It was about a year ago when I signed up for a Gmail account intending to use the Calendar service. At the time I had a number of things going on and was looking for a way to get at them where ever I was. It has worked out well be it at home on the PC, traveling with the laptop or at my finger tips on the communicator. So after my recent trials setting up fetchmail, dovecot, and ldap and then adding Squirrelmail and Spamassassin I thought “why not just use Gmail ?”.
It wasn’t the first time that had crossed my mind. I’ve followed their blog and read good things about features in other places but was never ready to “let go”… I guess. Well beginning of the year I decided to give it a try if it didn’t work out I could always go back.
It’s been a few months now and I’m enjoying it so far. Spam filtering is excellent and I’m getting use to the labeling vs folders. I even switched to the reader for blogs and news subscriptions. To deal with the “I want a copy on my server” just turn on imap and pull a copy via fetchmail. Using these instructions I was able to get that working with minimal effort. So for now Gmail it is.
It seems to be a regular occurrence these days for the power to go out. While it doesn’t happen every day or week it has a few times in the last 6 months. Today was one of those days and not a good day for it. About 10:00 this morning the laptops battery kicked in and then I heard a loud pop. The power was out. No point wasting time as I was in the middle of a few things I loaded up and was off to a cafe that had wifi about 10 minutes away. Unfortunately when I got there they did not have power either. I figured that meant power was out for 10 square miles from the house and I didn’t know of any other wifi spots close by.
So it was decision time, wait it out or find a place to work. I opted for finding a place to work. I know of a Panera Bread about 30 minutes from the house so I headed that way. I was able to get some work done but after a couple hours I’d had enough of the slow connection and getting disconnected. It was back to the house and power was on by the blinking clocks the outage lasted for about and hour and a half. Hopefully it will be a while before the next one.
I think I need to scout the area one of these weekends for a closer alternative if the one cafe is not an option.
The holiday season was about to start last year when I signed up for dog training through The Woof Waggin, a dog care and boarding facility in town. I started taking Roscoe and Cooper there shortly after hearing at the dog park they offered day care services to help dogs socialize.
Before the class I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about dogs and was doing most of the right things for mine and their health …. needless to say I had a lot to learn and still do. What prompted me to sign up was the initial evaluation by the Woff Waggin on their first visit. They just don’t let your dog hang out with anyone they evaluate them first and put them with other dogs that will help whatever challenges they might have, if any. The evaluations came back for both as nervous and anxious around other dogs, in general they didn’t know how to act. That was surprising especially about Roscoe. So that got me thinking if I couldn’t read how they acted around other dogs what else was I missing ? Enter training.
The class I signed up for was one to two hours every Monday, with a week skipped here or there for holidays. We covered the basics of walking, sit, stay, going in and out of doors and ignoring on command. Even though that doesn’t sound like much for the time it was plenty. I learned ways to accomplish these I would have never thought of on my own and since neither Copper or Roscoe excelled at any, they’d have a chance now.
The training was really for us not the dogs. How do we react when “anything” happens, what do we say or do when they’re bad or good. Sending confusing signals and not being consistent were things I didn’t realize I was doing, but I was. I’m sure I still do that today but hopefully less. We have progress and walks are more enjoyable. If things aren’t going the way I want them to I can change it. We can go through doors or gates without me getting run over and if it’s time to leave something alone it’s left alone, most of the time…. still working on that one.
So if you have dogs and are challenged like me find a trainer take a class or two, you might just learn a little about yourself, and your dogs might be happier too. Special thanks to everyone at The Woof Waggin for hosting and Nikki Ivey for the training.
Cheers !!!
