Thursday, November 09, 2006 , late at night

Animal Planet buys Petfinder

This is probably old news to many of you, but Animal Planet/Discovery has purchased Petfinder.  This means a nice infusion of advertising cash into Petfinder, plus a lot of TV ads to promote animal adoption.  All the Petfinder staff will remain to run the company, so it should remain as wonderful as it’s always been, but it should be even more effective.

Just to prove that I truly do need a “news of the weird” category, I found this story about a man who built a small “wheelchair” for an injured ferret:  Pet lover creates wheelchair for ferret.  The story is a nice tale of a somewhat frightening-looking man who loves ferrets, so what could be weird about it, right?  Check out the link, and either watch the video or click on the slideshow of photos.  The man loves his pets so much, “he keeps them in the freezer when they die”, and he actually opens up his freezer and pulls out a frozen iguana.  No, seriously.  I’ve kept dead goldfish (very large ones) frozen for lengthy periods of time until I could bury them, but I always freeze them in water in a Ziploc bag, then put them in a box.  This guy just has dead animals stacked in his freezer, and the sight of a stiff, frost-covered iguana is sort of disturbing!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/09 at 11:46 PM
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Wednesday, November 08, 2006 , late at night

Animal-related ballot questions

On election day, voters in Arizona and Michigan did some great things for animals at the ballot box.  Michigan voters overturned a proposal to allow target shooting of mourning doves (oddly enough, the mourning dove is the state’s official bird, so the proposal seems to have been both cruel and ironic).  In Arizona, voters passed Proposition 204, which bans gestation crates for breeding pigs, and veal crates for young calves.  This makes Arizona the second state in the nation to ban gestation crates, and the first state to ban veal crates.  I wonder if pigs and calves will have to speak English-only to qualify for this new regulation?  Anyway, my sarcasm aside, both these issues saw two-thirds of voters expressing their support of humane animal treatment issues, and I think that’s great news.

It isn’t an animal-related ballot issue, but in Nevada we passed Proposition 5, which bans smoking in all places which allow gambling, but which aren’t officially designated as casinos.  If you’ve never been here, we have small video gambling sections in grocery stores, drug stores, convenience stores, and even gas stations, and people are allowed to smoke if they’re playing the machines.  It’s really quite disgusting to be shopping for groceries while smelling stale tobacco smoke, so I’m really happy this passed.  The lobbyists for the tobacco and gambling industries spent millions and millions of dollars to try to make sure this propostion failed, but voters were a lot smarter than I expected.  Yay, no more stinky grocery stores!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/08 at 11:32 PM
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The toughest job I’ve ever had

I’ve recently started working at what should be a simple, straightforward, freelance job.  Every day I write one review about an economical computer, and I post the entry on the blog CheapPCGuide.com.  After doing it for just five days, I have to say that it’s one of the most challenging jobs I’ve ever had.  I have to write essentially the same thing every day, yet make it sound different.  I’m positive it’s an excellent writing exercise for me, and I’m sure it will make me a better writer, but it’s mind-numbing.  On the positive side, I know just about every good computer deal on the Internet now, but on the negative side, it’s hard to resist buying something every day.  Today I wrote about a notebook computer that I was just itching to put into my shopping cart.  This job is to help tide us over financially as we transition betwen jobs, and I doubt I’ll have it forever, but I hope it leaves me knowing 389 different ways to say “cheap”.

I can’t believe I agreed to to NaBloPoMo during the same month that I’ve taken on four or five new part-time jobs.  I’m nearing brain-death and it’s not even into November double-digits.  Rather than just snacking on chocolate, I might have to start infusing it directly into my bloodstream.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/08 at 05:12 PM
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Nevada occasionally sucks

Nevada had the chance to elect a female Governor last night but didn’t—Dina Titus (D), lost to Jim Gibbons (R), by about 2% points.  Jim Gibbons admitted just a few days ago to taking gifts in exchange for votes in the legislature.  About a week and a half ago, he was accused of assault by a woman he’d met in a restaurant.  Both Gibbons and the woman admit that they were together and had drinks, but Gibbons claims all he did was help the drunk woman to her car (whereas the woman claims she was escorted to her car and then groped against her will).  Read that last sentence again:  Gibbons admits he was walking a drunk woman to her vehicle so she could drive herself home.  The security tapes from the garage where all this happened were first missing, then they were “miraculously” found last weekend but they just showed a completely empty garage.  The security company which “found” the tapes in their safe has ties to Gibbons.  No one will explain why the security company had the tapes in their safe for two weeks after they’d claimed the tapes didn’t exist.  When Gibbons was doing his drinking with the woman in the bar, he was supposed to have been debating his opponent, Titus, but he had refused.

Yep, that’s the new Nevada Governor… at least I’m not guilty of voting for him.  His opponent, Dina Titus, had no skeletons in her closet, just the usual “tax and spend Democrat” stuff.  However, I’ve heard that even some Democratic women didn’t want to vote for Titus because they didn’t like “her personality”.  We get the government we deserve, and in this case, I guess Nevadans feel they deserve a grey-haired, stylish, corrupt Republican over a well-educated and energetic female Democrat.  Women are held to such a different standard then men, something I need to remember everytime I think, “No, not Hilary!” when it comes to the 2008 election.  Elections should be about substance, not style.

Anyway, that’s the last of my political talk for a while.  I’d hoped Titus would win to give this state a new energy, but instead it’s just going to stay the same ol’ boys club.  Congrats to Harry Reid on being the new Senate Majority leader, though—the next two years are going to be a wild ride in one way or another.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/08 at 05:58 AM
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Tuesday, November 07, 2006 , early evening

I hate the telephone, now meet my new cellphone

I am one of a small but ironically vocal group of people who hate the telephone.  I’m not intimidated by it, and I’m not nervous about making calls or talking to strangers.  I hate the phone because it’s inconvenient.  You have to make sure you call at a good time (most people don’t appreciate a call at 3am), you have to actually take time to talk on the phone as it can be hard to multitask without getting a stiff neck, and the phone leads to confusion.  When people send dinner plans to us via email, we know the day and time, and can read and re-read the information as often as necessary.  If someone tells us plans over the phone, we’ve got to find a pen and paper, we’ve got to make sure to keep track of the paper after we’ve written on it (i.e. we can’t let Scampi eat it), and there’s always a chance that someone on either end of the phone will develop temporary dyslexia and give out, or write down, incorrect information.  At least if someone does that while sending an email, all parties know who is to blame rasberry I think email is convenient, it’s time-saving, and it’s lovely and organized.  I love, love, love email.  If and when Flippy and I can get married, I want to do it by email.

So, meet my new cellphone, the T-Mobile MDA:

image

Flippy and I had to get a new cellphone for work, so we chose this model.  Its disadvantage is that it features a working telephone.  Its advantage is that it comes with wireless email and Internet, and runs on Windows Mobile so I can play cool games in pretty colours!  The unit slides out to reveal a full qwerty keyboard (which is pretty easy to type on), and it’s also got a nice camera and takes wireless video.  If it only didn’t come with the telephone feature, this would be my favourite cell phone ever!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/07 at 07:43 PM
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Monday, November 06, 2006 , early evening

To the Cape and back, in 43 minutes

I ended up not going to “the Cape” for my job interview.  The person who was supposed to interview me had to make a last-minute trip to Canada, so instead we just did the interview over the phone this morning.  I still think there’s going to be a third-round of interviews, though, and I hope I’ll be asked to participate in that.  I’m sure that third (and I assume, final) interview will have to be in person.  In the middle of winter, no doubt—they’re testing me.

My interview was at 9:30 am this morning, and it lasted 43 minutes.  It would take us longer than 43 minutes to drive to the airport, so I have no complaints.  I was asked more specific Internet marketing and SEO questions today, and while I know the answers, they can be tough to explain.  I don’t always know how to put what I do into words, I just know what I’m doing is correct.  It’s tough to use that excuse in a job interview.  I hope I did well, and if not, I hope I might be able to volunteer with the IFAW organization in some sort of online capacity.  They do good work, and they’re not all freaky and combative like you.know.who. (P*TA, I dare not say their name aloud).

Flippy and I have been muddling through our new part-time freelance job.  I don’t think I can say who we work for, but I can say that it’s Internet marketing of a sort and it’s blog-related.  The job isn’t necessarily time-intensive, but it has this tremendous learning curve because of the software being used.  Just as an example, I’ve had to learn to get comfortable using Microsoft Outlook, which I think is a mammoth of a program.  I’m sure my computer desk visibly sags under the weight of the program whenever it’s opened.  I want to like Outlook because I love being organized, but gah, learning curve.  The same with Excel, which is something else we’re learning to deal with.  I’d much rather muck around in a mySql database via phpMyAdmin than do anything in Excel, and Excel is supposed to be easy I’ve spent a lot more time pawing through my “Outlook 2003 Quicksteps Guide” than I have doing actual work. 

One more announcement to make—we’ve got a new server all set up and ready to go, which means all our current websites will be transitioning to it sometime in the next couple of days.  While our blogs theoretically should not have any downtime, there might be a lag because of cached information in other nameservers around the world.  So, if any of our sites seem to be missing, they’ll reappear eventually.  For our next trick, we’ll be pulling a quarter out from behind your ear.  Thank you for your support, and remember, the show is dark on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/06 at 06:31 PM
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Sunday, November 05, 2006 , early evening

National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week

November 5th through 11th is National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week.  This event is sponsored by the Humane Society of the United States, and you can find out more about it by visiting HSUS.org.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/05 at 06:50 PM
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Dear Firefox users

I’ve tried and tried, but cannot seem to fix the title/header image to appear properly in your browser.  In IE, the area with the blog title is completely grey, whereas in Firefox, just the title image itself has a grey background, but the surrounding area is white.  I know it’s not particularly attractive, but it seems to be the best compromise I can come up with.  At least I think I got the sidebar issue remedied… that’s something!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/05 at 06:16 PM
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Saturday, November 04, 2006 , evening

Dogs and avocado

Did you know that you shouldn’t feed your dogs avocado?  This was news to me, because while I’ve always known that avocado is a no-no for parrots, I had no idea it could also be toxic to dogs.  The ASPCA has a news bulletin out reminding people not to feed avocado to their pets, and it mentions that the troublesome ingredient is called “persin”.  I tried to do a bit of research on the subject, (which is difficult, as the search engines keep insisting I must be wanting to search on the topic of “persian"), and found out that persin can cause myocardial necrosis—that’s pretty scary.  Birds and rodents seem most sensitive to it, but the Merck manual says there are two known cases of dogs developing myocardial damage after eating avocado.

So, add avocado to your list of “weird things your pets shouldn’t eat”, along with raisins/grapes and macadamia nuts (dogs only).  You’d think any species which routinely eats its own poop would be able to eat anything, but I guess you’d be wrong.  Poop good, avocado bad… what a messed up universe our pets live in.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/04 at 08:11 PM
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Mark Bittner, artist

Our friend Mark Bittner, author of The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, is now a successful visual artist as well.  Some of his wonderful digital photographs are now for sale at the The Linda Fairchild Gallery in San Francisco.  My personal favourite will always be “Mingus and Coit Tower”—I made a Photoshopped version of that image using some filters a few years ago, and got many online inquiries from people who wanted to buy copies of it.  I never thought it was my place to be selling my versions of Mark’s work, but maybe I should have taken them up on their offers!

If you’d like to see a small selection of Mark’s photos, visit The Linda Fairchild Gallery website.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/04 at 06:38 PM
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