I’m watching my friends’ dog Riley for a few days. The introduction between Riley and Wylie went fairly well, though I have to admit I’m getting a little tounge-tangled over their names. On the plus side, if I give either of them a command, they both pay attention.
Last night I took “the kids” out for their evening walk together and after bumping into each other a few times they finally got the hang of the two leashes. They were walking along, sniffing everything they came to. About a quarter mile into the walk, Wylie came up from behind Riley, sniffing away and quite oblivious to the fact that Riley had a leg in the air.
Yes, what you’re thinking happened is exactly what happened.
About a half mile later, Wylie had his leg in the air and Riley tried to do the same thing.
At this point I don’t think either one of them is playing with a full deck.
All posts by dividingbyzero
Fifteen Seconds of Comic-Strip Fame
I’ve been convinced for some time that a high percentage of the stuff you find online is pretty much junk. Sure, there’s some great stuff out there: Reference materials, product reviews, and more. The web is a real Wonderland.
On the other hand, consider the number of sites with pages that are never updated. Here’s one particularly egregious offender. And then you get into that whole thing with projects that never go anywhere and an unending array of blogs where the authors ramble without any sort of focus and so on.
When I started Dividing by Zero, I commented upon what I called “Blair’s corollary to Sturgeon’s Law,” claiming that most of what’s on the web is crud and wondering which side of the equation I was on.
I’ve been following the UserFriendly web-comic for most of the past seven years. It takes some good jabs at the geek world in a way that we generally can’t help but laugh at. Last weekend User Friendly ran a strip making the same claim I did about the value of online content. The strip even made the same reference to Sturgeon’s Law. Do you suppose this means Illiad (the author) has found my site?
Then again, he also pokes fun at himself from time to time…
A Call for Assistance
Hello there! If you’re reading this (and I know both of my readers are out there), then I’d like to request your assistance with an upcoming project of mine.
If you think I’m about to ask for money, well… Yeah, you’re right. The good news is that I’m not asking for myself, nor am I asking on behalf of any overseas princes, oil executives, or shady bank officials. (The bad news is that I’m also not offering you fabulous wealth in return for your assistance with sneaking money out of a foreign country.)
On June 2-3, I’ll be participating in the Southern Montgomery County Relay for Life – a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society.
Officially, everyone’s supposed to raise at least $100. Truthfully, I’d like to hit at least $1,000. Donations can be made online with a credit card. If you’d prefer to use a check or money order, drop me a line so we can coordinate things.
Pretty much everyone I know has at one time or another known someone with cancer. With your help, maybe we can brighten that picture.
Golf Cures Kidney Disease?
How bizarre. I just heard a commercial on WTOP that starts off with a claim that the Washington DC area leads the nation in the incidence of kidney disease. This isn’t something I was aware of, but having seen the impact kidney failure has on people’s lives, I’d prefer to keep my kidneys.
The commercial went on to say that there’s something you can do about it. I was prepared to hear a public service message about getting more exercise, eating healthier or even (shudder) cutting back on the caffeine intake.
Instead, the commercial started talking about playing in a golf tournament that includes various celebrity players as whichever air personality recorded the commercial and some politicians.
So apparently the claim is that if you live in the DC-area and prefer to avoid a future of relying on dialysis, instead of changing your life-style, you should play golf instead.
I’m just a little skeptical.
A First Time for Everything
Wow. I think this is the first time anyone has ever complained about me not teasing them. But then, Amy’s always been a good sport about things like that.
In the future, I’ll have to be sure to tease her in a more timely manner. After all, apparently it’s all my fault and I wouldn’t want to shirk my responsibilities!
Wombat Ringtones
Acting on a whim, back in January I conducted a brief experiment to find out what Google would make of the phrase “Polygamous Wombats.” The answer seems to be, “Not too terribly much.”
I did wind up with an ad for a hostel in Austria called “Wombats” (which is somewhat humorous when you consider that wombats are native to Australia instead of Austria). Aside from that, about the only practical upshot is that Google and Yahoo list Dividing by Zero as their number one resource for Polygamous Wombats. (Sadly, this distinction doesn’t seem to be driving any extra traffic to the site.)
In the end, all this does is demonstrate that I need to add a new “Pointless Posts” category to the site. I suspect that will quickly surpass “Assorted Ramblings” as the largest grouping.
Hypothetically Speaking
I’m organizing my Jaycees chapter’s participation in a local High School’s After Prom party. Our role basically boils down to supplying snack food and beverages for approximately 3-400 students. We do this by soliciting donations of food and money from area businesses.
So suppose I’ve just finished printing 286 donation letters. Assuming I’ve done that, and afterwards I’m looking them over one more time.
Now suppose I then – purely hypothetically – somewhat belatedly discovered that I’d accidentally used the wrong version of my signature (I scanned it for use on letters) and I now have 286 donation letters where my signature was backwards.
Would that be “bad”?
Hi Donna!
Back in March of last year, Mom sent me a newspaper clipping about one of my High School classmates, Donna Rorabaugh. It turned out that somewhere along the line, Donna had taken on the hobby of building gingerbread houses and in December of 2005, she’d managed to win a nation-wide competition. Very cool.
A funny thing happened this past December. I was looking through the web site statistics for Dactyl Manor and recognized a name in the list of search terms that had brought people to my web site. Along with the usual list of people coming to my site looking for the convention list, a lot of people were coming in to look for Donna.
I did a few quick web searches. It turned out that Donna had won another competition. I also discovered that Dividing by Zero was one of the top ten resources Yahoo and Google were directing people to when they looked for her. (My guess is that her family members were looking for online newspaper clippings about the latest win and some of them looked at my site.)
It’s only March right now. I haven’t seen Donna in 16 years and it won’t be gingerbread season for another nine months. But I’ll bet she wins this year too.
Have You Seen Sarah Connor?
This wasn’t exactly a planned purchase; but I was in the midst of a wardrobe overhaul/update and decided to try on a new jacket or two. I really liked the way this one fits and in the end decided to buy it. (Thank goodness for some pretty huge post-season discounts at the outlet stores!)
The photo’s a bit washed out, but that perhaps makes it a bit more dramatic.
I wonder what Linda Hamilton is up to these days…
Haiku for Pet Owners
The dog’s long black hair,
On my light khaki Dockers.
Oh no! The big date!