Family

From the road – Cherokee National Forest

/ hsoi

To bring Sasha home we had to drive 2000+ miles to Georgia and back. Spending about 37 hours on the road, we saw many interesting things.

When figuring out how to get from here to there, of course I turned to Google Maps. Punch in the “from” and “to” to go driveway to driveway. While Google put us on Interstate Highways most of the way, as we drew closer to our destination, Google took us off the beaten path. Oh sure, we could have gone through Atlanta, but interestingly that was going to be slightly longer… and frankly, more boring. If I can avoid driving through huge cities, great.

But we had no idea where the road actually was taking us.

We got to drive through the Cherokee National Forest.

All I can say is… wow.

Breathtaking.

Majestic.

Apart from Sasha, it was my favorite part of the trip. We had no opportunity to stay there or really see anything that wasn’t on the road. But I would love to someday go back to visit.

When we planned the trip we figured we’d use it as a good homeschooling opportunity. The kids checked out the map, figured out what states they were going through. We’d discuss how the plants changed, how climate changed, whatever sorts of things we’d observe and see along the way. But we had no idea we’d be given an opportunity as cool as Cherokee National Forest.

Getting to know Sasha

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Now that Sasha’s been at the house a few days, there’s been a lot of learning.

I mean, a LOT.

And mostly, it’s us learning, not her. 🙂

It IS exactly like having a child. Well not exactly. Dogs can come with instruction manuals, kids don’t.

I’m wondering what sort of baggage Sasha has. Been talking things over with a friend of mine and I’m coming to the conclusion that something from her previous owner wasn’t right. I don’t know. Did they neglect her? Did they not give her the attention, socialization, and training that a Kuvasz needs (especially as a puppy)? I mean, I know for a fact when she went back to the breeder that her coat was not where it should be, and we need to continue the rebuilding of it. So that’s an indicator of something not right, that the original owner didn’t do (some) things right. But to what extent? just what specifically? No way to know.

Bottom line: girl has baggage.

*sigh*

But she’s not a lost cause. I mean, that our family has been accepted? That’s a good sign. There’s no question from how she behaves that she loves us and adores us and knows we’re her flock to protect. I know that we have “alpha” over her since I can fully manipulate her, we can brush her, I stuck my fingers in her mouth today to remove a rock she picked up (wasn’t going to struggle with “drop” commands, just had to remove it) and I didn’t get bit. I exert alpha when she needs it, and she submits. So I suspect we’ll be able to make this work, but it’s going to take time.

She knows commands like sit, stay, down, come, drop it, leave it, and a few other things. But she isn’t perfect in obeying. Why? I’m not sure. Sometimes I suspect she’s intentionally disobeying because she’s decided working is more important (e.g. she’s guarding the kids and my telling her to “come” would require her to leave her tactically superior position, and she’s decided she can’t do that for whatever reason). Sometimes I think she’s trying to find our boundaries. And sometimes I think she’s just not conditioned to say “how high?” when I say “jump”, each time, every time, all the time. So, I’m starting to work with her on all the basic commands…  let’s go back to remedial work and establish the ground rules. I’m seeing progress, because she’s responding to “come” and “sit” much better this evening than she did before. We’re up to 10 seconds on stay and I betcha I could do more, but baby steps at this point. When I took her outside today, I’d have her got potty then start to work on “loose leash” walking. That’s going to take more work.

Just have to work on it every day. Just have to schedule in time for work and practice every day, at least twice a day.

But apart from all this work and baggage? She’s a sweet girl. Very loving, and has shown a silly, clown side too. I do adore her. I have no regrets (yet?) about this. It’s a lot of work, and it’s likely going to be more work than normal because we’re going to have things to undo and/or reestablish. But you know… the things you do for love. 🙂

Welcome home, Sasha

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Permit me to introduce you to Sasha:

Sasha is an 8 month old Kuvasz puppy. From AKC’s entry:

 

Bold, courageous and fearless, the Kuvasz is an unparalleled livestock guard, able to act at just the right moment without instruction and cover rough terrain for long periods of time. One of the larger working breeds, he is well-muscled and agile. His double coat features a coarse guard hair that protects a soft, fine undercoat. The hair ranges from straight to quite wavy, but must always be white.

[…]

 

Temperament

A spirited dog of keen intelligence, determination, courage and curiosity. Very sensitive to praise and blame. Primarily a one-family dog. Devoted, gentle and patient without being overly demonstrative. Always ready to protect loved ones even to the point of self-sacrifice. Extremely strong instinct to protect children. Polite to accepted strangers, but rather suspicious and very discriminating in making new friends. Unexcelled guard, possessing ability to act on his own initiative at just the right moment without instruction. Bold, courageous and fearless. Untiring ability to work and cover rough terrain for long periods of time. Has good scent and has been used to hunt game.

 

 

And… she’s the latest member of our household. 🙂

She’s 65 lbs and growing. She’s a big dog. She’s just what we wanted.

Background

Wife might be a cat person, but she grew up surrounded by dogs. Me, I had some dogs as a kid but I wouldn’t say I was ever a dog person — without a doubt, I’m a cat person. I have not wanted a dog. Wife has wanted us to get a dog since the day we got married, but I’ve always said no. A few years ago I finally gave in and approved getting a dog, but it had to be a useful dog.

You see, I don’t care for most dogs, or to be honest, most dog owners. I don’t like dogs that aren’t well-behaved, and that’s typically the fault of the dog owner. If I’m going to have a dog, it’s going to be well-behaved. I also don’t like drool, “dog smell” (be it the dog or the house smelling like dog), or a dog that views every random stranger as a friend. Thus, just going to the pound was not an option: any old random dog wasn’t going to work. Plus we had to get a puppy because we have cats and don’t need them to become a snack. Furthermore, the dog has to be substantial, because if you can drop kick it, it’s not a dog. 😉   So I gave Wife my criteria and she set about researching breeds.

Oh, one key criterion? Protection and guarding. People say any dog can provide this, but I’ve experienced far too many dogs that are rather useless in this situation. I want a dog that truly groks the notion of protection and guarding.

Wife spent about the past 3 years researching. It’d be a combination of her researching, finding something, floating the idea by me, I’d critique, then we’d get sidetracked by something in life and couldn’t act on it. But I think that all worked out well because if we acted on some of the breeds we considered in the past, I think we’d be unhappy.

Choosing the Kuvasz

A few weeks ago I was looking at the Crazy K Farm’s website (due to muscovy duck information) and found their link to a website about livestock guardian dogs. That sounded good to me, the sort of dog we’d like. I told Wife about the website and she read up on them (some for the second time). The Kuvasz breed seemed to fit exactly what we wanted, so Wife presented the breed to me and I agreed it sounded just right. So we started contacting breeders — it’s not a common breed, so there are only so many breeders. The first breeders we contacted were going to have litters but it wouldn’t be for 18 months. That didn’t thrill us, but we kept looking around and eventually found a breeder with a unique situation!

A puppy had been adopted by a family, but that puppy wasn’t working out with that family. The family already had an elderly dog and the Kuvasz pup was strong-willed and dominating the elderly one… that wasn’t a workable solution for them, so the Kuvasz puppy was returned to the breeder at about 6 months of age. So the breeder was looking for a good home for the girl. We spoke with the breeder at length about this particular puppy and she seemed to be exactly what we wanted. The breed itself has the temperament and characteristics we want, and this particular girl seemed to have all that we wanted. Plus that she was 8 months old gave a few advantages, like she’s already housetrained, crate trained, and hey… she’s big! She’s already a formidable force. But she’s still very much a puppy.

This, of course, is Sasha.

By the way, we didn’t name her. Sasha is the name given to her by her first owners, but we’re keeping it. She responds to the name, and gosh if it doesn’t just fit her well.

Bringing Sasha Home

So, opportunity presented itself. We did NOT plan on this. I had just come back from California and now had to turn around and drive to Georgia to get a dog.

Yes.

We drove.

2000 mile round trip. 18 hours straight there, 19 hours back (pit stops lasted a little longer on the way home). We drove out, met with her and the breeder for a few hours in the evening. Stayed at a hotel that night, then went back the next morning for another meeting, paperwork, and driving home. So, a lot of driving in a little time.

But it’s been so worth it.

At first, she was in guard mode. She didn’t know us, so she properly kicked in as we expected her too. But after a little time she warmed up to us, but was still wary. While the drive home was long, I think that helped her accept us. She was well-behaved the entire drive back. We would talk to her, pet her through the bars of the crate, and just lavish as much love on her as we could. I am working to establish myself as Alpha, and so far that seems to be setting in. Good thing too, as she’s wicked strong.

We let her trot around the house, on a leash, to explore and get to know her new home. After about an hour we introduced the cats. They aren’t sure what to make of her, other than it’s a big thing with teeth. But they do seem curious of her, just well… understandably on edge. 🙂  Sasha tho, she just wants to play with them. One of the cats got cornered and got very defensive, and Sasha took that as an offer to play. Cat wanted nothing to do with it, but seeing Sasha act as she did I take as a good sign.

As of now? I think she’s accepted us as family. We’ve received kisses. She watches everything we do: when I walked into the kitchen, she kept her eye on me. Movement outside? She was right at the window. I’m sitting on the couch with my MacBook Pro in my lap to type this, and Sasha is resting on the floor at my feet.

I think she likes us. 🙂

She’s receptive to our commands. She has a huge tail wag when she sees “Momma” (Wife). We’re able to hug her, pet her tummy. I also think she’s got a special protection mode going for the kids: when they move about she watches them, and when they come back to her she expects a little hand sniff to say “OK, we’re all fine”. It’s all very good. Even the cats are starting to mellow out in the same room (tho at a safe distance).

I know some people will look at us as crazy for going about things as we did. Picking a particular breed and settling for nothing less than our criteria. Using a breeder (tho this wasn’t like typical breeder purchase… it’s more like a rescue). Driving 2000 miles in 54 hours. But you know what?

You do crazy things when you’re in love. 🙂

Yes… I admit. I’m in love. Maybe I wasn’t a dog person, but Sasha… she’s changed me.

Now, we need to go to PetSmart. Got a few supplies to pick up.

Old School MMORPG

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Before World of Warcraft (certainly the most successful MMORPG ever), there was the MUD: Multi-User Dungeon.

I remember discovering MUD’s back in undergrad. Had a great time playing them, met some good people, and frankly if not for them I wouldn’t be a computer programmer today. The natural progression was starting as a player, but then wanting to get into the creation side of MUD’s. Certainly you can create worlds without knowing how to code, but I wanted to run a MUD and shape the world… so I had to learn how to program. I picked myself up a book on the C programming language, bought a development environment (THINK C), and got to work. I also recall that at my undergrad institution, the mainframe everyone used for email and such was a VAX-VMS system… no way to run a MUD there. But over in the CS department? They had 486’s running some flavor of Unix (SCO, I think), and I managed to finagle myself an account even though I wasn’t a CS student. 🙂 Good times.

Of course, pure MUD’s were text-based. We dreamed about making graphical MUDs, even thinking of ways to combat the limits of the age. For instance, if all you had was a 2400 baud modem, you can’t be pushing massive amounts of graphics over that slow connection (you kids today think a web page taking 3 seconds to load is slow? back in my day….). Besides, we lacked the time and resources to develop such things, but it was always on my mind.

I guess that’s why modern MMORPG’s don’t appeal to me — been there, done that, got over the addiction.

However, Daughter keeps seeing commercials for various MMORPG’s and they’ve perked her interest. Heck, with LEGO Universe about to come out, Oldest is curious too. However, they all hit the same snag: monthly subscription fees, and Dad isn’t going to pay for it. If they want to spend their own money on that they can, but so far they’re unwilling. 🙂

Nevertheless, Daughter keeps inquiring and it hit me: why not try a MUD? Sure it’s low-tech, but it’s no different from reading a book vs. seeing the 3-D IMAX movie adaptation (i.e. it’s text, you get to use your imagination instead of perceiving someone else’s).

Of course, the geek in me won’t let it be just any MUD! No… my dreams of running my own MUD may have faded but they’ve never left me. I went searching for codebases and found tbaMUD which seems to be a good foundation (I won’t bore you with the lineage). Back in the day, I did things to get MUD servers running on Classic Macs, but it never really worked like people wanted. With Mac OS X being Unix-based and most MUD codebases being biased towards Unix well.. download and see! So I obtained the tbaMUD source, fiddled with it a bit to get it working in Xcode, and ta da… I’ve got a MUD server running here at home. 🙂  It’s not connected to the world at-large but hey… I got to get my geek on, and we’ll see what Daughter thinks of it.

So with that… she should be awake soon. We’ll start up a telnet session later this morning and see what she thinks.

The Austin LEGO Store

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This past weekend we finally got to visit the Austin LEGO Store.

Oh, what geeky nirvana. 🙂

Of course, all the store sells is LEGO, and even at 10 AM (opening time) the place was jumpin’. Kits everywhere. You can see the back wall is just bins of bricks (grab a cup, fill it with random bricks). You can build your own mini-figs (3 for $10). It’s pretty cool, and all things LEGO. What I found extra amusing were the people who worked there. Very friendly, very geeky… you could tell they love LEGO themselves and enjoyed working at the store. If they didn’t have to engage a customer (e.g. they greet everyone as they walk in), they’d just strike up conversations about LEGO… one of the workers and Oldest spent some time just talking shop. The workers got to set up the various showcase models themselves and had fun when doing so. For instance, see this model of a Star Wars AT-AT?

Look for C-3Po. 🙂

Here’s some other models that I liked:

LEGO Biker - I love the trike, and the chain. Nice touch.

LEGO Horses, roaming the wild.

Martial arts, LEGO style!

LEGO Sumo!

I’m sure Oldest would be happy to rent a room in back and live there, or eventually get a job there. Boy… wouldn’t that be his dream job. 🙂

Oldest bought a few things, and I even picked up a couple of things. I bought the Kingdoms Advent Calendar and the Toy Story “Army Men on Patrol” set because hey… it’s Army Men in LEGO form, how cool is that? 🙂

Toy Story 3

/ hsoi

Toy Story 3.

Much win.

Movie itself was good. I liked how it brought closure to the series as well. Lots of subtle things they did in the writing. For example, from the get-go you felt how things were falling apart (the “staff meeting”). Or the little jokes, “You’re an accessory!”. Some of the bigger jokes too, be it Ken or the tortilla (that had me rolling with laughter).

Very happy to have seen it. I’m sure it will be out on DVD and Blu-Ray in time for Christmas, and I’m sure all 3 movies will be packaged in some sort of special collectors series. I’m sure I’ll pick it up.

Such a fine time was had

/ hsoi

I had a wonderful time last night.

Due to typing in the same programming circles so many years ago (over a decade?), I met a gentleman named Rainer Brockerhoff. We met in person some long time ago at an Apple WorldWide Developer Conference event, have seen each other at various WWDC’s over the years, and have certainly stayed in touch due to the magic of modern technology.

But the past week was a treat. You see, Rainer and his wife often travel together and so this time the plan was to come to WWDC then visit Texas. Last week they came to Austin for a bit and while my schedule was busy I made time to see them for lunch because I had no idea when another such opportunity would come — especially to finally meet his wife after all these years. Folks, she’s a charming and lovely woman and my only regret was that my Wife didn’t get a chance to meet her.

Well, life works out in fun ways sometimes. It seems the Texas heat is far too oppressive and it’s not making for an enjoyable trip, so they’re going to head home early. Due to the way things worked out, they were able to come back to Austin last night. This tells you what a great wife I have because she took it all in stride to get the house in order and prepare a nice dinner for a couple of people she’s never met before. (thank you, honey!). Rainer and his wife came over, we shared dinner and many wonderful stories. Rainer taught the children how to make some paper cutouts (he’s quite good). We all got to drool over his new iPad. Quite a wonderful time, and I’m so happy that our wives got to meet each other.

Life is full of fantastic opportunities, and sometimes it’s best when you just roll with what you’re given. 🙂

Now she’s got one too

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Wife’s mobile phone was almost dead. Battery wasn’t taking a charge, it’s been dropped so many times it’s barely holding together. I figured why not… time to get her a new phone.

So, this morning we got her an iPhone 3GS 16 GB model. Yes I know, the iPhone 4 is only a couple days away, but she doesn’t need all the fancy stuff nor the price-tag that goes with it. This is fine.

I’m slowly getting her set up with it, getting her familiar with how to use it, customize it, and generally get around.

What is she most excited about?

She can now get on Facebook wherever she may be in the world. 🙂

Lobster joy

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Took the family to Red Lobster last night.

Yeah, it was expensive… seafood generally is.

But watching Oldest having the time of his life as he ate his first whole lobster (shell-cracking and all)? Worth every penny. He even wore the bib. 🙂

Woke up in a fright

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You know what you don’t want to hear in the middle of the night?

Your children letting out panicked, blood-curdling screams.

*sigh*

Kiddos were “camping out”, sleeping in sleeping bags in the living room (it’s just something they like to do, and it’s harmless). Daughter reports that Oldest started to fidget and itch. He was groggy and not sure what was going on, but something was bugging him. He wanders into our room, wakes up Wife, and asks if she could look at his neck, if she might see anything.

She sure did.

A scorpion.

It was a striped bark scorpion, very common in Texas. We get them inside the house on occasion. Seems the scorpion was taking a midnight stroll across Oldest’s body. Once everyone noticed what it was, the screams and cries went out. Sure freaked me out to be woken up in that manner.

There’s a small welt on Oldest’s neck, another on his chest, and one on his hand. He’s doing OK, it’s just annoying him at this point. His siblings both got bad sunburns last weekend, he just got some light scorpion stings. Everyone’s happy. 😉