RobsPages

Jen is pretty obsessed with dancing shows. During ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ they have been promoting a new game-show called ‘Don’t Forget the Lyrics’ which appealed to us because its a game show about remembering the words to songs and singing in public. How cool is that?

In practice, its more painful to watch than the premise would suggest and it has nothing to do with the contestants.

The set-up is this: you get a ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ money/score board and helper options, a Jeopardy-style category selector and the most awfully timed commercial breaks this side of ‘Deal or No Deal.’ The contestant starts to sing the song they selected and at some point during the song, the band stops playing (think musical chairs), the studio is silent and instead of the next line of the song you see hang-man style ______ to indicate what words should be there. The game is to correctly fill in the blanks.

I am not sure what dumbass executive thought that making viewers wait through a commercial break to see if the very. first. question. turns out correct would be endearing - it is not. The ‘drama’ they try to induce with strategically placed breaks makes me want to change the channel. Of course this is true for all of the ‘reality’ based nonsense on the air at the moment.

Maybe once Tivo has a couple in memory and we can fast forward through that nonsense I’ll be able to sit through it, we’ll see.

Rock is dead they said. Long live rock.

Ok, enough lyrical cliches, here’s the meat:

My in-car mp3 player was acting all wonky on me for the past week and I reached my breaking point. Every time I start the car, instead of picking up where it left off, it always (always) starts playing Sixpence None The Richer’s ‘There She Goes.’ Great tune, but 4 times a day is a bit much. Then it starts skipping and the buttons are unresponsive. Next weekend I’ll take the drive out, flash the operating system and update the files and see if that helps.

In the meantime I am loathed to listen to FM radio for my 45 minute commute. I found a decent sounding new rock station out of Philly (93.3 WMMR) and who do I hear in the upcoming concert listings and the new music selections?? Smashing Pumpkins, Collective Soul, Nine Inch Nails, Silverchair, and Queens of the Stoneage. Is it 1996 again? I missed the memo. Anyway, welcome back guys. I’m off to Amazon to grab some CDs I guess.

Rob

Quickie Thai-update… He went to the Vet yesterday for a booster and a checkup and everything is going great. He’s up to 35 pounds of pure puppy love (ok, ok, 30 pounds puppy love, 5 pounds of terror).

A few weeks back we caught an episode of The Dog Whisperer with a guest trainer who specialized in labs was attempting to help the author of the book “Marley and Me” with an aggression problem he had with his 4 year old(?) lab. The trainer had these great looking training tools we later found out (thank you internet) were called “bumpers” or target dummies. Since we saw the episode I have been trying to get 1 of those for Thai. They are soft plastic or foam cylinders used in retrieving exercises and “soft mouth” training (teaching the dog to not clamp down on things you want it to carry). Well we finally got one at PetsMart this afternoon and had a great fetch session with it already. I think we went 5 or 6 retrieves in a row outside which is more than he ever did with his Air Kong. Or his ball. Or, well, anything.

It’s official! My brewing supplies arrived yesterday. If I have time tonight, I’ll get things started on my first brew (a hefewisen from an ingredient kit). Otherwise I may have to wait (dun dun duuuunnnnnn) until tomorrow.

I still need to get a carboy brush, bottle brush and some StarSan for sanitizing, but the kit came with some generic sanitizer and that should be fine for the first brew.

I’ll have to restrain myself from tweaking the recipe too much. So much of the brewing process is cleaning and taking notes, I don’t know how so many guys find this interesting beyond the first brew but I am determined to find out.

Rob

I was reading an interview with John Knoll, a visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) and co-creator of the image editor Photoshop, when I stumbled upon this great comment and thought I should share:

The way I’ve patterned my whole career is by starting with hobbies. When I was a kid, I had a whole series of hobbies, and one of them was model-making. I got my first job in the industry as a modelmaker, because it was a skill I could demonstrate. As soon as you’re doing your hobby as a profession, it kind of kills it as a hobby, and so it’s time for a new hobby. I was going to school at the time and started taking more interest in camerawork. Most of the models I was doing stage support for were built and shot at the time on motion-control systems, so I took up an interest in motion control. I started [putting] together my own motion control system as a hobby project, and then I got hired at ILM doing motion control and it was time for a new hobby. I took up computer graphics as a hobby and started writing a ray-tracing program. That led to the interest in computer graphics, and Photoshop came of that at the same time.

Ok, ok, so I missed posting a happy 4th of July. In my defense, we spent a good amount of time at Ikea buying dining room stuff that day, and the rest was spent playing with Thai and watching our first Amazon Un-boxed movie download on the Tivo.

I am (somewhat) happy to report that we now have 1 less empty room as we built the dining room furniture last night. Jen put together all 8 chairs including upholstery by herself (so if you fall on your tush, you know who to thank). I meanwhile assembled the unusually complex table (its a top with 4 legs, can’t be too complicated) and the remarkably straightforward cabinet/hutch thingie to go with them.

I’ll give Jen a week or so to finish it out, put stuff in the cabinet and maybe even replace the chandelier, then post some pics.

As a trade-off for Ikea diving and furniture building (and birthday present), I have ordered beer making equipment and should (should…) have a home-brewed Hefeweisen (pronounced HEF eh VISE en, or hefe-birthday-weisen) in the fridge for the end of August.

Brad and Angela had their home brews on display last New Years Eve (Mock New Years to be precise) and the results were highly drinkable. With some help from http://homebrewtalk.com, I should be able to pull it off as well..

Rob is in the process of wearing out Thai, so I thought I’d give an update on how things are going. We brought Thai to his first obedience class this past week and it was so fun! The trainer was a bit concerned at first b/c he was showing super-submissive and scared behaviors (i.e., he was hiding behind our chairs and wouldn’t play with other dogs) but he turned around *really* quickly and got to make some new friends! He particularly liked an American Eskimo named Stoli. They were playing like best buds. It’s so fun to watch dogs interact with one another and even more fun to watch your dog interact with other dogs when they are “being good.” We also learned that the food we’d been giving him (Science Diet) is “rocket fuel - it’s the equivalent of feeding your kids Twinkies for dinner” from the trainer so we are in the process of switching to Solid Gold “WolfKing” and so far he loves the new chow.

We took him on his first walk yesterday and then again today. He was pulling the whole time yesterday and it got a bit frustrating but today he did much better. We almost went a whole ten steps in a perfect “zone” heel with no pulling. He was really feeling my energy. (We’ve been watching a lot of Dog Whisperer Lately).

It’s Rob’s birthday today so we are going to leave Thai to spend some quality time with his crate and go to the movies - first night away from puppy so we get to go see Ratatoullie. The timing works well with his regular “cool it and get ready to sleep” time.

It’s time to get ready to go. Rob will post has posted some updated pictures of us and Thai out in the yard and training in the house.

Jen

Just thought I’d pass along today’s words of wisdom from Over the Hedge:

I am, above all else, a sucker for all things new, shiny and preferably with buttons (Yay! Buttons!). This inexplicable obsession has kept my attention for far longer than should be possible. Lately, all roads have lead to the Apple iPhone.

The iPhone has been excessively hyped in all types of media. It has been blasted by bloggers as a ridiculous exercise in stupidity and a yearned for by those who know better.

The most common dissent goes something like: “My <insert device> has this feature already and only cost me <insert cell carrier subsidized price> .” What those who don’t pay attention didn’t understand (what Microsoft refuses to understand) is not ‘what’ you put in a device, but ‘how’ it works.

2 weeks ago, Apple sent prominent tech journalists final, production versions of the iPhone to play with. Yesterday, their reviews were published and the consensus is sure there are flaws, AT&T still sucks, but the iPhone delivers an unmatched user experiance and that is what makes it special. 2 closing thoughts: a) I hope you bought Apple stock before yesterday, and b) these things will be selling like hot-cakes on e-bay for well over a grand come Sunday.

Here is a link to a list of early iPhone reviews.

Thai has kept Rob and I *very* busy for the past week, but he has come very far from the frightened puppy that he was when we took him home last Saturday.  He now responds to his name (as long as he’s not engaged in some stimulating activity like rolling around in the grass) and knows “sit” and “down.”  We tried to teach him “leave it” today but that’s gonna take some time. (It basically teaches him to “leave” some desirable distraction, like a treat, so that he doesn’t pick up something he shouldn’t.)  Housebreaking is going well too.  Not perfectly, but well.  He’s had several accidents (I lost count) but they are getting fewer and further between.  We also know what to look for and how to react (i.e., I don’t freak out anymore) when an accident does happen.  We’re at a little bit of a disadvantage with the potty training b/c he lived in the kennel for about 2 months before we adopted him…and living in a kennell means going to the bathroom where you sleep and not on the grass.  So, our vet told us that eventually he will learn to prefer grass, we just have to give him time.  The vet also told us that he is healthy - we just have to get his mange (skin condition) taken care of.  He has some bald spots on his legs and on his face.  She gave us a collar that we can just keep on all the time to treat it.  She also suggested that we get enrolled in obedience classes so we are seriously looking into that.  It will be good training for us but I think the biggest benefit will be to socialize Thai.  We want to get him use to being around other dogs and humans.

Hilarious pet anecdote:  This may be a “you had to be there thing” but Thai was running around the kitchen and ran straight toward the sink and jumped up and lifted his paws in the air like he wanted to land in the sink  He missed it by like 2 feet.  Flying dog!  Puppy Spider Man to the rescue!  He really was misbehaving and he should have gotten yelled at for it - but Rob and I were just cracking up.  He loves the sink though.  I think it’s the water.  We really need to get him a kiddie pool.

The biggest challenges now are dealing with the constant chewing (I think we have like 10 chew toys for him now so the ratio of stuff he’s not supposed to chew and is supposed to chew is much more in our favor) and the jumping up (solution recommended by our vet:  stepping on his back toes just hard enough to hurt a little).  All in all though, he’s a great puppy that is very affectionate when he wants to be.  He loves giving puppy kisses (and for some reason has a fascination with Rob’s ears).