Our older dog, Merlin, a labrador cross is at the vet's for surgery today. We won't get to see him again until tomorrow.
He's getting a doggie equivalent of knee reconstruction surgery. He had an op like this on his left hind leg a couple of years ago. This time it's the right hind leg. We know that in the longer term, this surgery works quite well. He feels cold weather a bit in the left leg, but he was almost at the point of never using it.
In the short term though, this is quite traumatic for all of us. Limited walks to very short and only on soft surfaces (no walking down the street for several weeks). Dog gets carried up and down stairs, which is quite a job with 27 kilos of dog. He'll ache and whinge more than usual.
We also have two dogs, and the second is healthy and is going to need lot's of exercise. Always fun trying to balance the needs of the healthy vs that of the injured.
Tetrod is a small puzzle game which is highly addictive. You swap the puzzle pieces until all the edges match up. There are four levels of play, 4x3 is pretty easy. 5x5 is pretty hard and takes some serious concentration.
I have to give Australia Post 5 stars for todays mail. It was addressed to 15 Lennox Crescent, Paluma. While we own the house, it is a holiday house, not a normal residence. In large orange letters someone added "Not Paluma Try JCU". Obviously when the mail got to JCU someone else added a circle with ITR? All up, with some effort on several people, I got the mail.
It's pretty funny though. All that effort and what is the content? "My name is David Rhodes and in September..." Yes, Australia Post put in an extraordinary effort for a classic pyramid scam letter! I will profit from the transaction - someone attached a 5 cent piece to the letter.
I think that in our house, you can identify 4 levels of fame of actors
Have seen before
Pretty certain we've seen this person before. Not sure where or in what context.
Oh that person played so and so (in such and such)
Can identify actor by some key role, but still don't remember their real name. Just the names of the roles. Sometimes the name of the show/movie has to accompany the role name.
That's XXX YYY. They played so and so (in such and such)
Can identify actor by name. Still needs some extra information about key roles to remember them properly.
That's XXX YYY
Actor is known by name. No need to refer to any extra information.
Not all actors have to pass through all stages. Michael Wincott went from 'he was in Three Mustketeers' to Michael Wincott after two more movies. What a lovely voice he has. Other actors never move out of the first stage of 'seen them before'. A lot of actors get stuck in stage 2 'he played General Burkhalter in Hogan's Heroes.' It takes something special to past stage 2.
This is a longish story that begins with a great crime fighting show Inspector Rex (Kommissar Rex) specifically an episode titled "Bring mir den Kopf von Beethoven". There's a brief appearance by one actor in that episode who looked a lot like the man who played General Burkhalter (IMDB reveals the actor's name is Leon Askin).
When trying to determine if Askin ever appeared on Inspector Rex, first I had to go to IMDB to find the actor. IMDB does not have any credit for the Rex for this actor, but I did find that he had returned to Vienna (where Rex was filmed) and had died in 2005. That was a bit of a surprise, he was quite obese and lived to 98! The official site for Leon Askin does not mention Kommissar Rex either but the actor was in the right place at the right time to be on the show.
So back to reflections on Hogan's Heroes. I had previously heard that Werner Klemperer was Jewish German and his family made it out of Germany in the 1930s. Further investigation shows that John Banner was also from Vienna. While I never thought about it as a kid, no wonder the Germans on Hogan's Heroes sounded authentic. Three of the key Germans on the show spoke German as a first language.
Oh, and the credits of that episode of Inspector Rex do have Leon Askin as the last of the guests. So in the end, I was right. He was looking pretty good for an actor in his 90s.
A subject near and dear to almost every Aussies heart. Today's subject - red wine. Australia has many fine large and small wineries. Townsville is located fairly far from any of them. So a while ago now, I joined the Australian Wine Selectors. Once every 12 weeks, we get a dozen mixed red wines. We belong to their regional series plan. This means that each dozen bottles comes from one wine growing region, but the next box will have wines from a different region.
This works fairly well for us. We have one nice bottle of red/week without needing to angonise for ages in a bottle shop. All the bottles have been from a good drop to a great one. And the prices for the dozen are quite reasonable.
At least one of our local radio stations (4TO) has a regular event known as the Prize Patrol. They have a vehicle which may appear anywhere in town and they give away merchandise to anyone who fronts up. I've stopped a couple of times over the years when I noticed the vehicle on my way past.
This morning was a bit different. I think that the Prize Patrol was waiting in our neighbourhood before setting up close to the beach. I went past the Patrol walking the dogs to the beach and was on my way back home when I was offered prizes. So I have flavoured milk, a loaf of bread, voucher for a local bakery, an ink pen and a couple of stickers for walking the dogs this morning. Since they weren't officially doing prizes yet, that was a nice little surprise.
Pop over to Stuff on my cat for some really cute piccies. Hard to believe what some of those cats put up with.
Don't shoot the puppy. Can you learn the secret to not shooting the puppy?
I only managed by reading the user comments below. Level 14 was a real giggle.
A genuine Computer on your wrist. Now this has to be the ultimate toy for your favourite geek. I want one.
How to get even with someone who has done something vile to you.
Assuming they have an email address, the answer is simple. Start subscribing them to spam. Newsletters that say 'we give your information to third parties'. Actually, much spam is simply getting that email address posted on a couple of web sites. Once it is out there, the spam bots will find it. Your victim is doomed.
Even more evil would be to subscribe them to a porn site mailouts, but that's probably more than anyone deserves.
Obviously, this is pretty nasty and should be saved for extreme measures.
Finely shredded cabbage, mayo and pineapple pieces. Mix together and serve. Pineapple is not optional in this house.
As above but with grated carrot. Can use greek style yogurt in place of mayo. Pineapple is required.
Family recipes are an art and not a science. It's generally mix x, y and z with no quantities specified.
Boil until done some potatos and hard boil a few eggs. Allow to cool. When cool, chop the potatos and the eggs. Chop some bread and butter pickles and celery. Mix in a large bowl with a bit of mustard and some mayo (roughly 1 spoon of mustard to 4 spoons of mayo). Additional pickle juice may be used to create the right consistency. Refrigerate until time to eat.
The guy who put for auction a rock to warn people about an ebay scam ended up with a bid for $21. He decided at some point that he'd send a nice little carved rock rather than just one from the drive! Kind of interesting to see.
In checking the contents of a spoof email (proported from ebay but really from a scammer), I went to see if the people named in the spoof were active in ebay. One is, and is currently selling a rock so they can warn others that there is a scam in progress.
The real trick is to ignore all emails that claim to be from Paypal, ebay or a bank about your account. Unless it is an email you expect (information on a bid from ebay you do expect.) Never ever use a link in any of these emails, type the correct url in the browser yourself! Remember, someone out there is hoping to steal your account. Nor should you ever type full credit card information into emails. That is very dangerous.
I was an early adopter of green bags in Townsville after hearing about them from a morning interview (ok, it was Cheez TV, you got a problem with that?) I realise that the green bags are made of plastic themselves, but they are strong, large and can be used for years. How many years is yet to be determined for my bags, I haven't needed to recycle any of them yet. And they have saved me *hundreds and hundreds* of small plastic bags.
Now the main trick to this is you have to bring the bags when you do a major shop. If you don't bring the bags, then either you'll buy more or you'll end up with plastic bags. I started with one bag the first time, just to ensure that I would bring it back. I have a set of 5 bags (and one 'chiller' bag) which I bring regularly when shopping.
I switched because we never would bring the little bags back for recycling and we had heaps and heaps of bags stuffed in cupboards in the house. Hundreds of bags vs 5, it makes sense to use those green bags.
I can't even get tickets yet, but I'm excited about going to The Boy From Oz. It's coming to Queensland in Sept and should be a splendid show.
Hugh Jackman - live - so cool
My last major expedition of this type was to see David Bowie in concert. That was a lot of fun, even if we were about as far from the actual stage as you could get.
I PRAYED OVER IT AND SELECTED YOUR NAME
AMOUNG OTHER NAMES DUE TO IT'S ESTEEMING NATURE
My name has an esteeming nature? Perhaps esteeming nature means 'looks like you are the kind of idiot who falls for one of these'.
Fortunately, due to the various spam filters and killers around, I see far fewer of these emails than I used to.
Another of my random bookstore purchase finds. He has a series of books about Thursday Next, literary detective. I actually started with the second and loved it. There was a series of people following Thursday like Lamb and Slaughter, Cannon and Fodder all of whom die very quickly after being introduced. And two henchmen, Chalk and Cheese who were indistinguishable from each other. I found it all funny, your mileage may vary.
Thursday Next books in order are:
Death Jr and the c4 Hamster challenge. Cute game, I can get the occasional 7000+ points with one hamster, but my average is more like 3000 to 4000.
There is an XML conference in Prague. I've been to Prague, it's a great city to visit. I'd love to go back. Unfortunately, I doubt my small Uni can afford to send me.
