Annie's Naughty Nose

We have a new screen door.

No I have not succumbed to pointless (and seemingly ubiquitous) “I’m making coffee!” blog entries. This screen door, like everything else it seems, is directly tied to Annie.

When we moved into our house back in 1997, the house had just been refitted with then-new Anderson windows and sliding glass doors. There are two beautiful sliding patio doors in our house; one upstairs in the dining room, and one downstairs in the family room. These sliding doors are our primary means of egress to the deck and back yard, so they are used frequently throughout the day.

The doors used to have beautiful wooden panels on the large sheets of glass. A matrix of intersecting decorative wooden strips made the doors look like they were made from 12 small panes of glass. They looked nice until Cozy learned to paw at the door to go out. Cozy eventually destroyed these strips, so for the past five years or so, the doors have been unadorned. Annie would have no doubt destroyed them anyway.

At some point in the past, Cozy had torn the screen on the upstairs door. The tear wasn’t large – maybe a few inches, and though ugly, the tear did not greatly affect the screen’s ability to keep bugs out. Then we got Annie.

Annie discovered that she could fit her pointy little ferret nose into this opening. She also discovered, that if she pushed, she could make the hole bigger! Bad dog!

I like to believe that there is a degree of decorum in my house. There is not of course, but I like to believe there are rules that was as civilized people try to follow. We all follow the unspoken rule that when having nice things, we must not destroy them lest they become ugly – or worse – useless things. Annie is a free spirit, who has no use for rules – especially unspoken ones.

One fine day, Annie was trying to get inside. I’m not sure why – zombies in the yard maybe? We do have a bit of a zombie problem here in New Jersey. Whatever the reason, Annie stood at the door, woofed her little ferret woof, and becoming impatient with our inaction, pushed her nose onto the screen as dogs often do. Annie is no ordinary dog though.

Annie the ferret-dog pushed her nose into the hole just as I walked up. “Annie NO!” I yelled as I ran up to stop her. Feeling panicked, she did what any crazed 100 pound puppy-ferret would do; she pushed.

I couldn’t get there in time. I tried – I swear that I tried. I can vividly remember the sound. The awful sound of tearing screen fabric as Annie’s black and white nose with that cute patch of white came pushing through the tear. As if watching a demonic birth, the head came next. It was horrifying!

The closer I got to the wicked beast, the more agitated she got. Being fully committed she had made her choice. In one final push, 100 pounds of black and white mayhem came through the screen. What had been a three inch hole was now a tear that my eight-year-old could walk through. Annie, now inside, wisely ran to hide behind Lauren. In the stunned silence, all that could be heard was mumbled obscenities while I stood and stared at the wrecked door.

Guinness, having been out on the deck watching, waited for the excitement to end. As if nothing had  happened, he got up, and walked through the new opening that Annie had so thoughtfully provided.

Yesterday, I bought a new sliding screen door for the kitchen. Are there any bets as to how long it will last?

GAD

Annie, unable to get into the cabinet since I welded it shut (with a plastic child-lock), decided to hunt elsewhere for snacks today. While I was out writing at an air-conditioned Starbucks, Lauren and the kids went to the lake to be with her sister and nephews. Annie, who apparently had not been sufficiently fed – or perhaps entertained – still needed her snacks. A girl’s got to eat after all.

Being at war with a hyperactive 100 pound juvenile ferret makes us do things that other people might find odd. For example whenever Lauren leaves the house, she puts the kitchen trash can in the bathroom, and the fruit bowl in the microwave. That may seem strange in your house, but I assure you that it is quite normal in our little corner of the Newfy asylum.

Upon Lauren’s return from the lake, she discovered Guinness happily munching on a peach pit. What the Hell? But the fruit bowl is… empty on the counter. It didn’t even look like it had been moved.

We’re still unsure about Guinness’ role in all of this. He was found with a peach pit, so he is at least an accessory to fruit theft, but it’s possible that he simply found it when everyone came upstairs. I think we might need to set up the old Newf-Cam again.

Today’s score from the monochromatic bandit was five apples and a peach. There were no remains to be identified from the apple family. The peach pit was given a proper burial… in the bathroom where the kitchen trash remains.

GAD

Having recently bought a Mac Powerbook Pro, I had to come to grips with using a new operating system. I have used Windows XP since it was a beta in 2001. This being the end of summer in 2009, you could say that I’m a tad set in my ways when it comes to my computing tasks.

The original Macintosh

The Mac Powerbook Pro was so enticing a piece of hardware though, that I was willing to look at Mac OSX. I was no stranger to Macs having used them since my roommate bought an original Macintosh back before time began. Though at the time I liked my Tandy 1000 better, the Mac was pretty darn cool too.

Still, having one around and using one as my primary mobile computing platform were two different issues. I’m a working consultant, so I need my laptop to work – period. I also need to not be trying to figure out how to use my computer while charging my client by the hour. That’s just bad form.

My first issue was the fact that I have many XP-only pieces of software. The thumbnailer program that I use for my photos is Windows-only, and I like it so much that I will forever keep a windows machine around to use it. Luckily with the Mac, there’s a better way.

In the apple store, one of the salespeople showed me Apple Parallels, which allows Windows XP (or most other operating systems) to run in a virtual instance at the same time as OSX. Think VM-Ware if you know what that is. In fact VM-Ware has a similar product called Fusion that many people prefer.

While Parallels looked cool, I wondered about moving files back and forth between OSX and XP. I was then shown how files can be dragged between OSX and XP windows and my jaw hit the floor. I told them to wrap it up. Fusion is also capable of this type of integration.

Once I had the safety net of being able to run XP within my OSX environment, I knew that I could install my normal XP software and just boot XP when and if I needed it. There was no no danger of needing to figure something out at a client site.

I then moved onto trying to get myself to a point where I wouldn’t need XP. Sure certain things like thumbnailer needed XP, but I only use that stuff when I’m on big trips. I usually do all my photography processing on my big home machine.

My biggest needs on a portable computer are:

• Writing – both personal and business
• SSH and terminal
• Visio
• Email
• Web browsing

Business writing and Visio both demand Microsoft Office. I was willing to buy a Mac version of office, but from all the reviews I’d read, the latest version sucked, and the old version was for power-PCs. While the older version would work with my Intel processors, I’m not a fan of paying for old versions. I’ve relegated business writing to XP using Parallels. It works, I have the license, and I’m not messing with it.

With Visio there is no choice. It simply does not exist on the Mac. Yes I know there are other packages that do the same thing, but my clients use Visio, and I am expected to give them Visio files. The easy fix for me is to use MS Office under Parallels, so that’s what I do, and it works without incident.

For personal writing, I don’t need MS Office, so I set about finding something else. I tried the demo version of iWork and hated it. I tried Open Office and had stability problems. I then discovered Neo Office, which is an OSX-specific port of Open Office. I love it. I’m using it to write my book and have had zero problems with it over the past two months.

SSH is a big deal to me since I primarily use PINE for email. Call me old school, but it works, and it’s impossible to get a virus, worm, trojan horse or anything other than offensive words with PINE. I’m using Alpine now on Ubuntu, but still, I need a nice SSH app to get to my servers.

In XP I use Secure CRT and love it. There is, as of yet, no OSX version of Secure CRT though. Luckily, for 95% of my needs, I don’t need it. OSX is UNIX, and it inherently contains SSH. Once I got my terminal window to look the way I liked, I was set.

While I use PINE for my text based email, I do occasionally need a graphical client. I prefer Thunderbird, and I tunnel the connection through SSH to my server. Works like a charm just the way I like it to.

Web browsing was similarly solved with Firefox, though I’m sad to say that since version 3.0, Firefox has been irritating me in a fairly regular basis. I find that Safari is a surprisingly good and stable browser, which I use about 75% of the time while on the Mac.

Some things are still mildly bothersome as a long-time XP user. For example:

• I dislike the fact that I can only resize a window from the bottom right corner
• I dislike the fact that with most apps, I cannot maximize the window
• I dislike the fact that there does not seem to be the idea of an insert key, even with a 101-key keyboard
• I dislike that there are no dedicated pg-up/pg-down keys on the Mackbook

Still, these are minor complaints. My insert key complaint is due to my habit of using shift-delete to cut and shift-insert to paste in windows. I’ve learned to use Apple-x and Apple-v like I should. The other stuff is mostly habit, and I’m finding that over time these things bother me less and less.

I’ve found that I can reproduce the Page-up and Page-down functionality by using the spacebar and shift-spacebar in every app I’ve tried so far.

Many people worry or complain that there is no right-click on a Mac. They’re wrong. Not only is right-click supported if you get a third-party mouse, but the included trackpad has a right-click button. For some reason it’s disabled by default! Turn that on and you’re golden.

It took me a lot less time than I expected to become proficient in OSX. Sure I still might need to hunt for some odd feature here and there, but overall I’m thrilled with the experience so far. I like it so much that when my kid’s PCs expire, I’ll likely replace them with Macs.

By the way, in the few months since I’ve owned my Powerbook, I have never once had to find or load a driver. I’ve not had issues installing or removing any software. I’ve not seen a conflict of any kind. I hate to repeat hackneyed sayings, but this thing just works. Oh wait! I did have it lock up on me – twice! Each time XP had consumed all the memory and was stuck in a race condition within Parallels. I got into terminal and killed the process and got it working again. I love Unix.

GAD

The Guilty Look

There is a large kitchen sized trash can in our bathroom. It’s not that we have large trash-can needs in our bathroom – far from it. What we have is a trash security problem.

Many years ago we bought a very nice stainless steel trash can for the kitchen. This wonderful container cost over $100, and has a spring-loaded latching lid. In order to open it, you push down on the top which then pops up under its own power. When you close it, it latches closed. It is an engineering work of art that serves a necessary purpose in our house.

We got this wonderful trash can years ago because of Daisy. Daisy gave the outward appearance of being a well-bred distinguished lady. We discovered the hard way that she was – at least in part – a Tennessee Trash Hound. She had been found guilty of not only raiding the kitchen trash, but also of eating an entire cooked chicken carcass and corn cobs from said trash. Both of these bits of refuse can be deadly to dogs, but Daisy survived them both to live a long life. Still, we needed to keep her out of the trash, so we got this most excellent example of a closed container.

Many years passed without further incident, and we lived in peace with our dogs and our safely enclosed trash. Then we got Annie.

Annie is a very smart girl. She’s also still a puppy, and she gets bored easily. At least those are some of the excuses we’ve come up with to explain her naughty nature. Annie figured out within days of her arrival how to open the supposedly dog-proof trash can. She would use her chin, push down on the top, and the tasty contents could be pulled out for all to enjoy.

This trash can is probably three feet tall, and Annie could get a tissue paper from the bottom without knocking it over. We think she must be part cat – or maybe ferret. She’s got that squirmy boneless ferret look about her. Maybe she was born without bones. All we know is that she can get anything from out of the trash can without disturbing it. Unless we make her knock it over of course.

Early on into the trash can battle, I decided that I was smarter than my dog, what with my big brain, opposable thumbs and all. I figured that since we put the trash can under the edge of the kitchen counter, that if I turned the can so that the hinge faced out, she would not be able to open the can with her chin. Genius! I went to bed that night smug with my superiority over my big dumb dog.

The next day, Lauren woke up to discover the trash once again spread all over the floor. Impossible! My plan had been fool-proof! Annie had discovered that she could not open the trash can – exactly as I had predicted. Ever the better fool, she had solved the problem by sliding the trash can to the edge of the counter and tipping it over. Jackpot! Trash bounty for all.

Lauren, tired of pickup up trash, puts the trash into the bathroom when she goes to bed. The bathroom in our house is one of the few rooms that has a locking door. Annie, unable as of yet to be able to open a locked door, leaves the trash unscathed moving on to more interesting targets like kitchen cabinets.

Moving the trash can is a pain in the butt, so sometimes it doesn’t get returned to the kitchen right away. This morning when I went to take a shower, I lazily put the trash can just outside the bathroom door, because even though the can is covered, it still smells like trash. After my shower I went downstairs for all of ten minutes. When I came back upstairs, I was met with Lauren picking up trash and Annie sitting in the corner with a very guilty look on her face. Most security problems are human after all. Annie just waited for one of us to slip up, then moved in when the opportunity presented itself. A good thief is patient after all.

Annie has escalated the trash-can war. I refuse to be bested by a one year old Newfy with a goofy grin and bad attitude. I’m going to Home Depot to get some high-tensile steel and an acetylene torch. I’ll have to lock it up though. The last thing I need is Annie figuring out how to use a welding torch.

GAD

Apple Macbook Pro

I hate laptops. In fact I have a statement that I repeat whenever anyone asks me to recommend a laptop:

“All laptops suck – buy what you like”

The purists will note that we haven’t seen a laptop in the market for over 10 years. Laptops were huge beastly things that harken back to the days of floppy disks and orange plasma screens. What we’re talking about of course, are notebook computers. The word laptop just rolls of the tongue better than notebook does, so I, like most people, will continue to misuse the word. Besides, I use it on my lap all the time. Thanks, I feel better.

At any rate, I found myself recently needing a laptop because my HP widescreen laptop blew a hard drive and developed an LCD problem that I couldn’t live with. I fixed it up as best as I could, and donated it to my youngest daughter who now uses it exclusively for important tasks like surfing Webkinz.com.

Being a business expense, and thus tax deductible, I decided to hunt out the best, most powerful machine I could get. I had the following requirements:

• 17 inch non-glare wide-screen w/ 1920×1200 resolution
• dual-core processor
• 4G RAM
• Non-squishy keyboard
• Sturdy case – metal if possible

That’s it. Doesn’t seem hard does it? I quickly discovered that it was. Most laptops on the market are disposable pieces of crap. Anything under $1000 seems to be made of thin plastic with toy keyboards and low-quality parts. The good side of this is that for $500 you can get some serious horsepower and RAM. I considered this because the alternative was a $3000 solution. If a laptop lasts me about three years on average, I’d be saving money if I just bought a $500 laptop every year and ran it into the ground.

The non-glare aspect of my requirements killed a LOT of contenders. The other thing that killed most laptops under $1000 was the non-squishy keyboard requirement. The keyboards on most laptops suck. Sure some have full keyboards with number pads and a lot of other cool features, but type on them for more than a few minutes and you’ll feel the cheapness of them. Cheap keyboards fail me. Nothing will make me want to hurl a laptop through an open third story window like a failing keyboard.

I’m a working consultant, and I’m also a writer. I Can type 130 words per minute, so I need a keyboard that can keep up with me and won’t fail after typing 10,000 words per day. Additionally, since I often have to sit in odd places while I’m working, the glossy screens that are so prevalent don’t work for me. Sit near a window with a glossy screen and you’ll know what I mean.

I am also a photographer, so a quality wide screen is important to me. As a writer I like the widescreen so I can put two full pages side by side. I’m spoiled, I’ll admit it. My HP laptop, though widescreen, was only 1280×960, which was damn-near useless for me. It looked fabulous watching movies, but for real work, it left me cold. I need pixels, and I need a lot of them.

Luckily, and a bit surprisingly, the dual core processor and 4G RAM requirements were no big deal. I quickly narrowed my choices down to two contenders: The Lenovo W700ds and the Apple Macbook Pro 17″

Lenovo W700ds

Loaded the way I wanted, they were both around $3000. I had used Lenovo laptops in the past, and was excited at the prospect of getting one, until I started reading reviews. Apparently, Lenovo had changed out the best feature of the business class laptops – the keyboard. Additionally, there were some reports that the sevice from Lenovo had gotten pretty bad. The days of killer support from IBM was gone. For $3000, I want excellent support.

I’ve had my Apple Macbook Pro 17″ non-glare laptop for abour four months now, and I like it more each day. It routinely get’s over seven hours of battery life, the screen is magnificent, and  the keyboard rocks. I didn’t like the keyboard at first. There are no insert keys, no home/end/pgup/pgdown keys, and some other niggles, but it’s not squishy, and it’s kept up with me admirably.

This Macbook, is in fact, the first laptop that i’ve ever had that doesn’t suck. The case is aluminum and is rock solid. The screen is magnificent. The keyboard is wonderful. Even the trackpad is great, though I use my Logitech wireless mouse 90% of the time.

I had to learn about OSX, which I’ll write about later, but even if I need Windows XP, I bought Parallels which works wonderfully.

I’m a convert. My next computer purchase will likely also be a Mac, even if I have to buy one used.

GAD