Digital Impulses

Beagle Drama: Our doggie gets hurt

This evening, I arrived from having dinner at Flemming’s in El Segundo with friends to quite the chaotic scene in my house.

My son greeted me at the door with a grim expression and the news that J.C. our 5 year-old pet Beagle had somehow injured his paw while scampering outside in the backyard.  Upon entering the house, I was greeted with a grizzly scene of blood on my wife’s dress, on various spots on the floor and on my poor doggie’s right-rear paw.

My wife was carrying the dog and had his paw wrapped in a plastic bag.  She had a look of grave concern on her face, so I ran to my office and looked up a 24 Emergency Pet Clinic. I found one immediately via SuperPages and called them up.

They were fairly close (in Torrance, off of Torrance & Crenshaw Boulevards), so we wrapped up J.C. as best we could, threw him in the truck and drove him to the Pet Hospital.

Upon arrival, we took him in to the clinic and explained what we knew.  I filled out a form, they took him in to see the doc (he tried to bite the nurse that carried him) and eventually, the doc came out and told us:

“…He seems to have partially torn a nail on his rear-right paw. We need to put him under, take out the remaining nail and fix up his paw. After that, he will need to take some Antibiotics and he should be all good…”

We were then presented with an estimate that varied from $441 to $684 depending on what they ended up needing to do.  (It ended up being $532.00)

Alas, the idiot receptionist came out and told us it would take 3 to 4 hours for J.C, to be ready to go home, so she encouraged us to go home and they would call us when we could pick him up.

I drove home, got out of my clothes, into bed and had barely fallen asleep, when, not even 30 minutes from when I left the clinic, the phone rang.  It was the Clinic, stating that J.C. had come through the surgery OK and was recovering from the Anesthesia.  I could pick him up ASAP.

Christ!  I could have just waited for him there.  Well, nothing for it, so I got back in the car with my son, we drove back to the clinic and picked up J.C.  He had a pink bandage on his paw, but seemed fine.

We brought him home and laid him down to sleep.  Now all that’s left is to give him his antibiotics twice a day and remove the bandage in a few days.  By the looks of it, he will be removing the bandage himself by chewing it off.

We are a much happier family now that we know that J.C. made it through his first medical scare with flying colors….    Whew!

Bookcases at Ikea

Finally.

After what seems like months of dithering, at the advice of my brother, I decided to give Ikea a try to see if they had Bookcases that might suit my needs.

Sure enough, 10 minutes after arrival, we found the perfect bookcases for $79.00 apiece.  I picked up two of them and after paying for them, we proceeded outside to tie them to the roof of my brother's car and take them home.

That in itself provided some humor, as in the process of securing the bokkcaes boxes to the roof of the car, we inadverdantly TIED the driver's side door to the roof of the car.

At this point, short of cutting the roipes and re-tying the boxes to the car, my brother had to enter his car via the window and managed to do that much better than I ever could have.

We drove the cases home without incident and then drove to the South Bay Galleria to have dinner at California Pizza Kitchen.  After dinner, we walked around the Mall and stopped in at Barnes and Noble where I picked up two books:  Hacking the TiVo and The Mezonic Agenda.  Both books seem like they are going to be great reads.

Incidentally, I have yet to post about my new TiVo, but a week into the purchase, I am absolutely LOVING it.

That's it for now...

America Has Spoken

Really. 

After much angst about how to express what this country did on Tuesday, 11/2/04.  It's pretty much expressed like this:

The Left has been simply repudiated.  The numbers (and the color red) does not lie.  County by county.  Take that, Michael Moore. 

Heh.

TiVo arrives at my house

During a recent shopping run at my local Costco’s, I happened to see that they were selling a Series2 TiVo PVR for $269.00. I mentioned it in passing to my wife, and not being technically inclined, she nodded sweetly and paid me little attention.

Later, I explained to her the advantages of it, and she seemed to understand it a little bit more and thought it would be nice to have. We then agreed to look at it more closely the next time we went to Costco.

This past Wednesday, I was happy to see upon arrival at Costco that the TiVo’s were still there.  After wandering around for a while, I bumped into my wife again and motioned the TiVo’s in passing again.  She looked at me and said, “let’s get one”.

Before she uttered another word, I was off like a flash to the shelf’s that held the TiVo’s and grabbed one and brought it back to our cart.

Immediately, my brain started bubbling over with the possibilities.  Of immediate need would be some kind of a WiFi Adapter to put my TiVo on my home network.  NO snail-like DIAL-UP for me, no sir!

To make a long story short, I had to make 3 trips to the store to find a Network adapter that would work with my TiVo, finally hitting on a D-Link USB adapter recommended to me by a female tech support rep that was very nice and helpful.

Once I installed the USB Dlink WiFi adapter, it all rolled smoothly and I was able to get my TiVo on my home network without further ado.  Of course, that opened up a WORLD of options, such as remote scheduling, showing pictures and music on the TV where the TiVO is, etc.

I am THRILLED with my TiVo and only regret not getting once the moment they came out…