind, but this is a pale consolation when you're praying for something that stops you from outright sawing logs right there in the meeting. Don't get me wrong - the topics in the meetings were all important to at least some portion of the attendees, but none of the early-morning material was relevant enough to lift me out of my fog.

Oh ya - I forgot to mention the coffee. How can four 16-ounce coffees not do *something* to remove the stupor?!? It's probably some type of plot. If I drank that many mugs of my home-brewed coffee I'd be bouncing off the walls. As is, it probably only prevented me from falling sound asleep in the meetings.

At any rate, I survived the day, to make it home. But wait! No no - seriously - wait until you hear this. I get home only to find my wife sound asleep. Even the sound of four dogs barking with glee was not enough to wake my wife upon my arrival. So I grabbed a beer and posted this blog entry.

They unbroke the recent copyright bill

Wired News: A Kinder, Gentler Copyright Bill?: "Digital rights groups said while there is still cause for concern in
the bill, it is a vast improvement over the previous version."

Yea! It almost restores your faith in humanity and government to see things like this. This could have been catastrophic to digital media.

ResellerRatings.com

ResellerRatings.com - Customer Reviews of Online Stores and Compare Prices

Most of my purchases are done online, particularly computer hardware. ResellerRatings is an excellent way to confirm the service provided by online electronics vendors.

Hah! You thought this blog was orphaned, didn't you? Go ahead, admit it. You wanted it to be stale, didn't you. It would serve to reinforce your world view of bloggers, wouldn't it? Well, wouldn't it?!? Go ahead, answer the question - wouldn't it!!!!!!

Oh wait... ok...

I feel better now. Ok, take a deep breath...

Ok, I'm definitely better now.