So a month ago one of the ladies of the house was rushed to the ER after too much fun in the snow. She is recovering quite well and all indications are that she'll be off leash come Tuesday to heal the rest of the way on her own. She's still got a limp, and the short fur is still a good 3 inches away from "normal" so it looks like she's lost a ton of weight on just 1/4 of her body. But all is well.

As of now, another lady of the house (the least furry of the three and the one I married) is crashed on the couch in a Percocet haze. This is the result of a planned double knee surgery to relieve some long standing pain she's been having. The doc cleaned out and smooth the cartilage and bone around her kneecap, and clip her tendons slightly so they'll heal a bit lengthened to help recenter the kneecap.

There was a bit more clean up than was originally anticipated, but he didn't need to clip nearly as much. This means that instead of being in leg braces for 5 days and then extensive physical therapy that she just has to keep her leg wraps on for 3 days, and most likely won't need any formal PT at all. Good news indeed!

In the mean time, I get to be her beck-and-call-boy (not that I'm not anyway!). But this was just a quick update for those that were not aware, or wanted a few more details.

I find myself changing my livejournal style almost monthly. When I make the change I really like what I've changed to, but then it grows stale. Currently my style is Minimalism Autumn Time. I've not found one that really stands the test of time with me, do you have one?

Which are you using?

Recently I seem to have developed a peculiar affliction. At seemingly random times while working at my desk at home I'll spastically type something akin to "z sre4". I stopped trying to make sense of the messages and instead concentrated on the cause.

As some of you might have been able to discern, those symbols reside on the left side of your standard QWERTY keyboard. The ultimate cause of this twitchy behavior is > 75 lbs. and about 3' 6" tall. She's stubborn too.

She's taken to grabbing her favorite toy du jour, and shoving it along with the rest of her every more stout* snout into my left elbow while I'm working away on the computer. Yeah..it's cute for the first 4 or 5 times, but this has become a morning ritual. On the plus side it does make for a decent mid-morning forced break. While some may go for a walk, and others grab coffee and perhaps a smoke, I play fetch.

As expected, Guinness isn't so much my dog as I'm her human.

* I chucked a bit after I typed this word. You know..stout, her name, type of beer, etc...?

I just might have to try the mobile.me service:

Find My iPhone location tracking enables all-city chase

So a while ago (here) I had asked about Magazines. Last week I ran across Zinio.com, which has a whole grundle of magazines in pure digital form for relatively cheap. I expect to be spending some money here. Plus, for those so enabled, they have an iPhone optimized site as well.

If you take the dead tree addition of any of the rags they have, I highly recommend buying their bits. They've even got some freebe issues to try the service out with.

From my youth, whenever this song comes on, it puts a smile on my face. Thanks Pandora!

Aly and I stumbled across an amusing show last weekend. I dunno if it's because it was a week after our Vegas run, or what, but Rehab: Party at the Hard Rock Hotel on truetv is quite fun. Maybe it's seeing all the silly people. Or seeing a bit more about how that "lifestyle" (VIP areas, bottle service, etc..) works after experiencing some of it. Or I dunno...definitely a guilty pleasure. AND another marathon of it is on as I type.

I've had occasion this week where a couple of my geek items have decided to give up the ghost in on form or another.

The first is my work Mac. The Mac it self is fine, but for some reason the battery in it decided to throw itself into oblivion and not work anymore. It could be seen by the computer, but didn't have a charge in it and refused to take any more juice. I make an appt. at the Genius Bar at the Gateway Apple store (where they've remodeled) and head down yesterday afternoon.

Once my name is called, the run some tests and run to the back for a "service part" battery. Out of stock, so they pull a new one off the shelf, install it for me and give me the "receipt" for it, since it's warranty is good for a year. < 5 minutes and I'm out the door with a brand new battery. No muss, no fuss.

The second occurrence was with our Logitech Harmony remote. While not the uber-gucci model, it's still be a nifty thing to have to control our A/V stuff. The only problem with it is that it has been chewing through batteries like now tomorrow. The remote has a nice little message that display "Replace Batteries" when the 4 AAAs in it start to wear down. The problem has been that this message has come up more and more often. The last time it showed up 9 days after fresh batteries were replace.

I hop on line and Logitech customer service has a nifty web form to submit support issues. A few rounds of gathering information and I'm informed that a new remote is in the mail to me. Again, no muss, no fuss.

The interesting thing with the Logitech instance is that they've got no interest in getting the old remote back. These remotes connect to the Logitech site to do their configuration, so they can disable access for the old remote that way. But I am a touch disturbed that they want me to just dispose of it. Recycling issues aside, I would think they'd want it back to find out why it failed, or do recycling on their own. But...not my issues I guess. Anyone know where I can take random electronics for recycling?

From comcast of all people. Not terribly informative...but entertaining:

http://www.comcast.com/fastestfast/

Enjoy.

I've updated this post with a new link to the video with sound, which really is much more fun considering all the growling you can hear Daisy do in the background. Anyway, 5 minutes of hot puppy tuggin' action!