And the countdown begins

Meeting with committee to set examination topics and date. Freaking out. Bring on the extra-large Doritos please.

Another open letter

Dear car,

You suck. The unexpected >$500 repair is not appreciated. You damn well better keep that engine light off long enough to pass the air quality test.

An Open Letter to Steve Jobs

Dear Steve,

5 years ago I become a mac user. I admit, I did it partly on a whim, partly due my utter and complete annoyance with my Dell and partly to be different. You see, when I converted it was before all the cool guy vs pc guys commercials, before you tube became a sensation, even before you converted to the intel processors. I fell in love with my little ibook G4 immediately and 5 years later, it really hasn't let me down. Yes its slow and yes its not the best for CPU intensive scientific work, but for serving the net, checking emails, you know pretty much anything outside of scientific working its great. Apple is known for its amazing long lasting computers and accessories. Yes that includes things like the ipod and the iphone. So why the hell don't you have backward compatibility? I recognize some things are limited because of CPU type, but really if a program works on my G4, shouldn't it work on my icore7?? Why does illustrator work fine but not Photoshop? I don't understand. Why can OS 10.5.8 recognize my G4 and migrate everything perfectly fine, but 10.6 can not? What is up with that??? If you're going make long lasting computers than you need to realize that people are going to be trying to switch over computers that are 5 years or more apart in age.
And seriously, the iphone 3G is not that old, the remote on the remote headphones should freaking work as well. It works on the new computer but not on the 3G iphone? WTF Steve Jobs WTF

Oh and your fight with Adobe is fucking stupid. I know you're not adding flash so that I have too download a TV show from itunes instead of going to the networks website. How dumb do you think your customers up. You need to shape up, you're starting to look and sound like Bill Gates.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Who the heck is the lady in front of you???

I used to be cool. Seriously I was. I knew the best restaurants in town, what the trendiest fashion was and what was hip and happening in the world. I used LOVE that stuff. And I still do, except somewhere along the line, I just don't care as much and I don't know how it happened or when it happened. All I know is that Mr.SM offered to buy me a fancy pants gift for Mother's Day, whatever I wanted. He offered fancy jewellery, new clothes, new shoes whatever my heart desired because I deserved it. I chose a new Macbook Pro over a diamond anniversary band!!!! WTF happened to me!?

All I know is that I have been eagerly anticipating the computers arrival and have been playing on it all day. Somewhere in my >10 year marriage I have become the computer expert, knowing how to network computers, troubleshoot etc. I can talk RAM, core7 processors, SATA harddrive and dedicated graphics cards with the best of them. I can have discussion of the pros and cons of investing in a faster processor vs more RAM or vice versa. I psht and say of course I'm upgrading to the faster hard drive, duh!

What happened to the girl who loved nothing more than to sit at a restaurant with her creme brulee and martini's?

The "joys" of dog ownership

I've had a dog in my life since I was 13. The last three years have been the first time in >20 years that I didn't have a dog and both Mr.SM and I would constantly dream about the day when the yard, fence, child were all ready for adoption. I have to say that nostalgia really is viewed through rose colored glasses. The things I forgot about dogs or didn't experience.

• The monkey is in love, getting him to do anything is impossible because he must see SMDog. And OMG he does not want to leave in the mornings. Morning are my hell..
• Dogs are like children, so even if your child is willing to finally sleep in on a weekend, the dog will be crying and whining to be fed and taken out.
• And my personal favorite Skunks. Woke up this morning, opened the door to feed and take out SMDog and got a wonderful whiff of skunk...

oh the joys, the joys....

Geronimo!!!

I've jumped off the cliff - literally in my mind. The emails requesting availability for my comprehensives have been set. It looks like it'll be in July sometime. Shitting bricks as I type this. In utter and complete panick mode!!!!!

Bittersweet Additions

As you know, we recently added a brand spanking new dog to our family. We purchased a female purebred German Shepherd from a "reputable" breeder, who was > a year old. As much as I would love to rescue a dog from the pound, my last experience with doing that was less than pleasant. When I did that, I adopted a dog under the presumption that he was ~3 years old, healthy and ready to be a running partner. I had the pound send me the vet records, which stated he had been checked and xrayed for hip issues. A week after we adopted him, we took him to our vet and found out he was double digits in age, had cataracts and major hip problems. Mr.SM's attitude is that when you adopt children, you don't return them if they have issues and same goes for pets. We made the best of the situation, gave the dog lots of love and he loved >5 years. Four more than the vet thought he would.

Since we weren't going to go the pound route for the above reason plus the facts its hard to find dogs from the pound that are good with kids, we went the breeder route. I wanted to make sure we found a breeder that wasn't a puppy mill, someone that treated their animals well, was breeding only 1 time a year etc. I went to the CKC to find a list of registered breeders t called around a few of them, looking for a non-puppy and was recommended to the breeder I picked by another breeder. I figured when a community member recommends another community member, its a good sign. This particular breeder was also a member of the executive for the provincial GSD club, what I thought was another good sign.

Unfortunately there are some issues. It should've been a red flag when s/he stated that the available dog was not registered. S/he was completely honest that when the litter was born, s/he did not have the time to deal with the animals appropriately and did what should never be done. S/he kept the sibling together all the time and did not socialize the dogs which is why s/he didn't register them. As result of the lack of socialization, our dog is fearful of new surroundings and is somewhat aloof, but also very gentle. Again, the fact the this individual was very honest about the lack of socialization, admitted to being a bad dog owner in term of keeping the sibling together I though was a good sign. When I first saw SMDog, I thought she was underweight, but the breeder said it was because she was just finishing her growth stage and would fill out now. Everything seem OK and after thinking about it >1 month (looking for at other dogs) we decided that yes this was the dog for us. However, now that we have our little gal, I have feeling I was not told everything. SMdog is underweight, is experiencing diarrhea, eating her own poop and has a significant lack of confidence. I've request vet records and haven't heard anything. I called this morning to find out more about the GI issues but haven't got a call back.

I'm OK with the fact that SMDog isn't "perfect". If it ends up that there are health issues that s/he knew about, I'm not going to return the dog. Monkeyboy is in love with her and I don't have the heart to take his BFF away. I do want to know what is known and what isn't known. There is no reason to duplicate tests or go on a big problem solving adventure if s/he has the answers. I also know that if I had gotten a puppy instead of older dog there would've been issues / problems as well. Even at the puppy stage you can't guarentee that the dog won't end up having GI issues and you have no idea what the personality will turn out to be. SMDog is already improving in spades through twice daily walks, obedience training etc. I have strongly believe that she will have a the confidence and courage of the typical GSD after a year of hard work. What I'm not sure about is the health. We've upped her food from the recommend 2.5 cups / day to 4 cups a day. We're supplementing with brown rice and sweet potatoe to control the diarrhea and are using Forbid to try to nip the poop eating. We're currently using Healthwise Lamb and oatmeal. I have never used fancy smancy food like this before. I'm IAMS / EUKANEBA type of Gal. Any recommendations on food? No the breeder did not give me food to when we picked up the dog, but s/he did apologize for that.

I'm more upset with myself for not asking more questions, requesting the vet records before I took the dog, for possibly supporting an unethical breeder - something I was trying really hard to avoid.....

I love glee

That is all. I had another post but the iPhone ate it. But seriously, glee is targetted to my age group.


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