Hello, I'm blogging at you now...

I'm not obsessed with urine--I swear...

2008-03-12T19:51:00.000-07:00

Enter the ICHC online Poker Cats Contest!

I am a leet rails haxor...

2008-03-10T19:02:00.000-07:00

Been playing with Rails a bit, to see how easy it is for me to learn (since I have some nodding familiarity with Ruby). It's generally fun, but I really disliked the new (in v2) style scaffolding. Apparently, the scaffold generator no longer inspects any existing tables in generating the views. You've got to list everything out on the command line. Very disappointing. I whined about it here.

Encouraged by the kind folks on the Rails Talk group, I tried writing my own scaffold generator--generally a complete ripoff of the original, except that if you don't specify any attributes on the command line, it sniffs the db for a table w/the proper name & then packs the arguments with whatever it finds. It's not fully tested, but seems to work for me. Here is the relevant code:



  def initialize(runtime_args, runtime_options = {})

    # TODO: test this proper (adapt rails' scaffold_test.rb)
    # This is hokey, but it's within my powers.  
    # Rescue the noob who generates scaffold
    # on an existing table w/out specifying attributes 
    # on the command line.
    si_uncounted_arguments = %w(--skip-timestamps --skip-migration)
    if (runtime_args - si_uncounted_arguments).length == 1 then
      # Called in "static introspective" mode--pack 
      # runtime_args with name:type pairs if we find 
      # an existing table.
      si_table_name = runtime_args[0].pluralize.underscore
      puts("Called without any attribute specs on the command 
           line--looking for a table called '#{si_table_name}' 
           from which to infer attributes...")
      begin
        si_cols = ActiveRecord::Base.connection.columns(si_table_name, "#{name} Columns")
      rescue ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid => err
        # Table not found.
        puts("Sorry--table '#{si_table_name}' not found--you're 
              going to have a lame-ass scaffold.  Did you forget 
              to run 'rake db:migrate' maybe?")
      else
        si_attributes = []
        si_ignorable_fields = %w(id:integer created_at:datetime updated_at:datetime)
        si_cols.each do |c|
          si_attributes << "#{c.name}:#{c.type}"
        end
        si_attributes -= si_ignorable_fields
        runtime_args += si_attributes
        # No need for a migration in this case--we're using the existing table.
        runtime_args += %w(--skip-migration) unless
                 runtime_args.include?('--skip-migration')
      end
    else
      puts("User specified attributes on the command 
           line--no introspection done.")
    end

    super

    #etc.

  end

I think this will work well enough for my purposes. I'll be using it (gotta get back to trying to learn Rails) for my toy app & will see if it serves me. If it does, maybe I'll try to gem it up (or package it up however such things get packaged up) and put it someplace accessible. In the meantime feel free to steal it, suggest improvements, make fun of it, etc.

Special Guest Dog

2007-12-01T16:36:00.001-08:00

For a while now we've been sort of 'fostering' our neighbor's dog, Sadie. Isn't she a cutie?

She was a rescue, but our neighbor says she's a malamute cross. To me she looks more like a combination Collie & English Sheepdog, but who really knows?

Kodos loves having another dog around, even if she doesn't always want to play when he does.

Urine Nation

2007-08-02T18:58:00.000-07:00

I have problems...

The family took a lovely road trip down to Tucson a couple of weeks ago. The house was going to be empty for 5 days or so, so we:

boarded the dog
up-ended a bag of cat food into a big bowl & scooped their litter boxes for the cats.

Since returning, 1-year-old Kodos has peed in the house four times, in 3 spots. And it seems not to be the regular, only-mildly-offensive pee. This is especially pungent stuff. I can smell it in the room, even after cleaning it with the Get Serious enzyme cleaner, which is supposed to make the smell imperceptible even to the sensitive noses of animals. I've gone over all 3 spots with that several times, and with an upright carpet steamer, and with a hand steamer. The smell is better (at least once the affected spots dry) but I can still smell it if I put my nose down in the affected area. I am definitely in the market for carpet-cleaning tips--please tell me how I can fix these!

Until I can get these things cleaned, I dare not let K into the carpeted areas of the house, so we're back in baby-gate purgatory for a while. This is particularly a drag, b/c my in-laws are visiting, and they are not the most nimble folks.

Have I mentioned that I need carpet cleaning tips?

So what the heck is going on? Why the sudden backslide of house training at this late date? I had trusted Kodos to roam all over the whole house for many months. He hadn't had an accident since I took away the beef bone that seemed to make him, um, incontinent in a different way.

Here are some facts to bolster the conclusion I'm about to lay on you. ;-)

At the boarding kennel, Kodos was stationed 2 kennels down from a female in season.
While we were gone, the cats took to using one of the bedrooms (the one K first peed) as a litter box & the place stank to high heaven. (Thankfully, they peed on bedding, which was easily removed & laundered--not so much with our carpeting.)
Kodos has recently begun lifting his leg to pee, as opposed to squatting.

So I'm thinking that Kodos has had a more or less sudden sexual awakening, and that that is causing him to 'mark' in the house (e.g., pee not to eliminate urine, but to spread his scent around, as a way to mark his territory). More importantly, I'm hoping that getting him neutered (and we did that this past Wednesday) is going to remove this impulse from him completely.

That's right, isn't it? The vet 'fixed' him, didn't she?

Tagged!

2007-07-03T16:05:00.000-07:00

Consarn it, I've been tagged by Orion Count Drulzelot. Apparently, this means I need to write a new blog post (which I've really had to do anyway) and mention 7 random facts/habits about myself. Since this blog belongs to Roy (the human) rather than Kodos (the majestic, mischievous Newf puppy), I'm going to write about me. So here goes.

I am besotted w/my puppy Kodos, who is now a year old. (Big ups to my Mom, who pointed this out during her recent visit out from NY & used that word 'besotted', which is exactly right.) You're shocked, I know--it's not as though every blog post for the last year or so mentions him prominently...
Just about all of my favorite TV shows have been cancelled by FOX. These would be: Arrested Development; Futurama; Firefly & (just recently!) Family Guy.
I have a law degree that I've never used--never sat for a a bar exam, certainly never practiced, and have pretty much reverted back to a normal person. All that's left are the student loans. Yay.
I am pretty sure this whole 'world wide web' thing is a fad, and will blow over any week now.
I have a very long commute to work--2 hours there, 2.5 hours home. But it's in part a beautiful ferry ride, and I don't drive any bit of it, so I get a lot of work done on my laptop during it.
I am one of those knee-jerk liberal Democrats your parents may have warned you about. Probably the education is to blame for that. I've been in a kind of political fetal position ever since the 2004 presidential election. Got me one of those mp3 music players right then & have been doing a wide eyed la-la-la-la-this-is-not-happening-la-la-la-la ever since. I don't normally talk about this, but this morning's announcement of Scooter Libby's get-out-of-jail-free card has me particularly outraged today. Bloody bastards.
I am a Cancer, which explains why I am not into astrology. Who likes to say they are "a Cancer"? They may as well have named the sign "Pestilence" or something...

Next! ;-)

We need a ramp for this thing!

2007-04-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

Had some down-time yesterday, and so eldest daughter & I loaded Kodos up into the new SUV, and headed over to the dog park. Kodos had a wonderful time of course, and everybody exclaimed at how big he is (and only 10 mos old!). He got kind of mount-y toward the end there, but in general was a gentleman. (So says the very biased daddy--hopefully the other dogs would agree.)

K has climbed himself up into the new car only once so far. The other 4 times he's been in, I've hoisted him in, one end at a time (e.g., I put my arms around his upper chest & hoist his front end up onto the back part of the car, and then I crouch down & lift him in by his rear legs). Not optimal, but it works.

Well, upon returning home from the dog park, K did not want to jump down from the car. He may have hurt a leg while romping w/the other dogs (tho he seems fine now) or he may just have been tired. Either way, he wasn't coming down & so, after 10 minutes or so of waiting for him to recharge, I kind of hugged him sideways around the tops of both sets of legs & brought him out. It worked fine, tho I really didn't think I'd be strong enough to do it (K was 100 lbs. at last weigh-in).

But enough of this foolishness--I ordered a petstep II ramp from Amazon yesterday, and we'll be working on getting K to use it as soon as it comes. Wish us luck!

Plavalaguna!

2007-04-14T16:20:00.000-07:00

We finally got our new RAV4 yesterday--very exciting! Here are some pictures:We went through a freelance broker sort of person, and so they delivered the car right to our house on a trailer.

Here are a couple of pics:

After being bilked into buying unwanted mud flaps, floor mats, and a very lame looking (hopefully it's more functional than it appears) protective rear bumper "appliqué", I was feeling too poor to splurge on the one dealer-installed-option I really wanted--a rear cargo tray/mat to protect the carpeting & foldaway 3rd row seats against the slings and arrows of muddy Newf feet. Fortunately, Costco was selling these lovely $18 industrialish rubber entry mats--the sort of thing you'd encounter upon walking into a supermarket, say. I had to do some (rather inexpert) surgery on it to um, "optimize" it for the space, but I think it's going to work just fine. Check it out:

There are actually 2 "stow-and-go" seats underneath that mat, which means that when we're not hauling Kodos around, we can accommodate 7 people in this beast. Which rocks.

In keeping with family tradition, we have named this vehicle. The name we chose is Plavalaguna, after the blue alien character from Luc Besson's The Fifth Element (scroll down to the Soundtrack section to see a picture of the Diva Plavalaguna herself). We have a bit of an alien streak going I guess--we call our Accord Banichi, after a character in C.J. Cherryh's novel Foreigner.

In the main, I'm pleased with the independent-broker process we went through to get this car. The guy we worked with (Mark Heinemann) had relationships w/dealers in a four-state area, and could sort of reach up the distribution chain to identify and divert the vehicle we wanted. In theory he wasn't a salesman, but in practice he seemed pretty close to one. But no matter--the fact that we were able to do all the wrangling via e-mail was absolutely wonderful. Anybody who's spent 3 hours in an auto dealership trying to hammer out details and/or make credible threats of going elsewhere, while trying to keep their children reasonably entertained knows what I'm saying.

I had ordered the consumer reports invoice report on this vehicle, so I had independent verification of the dealer costs on the various options. I feel like we got a good deal on the vehicle as configured, but the configuration is not exactly as we wanted. The things that were really important to us were the 3rd row seats, the 4wd, and the roof rack. Anything else was pretty much gravy--and not gravy we wanted to pay for. We knew we were going to have to accept the sunroof (which is a plus for me, but L thinks it's just something to leak), the enhanced stereo, and the daytime running lights, just b/c that's the way Toyota manufactures these things. These were all acceptable, but the vehicle Mark found for us also had the aforementioned mudflaps, appliqué, and floor mats, which most certainly were not worth what they charged for them. So I'm 80% happy, but not 100%. But I have yet to be 100% satisfied w/any car purchase, so, c'est la guerre.

Bubblicious

2007-04-07T18:51:00.001-07:00

Kodos' First Swim

2007-04-07T09:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had an unseasonably warm day (80 degrees!) and as Laurel's brother Jay was in town visiting, I took the day off & we headed over to Scenic Beach State Park for some fun in the sun.

We of course took Kodos along (had to drive in 2 cars, but we were more comfortable that way anyway) who wilted a bit in the heat, but was very eager to get out & about in the wonderful forest there.

We set ourselves up on the rocky but not unpleasant beach, and then had a stroll. I led K down to the water (still not confident enough to let him off-leash) and he seemed a little interested in the water, but not overly so. It was mostly about the new smells and creatures at that point, and as I didn't want to get wet myself, we just padded around the shore.

Cut to after lunch. Some kids started throwing rocks into the water (a very common occurrence of course--you put kids next to water, and they're going to throw stuff into it). For some reason, this set K off--he was barking and seemed to really want to get down there. So okay I figure--let's see if he'll actually get into the water. We go down (away from the rock-throwing kids) & I lead him into the water (always on-leash w/his gentle leader harness). You could tell the water resistance felt really weird to him by the way he was watching his own front feet.

I cajoled & goaded him out further and further by throwing his tennis-ball dumbbell toy nearer/farther away, until he finally got to a place where he couldn't really just walk, and--check it out!--his legs started that familiar paddling motion and my boy was actually swimming! He even retrieved the toy a couple of times (tho as often he just nudged it w/his nose & then turned back, leaving me to wade further out into the water to get the toy back). He had a couple of revelations, including that he couldn't breathe when he stuck his face into the water, which I think sobered him up some.

It was really interesting to have his attention on me. Up until that point, he was pretty heedless of me, being completely engrossed by the park, the other dogs and people there. But when we were in the water and I was throwing the dumbbell toy around, I had his attention. It wasn't quite as as intense as that of the border collies we see at the dog park when their person is chucking tennis balls, but it was close. At one point--possibly overconfident--I took his leash off to see if that would embolden him in his swimming out for the ball. It didn't seem to have that much effect, and he lunged toward a thrown rock, so I grabbed him & leashed him up again.

We may have a water dog on our hands! :-D

Once we got home, I tethered K up to the deck & gave him his first garden-hose shower (up until now it's all been tub showers). He was not amused. I discovered later that he'd cut one of his paw pads a bit--no doubt on a rock in the water. It bled some, but seems fine now. We'll keep an eye on it.

Girls first skiing

2007-04-07T07:56:00.000-07:00

This week Laurel's brother Jay came up from Wyoming, and we took advantage of his skiing instructional skills and put the girls on skis for the first time in their lives. We went to Crystal Mountain, over by Mt. Rainier. Both girls did great!

Here, Jay & Annelise contemplate the conveyor belt in the beginner area:

Here's a picture of Simone getting her first bit of sliding in, on the training slope:

Here's one of Annelise on the training slope:

Annelise--naturally--took to skiing like the proverbial bat out of hell. Simone is much more tentative about being off-balance however, and I was a little worried that she wouldn't have fun.

After they got used to sliding on their skis and 'snowplowing' to stop and steer, it was time to tackle the ski lift up to the bunny slope. My dim memories of ski lifts were that they were pretty challenging, and guaranteed to make you fall at some point. But we had a pretty decent time of it, all told--they actually slowed the thing down to let us get in place. Jay told us later that Annelise loved the lift--loved being up in the air. Simone didn't love it, but she did just fine.

Now, the bunny slope had two grades on it--a fairly short, steep one right down from where the lift let off, and then a longer, more gradual slope down the hill. On the steep part of the slope, my fears for Simone were realized--she was scared and very angry that I would lead her into such a dangerous place. She wiped out a couple of times.

But to my delight, the second part of the slope was gradual and long enough that 'Mo was able to get herself under control and up to a speed that was comfortable and fun. She made a couple of lazy loops, and could pretty much stop at will. By the time we got to the bottom, she was very willing to get back on the lift and have another go. After all the driving we had to do to get there, and all the preliminary practice, we only got 3 runs in, but on the third run 'Mo didn't wipe out at all on that first, steep slope.

So--it looks like we're going to be able to do family ski trips once in a while--very cool!

New Crate

2007-03-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

The girls were helping Kodos to feel comfortable in his new crate.

The Red Menace

2007-03-04T09:24:00.001-08:00

Yesterday on an impulse I picked up a laser pointer toy at PetsMart. I've seen people play w/their cats w/these--you shine the laser on the floor, and move it around & their prey instinct kicks in and they chase it all over the place.

Well, our grey tabby Pickles saw through this ruse right away--paid it a little attention at first, and then stopped. "Oh right--that light is back." Kodos on the other hand, will tear around like a maniac trying to catch the red dot. It's a strange combination of funny and scary to watch, as he is 100 pounds, and so focused on catching this thing that he will bang into things (walls, furniture) in his fervor.

I was hoping to be able to use it outside, to play with him w/out subjecting myself to the risk of stepping in poop, but apparently the beam emitted by a 6$ laser is not bright enough to show up outside during the day. Ah well...

Ix-nay on the Ip-snay (for now)

2007-03-04T09:00:00.000-08:00

I have changed my mind on neutering the dog so early. I mentioned to a fellow Newf puppy owner that we were going to get the deed done, and she mentioned some things that gave me pause. Specifically, she said the advice she'd gotten said that the physical development that may be adversely affected isn't just a matter of appearances. It's potentially a matter of orthopedic health as well. Well, I'm spooked enough by the thought of dysplasia that it caused me to reconsider. I posted a question about it over on newf.net and got some references to lots of opinions, including this article from a vet, which made me think really hard about how obnoxious K's behavior has really been.

So I consulted w/my vet about it, and his opinion was that the most important factor in bone development is nutrition, but if we wanted to put off the neuter until 12 months or so, it seemed reasonable to him. So that's what we'll do. I think I'll try to wait until 18 months actually & just watch his behavior. If it gets too too bad, I'll do it earlier.

In other news, we've tested out leaving K alone unattended again (we went back to heavy crating after he gouged the drywall) and so far, so good. I suppose it may be that he doesn't like the taste of the spackle as much as the drywall. Either way, the walls look pretty decent.

(Daughter Annelise had an excellent suggestion for getting Kodos to stop chewing the walls. When we put a plate down for him to lick off after dinner, he invariably eats everything on it except for any stray pieces of lettuce. A's thought was that we should cover the walls with lettuce b/c K obviously doesn't like the taste of it. Hah!)

Again with the snow...

2007-03-02T17:13:00.000-08:00

It snowed again today and Laurel told me to go get video of the dog, as he was jumping into the air to chomp flakes out of the sky.

Alas, I missed it. But here's the video I did manage to get:

Snippety snip

2007-02-19T12:28:00.000-08:00

My dear poochie Kodos is now 8 months old, and has entered adolescence. Thus, he has become a butt-head. Lucky for him, he is an incredibly cute--nay, beautiful butt-head Just look:

Could you stay mad at him for making a 6" diameter gouge in the drywall? (picture here--he enlarged it the next day.) I didn't think so.

I have a 3-pronged plan to combat this obnoxiousness

Try and get to the dog park more often, so as to exercise the demons (hah!) out of him.
Starting March 12 (yikes--that's my wedding anniversary!) we re-do basic obedience over at Noelle Ritter's. This time, no kids--just me. Fewer distractions.
On March 9th, K goes in for neutering.

It is arguably early for the neutering (a lot of the advice I've seen is to wait until a year, in order to give them a chance to get their last hormone-induced growth in) but I'm willing to risk it to keep him from developing pushy and/or destructive habits. I have a hard time imagining him morphing into anything short of his current breathtakingly beautiful state. Not that I'm biased or anything... ;-)

Pardeemobile

2007-02-19T10:49:00.000-08:00

With our latest addition to the family, we have been feeling a bit cramped in our current vehicles (a '99 Accord and '91 Civic). Thus, we are car shopping. We would like to be able to bring Kodos on various trips with us, and the days of us all getting into the Accord are long gone.

Now, having successfully avoided the minivan ('cause we're hep, man--thanks for asking) through the addition of 2 children to the family, we are fairly eager to keep doing so. Which means either station wagon or SUV. But Dear Wife is allergic to station wagons, and let's face it, she does like 80% of the driving, so I guess it's SUV-city for us.

The problem is that we've always been small-car people, and in particular, Honda people (I've never owned a non-Honda in my life). So naturally we have looked at the CR-V, the Element, and even the Pilot. Of the 3, the Pilot most captured my imagination. I have this fantasy that my brother would actually come out to visit us someday w/his family of 4, and since the Pilot seats 8, we could host them & all move about in one vehicle. I also have this fantasy that my sister would come out to visit someday, but she's got 6 in her family, so there's no way to avoid multiple vehicles.

But anyway, dang is that Pilot expensive--about double what we paid for the Accord in fact. So that's looking like a pipe-dream at this point.

The others are okay--the CR-V is actually quite nice, and a nice size. The fatal flaws on that are a) no 3rd-row seat at all and (this is silly, but it matters to me) b) no built-in aux jack so we can listen to our mp3 players in the car. To quote Lindsay Bluth "what are we, Amish?"

The Element has its funky look (which we both like) but it's a tad bit utilitarian for the money, and it won't hold all 4 of us plus the dog in the back. So that's out.

So... last Saturday we strayed across the street to the Toyota dealership (heresy!) and tried out the new RAV-4. Loved it! It gets decent mileage, is not outlandishly large, and yet you can still get it with fold-away 3rd row seats for 2. So it would hold 7 people in a pinch (w/close to no luggage or legroom, mind you, but sometimes that's enough). The salesdude even let us drive it home to test how it fit in our garage (no problems). We like. I have ordered the Consumer Reports price report on it, and will devise my strategy for getting a good price on it.

While we were there, we also looked at the Highlander. We like that one (and in fact daughter Annelise likes it better than the RAV-4, b/c it's got a bigger back for hiding in) quite a bit too. What makes it less of an attraction to us is that you have to choose between getting good gas mileage (e.g., get the hybrid) and fitting > 5 people in it. That is, you can't get a 3rd row seat on the hybrid (I believe because that space is taken up by all the batteries). So we'll see how it goes. It's conceivable to me that we'd settle for a non-hybrid Highlander if it's too tough to get a good price on a RAV-4. Wish us luck...

Getting big!

2007-02-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

From Kodos

Kodos is 7 months old now, and has taken to resting his head on my keyboard tray while I'm working. This is cute, except when he's waiting for me to share food with him (as in the pic above), at which time he creates a slippery condition on my mouse pad. But I can't fault his patience.

As you can see, he is distractingly beautiful. ;-) His adult coat is almost all the way in, and it is gorgeous--curly and lustrous. I have woefully neglected his grooming since my one ill-fated attempt at an ear-trim which resulted in drawing blood. Poor guy--I almost wished he'd bit me for it, I felt so guilty. I promptly gave him a thing of leftover roast beef and all was forgiven. But he's skittish around me when I've got cutting implements, and I can't blame him. I think I will let the fur go au natural, and will just try to focus on brushing and nail trimming for a while.

We have discovered the fenced-in, off-leash area at local Raab park. Kodos loves it! We've been twice now. The first time, there was an ornery bulldog who growled & snapped at K, which was a bit scary. But his owner removed him from the park
right away and the rest of the visit was a hoot.

Kodos spent a bunch of time playing w/a gorgeous husky named Keetna (sp?), who literally vaulted back and forth over him. Such energy! It was a blast seeing all the different breeds playing together. There was a little Italian Greyhound that had the energy of a hummingbird--so fast!

The funniest thing that happened was, after getting tired out playing w/Keetna, Kodos took up w/an adorable chihuahua-doxie mix named Troy. Troy would bounce up and down on his hind feet, which brought him just about to K's face level. Kodos pranced around a bit, careful not to step on Troy, and then sat down. Well, as soon as he did, Troy promptly ran around to K's rear, mounted him, and started humping away. I just about fell over laughing. The whole time K has this confused look on his face like "what? do I have something stuck in my fur or something?". I don't think K even felt him back there. Hah!

We had one other amusing thing happen since the last post. We had a big windstorm, which knocked down a section of the fence between our backyard and that of our neighbors, who own a skittish little miniature pinscher named Lucky. Lucky is a frequent visitor to our back yard, since even before the wind storm, he can easily squeeze through the opening where 2 fences meet.

Well, Kodos was naturally loving his expanded domain during the time before my neighbor went and fixed up the fence. The neighbors like Kodos, so that wasn't an issue. But more than once we looked out and saw him w/his head stuck into their pet door, no doubt barking his fool head off. "Can Lucky come out to play?" Fat chance--with your head blocking his way out.

Kodos at 6 Months

2006-12-24T09:43:00.000-08:00

It's been about a month since Kodos first came down with kennel cough (I think at obedience class) but I think he's finally over it. It was initially pretty bad, but cleared up really quickly (for the most part) after a course of antibiotics.

Unfortunately, it didn't clear up completely. Kodos would hack/sneeze four or five times every morning when he first got up from his night's sleep. He wasn't in any real distress, but kennel cough is apparently very contagious, and so we had to keep him home & out of the company of other dogs. This was a big drag, as K is pretty social, and loves to be out & about.

But thankfully, this week we've had no coughing. So we took him on a long walk into downtown Poulsbo on Friday, and stopped off at Poulsbo Emergency Vet Clinic for a quick weigh-in. He was pretty wiggly on the scale, but at the end it declared him to be 80 lbs. So I guess the mutters of "big dog" I was hearing as we walked around downtown are starting to be true. We'll see how big he finally winds up.

In other news, we've tried letting Kodos sleep outside his crate for the last 2 nights. He never really loved the crate, and he's been really solid on the housetraining, so we figured we'd give him a shot. The living room & upstairs are gated off, so he plunks down on the kitchen floor and makes like a speed bump. So far so good--he's 2 for 2.

Movies

Watched A Scanner Darkly last night. Very trippy, but excellent. I am not positive that I understood the ending completely (should probably read the book) but it was definitely riveting. I guess there are 2 types of "horror" that can really succeed in horrifying me--the supernatural (as in The Exorcist, which scared the crap out of me) and tales of addiction (as in Requiem For a Dream--one of the most compelling stories I've ever seen I think).

I love Picasa

2006-12-17T13:06:00.000-08:00

From Kodos

Just discovered google's Picasa program/service a little bit ago, and love it. You get a program to download, and a web account where you can upload photos, like the above. The program seeks out your photo files (and also watches for new ones coming off your camera). It's got a really nice interface for adding captions, doing little touch-ups (sharpen, brighten, etc.) organizing photos into albums, and uploading albums to the website for sharing.

Very fun and easy for non-photogs like me to deal with.

Anybody interested in seeing pics of my magnificent Kodos ;-) can surf to the "Kodos" link above--it's a public album that I'll be using to store the best of the pics we take of him.

Week 3

2006-09-09T14:29:00.000-07:00

We went to see Dr. Daigle over at the Poulsbo Marina vet clinic yesterday--Kodos is doing fine. He had another parvo/distemper shot, a worming & we got hooked up w/some Advantage anti-flea stuff for all the pets in the household. The K-man weighs 25.2 lbs or so (he was pretty wiggly on the scale, so that's probably +/- a pound or so). I actually forgot to ask about changing the feeding regimen, but as the vet seemed happy w/his weight, I'm inclined to stay the course (roughly 3 meals of 1-cup kibble & 1 tbsp canned dog food). He was a big hit at the clinic, naturally. At the vet's recommendation, we're going to wait to microchip him until he goes for neutering (anytime before 4.5 months, if I recall correctly). Next appt. is in a month, for another p/d shot & something involving a stool sample.

The mornings this week have been a bit tough on Laurel & the girls--school started on Weds, which means they're much more rushed & there was much less attention for Kodos (I'm off to work before they get up 4x/week, so I'm no help). He barked & carried on quite a bit--got into a bit of a frenzy. Things were much better on Thursday & then yesterday were just fine, as I was home. We're strategizing how to keep him occupied & reasonably calm on school mornings. I'm thinking of giving him his breakfast in several kongs, to spread it out over time & keep him busy. Hopefully that'll be the ticket--if not, we'll try something else.

Here's a pic I just took of him. Awfully photogenic, don't you think? ;-)

Life with Kodos

2006-09-02T11:30:00.000-07:00

Well, it's 2 weeks today that we've had Kodos, aka the K-man, aka K-Rock aka Special K. He's fitting in just fine. I had some wrong ideas about how easy the housetraining would be, and how quickly he would willingly go on leashed walks with me, but I think we've reached an understanding now.

The housetraining is going pretty well. We're crate-training, and I think the crate we have him in is officially too big for him (that is, he could probably go potty in one corner & be able to get far enough away from it to be happy. But he (cross fingers) hasn't done so yet, and after 2 weeks, I'm inclined to trust that he won't. We have the crate downstairs in the kitchen, and that's working well for us. I've been getting up twice a night (and yes it's me doing it, even on commute days) but am going to try and get that down to once/night soon. Actually, given the nice weather we've been having, Kodos has been pretty happy to sleep outside on the deck. That's pretty sweet, until one of the cats decides s/he wants to go out, and they sit on the other side of the sliding glass door. Kodos noticed Suki doing that at about 3am this morning, which caused a bunch of barking. Now, we have neighbors w/dogs that bark (even very late sometimes) but I'd like to not bother them too much, so I pretty promptly went down there & we did an animal exchange (dog comes in, cat goes out). I tried to wait for a 2-second period of non-barking, so as not to encourage the barking. We'll see how well that works out.

So now I'm looking to get the other aspects of his training together--the big issue right now is biting. He is of course used to having siblings to bite, who will bite him back & yelp as appropriate. We humans definitely do the yelping, but we'd really like to be more than chew toys to the little critter.

I've been doing a lot of reading. First the Monks of New Skete's puppy book (which I later learned is really quite out of date (it was published in 1991), and their How To Be Your Dog's Best Friend (much more recent). One of my correspondents on the newf-l list recommended Ian Dunbar's Before & after getting your puppy : the positive approach to raising a happy, healthy, and well-behaved dog. That's looking good--hopefully we can make that work.

Here are a couple of short videos of Kodos--here he's just romping around a bit:

And here's how he reacted to our scooba. I thought it was funny how underwhelmed he was. At the end he gets up & starts barking--not at the scooba, but at our cat who appeared at the back door:

Welcome Home Kodos!

2006-08-19T22:38:00.000-07:00

IMG_3546 (Medium)
Originally uploaded by rpardee3rd.

Today we welcomed home our long-awaited Newfoundland puppy Kodos. Isn't he adorable?

You can see more photos here.

Here's a short video:

The puppies are coming! The puppies are coming!

2006-08-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

I have had all kinds of trouble showing people this video of the newf puppies that I uploaded to youtube. Let's see if it works as embedded in this blog post:

Oy with this fence...

2006-06-24T20:25:00.000-07:00

Putting up this fence will surely kill me. Oh, my aching body. I can just imagine what I'm going to feel like tomorrow... Very not good.

Laurel selflessly volunteered to take the girls to girl scouts' camp this weekend so that I can get a jump on my secondary obsession--building just a little bit of fence so that we will be able to contain a dog in our back yard. This obsession is secondary to my Newfoundland obsession, of course. I'd have no use for a fence otherwise.

This morning I woke up bright & early--all alone mind you, and put on the Eukanuba Champions dog show on animal planet. I've been wanting to see a dog show, just to see the different breeds out there. (I was amazed to discover that people really do give poodles those ridiculous looking haircuts you see in movies/television. I wonder if there's such a thing as a flow-bee for dogs?)

That done, I rousted myself, borrowed my friend's pickup and headed to home depot to buy 5 10-foot 4x4s, a premade gate, and 9 60 lb bags of quick-setting concrete.

Now my goal was to get all 5 posts set in concrete this weekend--preferably today. Hoo boy, did I underestimate the degree to which digging post holes is a soul-sucking nightmare that renders you so weak that you're just barely able to type blog posts. I got 2 holes dug & posts set.

Next time we rent the power auger. I don't give a crap that it's just 5 holes. Yes I'm a big sissy-girl. Yes, I'm a weak little girly-man. Whatever. I can barely stand to raise my arms sufficiently to wash my hair in the shower. Thanks to the miracle of modern beer I'm beginning to achieve a certain detente with my body at the moment, but man am I gonna hurt tomorrow. This dog better be my best friend for life, I'll tell you that.

In the course of digging these 2 holes, I have invented the "praise the lord" rock. You will be asking yourself at this point "what the heck is a praise the lord rock? What could he mean? And why is he wasting my time with this phony rhetorical questioning crap?"

A praise the lord rock, is a large rock you encounter while trying to dig a post hole, which impedes your digging and makes a morale-destroying sound of metal hitting rock when you jab the accursed post hole digger into your still-too-shallow hole yet again. The sound is not unlike the cry of the Nâzgul. It is a rock that forces you to widcn your post hole more and more, in an attempt to loosen the rock sufficiently to get it the !@$@@%^ out of your !#%@@%$ post-hole, so you can start to make progress again.

When this happens, the hole-digger spontaneously exclaims PRAISE THE LORD!!! I don't care if the digger is religeous or not--it is not a voluntary reaction. It's like those reflexes that are handled right at the spinal cord level, w/out any nerve impulses reaching the brain.

Today I found 3, yes three praise the lord rocks. I almost feel like I've been to church...

Newf Newf Newf!

2006-06-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

I have become obsessed with Newfoundlands, those wonderful, enormous, water-loving dogs. The more I read about them, the more convinced I am that one would be a great addition to our family. The only dicey parts are that we'd have to fence in a fair chunk of our back yard, which may be difficult, and our current vehicle (a honda accord) is probably not going to cut it for brining our extended family around. There's nothing wrong with the accord, but it's served us well for seven years now, and so moving it into second place (behind maybe a honda element?) would not offend my sense of frugality...

The fence is another matter however. The grading on our property is such that getting a functional portion of it fenced off is going to be awkward. I'm going to have to do some serious thinking about that.

We went to visit some newfs at the Almost Home boarding kennel yesterday, where Sandy MacFarlane has some beautiful beasts. I brought the camera, but didn't take any pictures unfortunately. What fun! The girls loved the dogs, and vice versa. Simone was a bit squeamish about the "dog boogers" that were admittedly flying around a bit. I guess one got on the underside of her skirt, which was uncomfortable. But she and Annelise both had a great time.

Sandy recommended a good-sized covered kennel to solve the 'not enough fence' problem. Apparently the cover is a necessity, since, such is the breed's love of water, that given the choice between laying out in the rain, and laying under something covered, they tend to choose the rain.

I'm not sure I want to do that. I'd much rather be able to open the back door & let Chewbacca (I've already got a name in mind!) out to enjoy the air, and do his business etc. So I'm thinking about the fencing situation.

Laurel is, sadly, not as convinced as I am. "It's as big as our couch!" she says. "I don't want a dog that's going to make me feel like I need a bigger house" she says. Valid points. But I think we could make it work. Our house is not so small--and it's got a fair amount of wasted space (in the form of a 'play room' (read: big ol' pile of toys) that I think we could reclaim for newfdom.

The other breeds that I like are much smaller (corgis, dachshunds) but they are not nearly as good with children, and Laurel does not like dogs with short legs, so they're out. She nominated the malamute, which I like, but they have been known to kill the cats in the house (this is according to the one breeder Laurel spoke with) and that's a deal-breaker.

Movies
This week we watched Transamerica. A-ma-zing performance by Felicity Huffman. I'd heard that it was actually a woman playing the main character--a 'gender dysphoric' man on his way to getting a sex change operation. But midway through the movie I decided I'd remembered wrong--that couldn't be a man. Imagine my suprise on watching one of the special features, when I realized that not only was the character played by a woman--but it was an actress I recognized from other things! Excellent performance, and quite a decent flick as well.

I love wikis

2006-03-26T16:52:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time...

I am having a bucket of fun at work with the perspective wiki engine. For those that don't already know, a wiki is a website that you can edit right from within your browser, without the need for any special software, knowledge, or permissions. The most famous wiki is of course the wikipedia.

We put up a few instances to play with--one hosting local restaurant reviews (this will be for consumption by the general membership of my employer--the Center for Health Studies) and another for storing data documentation. It took me just a little bit of work to get it to read user information out of our Active Directory, but it works really slickly. It uses integrated windows authentication so users don't have to log in, and it creates new wiki user accounts (pages) automatically the first time someone visits the site.

It is such a breath of fresh air to work with this thing relative to pretty much any other method I've used for putting information on the web. It's even easier than this blog I think. Formatting is not the forte with this thing, but you can spew information onto pages in no time flat. Very no-nonsense. Highly highly recommended for any place that wants collaboratively maintained web based information.

This weekend Laurel & I both watched Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. I also watched Lord of War by myself. The Enron movie was a tad confusing at the start, as it wasn't really made clear exactly how these guys perpetrated the monstrous fraud that they did. I get that they were (for some reason) allowed to use this crazy method of accounting whereby they could 'count their chicks before they are hatched', and that allowed them to pretty much make up whatever crazy figures they wanted for the analysts. But the whole Jeff Skilling incestuous-phantom-corporation business remains cloudy to me. I suppose I'll have to read the book if I really want to know.

Good flick though. Completely enraging, as you might expect, but still a good watch. I'd forgotten that there was a period at the end where the rank-and-file were prevented from trading their Enron shares, while the uberclassmen were ditching it like the garbage they knew it to be. I'm kind of amazed nobody has Jack Ruby'd these guys yet.

Lord of War was excellent. Really poignant story of a man who has lost his soul. Kind of reminiscient of Goodfellas, in that it had very active narration, and was a story about organized crime. It's almost as good as Goodfellas too. Nicholas Cage like a mofo!

My illustrious Aikido career will apparently be postponed

2005-11-20T16:05:00.000-08:00

Three weeks ago my lovely daughter had her 7th birthday party at a local Aikido dojo--Island Aikido, on tony Bainbridge Island. This was on the very strong recommendation of a family friend, and a bit of shot in the dark, as our family has had no contact whatever with the world of the martial arts. The party went swimmingly--Sensei Chris Mills had the kids well in hand (and some of those kids were real characters, let me tell you), and everybody had a good time.

I was intrigued enough with what little I saw that I thought I'd try it out myself, and try to get my daughters enthused about it too. I've actually long harbored an idle desire to see them proficient in a martial art. I would absolutely love it if they were to develop confidence in their ability to deal with, shall we say... adverse physical circumstances. I think it would be a great load off my mind once they get further out into the social world, and have to deal with bullies, and possibly overly enthusiastic romantic admirers. It's a tad early to worry about such things, but so goes the mind of this father.

At any rate, I was intrigued, and decided to try my hand at the closer-to-home Kitsap Aikido. Sensei Dan Delaney let me know that they'd be happy to see me come by for a session, to see if it was for me. Nice folks over there--tremendously good vibes. The class started at 9am, which is earlier than I'm usually presentable to the outside world on a Saturday. But Laurel encouraged me to go, and so I did. I must say it was pretty cool. I'm usually pretty averse to anything even halfway spiritual, or which concerns belief in things outside the typical 6 senses, but I was definitely taken with what bits of philosophy were coming through in the class. Not that that was a very large proportion of time spent, mind you.

I was assured that "everybody feels like a klutz for the first 6 months", and allowed onto the mats to pratice along with 6 other students. And sure enough I did feel like a klutz. For some reason I lost my sense of right and left, and would frequently find myself in a posture opposite to the one desired. No matter. The Sensei was very encouraging--let me know that his Sensei had only taken up Aikido at the age of 40, and said that I was doing uncommonly well for a beginner. I bet you say that to all the girls, I thought. ;-) But who wouldn't love such encouragement?

The Sensei led me through the first things any Aikido student learns--how to fall without getting hurt. This means backward and forward rolls. Well, I was doing fairly well, when (I think out of overconfidence) I took one forward roll too hard on my left shoulder, and banged the heck out of it. The result was pain, shortness of breath & even a bit of dizzyness.

Which is lame. Here I am--almost 40 years old and just now attempting to learn a martial art. And before I can even score myself a set of those cool pajamas they wear ;-) I go and hurt myself. Feh. Loser weekend warrior.

I think the problem was that I went too quickly to doing the rolls from a full upright position. I should have spent more time starting from a crouch, until I could do it without having to think about it. Sigh.

Now those of you who know me well may recall that I had a similar injury during our summer trip to New York. I was bodysurfing on an absolutely beautiful day at the beach, and having a blast. Felt like a kid again. But I rode one wave too far, and when it broke on the beach, it pretty much pile-drove me into the sand, on my left shoulder. Lucky thing was that my Brother-in-law Michael and Sister Mary are both in the Physical Therapy bidness, and Brother Tim is a full-on medical type physician don't you know. So I was in good shape in terms of getting fast medical advice (ice and ibuprophen) but it did cast a bit of a pall on the trip. Good sympathy though.

After playing it fairly cool at the dojo, I went to Urgent Care and waited a ridiculously long time to see a PA about it. The nice thing is that they did an x-ray and let me know that nothing was broken. Turns out my 'AC' joint (this would be the one mating the collarbone to the shoulderblade) is mildly sprained. I was given a 'shoulder immobilizer' (translation: a sling that ties around your waist to keep the arm snugged in to your body) and told to wear it for 2 days, after which I should start some range-of-motion exercises to keep from losing that. And I'm to stay away from the dojo for 2 weeks.

So. Apparently, my very promising Aikido career will have to wait a couple of weeks to begin. ;-)

Sony To Customers: #@*$! you.

2005-11-12T12:27:00.001-08:00

This is getting tons of press in the tech world, but not much in the mainstream, so I thought I'd write a bit about it too, so I could refer friends & family to what I hope is a reasonably terse description of the problem.

It seems that numerous Sony/BMG CDs come with a trojan horse program that burrows deep into the windows operating system, hides its files, memory processes and registry keys from the operating system, and installs an extra software layer between the OS and the cd-rom drive that, if removed, results in the drive becoming inoperable.

Now hiding stuff from the OS is a neat trick--not for your average, run-of-the-mill code monkey. Just about every program that runs on your machine--including antivirus and antispyware programs, rely on the OS to give it access to things like files, a list of programs currently in memory (processes) and registry keys (that's the OS's whole raison d'etre). If the OS doesn't know about a file, it obviously can't make it available to be scanned. So this is close to complete stealth technology--a jedi mind trick for your security software. "These aren't the bits you're looking for. You can go now. Move along."

Software like this has a distinguished history in the annals of malware--it's called a rootkit and its used by hackers to hide their presence on a machine that they've compromised (aka 'rooted').

Now right there that would be enough to make anybody angry, but it's actually worse. This trojan is implemented in such a way that it extends its 'cloak' to anything whose name starts with a magic string of characters: $sys$. So make a copy of notepad.exe, rename it to $sys$notepad.exe while the trojan is running, and the copy disappears from sight! Or take a registry key, throw $sys$ at the beginning of the key name, and that's gone too.

Making notepad disappear from sight may be a fun parlor trick, but the fact that this thing indiscriminately hides anything with a magic name means that its only a matter of time before some script kiddie adapts a worm to use this to hide their own nasty payloads from your computer. The change would be as easy as changing a filename from IHopeTheyDontFindThis.exe to $sys$TheyllNeverFindThisHaHa.exe. Nice.

There are full tech details on the sysinternals website.

So what to do? Well as a practical matter you obviously don't want to put any of the affected CDs in your computer. There are lists of which CDs have this tech on them out on the net, but I'm personally inclined to err on the side of caution and not mess with anything that has the Sony name on it.

I'm also going to boycott Sony products until I hear about a serious response to this problem--which at a minimum will have to include a complete recall and free replacement program for all infected cds, and an easily accomplished and safe uninstall process for infected PCs. Preferably the people responsible for implementing this in the first place will also be fired.

So I guess I'm not going to be getting Shadow of The Colossus for Christmas. [Sob...]

New digital camera

2005-10-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

When Laurel's parents came to visit last summer, her Mom brought her brand new, hyper-mega-super, oongatz digital camera--a Canon Powershot S2 IS. This thing takes fantabulous pictures--even when handled by unsophisticated photographers such as Laurel and I.

We've been lusting after this thing ever since, but haven't been able to bring ourselves to spend that kind of money on a digicam, until this week. Not sure what the precipitating event was (if indeed there was one) but we took the plunge. Man, what a nice camera. I'm still reading the manual, so I don't yet have a stranglehold on how to put it to optimal use, but we're getting some hella-nice shots out of it already.

We originally ordered it from this web site, but when we weren't getting notices from them that the thing had shipped, etc., we went back and looked at their holiday calendar. And holy cow, I think they're shut down more days in October than they're working! When I tried calling them, they were out for Sukkot (although, according to this calendar, it was actually Shemini Atzeret). When Laurel finally got someone on the phone, she learned it was back-ordered, and wouldn't be shipped for 6-8 weeks. Oy vey. So we cancelled the order and just went down to Circuit City.

All we need now are two sets of rechargeable batteries and a protective case for it & we should be set. Yay!

We've been watching season two of Arrested Development on DVD for the past two weeks. That show so rewards repeated viewings. The gags are packed so tightly that you just can't get them all in a single viewing. So funny.

Last night we took a break from AD, to watch The Chorus, despite not feeling like we were in the mood for something of the quiet-and-heartwarming variety. This was one of the many many movies I put on my Netflix queue long ago after hearing some positive buzz about it, then forgot about, kept promoting other flicks ahead of it etc. Then I stopped paying attention to our queue, and when it showed up in the mail I was like "I wanted this why?".

Netflix can be a harsh mistress sometimes. You pay a flat monthly rate, and can watch as many movies as you like, but you can only have 3 out at a time. There are no late fees--you just don't get any new movies until you return the ones you already have. So there's a bit of pressure to turn movies over, in order to get your money's worth. On the other hand, the lack of a due date means that you can wind up sitting on movies that you're not in the mood to see right now, but don't want to send back because you think you'll be in the mood soon. We've got that dynamic going on right now with Finding Neverland.

Anyway The Chorus completely won us both over--totally charming. Highly recommended.

Peace out.

The Joy and Sorrow of Serenity

2005-10-02T18:22:00.000-07:00

So L and I took the day off from swimming with our darling daughters (Annelise is still kicking a cold anyway) and instead dropped them off at the neighbors, and went to see Serenity.

Ah, so wonderful. We were late fans of Firefly--just caught the buzz over at slashdot at some point, put the first disc on our Netflix queue, fell in love, and the rest is history.

Serenity was very pleasing--a total roller coaster, and with emotions all over the spectrum. Definitely recommended, whether you're a fan of the show or not. I hope they make a sequel or three.

Next eagerly-anticipated media event: DVDs of season 2 of Arrested Development come out a week from Tuesday. W00t!

Operation Downpour

2005-10-02T17:45:00.000-07:00

So we've got these two young cats--littermates, adopted last year from the Humane Society. Cuter than the dickens, but quite destructive. They're called Mei and Tsatsuki (after the sisters in My Neighbor Totoro).

Early on we let them be 'indoor/outdoor' cats, and even bought a cat door so they could come and go as they pleased. They really liked that, but poor Mei was soon hit by a car (necessitating ridiculously expensive surgery). So bye bye cat door.

Now, Suki was so destructive that she actually completely ruined our carpeting in several spots--clawing her way down to the padding underneath the carpet. Crazy. We couldn't tolerate that, and had her declawed. Regrettable, but so would bringing her back to the Humane society. So she's not so much a threat anymore.

Now Mei on the other hand still has some of the tools Mother Nature intended her to have. In her quest for freedom she has torn gaping holes in (or otherwise destroyed) no less than five window screens, in an effort to create a hole big enough for her to come and go as she pleases, like the good old days.

These are not wimpy fabric screens, mind you. Well, actually the first one was, but the first time I replaced it I used metal. She goes right through them. Not right away--but she's persistant.

So we've been trying like heck to keep them inside. This is a tad difficult b/c their litterboxes are in the garage (and we do *not* want them inside, thank you) and we keep our car in the garage, so we have to occasionally open and close the door. Mei's preference is to be out all night, until about 4am--just 30 minutes before I have to be up for work. Nice.

Now when Mei is outside and she wants in, she starts meowing and in short order, jumping up to claw at the window screen. Never mind that the window behind it is closed and that she could never actually enter the house this way in a million years. No, this is actually a good strategy because I, sleep-addled and fearing another screen job, hear her going after my baby and actually get up out of bed, go downstairs, and let her in. She's trained me well... Sigh.

But I am happy to report that I've gained the upper hand in this relationship. Or I think so at any rate.

It so happens that the screen in question is directly over our (2d-story) bedroom window. And it also happens that Laurel & I keep a small tub in the shower, to catch the shower water while we're waiting for it to get hot so it doesn't get wasted (L's such the environmentalist.). Can you see where I'm going here? Well, it's only slightly more effort for me to bring said tub of water over to my window, open it up, and slosh some out onto the cat than it is for me to trek downstairs and let the dear thing in. (She can wait a bloody half-hour.)

I've gone through 3 iterations of the sloshing, and am hopeful that this will finally break her of the screen-slashing. If it doesn't work, we're having her declawed.

Peace.

Wikipedia

2005-09-30T17:51:00.000-07:00

If you're not already hip to it, check out the wikipedia, a free, communal encyclopedia. So much fun stuff there--and all user generated. I spent about half an hour laughing over the Made-Up Words in The Simpsons page. Hilarious. If there's something you're interested in, do a search for it and see what they've got. If you don't like it--change it. So cool...

Bitchin' about admin privileges

2005-09-25T14:30:00.001-07:00

Many of you know that I have recently suffered a nasty spyware infection. (This, despite using FireFox rather than IE, and running behind a NAT firewall, and running a software firewall (ZoneAlarm) and setting windows to auto-update itself--terribly unfair, but whaddayagonnado?)

Well, as I rebooted, scanned, repaired, etc. my venerable Dell 8100, I had some time to reflect on some of the especially nasty methods these things use to stay alive, and the part that I played in our infection.

One method these nasties use is to add entries in your HOSTS file. Now HOSTS is one of the various means your computer uses to translate human-readable internet addresses (like say, www.theonion.com) into machine-understandable numbers ("ip addresses") like 66.216.104.235:80. This is just a text file, and on an XP system, it lives at c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts.

So if a nasty wants to prevent you from say, being able to get to the Windows update website, or the Norton Antivirus site, it can just add a simple line of text like this to your hosts file:

127.0.0.1 www.windowsupdate.com

(or whatever the proper host name is for windows update). That ip address--127.0.0.1 is a special one--it means "this computer right here that I'm sitting at--the local host.". (So if you're ever out and you see a pasty looking guy with a t-shirt that says "there's no place like 127.0.0.1", the joke is that that ip address is for 'home'. Ha ha--now you're in on the joke.

Anyway, that address is pretty much always reachable, but unless you happen to be running a web server on your machine, which will answer to the various URLs that start with www.windowsupdate.com, you'll never get anything but a 'page not found' error when you try to surf to anything starting with 'www.windowsupdate.com'. Ingenious! Nasty!

[Incidentally, you can also make your own good use of this file, by adding entries for known scummy domains, by pointing them to 127.0.0.1. Here's a good hosts file, maintained by one of Microsoft's MVPs. You see way fewer ads while browsing too. Recommended.]

One other things these scummy programs do is masquerade as protected windows operating system files. Windows has a very nice feature that prevents users from shooting themselves in the foot called Windows File Protection. This prevents users (and software installs) from removing or altering certain especially crucial operating system files. Unless the user (or software install) jumps through some hoops. The way it works is that the file delete, or overwrite appears to work, but then quick-like-a-bunny, behind the scenes, windows takes a shiny fresh version of the file from a hidden cache of pristene system files, and puts the file back the way it was.

This is a very nice thing for users (and software installs) that don't know what they're doing. It makes it just about impossible to hose a machine by monkeying with OS files. (Ask me about the time I hosed I think it was 4 laptops with my VB6 FTP client install... Oy. Bad Roy.). But spyware knows how to jump through the hoops & get their versions of these protected files onto your computer. And naturally, they don't just replace the one that's actually operating, they replace the one in the hidden cache of (formerly) pristene system files. So now windows file protection works for them, not for you. You can scan, detect the infection, and 'delete' the file (ha ha!) and then WFP comes in and helpfully 'corrects' this mistake you have made. Oy oy oy.

Sooooo... What do these two nasty methods have in common? Well, in order for them to work, they have to be run by someone with Administrator privileges on the machine. Administrators are Lord, God, King of the system--they can do pretty much any dang thing they want on the box.

And since windows evolved in an environment where there was only ever one person using a PC at a time, and that person had to be physically present in front of the machine, could put their hands on it & smash it to 1,000 pieces if they really wanted to, the windows world is still sort of getting the hang of the idea that not everybody should have Ultimate Supreme Grand Pooh-Bah access to the machine at all times. Specifically, software written for windows will frequently just assume that every user has admin privileges. This is a huge blind spot for developers (myself included) since they normally run with administrator privileges.

So, I think to myself--this is what I did to contribute to our infection. Both Laurel and I were running w/admin privs. This was the thing I could change that would ensure (or close) that we will never be infected again. And so I have downgraded both of our accounts (although I am still in the 'Debugger Users' group, which I suppose I should throw off, as I'm not really doing any development on this machine).

And so we are. And for the most part, things are going well. The one exception is the software that came with our Kodak EasyShare camera. This thing gives us a warning when we startup about how it will only work for a user with Admin privileges. And it looks like this is true--we can open the software and use it, but unless we log in interactively as a user w/admin privs (so 'Run as' does not work, alas!) the computer does not recognize when the camera is attached, and will not download new pictures. Damnation.

I even put this question to the Kodak support staff:

After getting hit by spyware I do not wish to run routinely with Administrator rights. How can I use the easyshare software with 'regular user' privileges? Thanks! -Roy

To which they helpfully replied:

We can guarantee the full functionality of the Kodak Easyshare Software only under administrator's privileges and we can only give support under this privileges.

Bastards.

Holy cow, that was easy.

2005-09-24T19:25:00.000-07:00

Hello, I'm blogging at you now... ;-)

Today I got yet another bad haircut, and worked on my friend Kevin's computer, which is laden with spyware and other nasties.

Fall and the rains are coming, and it's getting harder and harder to escape the gravitational pull of my computer.

Last night I finished watching the Battlestar Galactica miniseries on DVD. Very cool stuff. Quite dark. Laurel actually went to bed before the surprise twist ending! I tortured her sufficiently before caving in and telling her what it was. Anyway, can't wait to start the first season discs.

I also watched Blade: Trinity, which Laurel was too smart to partake of. It sucked, of course. Sigh. I so liked that first one...

End communication.