that’s whacked

Posts filed under 'Pets'

char-siu is a huntin’

for the past 25 minutes or so, char-siu has been stalking a fly in the living room. it’s hilarious - i’ve never seen him this focused on something for this long. he’s seriously gone into hunting mode. ears cocked, tail straight, the works..

the funny thing is he’s caught it 3 times already. each time he tries to chew it, and it falls out of his mouth and ends up on the floor covered in dog drool. it kind of splats about for a few minutes or so while char-siu stares at it curiously, and then once it dries off enough it starts flying again - and the cycle repeats.

the fly will buzz by over him, char-siu jumps/bounces up and catches him, lather, rinse, repeat.

best 25 minutes of entertainment i’ve had all day.

Add comment August 16th, 2007

nosy beagle

this is hands down my favourite photo of Isis i’ve taken yet:

4 comments April 23rd, 2007

sometimes i hate oakland

someone tried to break into our house yesterday. our alarm company very promptly called me on my cell phone to notify me that they had dispatched a police officer to our house.

i gave wendy a call and she went home to check up on the house with a neighbour. it looks like some of the stuff on our back patio has been moved (presumably so whoever was trying to get in could get to the back kitchen door since the garbage can i put to block it was moved).

fortunately, some combination of our ferocious beagles and our loud-honkin’-alarm scared the person off.

either way. sometimes i just f-ing hate oakland.

2 comments September 9th, 2006

a cross-disciplinary productive day

i’ve had a fun day catching up on all sorts of little odds and ends i’d had on my to do list.

finished the final step in my migration of all my users’ home directories and web-space to ZFS.
setup drupal and started building the portal for my neighbourhood. our neighbourhood improvement association was blowing away $45/month on crappy webhosting for a phpBB installation that kept getting hacked, and a mailman list. it’d frustrated me long enough that i finally volunteered to be the webmaster. i’m in the process of building a new website from scratch that will be a full portal to our neighbourhood and provide blogs, message boards, mailing lists, and web space to any resident, organisation/club, or store in our neighbourhood
did lots of research on various brake pads for my A4. i’m planning on replacing my front brake pads tomorrow. it’s been tough finding a good recommended brake pad that has a firm bite, not-as-much brake dust, and a proper connection for a wear sensor. i’m finding that it’s hard to find a good firm sport brake that will endure my, shall we say, vigorous, driving that also has a wear sensor.
installed bugzilla on grommit. i finally got tired of hearing about our bug database sucking, and the points about project bug-tracking for externally driven projects (like ksh93) are perfectly valid. yes i realise there is much to be done on b.o.o., but due to the process, policy, and implementation of Sun’s bug tracking system, there are lot more constraints of b.o.o. i do intend to help internally anyway i can to make it better; but in the meantime, hopefully the bugzilla install will let external projects start tracking bugs and just make progress

my random thoughts for the day:

the new vienna teng cd is incredible. her voice has definitely matured since her first two CDs. the music is less raw now, a little more polished/produced. this is neither good, nor bad… just different. the CD is brilliant. highly recommended.
there’s nothing quite like a freshly bathed beagle as your soft/plush pillow when you’re taking a nap. lovely.
it’s getting colder and gloomier out now. i took the dogs to Pt. Isabel, and actually had to wear a beanie. this was also my first official soft-shell-jacket wear of the season. it’s definitely fall.
i’d always known Pt. Isabel was big… i didn’t realise it was the largest off-leash dog park in the nation. wow. go east bay parks
the chili/sourdough baguette at the cafe at Pt. Isabel rocks. highly recommended.

Add comment September 9th, 2006

char siu

one week into the “sleepover” and for the most part Char Siu is doing pretty well. he and Isis seem to have become friends. he’s not as affectionate as Isis, but he definitely seems to have bonded to Wendy and I.

two problems though: 1) the separation anxiety is bad. he HOWLS whenever we leave him at home. the rescue group and i both thought he would be okay with Isis at home with him, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. he definitely wants human contact. i’ve been trying to train him off it, but it’s been hard so far.

2) he pees. inside the house. often. supposedly he is housetrained, and for the most part he seems to do okay. but for some reason, he pees every now and then. and it wouldn’t be so bad if it were just on the carpet… but he always seems to go for our white (okay, now yellow) rice paper lamp. sigh.

anyway, we’ve just passed the halfway point in the two-week sleepover and Wendy and I will have to make the decision as to whether or not to keep him. it’s a pretty tough one. we love him already, he’s a great furball of fun and energy, and we can tell he’s enjoying his stay with us. and we’re definitely enjoying having two beagles around. giving him back to the rescue group would only compound his separation anxiety issues even more…

i’m 75% sure we’re going to keep him….

…if only because last night he decided his bed was too far away from me and he came over to my side of the bed, dragged my shorts over, and curled up on my shorts and promptly fell asleep.

2 comments August 7th, 2006

weekend photos

i just uploaded some photos from this past weekend… namely wendy’s 30th birthday party, and photos of char siu

he’s a great beagle

1 comment August 4th, 2006

busy busy busy

i so rarely blog about anything personal these days.. to the point that my default new blog post category is now ‘OpenSolaris’. a little bit sad, neh?

i guess that’s what happens when you love your work. oh well. losing some blog audience is a small price to pay i guess

anyway, after today’s cleanup and reorganising work, my basement is starting to look… well… almost there. two years after we started, with countless distractions along the way (including putting up two windows last weekend), we’re finally done with the drywall. (seriously, we started drywalling two years ago… sad, i know). our next steps are to texturise, and paint the walls/ceiling, and then lay down a floor. once we have those done, the basement will be… well, liveable!

our inner storage room in the basement is finally done, with all the storage in place, and my new workbench area and tool wall all organised.

after a long afternoon of inhaling plaster, we headed down to Milpitas to “Cafe Orphelia” at McCarthy Ranch for some great filet mignon on the “hot rock” grill. they bring out a big rock/stone that’s been super-heated, and you grill your own steak on it. great steak. mmmm…afterwards, we had some red bean shaved ice. we ate all the red bean and then asked the waitress to box up the remaining unfinished ice. she gave us a blank stare and asked why we wanted to save ice? of course, isis was in the car… and she looooooves ice cream, so we thought she might want some shaved ice.

of course, isis lapped it all up - and we have some great photos (which i’ll post tomorrow).

after that, we headed down to Los Altos and tried out the new Satura bakery which was awesome. we got 4 desserts and loved all 4 of them.

and on a very last quickie note: we’re planning on adopting a second beagle. his name is Dusty and he’s 3 years old. i can’t wait!

2 comments July 15th, 2006

isis, hard at work

eric took a couple photos of Isis yesterday at our NUMA/Autobahn meeting. Given that we have so much work to do, and not enough engineers, Isis kindly volunteered to take on some work. After all… 1 dog-month = 7 people/programmer months!

1 comment July 21st, 2005

polaroidnizer & a photo from joaquin miller park

just installed the polaroidnizer plugin so i can reference photos in my blog. let’s see how this looks…

Add comment July 15th, 2005

zzzzzzzzzz

i’d always kind of wondered what Isis did all day when i left her at home by herself on my days when i come into the office without her.

i know she usually likes to jump up on either the sofa or the guest bedroom… and i guessed she probably goes for the sofa during the day since the living room gets more sunlight; so i setup my webcam on my Qube, and pointed it at the sofa.

turns out, she doesn’t do much. the webcam takes photos every 10 minutes…and she either manages to jump off and save the world in 9 minute intervals before coming back to lie down on the sofa in the exact same spot….. or she sleeps…in the same spot…. for 9+ hours.