Doug's Blog

Rupert Howls at Siren

Doug — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:42:05 +0000

Rupert always howls when the fire truck goes by, frequently matching pitch. May be an instinctive response, but I still love it. And I really need to stop posting pet videos - I might be addicted.

Early video of Rupert

Doug — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:42:14 +0000

After putting up a video of Jax, I couldn’t help myself and went and found a video of Rupert when he was a puppy. Sadly, the video is out of focus for some reason, but the content outweighs the problems in this case, so I’m uploading it anyway.

Early videos of Jax

Doug — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 18:57:29 +0000

Rupert’s best friend is a dog named Jax. He’s a super great dog, and now almost three. But I took this video shortly after Travis brought him home, and just thought I would share… unless Travis tells me this is inappropriate young dog footage… or Aki doesn’t like Travis’s patronizing (but humorous) tone.

Oh, found another one. This one is even cuter, in my opinion:

Cool iPhone Bike Mount

Doug — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:27:12 +0000

So maybe I am crazy taking my iPhone to mount on my bike at Burning Man (which, OK, I may not do), but I will say that in the process I found a great thing that’s practically free. My iPhone mount arrived today and fits solidly on my bike, and cost just $7 total (shipping included):
http://www.fatyourwallet.com/universal-bike-mount-holder-iphone-iphone-ipod-touch-p-205.html

Yes, the English translation is weak, the guy is sending it from Hong Kong and hand writes the shipping label, and it takes like 12 days to get here. And truly, the mount can be used to hold any squarish and light device - not just the iPhone. The box reads “Bicycle Phone Holder.” But after mounting it on my bike, it feels quite solid, and I’m looking forward to a test ride. I’ll update this post with a track of my ride if it goes well. Which brings me to a related note.

If you’re ever wanting to track your rides around town using something like MotionX GPS, you’ve spent $3 on the app and $7 for a holder - pretty sweet bicycle GPS tracking tool for $10:
http://news.motionx.com/category/motionx-gps/

Anyway, good stuff.

Is this post really that exciting that it justifies a post after over a year of not writing anything at all on my blog? No, but at least I posted something. I plan to write more soon.

So I guess dogs really can cry…

Doug — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:23:53 +0000

So Karen and I woke up to an unpleasant surprise this weekend. Rupert decided to pee on the bed right between us. Needless to say, we were quite upset. After some scolding, I found myself taken by just how sorry the little guy seemed to be, and ended up taking a picture of it. So here he is, sitting on the bed now stripped of the sheets which must be cleaned. Shortly after this picture was taken, I realized something that I thought I had ruled-out after searching the web on this very topic… dogs can cry. His eyes were so glassy they were welling up full tears at the base of his eyes.

After realizing just how sad he seemed, we wondered if there was something else we missed. As it turned out, the left side of his body was soiled as well. It seems he went in his sleep. No wonder he was so sad - he didn’t even know it was happening. Poor little guy.

New Rupert Pics

Doug — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:19:05 +0000

Well, it’s been a significantly long time since I’ve posted anything here. Although I do tend to have some additional posts soon, before anything else, I thought I would post a link to some of my favorite pics of our puppy Rupert, by month.

Rupert - 2 Months

Rupert - 3 Months

Rupert - 4 Months

Married

Doug — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 06:26:37 +0000

I got married. Congratulations to me and my lovely wife.

We chose to have a simple thing at the JP here in San Francisco (just like Jessica Alba, our role model). The real story behind this date involves Karen’s Mom. About a month before, Karen tells me that her Mom says that this day (March 25) was the only “lucky” day to get married this year for the two of us. This is based on me being a pig ear and Karen being a Lion’s butt, or something like that — Chinese superstition stuff. Since this was only a month away, and on a Tuesday, we joked about just going ahead and doing a JP-wedding for about a week, and then decided “what-the-heck, let’s do it.” Neither of us were enjoying the process of trying to figure out a cool wedding plan anyway. We never quite figured out anything we completely loved, but knew we didn’t want anything traditional; from there, a night of planning ended up being a night on the Wii. We flew Mom and Dad out and they served as our witnesses at the courthouse, and Srijesh dropped in as well and took some great pictures too. It was actually a beautiful setting — San Francisco City Hall provides a great backdrop.

Scary Dog-Like Robot

Doug — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:27:46 +0000

DARPA (creators of the internet, a surprise to Al Gore), have come up with a robot that is simply scary. Carrying 340 lbs, imagine this thing armed with video cameras, an internet connection, and a few machine guns. Having something like this (or hundreds of things like this) coming into your town would likely immediately kill off a significant percentage in heart attacks alone. Watch the entire video before you decide this is NOT scary.

http://gizmodo.com/368651/new-video-of-bigdog-quadruped-robot-is-so-stunning-its-spooky

Update: After talking about this quite a bit, I’ve decided that this robot’s use in search and rescue alone more than outweighs my “fear” of the robot. Another fun option would be to saddle up this thing and ride it up the mountain yourself!

New Puppy

Doug — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:45:49 +0000

This is probably an example of counting my chickens before they have hatched, but we believe we have a new puppy. I say that because the site indicates the puppy as “adoption pending,” but we have yet to receive the confirmation that we are the “pending” home they are referring to. Still, from the talk with her yesterday, and the home visit we had yesterday, I think we are in.

We had been looking at the SF SPCA and the Animal Care and Control, which have been helpful, but then our impatience threw us out to craigslist, and then to this Pet Finder, a great site with animals from all over the country, and the ability to search near your area. We found out about Spike (who will be renamed to… um…) and Furry Friends Rescue.

This is a “home fostered” puppy, which means that he has never been in a shelter. There is a sweet related side story: The mom was going to be put down, but a volunteer offerred to take her. A vet had said it was early enough to abort the pups, but they ended up arriving only a day before the abortion (nice job, vet). So she ended up taking the mom and the complete, adorable litter.

We should be able to take him home this Friday. We’re very excited.

Cables, Best Buy, and Ignorance

Doug — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:28:29 +0000

I went to Comcast to try to get another one of their crappy Motorola HD DVR boxes, and was very pleased to find out a new box has been released. The only problem? It has HDMI output instead of DVI, which is what my plasma uses to connect. Since they are really the same video signal, with just different plugs, I expected a cheap converter to be provided from Comcast, since - if nothing else - I have given them about $2,000 a year for the past several years. But no dice (even after being somewhat of a pest in the Comcast store). Next stop: Best Buy, where I find they stock this converter (from Monster) for over $30. My only other option is to buy this cable for $60.

Fortunately, I know to head over to newegg and find this converter for $3.99. Since shipping was higher than the product, I threw in the coolest and tiniest 2gig thumb drive for another $13. (I love this little thing.) My whole purchase and shipping was still less than the cost of the overpriced Monster option.

Cables are cables, and those that spend a ton on expensive ones are wasting their money. Since making my newegg order, this article came out which really sums it up best - you could do just as well with a coat hanger as these fancy overpriced cables.

I blame both consumers and retailers for this situation, but consider the retailers most at fault for providing such limited options. With no $4 converter at Best Buy - the largest consumer electronics retailer in the US - the consumer has no reference to even question the pricing of the Monster adapter. It is an abusive and manipulative use of their position, and obviously such a disservice to their own customers.