I just discovered my mail on the credenza in the office foyer. A letter carrier opened the door and put it there, with nary a woof out of the office puppy. Maybe this is why:
I'm beginning to wonder about his contributions to the company's bottom line.
OK, I think I've got the ParkerCam figured out. Here's the current arrangement:
And here's what the ParkerCam sees:
It's impossible to keep up with him sometimes, so very often you'll just see an empty rug. Or, after Parker has done some redecorating, a scrunched-up rug:
Now we're going for a walk, so I can get lunch before Whole Foods turns into a zoo.
Anne just confirmed that the "Parker has halitosis" photo is now a ThinkGeek Action Photo. Maybe it's time to get Parker an agent? Or, possibly, a toothbrush?
I remembered my camera today, but alas, Parker is at home (so no ParkerCam). Here he is Sunday struggling (as any rational being would do) to get out from under a Cardinals blanket:
Last Monday was the first anniversary of this blog. I completely forgot.
As penance, I will now post this photo Anne took ten minutes ago (she and Parker are at home; I'm still at World Headquarters):
Duh. Today I forgot not only my camera, but also the memory card inside the camera with the photos that I wanted to post. We'll just have to make do with the ParkerCam:
Some memes obscure deeper truths. "Liberal" and "college town," for example, often go together, as in the lede from a story in Tuesday's New York Times:
BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 14 — Voters in this liberal college town have approved what environmentalists say may be the nation's first "carbon tax," intended to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases.
This lede bothered me for several reasons. First, I don't believe that wanting to reduce catastrophic climate change is so much a "liberal" idea as it is a "sensible" idea. Second, if Boulder is "liberal," that makes my home town (Evanston, Ill.) "socialist" and puts Cambridge, Mass., on the loony fringe. And I'm not sure Greenville, S.C. really wants the label "liberal" any more than Evanston wants the label "reactionary right-wing religious nuts."
We get this via Talking Points Memo: Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) explains what's really causing global warming.
We'll be watching him lose his chairmanship as the new Congress takes office in 46 days and 20 hours.
The ParkerCam is such a hit (Anne refreshes it more than I do, it turns out), I replaced the ailing, sunburned, five-year-old Intel camera with the same model that I use for the Inner Drive webcam. It's easy to see why; here's the "before:"
And the "after:"
(The new camera is so good, if you open the bottom image in its own window you can read half my programming library.)
<Geek Stuff>
Alas, the new camera and I had a disagreement initially. It's a Logitech QuickCam Orbit that I'm running through Sascha Keller's VisionGS Webcam software. I had to reduce the thread priority of VisionGS to get it to play nicely with my computer. And I have Microsoft Index Service turned off until I shut down the Webcam, because it was taking every available processor cycle. The Index service sometimes repopulates its database after an unexpected reboot, and There were also several reboots involved. I also disturbed poor Parker's sleep a few times commenting *ahem* on the installation process.
</Geek Stuff>
It's working now. And if Parker moves we'll see if the face- (puppy-) tracking feature works.
Parker had the Big Operation yesterday and, after the drugs wore off overnight, was back to his usual puppy self by 5:30 this morning. He didn't understand why we couldn't go to the dog park this morning. Tuesday, we assured him, he could go.
Today he is once again guarding my office from productivity:
In other news, his official weight from the vet yesterday was 16 kg (35.2 lbs), so he has officially doubled his mass since we got him in September:
