Donde es el Perro?

I had let him out like I do every night. Right around 8:45, giving him enough time to do his dog-business in the back yard before he comes in to eat at 9:00. Forgetting that earlier in the day, I was working in the yard and left the gate to the fence open (or at least I pulled it closed and did not check the latch).

After about twenty minutes, I opened the back door. No dog. Fence Wide Open.

“F-riggy diggy.” or something like it was what I said. I ran out the gate to the fence. Called the dog – called the dog. Called the dog. — listened. Nothing. I realized the dog doesn’t have his collar on. The backyard is usually very secure. So I didn’t think about it. Until now.

I ran through the house (not slipping in the kitchen and landing flat on my back this time) and went out front. Looked left. Looked right. … No dog.

Looked left again, as two people and a Great Dane were walking towards me. “Have you seen a medium sized…” I stopped myself mid-sentence. I looked at this HUGE dog of theirs, and continued, “a smallish brown dog about this big? He escaped the backyard within the last twenty minutes, got that kindof ugly/but/cute thing going on?”

The woman with the Great Dane pointed up the street, “Is THAT him?” she asked. Sure enough. Here comes my genius of a dog trotting up the street, happy to see a party, wanting to see what fun he is missing out on.

Then he attacks their dog. My dog weighs fifty pounds, and stands about knee-high. The Great Dane – ground to ear tips – stood about five feet. Yep. My dog has a problem.

The woman screamed, and freaked out and started jumping up and down, which made her dog freak out. I yelled my dog’s name and walked over (two steps) to him and he saw me and immediately laid down on the ground. I picked him up and carried him to the house and sent him to his kennel (crate). (“go to your room”, which he does and usually won’t come out until you tell him to.)

I made sure their dog was uninjured, thanked them for spotting him, and apologized to them for his attack. When I returned to my own house, I checked my dog for injuries (none present, they just made a lot of noise and apparently nobody was bitten).

I then went into my kitchen to wash my hands and the dishes. The bottle of dish liquid was tipped over, and half of it had oozed across the countertop. (everywhere). What an ending to an already screwed up day.

Explain it to Me as if I Were Six Years Old

Remember Dennis, the guy with the computer woes that was lost a while back? Well his wife bought a scanner. Used. She asked me to get it working for her. I get to their house, and look at the scanner. It looks ok so far… has a power cord. That’s it. No data Cable. I asked her where the other cable for it was and she said, “Everything is right there.” After I explained to her that you need to connect the computer to the scanner in order to communicate with it, she asked me, “You can’t get it to work without it?”

“No,” I told her. “Right now, your scanner has power. It says ‘ooooh I am on. I have power.’ But there is no way for the computer and the scanner to talk. So you need that cable.”

She looked at me. Then at the scanner. She said, “Well, what good is that?”

Pipe Dream

I woke up with my heart pounding and feeling the way you feel when real fear grabs you. The way you felt as a little kid when you needed to get up and pee late at night, but you just KNEW there was “something” under your bed. Waiting to grab you, and your room is so dark that you can’t even see your hand in front of your face. As a child, you know what the “something” looks like and you can even hear him breathing.

I was in what looked like a hospital building. Wherever I needed to be was only one level (floor) up, and I did not see an elevator, but could see the door to the STAIRS. I decided to take the stairs, as I will do if I only have a few floors to climb.

I opened the door to the stairs and walk through. The stair well was made up of large round pipes, that were large enough around that a person would be unable to get a good grip. (I would guess if you took a measuring tape they would have been 8″ around). Pipes everywhere. All of them painted in a red high-gloss paint. The sound of a machine room filled my ears. The brick and red pipe stairwell went up many stories rather than having the landing and door at each level, and the distance from where I was (at ground level) to the basement appeared to be impossible.

The stairs that lead down are to my right. The stairs that lead up are to my left — but there is no way to get to them. I look around and determine that to get to the stairs I have to crawl between the 3 horizontal pipes that make the safety railing – step out on a platform and then cross a smaller (4″ ?) diameter pipe that is about seven feet long (like a tightrope it runs across) to the next safety railing.

I am not afraid of heights, so I climbed through the bars of the safety rail and onto the small platform, placed a foot on the pipe that crosses over and reached out with my left hand to the other next rail.

For some reason I now have a pair of hedge clippers in my right hand, and a pair of gardening gloves on.

(ah gotta love dreams. “oh so you think that was easy do ya, Pero? Well, here is a little twist to make it more challenging”)

There was no railing or pipes behind me, just a brick wall and about a ten story drop to the polished cement below. There was about five feet between me and the brick wall behind me. There was also no way to get to the stairs now that I was on the other side. The pipes crossing over and under and in front of each other only made it appear that there was a way to get to the stairs from the other side.

I cursed out loud (in my dream it echoed as it would in an area that size), but I do not remember what exactly I said. I began to panic. I tried to get back to the platform from which I came but I couldn’t reach the railing to my right, and with the pruning shears in my hand, I would not have been able to grab it if I could reach it.

(I don’t know why I felt I could not drop them or throw them away)

Other people were coming down the very stairs I needed. They were walking down effortlessly, some of them single file others in pairs. I called out to them but none of them noticed me.

After some time, a man in a yellow construction hat started walking down the stairs and he saw me, smirked and shook his head and went down to the lowest level. He came out of a door on the basement floor with a very long, very wobbly paint ladder, and set it up. I put my foot down and climbed down the ladder…and woke up.

Now I just have to analyze the dream and try to figure out what “the something under my bed” is.

Dirty Pero

(Refer to post below if needed)
I cleared some flowerbeds, killed weeds. I bought some plants and flowers from a local nusery. The woman that owns the place was helpful when I asked her what plants and flowers my yard (gave a description of how much shade, rain and sun I get) would be well suited for, and she helped me select about eighty bucks worth of stuff.

Then I brought it all home and dug up some hard useless dirt that hasn’t grown grass for the last year and a half, and I put down some material that prevents weed and vegetation growth. I spread bark around some of the areas and planted things in others. Hopefully they will grow and prosper.

I regret that nothing eventful happened, and nobody with strange habits crossed my path. Maybe next time. I’m sore. I’m hungry. But I am feeling good because I got dirty today.

Lucky Day, Nice Weather

I took an unscheduled day off (traded a shift) and the weather promises to make it worth my while for a change:

A warm day today and even warmer tomorrow!

An offshore flow will develop today bringing clear skies and dry air. Highs will reach the low 80′s.

I am wanting to get some stuff planted in my yard before it gets too late. Today is the day. During the next week I will be battling the weeds in the front / side of the house. Wish me luck, because once it gets warmer out they will be out of control.

Sleep, in Theory, is a Simple Pleasure.

It’s very early. I’m wide awake, and it is VERY early. I am not sure if going to bed at eleven was my first mistake or my second. My second mistake, if that is the case, would be actually believing I would sleep once I got into bed. (or maybe THAT is the first mistake and the time I climbed into bed was the second… if it really matters).

Thursday (which is technically today, but I am in denial that Thursday has indeed started), is going to be a busy day for me. I have a lot of stuff to get done an I am not going to feel like doing any of it on this little sleep.

I went to bed at eleven p.m., thinking it seemed logical since I have to get up early, and I felt tired at the time. A full night of sleep – for once, looked promising. All was well for the first couple of hours. I fell asleep quickly, and without struggle. I woke up two hours later (I had to pee if you really care). I have one of those small, dim, INDIGLO type night lights, which provides enough light to see without waking you up or being so bright that it causes you to stumble back to bed blind while your pupils re-adjust to the dark. I climbed back into bed and closed my eyes. But nothing happened.

I am not sure if my brain was done sleeping or if my body was bored laying there, but sleep was over for me for the night. “After two hours? You have got to be kidding me. I need more than that,” I thought to myself. I closed my eyes and tried desperately to relax and fall back asleep. I may have dosed lightly, either that or I was relaxed enough to half dream but not be asleep. I cannot be sure which. I opened my eyes and looked at the clock. Another hour had passed. Annoyed I rolled over and tried again to sleep.

More time passed, so slowly that I was literally praying for the sleep that would not come. I finally gave up about an hour ago. I had to be wake now anyway, so what point is there in even trying to cling to that last hour?

It is five minutes until six. The neighbor’s dog is barking. Good morning, world. You cruel bastard.

Gadget Insanity

NexTel gets things done. Instant communication. GiddyUP. Over the weekend, Tim decided that we should cancel service with our current wireless plan and get these. He got a deal on the phones and on the plan, as he did when we got the old wireless phones back whenever that was. I didn’t mind changing because my other phone worked in my driveway and most of the area around here, but not in parts of my house. For instance, it didn’t work in my garage, or in my kitchen; but if I stood on one foot in my bathroom it worked fine. Also, some of our friends have NexTel, and now we do too. Nationwide Walkie-Talkies.

Unfortunately, today is Sunday, which means the place we have to call to activate the phones is closed but we can Walkie-Talkie (direct connect) eachother, and the incoming calls work. I get a great signal in my house so far. And it looks like a Bat-phone.

Loathing for Windows

Mi____soft has once again cast its shadow over me. Due to its notoriety, it is a favorite among all favorite targets for code slinging virus creators and hackers. Due to that popularity, my network is trashed.

Bill G.- I wish I could buy you a drink. I’d sit you down and explain to you that eventually, enough people will switch to alternate operating systems that you may actually begin to FEEL it. You do not have my vote. You are everywhere, like fast food. Your company is a disease. Your product is the child on the playground that everybody gangs up on. If you invested a portion of what you probably pay for utilities per month, you could hire interns to hack and crack the hell out of all of these HOLES you leave in your OS products. My theory is that you leave them there on purpose. If I was you, these products would not be GOOD ENOUGH to market as they are. Anything that can be described with “it works OK, but…” – shouldn’t be making millions and millions of dollars every year.

Despite the fact that I keep up with all of the ‘fixes’ you provide, and the fact that I maintain and utilize anti-virus and firewall software, I have been hit.

As of the time of publication of this post, I have rebuilt and disinfected everything. My network is currently a sterile environment. Security is tighter and hopefully — its a safer place (read that as: LINUX). Regular posting will resume in the near future.

Plan Bee

Yesterday, as I was working in the back yard I noticed her. She was not even aware that I could see her as she worked diligently on her own project. She was making paper. More specifically, she was making a paper nest. She looked beautiful in yellow and black, and I knew that if she sensed the small amount of fear (enough to respect her privacy) in the pit of my stomach, that she just might attack me.

The yellowjacket has the amazing ability to sting as many times as she wishes – without the burden of sacrificing her own life. I watched her for a few minutes as she crawled around on her nest, shaping each small, six-sided compartment with absolute perfection. I noticed that her nest was actually symmetrical. It was perfectly formed. Then I decided that she needed to go. The thought of sharing my summer activities with an entire colony of yellowjackets is not such a good idea.

I dug around in the storage space in my garage for half an hour, but I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I called Tim, and asked him if he remembered where I put the “Yellowjacket Trap” that I purchased at some home improvement store last summer. He somehow knew exactly where it was, at the bottom of the pantry, on the floor in the back behind the dog and cat food. (Huh. I don’t remember putting it there, but he was right). He said, “Don’t do anything yet. I’ll be there in a few minutes,” and he hung up.

I retrieved the “trap” from the pantry and placed it on the picnic table. I was still in the back yard, raking and preparing the lawn for seeding; while watching the yellow jacket working on her nest when Tim showed up. He looked at the nest for a while, and then grabbed the “trap”, ripped open the package (which had never been opened up until now) and looked at the two (2) pieces that were inside. He said, “Is this IT? It seems like something is missing.”

“I have no idea I haven’t even looked at it yet,” I replied.

He looked at the directions (really, he did) and he said it was missing the bottom piece, which would actually serve the purpose of preventing the yellowjacket from escaping. “Well, no problem, I’ll go get some duct tape.” (The typical Tim solution. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, Duct Tape is the best stuff on earth.) We went to work and we made this. We left the “bottom” end open so Tim could slide it under the nest. With a flick of his wrist the nest and yellowjacket both fell into the trap. He then dropped the smaller cone-shaped piece into the large one and held it towards me as I taped all of the gaps, trapping the very angry insect.

Tim, being the nice nature loving person that he is, shook the entire contraption violently, causing the yellowjacket to bounce around inside as if she were in a pin-ball machine. You could hear her angry buzzing. She was PISSED. At some point, we were “buzzed” by what we guess was another yellowjacket, either warning us, or attempting to rescue her friend; but neither one of us actually saw the rescue-scout, but knowing that help may just be on the way (in swarm formation, provided yellowjackts even ‘swarm’), I decided it was time to put the trap with the stunned but still alive yellowjacket with the trash.

You are a GRAMMAR GOD

If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!

How grammatically sound are you?
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(Special Thanks to neva for the link)