David's stuff

Today we heard from Marci's new mom who informed us that less than 24 hours after meeting up with Marci, she'd decided that their life together wouldn't work out. Now, Marci is a 9-month old wild-boar puppy. She's 9 pounds, female, and completely house trained. She's an angel of a puppy. The reason for her return was that she was "barking at the bird" and the lady who clips the birds wings said "Marci would never be trustworthy with birds". Also, the woman's other dog was stressed by the new arrival. However, the dog had been sick before Marci arrived. In any case, Marci is back up for adoption!

We also heard from Heidi's new mom who said she's doing quite well. She's hopping around despite her disabled left front and rear leg. She's gotten her the Wellness dog food we recommend, and asked about the vitamins Libby sent with her.

We just heard an email from Petee's family, which was quite odd, but generally positive. The email was most concerned about whether or not we thought Petee would choose his new mom as his new best friend, or not. How we're supposed to surmise whether or not Petee will like someone we've never met, not that if we'd met her we could understand his thought process, is beyond me.

Finally, Lillian wanted to show off her winnings from the festivities on Saturday.

I've been struggling recently with a desire to get some fresh music into my collection. This is a struggle because of my reluctance to do anything which might encourage the RIAA to continue to alienate their customers and their artists.

I stumbled on the weblog of one of our adopters Charles Burdick who posted about an application called iRATE.

iRATE is an application written in Java which downloads music that's available on the web for free download. It allows you to rate music and tailors your downloads to those which match others' with similar taste. So far I've only downloaded 5 songs, but they're of far higher quality than any of the other "free downloads" I've looked at previously.

On a site note:
Also interesting, the application is compiled under Linux using gcj which means although it's written in Java, it runs as a native application!

Yesterday we attended the North Carolina Wiener Roast as previously discussed. We were supposed to arrive at 9am, but didn't get all the pups and gear into the car until around 8:15 and consequently didn't arrive in the vicinity of the park until around 9:30. We had a bit of trouble locating the place, which I thought was a result of Libby's dismissal of the provided directions and preference for those provided by MapQuest, but as it were many people were lost and confused en route. Finally we located the picnic around 10:00 and began to unload. We were disappointed to find a long haul to the park shelter. This included a 300 yd. walk down a hill (which wasn't so rough until we had to walk back to the parking lot). We ended up setting up our camp near the entrance.

I made two more trips back to the car for supplies, and helped several other people unload their goodies from the parking lot. Dan and Anna Carla (someone correct my spellng if it's wrong) arrived not too long after we did, and brought a tent which provided much apprecited shade throughout the hot day. Susie Yates-Clark arrived around 11:00

We met many people we knew and Libby was sought out by many of the people with whom she communicates via email but hadn't yet had the chance to meet. We got to see Durham (formerly Micky) (and his mom Christy), Jasper, and Chloe.

Lily had been resting up all morning for an exciting day of competition ......

We've been having most of our dinners at home this weekend and enjoyed Chicken with Leeks, tacos, hamburgers, hot dogs, and grilled chicken! Libby's looking forward to eating out a bit more now that she's paid this pennance.

Tuesday night, Eric helped me out with something I was doing at work and we were able to work on the same piece of code at the same time. I've never "pair programmed" with someone quite so compatible, and can see how this is an extremely useful exercise!

This coming weekend is the North Carolina Wiener Roast and we look forward to taking all our kids. In fact, many of the kids will be going to their homes during or after the picnic. Since people come from all around, people will be taking Petee, Heidi, Sadie, and Marci to their respective homes. Anyone with dachshunds or dachshund spirit are welcome to come!

Congratulations to Eric & Ana and my parents (30 years!) on their anniversaries.

Today, the puppies threw Libby a pool party. Lily enjoyed going under water in search of her toys. She's quite the avid swimmer. Fun was had by all, and we all cooled off despite close to 90 degree temperatures.

On another exciting note, we used our trimmer, which worked quite well. The charge lasted about 25 minutes, which should be just fine for future trimmings, though it didn't quite cut it for this first time when everything has gotten a bit overgrown around the house and fence.

We woke up this morning and head off to complete Chloe's adoption and drop her off at her new home. We then went to the Farmer's Market and picked up some fresh tomatoes, lettuce, basil, and asparagus. We picked up a trimmer at Lowes on Eric's recommendation (pictured below). Then, we picked up Marci off I-40 in Durham. We then came home, washed both cars inside and out including using the steam vac on the floor mats. This evening, Gadget and Oscar were dropped off by our foster home who we're babysitting until next weekend. Finally, we watched Bowling for Columbine this evening and actually enjoyed it. I'm not sure I agree with the entire slant of the film, but I did enjoy the commentary and satire it offered.

The weekend is upon us! We had a wonderful week and tonight we got some dinner at Salsarita's We'll be getting two dogs for babysitting tomorrow (Gadget and Oscar). Also, we're getting a young red smooth female, and Chloe will be going to her new home.

I seem to have a bit of a referer spam problem. As you can see from the "top referer" list on the right-hand side. Not quite sure what I'm going to do about this yet.

Today we picked up Petey, a red smooth boy about 20 pounds. We're doing two home visits later today, and hopefully Petey will be adopted today! If not, then he gets to bunk here at the house with the rest of the gang. Heidi, Sadie, Chloe, and Lillian are all doing well in our pack.