Things done
( Read more... )

Dog occurrances( Read more... )

Things undone ( Read more... )

The card machine at the Coop has taken to asking questions while you wait for shopping to be scanned.

Some of these questions I was heartily in favour of , for example:
"Did you find everything you were looking for" is an excellent question for a supermarket to be asking that has been known to run out of bread, milk, lemons, bananas,tinned sardines etc entirely by 6pm in the evening.

I can even cope with questions like "do our ethics make it more likely that you will shop at the Coop' because although there is an obvious quibble over putting ALL the ethics into one giant pot, and I would definitely like to add footnotes like "if you are that ethical how come none of the meat in your fridge is either free range or organic" and "dubious about the concept of ethical supermarket" and even "my personal ethics prefer THESE bananas" ... yet on the whole, I can probably say a generalised 'yes' to the idea of ethics in food shopping.

I'm not sure about the "were the staff neat and clean" type question which seem a bit intrusive, but I can honestly answer yes to all of those as they are a lot cleaner and neater than me with my wellies and post-dog-walk birdsnest hair.

Today's question: "Is it good that we support Variety Club" though - I have no yes no answer to that. My first reaction is : What the f*ck is Variety Club? And in what sense 'support'? Do they mean they currently fund it, whatever it is, or are they asking if they should fund it, or is this 'support' more in the sense that they take all Coop employees down to cheer it on Saturday afternoons?

Despite the lure of being asked for an opinion - with buttons to press that went beep! I had to ignore it. SO HARD!

Mollydog has been sent home with no bandages today.

You can still see bone and a big screw, so it's a bit squicky. She has strict instructions not to lick it. I have some antibiotic cream to plaster on at regular intervals to reduce the likelihood of damage if she does get a crafty lick in. I keep hearing cats licking themselves and whipping round to check it isn't her.

Very difficult to put a cone on a greyhound that is large enough to stop it licking the bottom of a back leg, given length of neck, nose, legs, remarkable flexibility of entire dog, etc.

Someone called to enquire about surrendering an old working labrador.  The dog is now 13, the owner is 90.  The owner bought the dog as a working retriever to take out hunting.  Owner was 81 at the time! 

There is a huge monumental governmental project afoot to capture huge amounts of data about anyone who flies outside the UK and submit it to a Monstrous Central database.   There are working parties and coordinators and guidelines and monstrous great teams of highly paid and (I hope) highly trained people working on this. 

But of course, someone has to actually collect that data from the passengers, ensure it is captured and stored  and sent to the Monstrous Database in a timely manner.  That task, for one small airline, is done by me and my airline contact, Steve.

I am somewhat concerned that although we have received an absolute DELUGE of materials, much of it explaining concepts in incredible detail (want a full specification for SFTP...?) or giving brain-numbing descriptions of templates -  we haven't had what I would have thought was the basics.

 Like, 'don't send this data in plaintext  email' - if I had to point out that wasn't a good move, then someone, at some airline somewhere has probably not said it.    And nothing on how the data is to be stored at all, or whether we are supposed to delete it after they have flown...

Apparently the longterm plan is for the system eventually to be responsive: the airline will send off all its passenger data half an hour before the flight takes off, then the Mighty Arm of the State will reply to say who should, and should not, be allowed to fly.  This will happen both in and outbound, so it's possible that someone might fly out of the country, then find that a database glitch makes it impossible for them to get back in.

The potential for mistakes and chaos there strikes me as truly hair raising. 

Oh yeah, and the other thing is, we have to do this for flights to France, but not flights to Ireland. It's supposed to be about security and terrorism, but I'm not entirely clear why Dublin is less of a likely source of terrorists than Grenoble.  Am imagining crack squads of terrorists on skis swooping from the Alps. 

 In case anyone was wondering, I bought this hat and would recommend the seller for anyone seeking an affordable and well made waterproof hat.   It's just a tad loose, but not enough to blow off (and if it's very windy, I can always tuck my hair inside it to wedge it. ) 

Actually, given the prices I'm quite tempted to buy the plait detail one and the trilby as well.   And for that matter, I'm kind of in love with this straw hat  and also with this one. 

But no.  Nobody needs that many hats.  Do they?  Also, if I buy sunhats it will rain non-stop for the next 3 years, I know it will. 

I devised for the Oldies club a system for sending details about dogs to the charity.  It isn't vastly sophisticated, but it asks a bunch of important questions about each dog, logs the result into a database, sends a notification to the relevant person depending on what options were selected, and produces reports which are integrated into the user management system for the website so that only the appropriate people see them.  

I was modestly proud of it, but for some reason there was a lack of keenness from a number of people to use or depend on it, even though it was considerably more reliable than email, not being subject to the whims of spam filtering, and much easier to refer to than notes from a phone conversation.

Recently I discovered why this was.  The interface I created displays the most important bits of info, and allows you to click on the dog's name to see the rest of the details that relate to him.  The link on the name is indicated by the name being blue, bold, underlined, and producing a 'hand' icon on mouseover in the traditional manner.  I didnt' think it needed more explanation than that, though I did stick a line at the top saying 'click dogs name to view'

But no, several people did not realise that a blue, underlined, piece of text that does 'hand on mouseover' was a link.  They never clicked on the name, so did not realise that the form captured every detail they might require.  Nor did they read the top text, they only scanned it, missing my vital note about the name.   These are not stupid people, nor particularly web-unsavvy ones.  They just didn't know about something that I thought was standard.

The lesson here is that default link formatting is no longer obviously interactive to many web users.  I think I should have made it look like a button, or included an extra [view full details] or something.    Interesting. 

Just taken Mollydog in for rebandaging again, and she has come back with toes visible on all 4 feet!    I haven't seen the toes on the affected leg since August.   At long last she is no longer a partial Pobble*. 

She's supposed to start putting weight on it now, but persuading her to do that when the leg is so wasted is not that easy.  At the moment she's basically using it only as a parking brake. 

* does anyone remember a children's book in which the Pobble sets out to reclaim his toes? I'm sure I remember one quite clearly, but Amazon knows it not. 

My sister has decided that she can't let sleeping myths lie, but must investigate the truth behind the king of Barbados.

I know clarienne  & louisedennis  (and perhaps others?) have recently researched their family history - can you advise on which websites are particularly useful, or which would be worth paying for access? So far as we know, she would be looking at records for Kent, Essex and London. 

I have told her that I don't want to know unless they turn out to be at least as strange and unlikely as the myths, but have apparently been assigned the job of creating an illustrated family tree, featuring cartoon deathbed scenes...

When I am reading I have this horrible habit of being caught by incidental detail, and thinking 'hang on, that's wrong, isn't it'? My brain then hares off after that detail and loses the plot.

Last time I read through A Song of Ice and Fire, I was taken by the remarkable fatness of Samwell Tarly, which persists despite military training and rations, forced marches, seasickness, and lack of money.

This time I read it, I noted that Ser Wylis Manderly is apparently stricken by the same remarkable problem: despite the stresses and strains of riding to war, battle, being taken and held prisoner for some considerable while in a situation where the prisoners are driven to cannibalism, he's *still* fat when released. How odd.

I also wondered about Ser Ilyn Payne and Victarion's tongueless bedwench. Neither of them is able to talk at all, because their tongues have been removed. Yet, surely, the ability to speak is not entirely tongue-based? Admittedly it is hard to pretend you don't have a tongue, but I reckon that quite a few consonants are shaped entirely by the lips, and removing the tongue surely would not damage the vocal chords? It would certainly render someone hard to understand, but surely not completely silent...?

A real Happy Potter:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/harry-potter/6402124/Real-life-Harry-Potter-taunted-about-his-name.html

I guess Real Ron Weasleys and Hermione Grangers are less likely?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6879295.ece

I did two exchange trips when I was of that age, one to France and one to Germany.   The German one was pretty grim, but that was because my father was dying of cancer at the time so I was probably not feeling particularly open to new cultures, and even that one, I have some brilliant memories of.  I am pretty sure that both did more for my language skills and general independence and confidence than any amount of classroom teaching.

Why would anyone want to formalise something so effective and undangerous, particularly when that is likely to crush the whole idea except for the most well-prepared and determined of families?   And surely, the criminal records check people are already overloaded and checks are taking ages...?

I expect the next move will be CRB checks for pregnant women and their partners.  

( garden stuff ) ( The family 'History' bit - I think more fun than actual family history and certainly less work.  )

 On 30th September I bought 2.5 kilos of dried tripe, and the box is now almost empty. 

I think my firm principles have been slipping...   Though admittedly, I did have 3 dogs nomming tripe with gusto for a week and a half rather than just 2.   And 2.5 kilos in  just over 2 weeks is still a *small* reduction over the period of Maximum Tripe Extravagance back in June. 

I'm keeping a pair of old secateurs in the box for tripe-chopping-up purposes. 

I signed for an SATA hard disk, which was delivered by the postman.  On the outside of the box, it said 'please check for damage BEFORE signing.

So far as I am aware, the only way to be sure if a hard disk is undamaged is to install it.  Am I really supposed to keep the postman hanging around while I do this...?

Did a home visit last week for another rescue -  young family with a 2 year old little girl,  who wanted to adopt a young greyhound x whippet.   I took Az, who is the same mix (though of course a lot older!) to check them out.  

I was a little cautious because 2 is pretty young, after all,  a greyhound cross is not a small dog, and a youngish adult is going to be boingy - and this dog had not had the best of starts in life either (neglect and mange) though she had been in foster for a while and was used to children. 

The little girl turned out to be beautifully socialised with dogs: loved Az, but  behaved better than many adults: approached gently, knew she wasn't supposed to shout (though it was hard!)  and didn't pester him.  Very cute moment when she offered him the bed her toy dog sleeps in: it was rather small, but the thought was there!   Parents were pleasingly robust too: I pointed out that with a largish dog and a small child probably at some point there would be a 'tail in face' or 'child knocked over' incident, and they weren't at all bothered.  Apparently a friend's springer has already been there and done that, and both parties survived. 

I just heard they took their new dog home yesterday: I hope it will be the start of a wonderful friendship. 

On the telly, a painter (forger John Myatt, a man of enormous skill)  is trying to paint a portrait of John Cleese in the style of Matisse. He can't get it right and keeps overpainting the face and doing it again.

This makes me feel so much better!  I've been there soooo many times.  Well, not John Cleese in the style of Matisse.  But the whole 'paint is NOT COOPERATING' struggle is so familiar.

I do wish there was some way to say to people who buy GSD and german shepherd cross pups: in 10 years time you may want to rehome this dog, please, PLEASE consider small floofy dog such as Westie, Yorkie or Bichon instead... 

And for that matter to too many people with all sorts of dogs:
"OK, you may have no desire to exercise, own no cats, horses, ducks, chickens, rabbits or even other dogs, but if you keep your dog away from other members of its species for 10 years, give it no guidance on how to walk on the lead, off the lead, or interact with other species, quite apart from the whole "what kind of a life is that" aspect,  when you phone us to say you are going into a nursing home or moving to New Zealand, finding someone else to look after it it is going to be a nightmare. Oh yeah, and vaccinations would be nice.  The yearly sort, not the sort you do once and then never get round to again... "

Weeping down the phone at that stage is all very well, but ineffective. A more productive use of time would have been some lessons and socialisation at an early stage, and regular booster shots.   

I am also boggled by the existence of dog owners who cannot identify a) if a dog has a penis and b) whether an adult male dog has testicles or not.