DarqByte

I swear I’m trying to post more often again…

Anyway, when Laura and I completed two different courses of training with Pepper, we got a bumper sticker for it. It was basically an ad for Petsmart training with one of those “I’m proud of my dog” things.

Well, one of her coworkers, Andy Taylor,  has been regularly moving that bumper sticker to different places on her truck. It got even more convoluted when it would appear in very random places. Well, a couple weeks ago Laura couldn’t find it. She put it on Andy’s car and never saw it again.

Well, today I checked Andy’s blog… And I found our bumper sticker… Hilarious! First photo.

So this last weekend Laura and I took Pepper and Samantha to our vet. We go to VCA Spring Mountain for them to get up-to-date on shots. Pepper needed one, Samantha needed three.

We’d been neglecting Pepper’s teeth cleaning until our tax return came in because it was going to ring in at about $400. So we finally scheduled to have her teeth done, and they were done yesterday.

They were very nice to Laura when she took Pepper in yesterday and very nice to me when I picked her up. They were also very informative about all that we needed to do after the cleaning to ensure good teeth health until her next cleaning.

Pepper was pretty out of it thanks to having been put under. VCA said that really they can’t do a full cleaning unless they put the animal under because the animal will fight, move, etc. It made sense. Thus, Pepper was pretty out of it. She was sluggish and couldn’t jump into my car, had trouble getting out, just kinda zoned out.

Obviously this is expected behavior. But what we didn’t expect was a call today from the vet, asking how Pepper was doing. That’s pretty cool in my book.

Not only that, but they’ve had a history of treating us very well with our pets. When we had to put Dusty down, they were totally awesome about it. Very nice and very understanding on everything. We felt valued and that they understood that our pet was a part of our family and not just an animal. We were upset over having to put him down and they were very good about the whole process.

Basically our vet has been spectacular. I really like them and we’ll continue to take our pets there any time we need veterinary service done. High marks from me.

Sorry for not posting much lately. Haven’t had a whole lot to talk about. I’ve just been playing a lot of Fallout 3, which is totally awesome by the way. I’ve never been a really big RPG player, but this game is sweet. It’s a post-apocalyptic RPG set in Washington D.C., after a nuclear war with China. All kinds of fun.

Anyway, one of the reasons I’m popping in today is to bring to light Laura’s 365-Day project. She’s posting the photos on her blog and on her Facebook profile, I think. But some of them are really cool and good, like the one of Pepper.
I’m finally starting to delve into learning C#. It’s about time I did because having more exposure to other languages is a good thing, and it makes me more marketable in the event that my job collapses (which is highly unlikely given how well we’re doing, but you never know).

I’m also probably going to learn Flash at some point too, especially with ActionScript. There’s another good thing to know. And I want to learn more about Java as well.

I was thinking, morbidly, that if I ever lost my job and became unemployed, there would be some pros:

1. I would get unemployment benefits (although it would never make up for the income from a real job)
2. I would have lots of time to learn all these technologies that I want to learn to make myself more marketable
3. I would have lots of time to work on my own websites, like I’ve always wanted

Overall it would still suck, but there would be a couple upsides, at least.

Well, back to the grind.

So recently, my Dad and I built a wooden gate for Laura’s & my dog, Pepper. We had this older, plastic & metal gate that is mass-produced. It was kinda old and has some rust on it, and was digging into the paint in the walls where we kept it, so I decided we needed a new one.

This turned out to be a longer and more expensive project than I anticipated. The wood from Lowe’s was more expensive than I thought it was going to be and I had to buy some other things, such as wood filler, stain and sealant for the wood, a saw to cut the wood (which didn’t really end up getting used), some hooks to hang the gate on for when it wasn’t down, etc.

In any case, I started it here at our place and got to a roadblock — I had to to countersunk screws and hadn’t done it before, so I thought I was messing things up. That and I didn’t really have all of the requesite tools necessary for a project like this. A hand saw and a low-level drill. Yay. My design for the gate was also slightly off.

So my Dad and I teamed up 2 weekends ago to start it properly at his place, where he’s got tools galore. We cut the wood pieces down to size and also managed to get the rails, as I’m calling them, constructed. All I had to do was stain and seal them that week here at home. The rails are the side pieces that the gate itself slides into and keeps it in place.

This last weekend, my Dad finished up the gate while I was at work on Friday, so I brought it home and stained and sealed it too. I installed the rails and slid the gate down, and voila! It worked like a charm. I installed the two hooks on to the back of our laundry door, but they couldn’t go in the whole way and were pulled down. Today I removed them from the door and attached them to the wall behind it, which worked. Now the door has the backs of two anchors in it and I had to use wood filler to fix the holes. Doesn’t look quite as nice, but nobody’s going to see it back there. I may also eventually be able to “sculpt” a better-looking fix someday since I’ve got wood filler and all.

I ended up putting rubber pads on the bottom of the gate for it to rest on when slid down to the floor, as well as on the inside of one of the sides which is where the gate hangs from the hooks.

So the gate’s installed! Here are some pictures.

The gate

The rail

The rubber pads