Stoopid Dog.

I have a question.

Is it possible for animals to be retarded? I mean, with lots of different animals you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference…but is it possible for an animal to be as thick as a submarine door, dumb as a bag of hammers and a couple sandwiches short of a picnic?

Ladies and Gentlemen? I give you my dog, Buddy:

Buddy is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in an enigma (Who coincidentally smells quite a bit like old carpet).

He is capable of acts of extreme intelligence, but is more commonly known for his acts of downright outrageous stupidity.

For example, like Jake, my uber-intelligent dog who still lives with my parents in England, when you tell him to do something, he will check your hands for treats. If there’s not something tasty waiting for him at the end, he ain’t going to the trouble.

On the other hand, he’s the only dog I’ve ever met who can’t grasp the concept of “Fetch”. I mean, he’ll actually chase whatever you throw, but after he races towards it at break-neck speed…he’ll just stand there and look at it. Then he’ll trot back with a look on his face like “That was cool, dude! Throw something else!”

Either that, or he’ll look hurt that you threw his favorite ball away.

Put it this way, he was once enticed by the delicious smells coming from the oven. He got so close trying to locate the delicious emanations he burnt his nose.

Ever heard the expression “Once bitten, twice shy.”?

Neither has Buddy. He not only did exactly the same thing again, he did it three times before he understood the concept “Oven is hot, hot hurts, do not puch nose against the over door.”

Well today, I want to relay a ‘Buddy Story’ that just happened. It involves both his intelligence and his sheer stupidity.

Now Buddy knows he’s not allowed in the kitchen while we’re cooking, which he understands as “No one is allowed in the kitchen while cooking, except under his direct supervision.”

If you spot him in there, he’ll turn his back to you. I think he thinks that if he can’t see you, you can’t see him.

He also knows he’s not allowed to bed for food while people are eating.

He has, however, discovered a loophole in that directive. If something touches the floor, it instantly becomes fair game. (He has in the past “accidentally” knocked food from the table for just this purpose).

Well, today, I was hungry, but wanted something simple. I decided to have a boiled egg.

Now, when you’re cooking in the kitchen, Buddy instantly enters “Sam Fisher” mode. He gets all stealthy.

This means he gets under your feet as much as possible. If you shout at him, he’ll cock his head to one side like: “Dude? Why are you shouting at the cat? He’s not even in here!”…and if pressed will turn his back on you, which from his point of view, makes him as invisible as Harry Potter in the girls’ changing room.

Well, this was the position he was in as I was trying to walk back through to the living room.

Then the egg fell off my plate.

I swear he could hear it falling, because he’d whirled around before it had hit the floor.

Remember how I said he’d discovered the ‘begging loophole’?

Well, he also knows that this isn’t an entirely legal move. So he tries to eat whatever’s been dropped as soon as possible.

In the blink of an eye, he’s scooped up the egg as fast as “The Flash” with diarrhea.

Then his face changed.

It can only be described as the retarded dog version of “Uh-oh”.

Not only was the egg directly from the boiling water…it still had it’s shell. Who knew that something’s are even unpalatable to retarded dogs?

I could see his dilemma.

Not only was the egg burning the crap out of his mouth, he also had a mouthful of eggshell. On the other hand, it was contraband food, a delicacy so rare, that it simply can’t be discarded without careful thought…something that Buddy is incapable of.

So after attempting to chew for another 15 seconds, he finally gave up, dropped what was left on the floor, and ran to get some cold water.

…from the toilet.

The final kicker? I went to get something to clear up the mashed egg-shelly mess from the floor.

When I returned…he’d finished it.

Dumbass.

Nurse! I Need EarPlugs, STAT!

Ok, something else from the wonderous interweb that I just had to share.

Here's the back story:

This guy is a music major at a Christian College, and this is his audition tape for a scholarship program. He hoped this tape would win him a scholarship.

Now, I gotta say, this just has to be heard to be beleived. You know those terrible auditions on "American Idol"? Well, this guy makes them sound like legendary stars.

Listen to it all the way through. At first, I thought "Cheesy Karaoke, but not absolutely terrible."

Then I heard him trying to hit the high notes.

So enjoy, no matter how tone deaf you are, this guy will make you beleive you can sing.




Worst...Singer...Ever

Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

This is something that I found online and just HAD to share with you all.

Not only because I had a long line of teachers like this, but simply because it’s so outrageous.

I hope that this is fake for one simple reason: If it’s real, I seriously despair for the state of world we live in.

Why?

Because this letter simply says:

“Don’t think. Obey anyone in a position of authority without question. Even if we are wrong, you’re wrong to disagree with us, because we’re the ones in charge.”

I know I bitch and rant about a lot of stuff on this blog, but this is exactly the kind of thing that truly pisses me off.

So let me write a short rebuttal to this teacher:

You’re a teacher. Your job is to teach. You are not doing your job, unless your job is to teach children things that are flat out wrong.

Yes, you are in a position of authority, but you are in that position because the world at large believes that you actually know what you’re talking about. Your job should be to teach kids to question, and to think, not to blindly obey and accept everything they hear at face value…especially when they know what they’re hearing is wrong.

Let’s face it. You didn’t give this kid detention because he didn’t blindly accept the ‘facts’ you gave him. You’re giving him detention because he showed that you are an idiot and an incompetent teacher.

Also, for one, he didn’t show a ‘blatant disregard for authority’, he showed a blatant (and justified) disregard for a ‘fact’ he knew to be false. Secondly, a school that allows someone like you to be a teacher, simply doesn’t deserve ‘respect’.

Respect is earned, not taken or demanded.

You, Sir, should not be teaching.

I hope to fuck that this is fake.

Rant over.

Good Luck / Bad Luck

In my lifetime, I’ve experiences a lot of bad luck, a smattering of good luck…but very rarely both at the same time.

In fact, I recently had a bad-luck experience that turned into good luck.

If you read yesterday’s post, you’ll know all about my new vendor. (This post is Second Life related, but even in SL doesn’t interest you in the slightest, read on anyway…because while this happened in SL, it’s not really about SL)

Well, today I checked up on everything, and discovered that the vendor in my main store wasn’t working. Instead of showing off my amazing creations, it was a blank screen showing “Vendor Offline”.

I went to Sunny’s cottage and reset the server.

While my other (far lower traffic) locations updated perfectly, my main store kept getting to about 95% updated and freezing.

I tried everything. Nothing would make it work. I started swearing.

Then, despite the fact that the server is meant to work with vendors grid-wide, I decided to see if placing the server closer to the vendor would fix it. So I grabbed my server, and tucked it away in a corner of my store.

It worked, but I still wasn’t happy. Only Sunny and I (plus a few trusted friends) have access to her cottage. I didn’t like the idea of my server being out in the open, where people could try to dick with it.

I decided it would have to do, for now…and left it.

I logged out.

A couple of hours later, Sunny logs in to find her cottage, and the entire neighborhood missing. Apparently, the asshole who owns the land had sold it and cleared everything.

This isn’t entirely uncommon in SL, only usually the land owner will give notice, and anything that’s cleared from the land is returned to its owner. (If you leave an item on someone else’s land, it’s usually returned to you at the end of the day).

Sunny hasn’t got back anything she had in the cottage.

Now while I don’t revel in this, simply because Sunny lost one or two expensive custom items, I’ve got to see how good my luck was.

Here’s the thing. My entire inventory was on that server, and without it, my vendors are giant paperweights. Also, thinking I wouldn’t need them, I deleted my old vendors. I thought my clothing line was safe on my shiny new server.

In other words, if that server had gotten deleted, not only would I have had to replace it, I’d have had to upload everything I’d made again (IF I still had the original texture files in photoshop).

Plus, unlike the vendors which are infinitely copyable, the server is a one shot deal. You get one, and they’re expensive to replace…and there’s no way I could convince the guy who sold it to me that I just wanted a replacement for the lost one…and it’s not even his responsibility anyway…he could have turned around and said “Tough shit.”

In other words, if it wasn’t for that one vendor going on the fritz this morning…I’d be officially out of business.

Maybe it wasn’t a bug. Maybe my server just has a sense of self-preservation.

It’s like missing a flight, cursing your bad luck, only to find out later that the plane crashed.

Paulius Designs Goes Hi-Tech!

(Click the picture for a larger view...and yes, that is me standing next to the ad)

(This will be of little interest to many of you, but quite frankly, I just need someone to gloat/brag to).

Until recently, my Second Life business was run using freebie hardware.

Here’s how it worked:

Essentially, I had a box. I put my clothing into this box along with a picture of each item. People would look at the box, click an arrow on it to scroll through the different items, and pay the box, which would give them their item and pay me.

Clunky, you could only see one item at a time, and it meant I had to wander around and update each of my three locations separately.

Today, I got the real shit.

Let me explain this thing…because I’m inexplicably proud of it.

Now, when you walk into my store, you see the equivalent of a gigantic plasma screen, showing up to 16 items at once, tiled on the screen. You click one, and in the blink of an eye, the item dills the whole screen. You can even click a button on the screen, and it’ll give you a notecard explaining the item.

Best thing?

Networked.

I have a server. I put my new items in it, and at the click of a mouse, every single one of my stores updates at the same time.

Actually, that’s the second best thing. With my old freebie vendor, the only way I could tell if anything had sold is by looking at my cash balance before I logged off, and seeing if it had increased when I logged back in. I could see that someone had bought something, but not where they got it, or what they'd actually bought.

The new vendor not only sends me an instant message, letting me know who bought something, where they bought it, and what they bought…I can also set it to send my an email with that same information.

There is one downside. It’s a minor, petty little thing…but just to take that big business, hi-tech sheen off the whole operation…where am I keeping my server?

In one of the secure server storage facilities dotted around Second Life? In a deep, bomb-proof cellar, beneath one of the malls my store is located in?

Nope.

It’s sitting on top of Sunny’s fridge, in her Second Life cottage.

Heheheheh…I’m big business now, but I’m still a cottage industy.