Category: General

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It’s amazing how late you sleep without heavy equipment

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The construction going on in the wash near my home is taking a bit of a toll.

In addition to the dust, and that I can’t take the dogs for walks after 7am or before 6pm usually I just noticed that I really sleep late on Sundays.

Sunday is the only day when the steam-shovels and bulldozers aren’t rumbling and growling to life first thing in the morning. The noise of work crews arriving and heavy diesel engines firing up usually starts sometime around 6:30am

My morning coffee is then accompanied with shouts and the ground vibrating as the steam-shovels are wrangled into place for their days work.

It’s easy to forget how quiet and peaceful the mountain is with all the construction.

I will say the crew is doing their best to not be terribly obnoxious but when you have 2 large steam-shovels (an anachronistic term!) at least one bulldozer, a couple of backhoes, and several skip-loaders plus at least 3 large water tankers running up & down a little over 1.5 mile stretch of work area…

Well it’s going to be noisy.

Add to that the intermittent sounds of wood chippers and well you might as well be right in the middle of Manhattan.

It’s on Sunday when we all take a sigh of relief. This morning I woke up late, but it was to the sound of birds in the trees and leaves rustling in a gentle breeze.

Monday it starts all over again. I’m planning to be out of the house for the day and hopefully in the cacophony of a Starbucks before the steam-shovels start moving.

Yes, I still have cash on account at Starbucks. I was disappointed that Starbucks broke with their traditional stance of neutrality over the gun debate. My inclination is to use up the remainder of the money on account and not renew. Its’ not about guns per-se but about Starbucks moving away from their neutral stance on the matter. So I’ll make the decision about continuing to do business with them when the account runs dry.

Until then, they’ll be serving me my damn cafe mocha!

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As if anyone was wondering.

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We made it official on Tuesday.

We adopted the R dog. He seems to like the place and the toys.

On thing that is very nice is that while the S dog tends to leave toys all over the place, the R dog tends to collect them into one place.

Does anyone notice an agreeable symmetry?

Training continues. Walks are less of an ordeal for all of us. The R dog is stronger, his paw pads are toughening up and he’s less mindful of some of the new scents.

He’s trying very hard to please. He still doesn’t like to go out in the back yard without the whole pack being in attendance. This will present a challenge in the wintertime when I’m not going to feel like hiking in the backyard at -20F

In general he seems happy. His elbows are healing too. He had rough skin patches that dogs get from spending too much time on concrete and not enough time on grass, dirt, or other softer more natural surfaces.

As part of the adoption we found out a lot of other stuff we didn’t know about him and that knowledge is playing into who he is and how we train him.

The other half is happy again and enjoys being greeted with a happy woof.

While I’ve been essentially the soccer mom, handling the day to day issues of walks, feeding, poo patrol, and training. The other half is getting to be “The Fun One”.

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Which isn’t to say that the R dog and I don’t have a connection it’s just that I’m not always FUN!

It is nice to come out of the shower and have both dogs guarding me. Even if that means that I have to step over them to get out of the bathroom.

10 Seconds of preaching.

I know that puppies & kittens are cute and cuddly and that you don’t have to undo someone else’s mistakes. But please, before you decide on buying that puppy or kitten in the window, check out your local animal shelter. Contact a rescue organization for the breed of dog or cat that you’re interested in.

There are a lot of sweet, well behaved, and honestly deserving dogs & cats who need good homes.

End of preaching

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The last 2 dogs came from the animal shelter. The R dog came from a retriever rescue. We’re members of that rescue and as soon as the R dog is fully integrated and settled in our household,  we’ll be opening our doors to another homeless dog.

That one we will be fostering, training, and loving, and then we’ll pass him or her on to another loving home.

At least that’s the plan…

But I’m a big ‘ol softie when it comes to animals.

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About Guns

I’ve been participating in a series of discussions with other folks about the current gun legislation. As a result I’ve firmed up some of my own ideas about what’s reasonable and what’s not.

Background Checks

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I think background checks are reasonable. In point of fact we’ve had laws on the books regarding background checks for a long time. So the current layer of legalese coming out of Washington is nothing particularly new. It’s probably not going to be enforced any better than the previous laws.

That being said, I agree with background checks. I wish they were efficient and enforced.

With the responsibility of the government to perform background checks also comes this one…

The records about why people are being denied guns should have to be cleaned up too. Why should someone be able to buy a gun in one state, passing that states background check and not be able to buy a gun in an adjacent state?

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Cosmetic Gun Bans

I absolutely and categorically am opposed to banning a particular gun because of it’s cosmetics. If we see fit to ban a particular kind of gun, then we must ban that gun in it’s entirety. Every version!

It is irrational to ban one model because it’s black and comes with a 20 round magazine, and yet continue to allow the Green version with a 10 round magazine to be sold.

The rate of fire for both weapons is the same. Someone sufficiently clever could take two 10 round magazines and make a 20 round magazine out of them.

Such a magazine would only have to work once if that person was going to do something horrific like shooting up a mall or theater.

Consistent Laws from State to State

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The law from state to state should be consistent. A legal gun owner shouldn’t have to fear being arrested in one state for owning or transporting a weapon that was not illegal in an adjacent state.

There is no situation where it makes any sense to have a particular gun legal in one state and illegal in the next. It’s time to do away with individual state regulations. If we’re imposing a magazine limit it should be the same in all states. If we’re saying a model of gun shouldn’t be sold in MA or CA then that model shouldn’t be sold in the other 48 states either.

Gun ownership laws should be the same too. 18 years old or 21 years old? Must a gun be stored in a safe? Must a gun have a trigger lock? How much Ammunition is too much? Who can purchase ammunition? Do ammunition sales need to be tracked? What about reloading supplies?

These are all questions that should be asked and addressed.

All lawmakers involved in Gun Legislation should be required to attend Instructional classes on guns and have mandatory range time.

To me this is such a no-brainer. Right now we have people making decisions about gun laws that have no fucking clue how a gun works, or even the proper nomenclature.

How can these people make informed legal decisions when they don’t know what they’re talking about in the first place?

I’ve actually gotten in the habit of asking the more vehement of anti gun people if they’ve ever actually been out to a firing range. it’s amazing how many people storm off in a huff when confronted with that question.

At least our legislators should have the courtesy to know what they’re talking about before deciding our fate.

I feel exactly the same way about all internet legislation. Most of the politicians making internet laws have no clue what they’re talking about or the levels which their laws can be used to harm innocent people. That’s another blog entry.

Lets stop making emotionally based laws and rules.

Emotion serves no purpose in law. Lets dispassionately discuss the issue of gun control, or gay marriage, or taxes, or whatever.

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Logic and reason should be our watchwords. Equal application of principals should be our guide not our jailer for all law. And for goodness sake lets allow some intelligence and latitude when we come upon a situation where the law doesn’t quite fit.

Zero Tolerance policies are moronic on their face.

The best example I can think of that demonstrates the need for reason and latitude in laws and rules is this.

A child finds a bullet at his or her school. They bring the bullet to their teacher and get suspended because of a zero tolerance policy.

The child did essentially the right thing but was punished for doing so. Will that child do the right thing the next time?

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If we continue to pursue more and more restrictive laws or so called Zero Tolerance laws, we will create a country where no-one will ever take responsibility to do the right thing because we’ll all be too concerned with the punishment that comes from doing 
the right thing.

That’s not what made our country great.

What makes us great and perhaps unique is that we’ve always allowed common sense to guide us and we’ve generally rewarded not punished people for getting involved or taking action when the situation demanded it.

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Day 3 of the flood control construction

This is probably going to drive me completely insane. Eight weeks of this kind of noise and rumbling???? 

Maybe I’m just a little grouchy. I know I’m totally random in thinking today. There’s no controlling my errant mind.

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I didn’t get much sleep last night. I ate something that I swore was an Alien trying to get out.

One thing I can say is that death by Alien would have been more humane.

I began to wonder if I was reenacting the bathroom scene from Dreamcatcher. 

That scene will make you think twice about a lot of things, especially at 3am.

I’m still feeling like crap. (Yeah, I said it)

I couldn’t sleep late because of the construction.

7:30 am Horns blaring, crane starts moving, ground starts rumbling.

7:32 am I haul my sore ass out of bed and stumble toward the coffee machine. I pause, wondering if this is a good idea, say screw it choke down my morning vitamins and go for it.

7:35 am gut not reacting to the coffee. Cool must have passed through.

7:45 am Second cup of coffee

7:47 am go to my desk try to write some shit… Mind wandering, software update notification, New IOS 7available. Start download try to write more.

… what was I doing?

Why is it 11:00am? Why does my neck hurt? Must have Zoned out. Download failed, restarting, go get shower warm water feels good.

11:30 clean, warm, hungry, more coffee.

12:30 computer bitching about iPad purchases and need to xfer them to computer prior to update. What purchases? iPad says sync completed. Unplug iPad, replug iPad, resync, same error… too tired to deal with this…

Don’t care, if purchased I can re-download whatever the hell it was. Command system to update!

Waiting…

Kinda like Microsoft Bing. Google always presents only news items from communist liberal sources. Bing seems to be better balanced. God I hate systems that try to be too helpful but above all I’m not sure I like systems that filter what they show me. Google doesn’t know me but seems to think it does.

Wonder where those tracking cookies are stored? Think about flushing all cookies everywhere on system. Not up to it… too many possible ways to screw that up and I’m not entirely sure I’ve got all the passwords that may be stored.

iPad cooking… Software update in progress, taking along time, cooking rice in kitchen, liking the iTunes radio smooth jazz is good. Update complete, rice not.

IOS7 looks pretty good.

Rice finished… Lunch! Followed by going to bed cause I’m feeling really bad again.

Hope your day is better than mine.

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It’s funny how heartbreak affects us.

When we lost the B dog in July I was mostly quiet about it. I was hurting and sad but I focused on the S dog and worked hard to get his life re-arranged to a “New” normal.

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I guess I was a little too focused on him.

So much so that I didn’t notice how the heartbreak was affecting the other human in this house.

As I posted there’s a foster dog in the house.

While I’ve been dealing with the observations of the foster dog, (Things like obsessive behavior, aggression, eating, hip problems, sore feet, general interactions with the world, and stress level brought on by a new environment) I’ve also been observing the human.

I’m sad to say I really had missed how sad that other human was over the loss of the B dog. 

Now with the foster dog in the house it’s all about the fostering. The other human will talk endlessly about the fostering program, the needs of the dog, the upcoming vet visit and 10,000 little issues, all surrounding the dog. 

What I’m noticing is that the other human seems to be, in my opinion rushing things. Yes, the foster dog needs attention and care. I’m not implying that he doesn’t. But he also needs time to breathe, to get his bearings, to relax and sniff the air. 

Hell, the poor guy isn’t even responding to his “given” name (I personally think there’s a language barrier. His former owners were Asian and probably spoke their native language at home. Perfectly reasonable and normal!) it’s obvious that this dog has been worked with and knows how to interact with humans. He’s house broken and very polite when he’s inside the house.

The human on the other hand is being obsessive about the dog. After reading the humans initial report about the dog, which got sent to the rescue people I’m thinking that I’m going to have to start writing reports from a more clinical perspective.

It’s funny, I’m actually more concerned about training the human, than training the dog.