My buddy

This little girl shared my seat with me during the first half of the super bowl. I had to leave at half time because I was far from home and the cigarette smoke was getting to me.

She is a little tiny thing. After being around my hounds she seemed like a delicate china doll baby.

One of my rat terriers woke me up at 3 a.m. this morning barking. I couldn't get back to sleep. As I sat here reading facebook, email and blogs I think I know why he was barking. The wind is picking up out there and will take my welcome sign and bang it against my front porch wall. This always seems to spook the hounds. Well, I can see why.

I did a lot of reading. I read quite a few blogs that are political along with ones that are just plain fun. I try not to get too wrapped up in others' views of what is going on. I like to keep my mind open and try not to get swayed by the rants of others.

I consider myself a liberal but I don't pigeonhole myself into an all or nothing mindset. I apply my own judgement to what I say or believe and do. I also make sure that I read the opinions of others who may or may not be liberals.

It goes back and forth, back and forth. The liberals trashing the conservatives and vice versa. I get real tired of it. Like a yo-yo. Each party making fun or mocking the other. Sometimes it just gets old and I quit reading for a long time. My newspaper is pretty much the same. I read the opinions and just shake my head in disbelief. Are these the ravings and rantings that make up the general public? Please tell me no.

I joined in for a while with my local newspaper. I called myself "The Village Idiot" in a satirical manner. The rants became so ridiculous I signed off one day with "this is pathetic" and I never went back again. I don't read them anymore. Is this what it has come down to? At times I am completely aghast at what I am reading. I ask myself "Is this person for real?" Sometimes it scares me to my core wondering if the general public thinks, acts and believes like what I am reading. And I keep searching high and low for some semblance of sanity. Out there. Somewhere?

More wintry mix

My back yard lamp post from Friday night

We are scheduled to get more of the white stuff today. Over a hundred schools are closed in my surrounding area. I was to meet a C!sc0 rep at one of the schools today. I told him to call me first to see if we were closed. I don't want him driving all the way in from Columbus for no reason.

I do not look forward to shovelling more of the white stuff. It is what it is. I should get myself a new shovel. One with the bent handle that is supposed to be better for you. I was afraid my old flimsy shovel was going to break when I was cleaning off my driveway Sunday morning so I could get my car out.

My brother's test results came back. He had a biopsy taken from a growth on one of his vocal cords. He showed me the picture from the scope on Sunday. He said that one vocal cord was vibrating correctly when he spoke and the other didn't move at all because of the growth. His was benign. They said they got it early enough and he must quit smoking.

He is 52. I think he has been smoking since he was at least 15. If my memory serves me correctly. He overdid the talking on Sunday and had a sore throat on Monday. That was from not speaking for a week after surgery and having a houseful of family and friends Sunday night. I had to leave at half time because the cigarette smoke was so bad. Sister 1949 and I were the only 2 not smoking. That and the little children, I think. It was a smoking chamber in their house that evening. He was smoking. He is looking at getting Aeros. I wish him the best of luck.

I didn't get to see many of the commercials. Sigh. I laughed at the dog collar one with the guy sitting on the bench. But I don't recall the product so it wasn't a "good" commercial. What was Kiss thinking? Bad move. Bad, bad move! Soda pop? Really?!

With the ad about Leno, Winfrey and Letterman sitting on the sofa, I so wanted O'Brien to come up behind them and pour a bucket of Gatorade over their heads or something. Now THAT would have made me laugh!

I had a registry file recover on my system when I turned my computer on today. I am still having some Norton anti-virus issue. Something not working correctly with the live updates. I am not working today, so maybe I will dedicate a few hours to troubleshooting this system with Symantec and their product today. Should be fun! YAY!

Lemon Cake

The cake itself was inedible. Add a ton of lemon icing and all those lemony candies and it passed. Then drink a huge glass of milk. I just ate the icing and the candy and dumped the cake part in the garbage disposal. It reminded me of a heavy, doughy biscuit. Yuck!

Dogs in snow

Who let the dogs out?! Without their harness and leashes? Me! That's who. With this much snow, they didn't go far. I did have one little scare when Slade (the brown one) took the pups for a run down the alley way. Sable was either too lazy, too sore, too tired or too smart to follow. I walked to the edge of my driveway and called them back and they came a-runnin'. Whew.

They had a blast in the snow. I uploaded the videos on Youtube. I think a search for Cheech Chong snow dogs might get you to the videos. I don't know. Yep, it sure does. Four videos taken just this morning. Sorry about the throat clearing in the one video, I had to keep reminding myself to stay quiet. You can also hear the wind howling.

I slept in! I slept in! My daughter woke me up by calling me. She wanted to know if I had taken the pups outside yet. It was 7:45. She wanted me to take videos so she could see them in the snow. The alarm went off at 5:30 since I had forgotten to turn it off for the week-end. I turned that sucker off and said "Aw, hell no!" and went back to sleep. I cannot believe I slept that long.

Then I have had anti-virus problems for a couple of days. I am hoping it is because I installed that new back-up hard drive and Norton just can't figure it out. I hope that is all it is. I ran the auto-fix a few times and it seems to be working for now. I do not look forward to working with tech support on the telephone for hours.

And, I discovered that I DO NOT have a cake mix in my cupboard as I thought. Well, there is no getting my car out and going to the store today. I don't feel like shovelling all that snow this morning. It may take me all day to get the sidewalks and the driveway cleared anyway. I'd hate to call my nephew and ask him to stop at the store and pick up his own birthday cake mix. Good grief!

I can't believe that I am going to attempt to make a cake from scratch! Me! This should be vewy, vewy interesting. If I retain my sense of humor through the ordeal, I'll take pictures and share them. Fat chance, though. I am not a baker. Cook? Definitely! Baker? No.

And by the way, I read his friend's facebook post that tells about them driving in the snow all evening last night playing. My nephew has his new all wheel drive Subaru and they said it goes everywhere! They passed dozens of cars that slid off the road but they had no problems at all. That and my nephew is a very good driver. He has driven all over the country. He loves to just take off and drive and drive and drive.

The snow we have is a very wet and heavy one. While taking the dogs out last night it was eerily quiet. I heard a loud pop and snap and a tree branch fell from my neighbor's tree. The wires going into my house were covered with ice. I think the worst one was my old POTS line, though - so I didn't care.

Step by Step (Yawn)

Let's see if I got these in the right order. Anyways, you probably don't want to know all the details, but here they are. Step by step. Picture by picture.

Knowing which hard drive to buy helps. Since I had taken the old (non working) hard drive out the day before, I knew exactly what I needed. I decided to go with the exact same (since it was on sale).

Opening up the computer and here is what we see inside. Since the blue cables are so easy to see, I will use them to guide. There are 2 (one for each hard disk drive). They provide the power to the disks.

I want to remove and replace the bottom disk in this case. I remove the "P3" cable. This cable attaches the hard disk drive to the Motherboard and this is how the computer reads and writes to the disk.

I also remove the blue (power) cable. They just plug in (easier than a telephone plug).

I had to put the camera down to start the removal of the hard drive because you have to squeeze the green plastic sides in a wee bit to remove the disk. Squeeze them in while pulling the hard disk drive out towards you. I then glided the old hard drive out.

Here is what one of the cables looks like on the end that plugs into the hard drive. It will only go one way so you can't really insert it incorrectly. And, it only fits into one slot on the hard drive so you can't place it in the wrong area.

You want to remove the green plastic side bars off the old hard drive and place them on the new drive. You need a Phillips head screw driver for this task. It is very easy to remove them.

After removing one of the side bars, I compare the two drives side by side. The new disk drive is on the left and the old one is on the right. See how the holes line up the same? They make it very easy.

And you screw the green plastic casing side bars onto the new hard drive. The above photo shows one of the glide bars on the new drive and one is still on the old one.

Then you slide the new drive back into the bay. It glides in easily and clicks when it locks into place.

I re-insert the cables into the new drive, making sure that I push them securely into place.

Here is an "after" picture of the two hard drives. Both of them have a cable that attaches them to the Motherboard (this is the one with several colorful wires attached) and both of them have a thinner blue cable attached (for power).

Here is a picture of all the drives in my system. At the very top is the 3 ½ inch floppy disk drive, below that is my CD-ROM drive burner and below that is my CD/DVD burner. Then the two hard disk drives of course. I ordered this computer in 2003. You will notice that today's models usually do not have a 3 ½ inch floppy disk drive, nor do they have 2 CD-ROM drives, nor do they have 2 hard disk drives (unless you order them that way).

My 4 gig of memory. Still going strong for 7 years! That was an enormous amount of RAM back then.

A newer video card was added later. I can't recall why. I think I just wanted one. Maybe the original one died, I can't recall. I do know that I had to replace the monitor somewhere down the line.

We then close the case back up. I do this slowly and watch to make sure no cables get pinched during the process.

The back of my mammoth system.

Oh, I thought I would post this. Here are Western Digital's instructions. LOL!

I re-attach my computer to all of the cables and power and the monitor and start it up. At the first splash screen, I press and hold my Ctrl key, while pressing "I" one time. This enables me to enter the RAID configuration Utility.

What is this? An error message? When I did this before (in 2005) I had a Dell technician walking me through the process. Sigh. I don't remember what I did here, if I got the same message, so I decide to exit. I'm not giving up. I have another plan.

Are you sure? Hell, yes! Get me out of here!

Windows starts and my task bar tells me that the system does realize that I have installed a new hard drive. Whew. That's encouraging.

Lo and behold. I get the usual icon in my task bar telling me that RAID is degraded. I double-click on the icon to begin the GUI version of RAID configuration utility.

I right-mouse-click on the new drive and am given the option to "Rebuild". Yes, I'll take it!

This will delete any data on the drive. I know that it is brand new, so I am not worried. Right? Right.

Whew. Rebuild has started successfully.

The rebuild is in the process. I remember from years ago that this takes a while. This is NOT the time to work on my computer. This is the time for other stuff. Reading a newspaper or a book or a magazine. Playing with the dogs. Watching TV. Cleaning house. Doing dishes. Something other than the computer.

That is NOT the correct time in the task bar. My battery on the motherboard is probably going bad. Do they still use batteries? I don't know. The life of a battery in CMOS used to be about six years. It was about 6:30 and the rebuild was finished by 10:30.

Sweet. I had a few glitches. My Norton hiccuped once. My Spybot gave me a strange message. I'll have to iron out the wrinkles to see what is what. But, all in all - so far, so good!

And this is what I consider fun! I rarely get to do this anymore. I work with big ol' routers and switches, now. The laptop with the docking station has replaced my PC. I do NOT take apart laptops. This is why I built a Linux server and a web page. I miss the old days when I used Peter Norton's disk utilities. BEFORE they merged with Symantec. BEFORE Windows. Command Line Interface. Sigh.

Edit: Two of the pictures will not open when you click on them. I got a headache trying to figure out why. Maybe tomorrow I'll troubleshoot that. :)

Inside the box

Here is a photo of my two hard drives. There is room for one more on the bottom, there. This is after I removed the cables that connect them to the Motherboard. One cable for power and one for ( a word fails to come to mind) - operations, control? I see the dust has begun to accumulate again. Sigh.

I'm sorry, guys. I can go on and on about computers all day long.

Does this example, help?

I have 2 Hard Disk Drives in my computer. We will call one of them “A” and one of them “B” for this example.

RAID 1. If I write the word “example” and save it to Hard Disk Drive “A”, my computer automatically writes the exact same word “example” to my Hard Disk Drive “B” in the exact same place.

The same example applies if I save a picture to my hard drive. The exact same file is saved to disk B, making me a perfect copy of my entire hard drive. Most would say this is overkill.

It “Mirrors” everything I put on “A” to “B” so that if “A” would ever die or fail, “B” just picks up and I can keep on working with just a short pause or two in my computer. (I did see the pausing on Saturday while I was working on the computer).

In my case, “B” failed, so A is still working and running along. If I want that "safety net" of an exact copy of everything on my original (A) hard disk, I will need to replace B.

Without a net

At first I thought it read "Deathstar"

Actually, this is the "good" drive. It is still one of the original disks from when I purchased my system in 2003. I think it was 2003. It was Dell's top of the line 2nd generation XPS. It was a gaming system. I needed a gaming system like I needed another hole in my head. But, it was easier times back then. It was my first "real" computer that I could buy without limitation and I went all out.

The second hard drive is a Western Digital 500 gig. I took it out and reinserted it hoping to bring it back to life. No such luck. Ah well.

Now, do I buy another 400 gig to mirror the above Hitachi, or do I just go with the TB drives that are almost the same price as the 400/500 gigs? If I do go with the TB, I'll have to nix the RAID 1. It would only mirror what the 400 gig can hold. That would be a huge waste of space. I didn't mind losing 100 gig when I put the 500 gig as my second drive.

I could put the TB drive in - let it mirror and then turn RAID off and remove the 400 gig and use the TB drive. Maybe? Would that work? Then use the 400 gig as an internal backup drive. Decisions, decisions. I'll hash this around for a while.

The Staples store (4 miles away) has a WD 400 gig internal SATA hard drive. I can order one online for $10 cheaper, but would have to wait a week before it arrives. Decisions, decisions.

Meanwhile, my RAID volume icon keeps blinking in my task bar reminding me that I am cruising without a safety net. The icon looks like 2 55 gallon drums. One is white (indicating the good hard drive) and one keeps blinking from dark red to red/yellow. Stop it already!

And you know what? I might just cover that little hole up to see what happens. I hate it when they say "Don't Do This!" Or what? I'll lose all my data? It can't breathe? It will come and murder me while I sleep? What?! Cripes! At least tell me what the consequences are.

Prickly

Empty pods from harvesting Moonflower seeds

I braved the prickly pods of my moonflowers yesterday and harvested all the seeds that they contained. I was hoping that I did it late enough so that I didn't destroy any chance of the plant growing in the area in front of my patio, like I did with them on the side of my house. I will plant seeds this spring and return the moonflowers to the west side of my house.

Speaking of prickly, one of my hard drives failed. Ugh. I have my system setup with Raid 1. One hard drive completely mirrors the other drive. So, if the main drive fails, I have a word for word, byte for byte back up. Overkill ? Perhaps. Waste of space? Perhaps. I also back up new data monthly to an external hard drive. Everything I did in January was backed up Saturday morning. Hmmm. My backup hard drive failed soon after that. I wonder.... probably coincidence. I set this up after I lost a lot of pictures one time. I was making sure this didn't happen again.

As it stands if my main hard drive dies, I can re-install Windows and my programs from the original disks and it might take me a while but slowly put everything back onto my hard drive from my external hard drive. I also take snapshots of my desktop (to see the icons) so that "if" my hard drive does fail, I can remember what programs I actually used on a daily basis. Well, that's the idea anyway.

My sisters and brothers don't back up. Not that I know of. I am not certain they understand the concept. I don't believe they have had a hard drive crash. Maybe one did and he took care of it himself. My one brother understands. He backs up all his email to a CD. It was funny. A couple of weeks ago when I was working on his computer at the fire station, the CD-ROM drive failed. We had to revert to 3 ½ inch floppy drive. All the disks had something on them and I cleaned one off to use it. It has old emails on it. He did not remember what they were. They were mostly old jokes that people had sent him. We got a good laugh at most of them.

I admit that I keep all my emails. But, I don't keep the jokes. Good grief. I keep family and friend correspondence. I don't keep pictures. I save all my pictures to another folder on my hard drive so that I can sort them and back them up monthly.

So, until I purchase another hard drive and install it, things are a little prickly here. Of course, I will physically remove and re-install the "failed" hard drive, just in case it comes back to life on it's own. They do that sometimes you know. Sometimes a cable shakes loose just enough so that it cannot read the hard drive and it "fails". I did just clean the computer out a couple of weeks ago, so I may have loosened a cable then.

If not, a new one in that size costs about $50. Once it is installed I am hoping that my system automatically begins the copying process where it mirrors the "master" drive to the new one. If not, I'll have to sharpen my memory and troubleshooting skills and enter the RAID setup program and do it manually. Fun stuff. This is all and well, I can do that. The trouble is that I did it four years ago or so and I don't recall what steps I took to perform it. And, I believe I had a Dell tech walking me through the procedure. Should be interesting.

Just checked. It was June 2005. I didn't read back into my posts to find this date. I went to the CLI in DOS and looked for the oldest date. CLI (Command Line Interface) and DOS (disk operating system). I worked on computers before Windows. I remember getting new PC's at work and they had this small book that came with them titled Windows 3.0. I was like "Okay, that looks interesting" and put it aside. I started using Windows version 3.1 soon after that. But, before Windows was DOS. And the DOS prompt (C:\). You know with each newer version of Windows the CLI gets harder and harder to use. It is like taking away my safety net, my security blanket. Eh. The times they are a changin'. Gotta roll with it.

Movie update. I watched "The Invention of Lying" and "Surrogates". R Gervais is quite funny, in my book. I laughed out loud when he utilized the pizza boxes and when he opened the door with his long hair. I KNEW when the camera panned on his face who he was going to look like.

Surrogates is your normal B Willis gets smashed up and finally catches the bad guy and wins his scarred and spiritually broken wife back. Really. It used to be in the old films where the hero didn't even get a scratch. Now, they defy gravity get pummeled almost beyond recognition and keep on ticking. Like a Timex watch or the Energizer bunny. I mean really. At least show him taking an aspirin or rubbing his head in pain sometimes. Maybe he could wash the blood off once in a while? All in all, same old "ho hum, ho hum" for Bruce. Same action-hero character, different movie. More money! More money!

Not a big fan of R Pike. I recognized her and when I researched, I saw that she was in "Fracture". Didn't like her in that movie, either. (I really liked the movie, though.) She is not easy for me to look at. Something about her features. As for her acting, I'd like to see a few more movies before writing her off.

Delays

My back yard about 3 years ago

This is sort of what it looks like today. Not so much ice on the tree, though. They have delayed all area schools by 2 hours or so. I am going to have to finish my coffee and get my behind in gear. A delay just makes me drag my feet even more.

Found out late last night that my brother has a spot on his vocal cord about 2-3 mm. Possibly papilloma. His surgery is scheduled for next week to remove it. From what I have been reading, there is a good chance it comes back.

And, on a side note. I always check the pets lost & found. I saw this ad today:

1/21/10 - LOST DOG - male, tan, American bulldog, pink collar, Indian Meadows

He isn't lost. He ran away. Who puts a pink collar on a male dog? Just kidding! Seriously, I hope all lost pets are found by their caring owners.

Super side note: I was actually going to put a pink tutu on my boxer for Halloween. I'm sick I tell ya, sick!

Free to Good Home

Hahahahahahahahaha!

I sh!t you not!

This is what I saw while reading Google News this morning. No lie! I was a tad bit disgusted and I do apologize for sharing but I could not believe how crass this was. Right on the front page of Google for all the world to see.

After the initial shock wore off, all I can do now, is laugh. I don't even have a label for this one. If you go to Google and type in "pepper salmonella" it is the first link to show up. At least for today, it is. Good grief!

I have no words

Double Vision

Cheech is on the left (still wearing his harness) and Chong is on the right. Twice as much fun. Twice as much grief. Twice as much poo... I mean mess.

What a mug!

Slade up close.

My picture taking skills are a bit rusty.

Found it!

It couldn't stay hidden forever.

I flushed it from it's hiding place just this evening.

Pictures should resume after I charge both the batteries.

I watched this video on another blogger site: Earthhomegarden.

Keith Olbermann slams R Limbaugh and P Robertson.

Keith is my new hero.

Finding shelter

The shelter house where we held our summer family reunion

Photo was taken this past week. Since I STILL can't find my camera's battery charger (oh, this gets really old, I know!), I will rely on others' photos. An elderly first cousin passed away and sister 1944 went to the funeral. While visiting, she drove past the shelter house where we held our summer reunion. Whew. I wouldn't like to spend the day there during this time of the year.

I hope that we can shelter the poor lost souls of Haiti during this tragic time.

I mentioned the Colin Powell video. You can watch the video, just google "Colin Powell BBC Haiti" and it will most likely be the first URL listed. He speaks of how organization must be restored before they can just start supplying much needed food and water to the victims. Oh, I don't know. It sounds good on paper, I suppose - but in reality I have to think "bullshit!" Save them, restore the government later! Maybe the greedy, bigger stronger victims will get the supplies, and maybe some will trickle down to the weaker people in need. It is better than waiting until there is a working government in the country.

Is he for real, or is he so full of bureaucratic logic that he cannot relate on a tragedy level? I'm sure he would just say (or think) "The average citizen has no idea what steps need to be taken to obtain order and to properly distribute supplies to the needy. Most of it would be wasted if we just threw it out there at random." I suppose he knows better than I, and I'll try to wrap my head around it. Meanwhile, how many more died today because we didn't drop supplies but waited for a government to be established in the country? I guess that is why he held the position he did and I deal with machines and their catastrophes. :)

I watched "The Hurt Locker". I really like movies like this. I don't know why. It reminded me of "The Kingdom." Yes, there is some gore and blood but I have so much empathy for soldiers and what they go through that this really touches me. Not that I can ever imagine what hell they go through (and personally, I hope I never get to know really).

J Renner looked so familiar. As I looked up his list of movies (and television appearances) I am guessing it must have been the episode of "House" where I remember seeing him.

A Mackie was superb. I have seen a few of the movies he has been in, that is why he was familiar. B Geraghty has also been in a few that I have seen. He plays a very good mentally fragile soldier. I thought I recognized D Morse and R Fiennes.

On a lighter note:
For a funny medieval help desk video, go here. Then tell me if you don't think it would have been funnier if he would have knocked the burning candle over and burned up the book at the end of the video? They missed a great ending with this one, I think.

SNAFU

January of last year. My dogwood covered in ice.

I can't believe I have not posted since Tuesday. What have I been doing? I can barely recall the entire week. I don't know. Time is passing so quickly. For all the griping I do about how long and dull January is, I am always surprised at how quickly it passes.

I heard Colin Powell speak about the situation in Haiti tonight. It is sad that we have to put such a political spin on everything anymore. I am sure he is correct. However, from a victim's standpoint who gives a sh!t about the government and how control needs to be in place to safeguard against chaos. The supply teams are looking out for the people of Haiti's best interest so that the greedy government officials don't take all the supplies and keep it all for themselves. I can imagine that the people of Haiti are just saying "Give me the food and water NOW! Worry about the greedy government officials later!"

I do understand that folks like Mr. Powell know much more about this sort of disaster relief than I do but it certainly looks like the rich kid coming in to say "It's my football and we will play the game the way I want to play with my rules, or I am going to take my football and go home." In other words, we will give you supplies and aid, but on our terms. We don't want you ignorant sub-humans to waste it. We try to force other countries to see things the way we see them. It just doesn't work that way. Not without a lot of friction. We continue to shove our way (the best way, I'm sure!) down their throats. Sigh. Same old, same old.

I repeat. I stand behind our country helping Haiti. I also understand what our government is trying to do (after listening to Mr. Powell). I am just imagining what the victims of this disaster and other countries might be thinking about the United States and our way of policing our efforts.

Once bitten

Don't worry. They didn't get it again. This is just a very close up view of the remote from last week when they chewed it good. Click on the picture. Go ahead. It's huge.

I can't help but be horrified by the news of the earthquake in Haiti. The other half of the island is Dominican Republic. This is NOT where my nephew is. He is a few islands over on the island of Dominica. I had a dream about an earthquake the other night. Except it was a tree falling on my house, which was not really my house. Dreams are strange.

It was the big pine tree behind my house. The wind always makes me think it is going to fall. In the dream I just remember the dirt falling on my face, but I was not hurt one bit.

I think it was after the recent quake in California.

Well, I can imagine the people who believe the end is near are really having their heyday.

I was really disturbed listening to this one guy on Skype they were interviewing talking about his ride home, seeing only a woman's head protruding out from under a bunch of concrete, he said there was blood coming from her eyes, nose and mouth. He didn't say he stopped. He didn't say he stopped to see if there was anyone alive that he could help. He said he was sure she was dead. It was shortly after that his video froze. I'd cut him off, too. The louse.

A dirty picture

My nephew gave me some canned air and monitor wipes for Christmas. I put them to good use over the long week-end. I did some cleaning. My computer really needed it. Cripes!

My Honda dealership took care of my low tire pressure indicator today and put my new plates on the car. They were out of keys, so they ordered some and I'll have to go back. They didn't charge me a dime for the other stuff. Very nice.

I have a lot less anxiety to come home to now that the pups are caged while I am gone. Or, crated. Whatever. However, they did manage to get my glasses one more time and I paid a visit to my eye doctor again today to get new tips put on again. They laughed.

I had a migraine all day Sunday. I slept most of the day away. Didn't get much done other than taking the dogs out to do their business every 3 or 4 hours. Then, I slept all night. Wow. Today all I needed was the usual generic acetaminophen. I have not switched back to Advil (or ibuprofin) since my surgery, I'll stick with acetaminophen for a while. Until it doesn't work anymore.

I read an article today about puppy mills and it just made me sick to my stomach. Please spread the word around to all your friends and families.

Stop puppymills.

Stop puppyfarms.

Do not buy from pet shops.

Do not buy from the Amish.

So many people (tourists) believe the Amish to be a fine, peaceful and admirable group of people. That may be so in most cases, but they do not believe in kindness to animals. They are a stern and simple people. They do not have room for anything they (or their beliefs) consider excessive. Animals are put on the earth to serve mankind (they say this comes from the Bible, I don't know) and that if the animal is no longer useful, it can be discarded or destroyed.

I am not knocking their way of living. To each their own. I just want to help spread the word so that many people do not mistakenly purchase a puppy from an Amish puppy mill thinking that this critter was well taken care of by these peaceful and loving people.

Sigh. NOW I need the acetaminophen.

My hand

I was dealt this hand in Euchre last night

The opponent on my right dealt the cards. She turned up an Ace of clubs. I passed. Her partner passed. My partner passed. I held my breath. She turned it down. I called it Spades and said "alone!" Then I lay down the hand you see above. Once in a lifetime!

It didn't help me one bit. My partner and I lost all rounds of the game. Even after getting 4 points from that hand. I'm very rusty. Oh well.

I slept in until 8:30 this morning and I feel like crap. The dogs must have thought I died since I was not up and about at 4:30 or 5:00 to let them out. The headache is raging. I drank ginger ale so it is not a hangover.

Disruption of sleep pattern. But hey, what am I supposed to do? Stay home every night? Find friends that just want to get together during the daytime? Hardly. I like my down time, but I need to socialize once in a while, too. And, it was not a late night. I was in bed by midnight.

Bring it on. I've got the sumatriptan.

I got in my car to drive home. Most of you know that the newer model cars have an indicator light for when a tire has low air pressure. Mine was lit. It figures. It was 7 ° Fahrenheit outside. I ignored it. I almost made it home when after making a sharp left turn, I heard a god-awful noise coming from the underside of my car. WTF? It is 11:30 p.m., cold as the dickens and I have to stop and investigate. Sigh. Fortunately it was only frozen ice buildup on my splash guards that were rubbing against the tire. I kicked it off and all was quiet again. That stupid yellow/amber low pressure light remained on, though. Grrrr.

Have Mercy

Sunday the 3rd, my daughter and I had a dinner to go to. An early "surprise" birthday party for the nephew who is going to school in Dominica. He leaves tomorrow to return. My daughter and I have become very good at putting stuff out of the dogs' reach. They are getting desperate.

For the (almost) six months that we have had the (newer) pups, not one time did they touch the cable remote. We returned from the dinner to find this. The next day I went to our cable provider and set the remote on the desk. "Have mercy" I said. She laughed, chucked the remote into a boot barrel next to her station and said "It happens all the time."

She promptly gave me a new one, said it would be $10 and she would add it to my next month's bill. I said "What if it happens again?" She said "Still $10."

Mercy me! Folks at work got a good chuckle out of seeing the remote. I did not "investigate" to see who pooped out the missing buttons on the remote. It is very cold outside and it is all I can do to stand out there with them while they do their business, I certainly am not going to go poking around in it. My neighbors already think I am nuts.

I left the cable office and promptly went to the farm feed store and purchased two medium sized crates for my rat terriers. They are set up in my living room. The boxer will need a special order crate made of sturdier steel that I will get online. He would chew the flimsy store bought ones up in no time. With the pups locked up, I may not need one for the boxer. Time will tell.

The rat terriers get very vocal when I come home after they have been in the crates for a few hours. When one began to pee on my carpet he promptly was placed inside his crate. He curled up and did not make a sound. After about 20 minutes I took him outside.

This should have been done long ago, I know. I have read where they also feel much safer with a "crate" and it increases their self esteem. I hope so.

I will continue to plod along. I signed up for this job, I'll see it through.

Survey says...

So there I was at work reading e-mail and I received the above survey message from the manufacturer of one of our applications. Secretly I want a Kindle, but I am not certain if I would use it all that much. I think if I were to use public transportation like the train and had a long commute, it would be a great idea.

So, when I saw the option "Who cares?" I figured this was the one for me. Then, I thought again. Don't we need to use less paper in the office and at home? Did I really care or was I just in it for the free Kindle? So, I decided to view the results.

Hmmm. I thought a lot more people would have chosen "Who cares?" I didn't vote. I don't want a free Kindle at the risk of receiving a ton of junk mail that might go with participating in the survey. Besides. Who follows up on these things? Do people really get the item?

Have you ever won anything this way?

Save yourself a lot of grief and pass on the following movies:

"Funny People" with A Sandler and S Rogen. Why do I keep watching movies with L Mann in them? I need my head examined. I need to remember that she is in her husband's movies and that they are very degrading to women. I am very disgusted with A Sandler. He has two daughters and he doles out crap like this? Can anyone say Casey Johnson and Paris Hilton? Too much money from the fame of their parents and no self respect. L Mann also has two daughters. I cannot say much about Rogen. You would almost expect low, vulgar movies from him. He oozes vulgarity. No more.

"Land of the Lost" with W Ferrel. Where were the kids? There were kids in the television show. Aren't kids funny? I did not like Chaka at all, or the weird Will Stanton character. I thought that the monkey's name was "Stink" but I realize the entire show just "stinks".

My daughter watched "The Goods" and told me to pass on it. I did, so I have no comment.

I must return to Turner Classic Movies. With emphasis on the "class".

Little furry heads

Somebody got me a computer game for Christmas. I am addicted. Yep. Like I needed another addiction. To get points you make at least 3 fuzzy heads of the same color in a row. I would drag the lime green one down to match 3 green ones in a row. The entire row moves. There is more to it, after you play for a while. You get locked (where the row won't move) you get big fuzzy balls that move two rows at once and a lot more. So, I've been doing that on the computer instead of other stuff. Heh.

I did get two of the main goals done over the holiday week-end. I did not go anywhere on New Years eve or day. I ventured out on Saturday with my daughter to pick up her big Christmas gift. Our wireless provider would not let us upgrade her phone until January 2nd, so she had to wait a week. She wanted the Droid. It is a lot of phone, I want to tell you. She had one of the Blackberry flavors, prior. In March I may move to a smart phone.

One goal was to clean up the basement clutter - done. The other was to get my non-working dryer out of the laundry room and into the empty side of the basement, then to get my spare dryer out of my garage, down the sidewalk, up onto the back porch, inside the back door, down the basement steps and into the laundry room and hooked up. Done. Did it. All by myself.

I am a wee bit sore, but not much. I did break off one of the legs, but I used shims to level the dryer off. The hardest part was getting the unit into the back door. I had to leave my house from the front door and push it in from outside. In single digit weather! The funny part was walking the dryer down my sidewalk (it really sounded to me like a science fiction monster walking around) at 10:00 a.m. on New Years' day hoping beyond hope that none of my neighbors had a raging hangover and I was waking them up. LOL!

I also play the time game. That is where I start the dryer walking down the sidewalk and get it into the house before any "good Samaritan" neighbor sees me and comes over to help me. Now, most folks wouldn't have to worry a lick about this issue, but I have great neighbors. I was fortunate that on one side are two elderly widowed ladies and I don't think the guy on the other side was home this week-end. Whew. Made it into the house without incident.

Okay. The truth is I have a very difficult time asking for or accepting help. There. I said it. I am going to be 50 this year. I ain't changing now. Well, maybe a little.

Then there is sister 1944. She yells at me. Well, if you can YELL in e-mail. She, her husband and our oldest brother are retired. She keeps telling me to let them know what I want done and they will come down and do it. Big breath. Okay, if I am going to change, I will ask them to rip up my carpet and put a floating floor in my living room come this spring. Right? Just bite the bullet and ask for help. Maybe get a couple of other family members involved and supply food and beverage for all. The hounds will have to be boarded for that week-end, that is for certain. Get them out of the way. Well, it is a plan.

In the mean time, I am getting caught up on my clothes washing and will probably go back to playing my furry head game during this cold snap here in Ohio. Happy New Year y'uns guys. Some co-workers and I debated what "y'uns" meant back in the 80's when I moved to Virginia. Of course they say "y'all" there. As in "you all". We in the eastern part of Ohio always said "y'uns", as observed by my Virginian co-workers who were teasing me one day and I said "Y'uns guys!" Well, that started it. As close as we could come was "you ones". Huh? Maybe. It helped having a Pittsburgh native in the work group. Well, we didn't have the Internet back then, but there is a lot about that phrase out there on the info highway nowadays. Looks to be a Pennsylvanian dialect.