Random Musings and Nicknacks

I learned that the fruit flies in my house are alcoholic!!! They won’t touch sugar water or honey, but only red wine!

Chris made a few fly traps recently. The only one that worked was the one filled with red wine. Those flies walked into into the trap gulping the wine like there was no tomorrow. They were so drunk, could not support themselves, and eventually drowned in the wine…

Maybe those fruit flies need some FAA (Flies Alcoholic Anonymous) sessions to get rid of their addictions.

Christmas morning can be a bit problematic for Punky. The whole family goes downstairs, steps into the living room, and sits down around the tree [1]. The whole family, of course, except for poor Punky who is stuck out in the hallway.

This year we sat down and the first wrapped present was labelled “To: Punky, From: Bob”. We had no idea what Punky would get from his Grandpa, so Ling walked over to Punky, unwrapped it in front of him, and we found a stocking full of dog treats. One “snausage” later, and we figured Punky would be set for the morning.

Well, he was set alright, but we understimated his ability to learn! For the rest of the morning, picking up a wrapped box resulted in a very alert dog watching to see what came out of this one!

[1] Well, in between that there is the shuffle into the kitchen, and the ritual turning on of the coffee machine, and begging it to brew faster

The barking seemed to escalate fast. It quickly became very loud.
It seemed my ears could really pick up these things. My ears seemed to work better than those humans, or maybe their hearing was just really bad. Either way, their hearing is not as good as ours.
Anyways, the barking was bothering the drivers. They screeched to a very sudden halt.
(more…)

Saw this one online today…

A dog is truly a man’s best friend.

If you don’t believe it, just try this experiment.

Put your dog and your wife in the trunk of your car for an hour.

When you open the trunk, who is really happy to see you?

The four of us took advantage of the nice day and went out to the park to throw a Frisbee. The arrangement settled itself out well, I threw to Ling, Ling threw to Tim, Tim to me, with Punky happily running after the disc and trying to catch it too.

Then … we had an incident.

The disc was heading towards me, I had lined up the catch, unaware that Punky also had. I ran toward it turned my body to catch it, just as Punky leapt into the air … and gave our poor dog a full body check.

He bounced of me, rolled in the air, and landed on his back. Rolled over got up, and gave me the most submissive look I have ever seen.

We dusted ourselves off, I threw to Ling with Punky running after it, Ling threw it to Tim with Punky running after it, Tim threw to me…

and Punky stayed beside Tim.

Well, a few days ago I came up to a website.
It’s pretty funny.
(more…)

Okay, I have to admit this shows me as a total, and complete geek. This got forwarded to me today and it actually got me to laugh out loud…

Why I laughed so hard will be left as an exercise to the reader.

A new company is moving into the empty office space on our floor (empty since it was vacated by BC Rail), and we’ve been speculating on what kind of company it was. I quipped “well, they have the most expensive real estate on the floor, I’ve seen guys in suits, and I only see people in there about 2 hours a day, it must be government”.

The signs have gone up … turns out I was right.

Just like some dogs like to chase cars, it is also not uncommon for them to chase bikes (something I have fortunately not had to deal with <knock><knock>). This can be quite dire, especially if the dog thinks it is protecting territory or gets into a prey/chase mode.

This is common enough that there are many FAQs written on how to deal with it. The most common advice being:

When you see a dog up ahead, get ready with your water bottle. If the dog starts to close in, give it a good squirt of water in the face. It can confuse them and put them off their attack enough for you to get by. Frequently they’ll just stop, and the problem is solved.

I’m just trying to imagine some poor cyclist doing this to Punky only to watch him jump in the air and twirl in joy, then chase harder hoping to be squirted again…

This reminds me of someone I know…