An AWESOME day for a car ride

Out running errands today.  It was 65 degrees and sunny.  

On the way home, my Great Dane, Bogie, was hanging his head out the back window on the driver’s side.  A pickup on our left had a medium-sized white dog hanging out its passenger window.  

He looked at Bogie.  Bogie looked at him.  

Neither barked or growled.  

The white dog had a grin on his face as if to say, “It’s an AWESOME day for a car ride!”

I need to remember to appreciate the important things – like car rides and beautiful days.  

Love/hate relationship with technology advances.

Recently, I replaced my 2 year old cellphone with a Nexus 5.  This comes with a Google Now feature not available on my previous Android.

For anyone who doesn't have one, Google Now will tell you the path and time it takes to get to a planned destination, give you weather information, nearby entertainment events, evening television, etc.

The "normal" route to work is not the one I regularly take.  I cannot stomach the intersection of highways 101 and 202.  I always take an alternate route to the office.

I realized yesterday that Google Now noticed this and uses this route to plan the driving time.

This is incredibly cool.

And kind of creepy.

Do I want my phone to know me this well?

Is there any harm in having the ads on websites tailored to my previous searches?  It's not necessarily accurate since I often look up stuff for my sister who is technologically challenged.

But is it harmful?

Are these the first steps in the eventual domination of the human race by our mechanical overlords?

Or just a way to make life a little more efficient?

Does life even need to be efficient?

These are the quandaries that keep me awake at night.

Cool?  Or creepy?

Don't mess with my weekend.

I was reminded this week that just because you like someone personally doesn't mean you have to like the way they work or the quality of their work.

For me, if I like someone, I want to respect their work.  I try really hard to respect their work.

But once the poor quality of your work, or your lack of initiative, or your lack of commitment, or your inability to communicate impacts MY work and personal life, all bets are off.

What brought this up was the two days of overtime I just had to put in to meet a deadline.  I'm salaried, so no overtime pay.  Besides, the older I get, the more I value my time off.

Do not get between me and my time off.

The culprit was a contractor working in our office for a short time.  Every day we had a stand-up meeting.  (It's a SCRUM thing.)

Every day, he said his tasks were done.  When asked why they weren't closed, he said, well, they are almost done.  I need to validate before I check the code in.

He said this EVERY day.

Now we're not stupid.  We figured out there was a problem.  But everyone else had tasks to finish before he could be helped.

And when offered help, he hid the extent of the problem.

A problem that was so bad that we discovered on the day the project was due, that he didn't even know how to create the web dialog he had been tasked with.

Now, mind you.  I have absolutely no problem with people not knowing how to do something.  No one knows everything.

I object to someone who is completely lost not asking for help.

I object to someone being assigned something they have never done before and not calling that out.

I object to working over the weekend because someone was too proud to ask for help.

Arghh!

Protect my treats

I give the dogs one meaty treat and a rawhide twist when I leave for work.  

Sometimes, like today, As they are chewing the meaty treats, I scatter 4 smaller rawhides across the downstairs for them to find.  Then I hand them the rawhide twists.

Well, when she saw me getting the smaller rawhides from their container, Angel wanted one of those first.  

I gave her the small rawhide, then set her twist in front of her so Bogie wouldn't get it.  

With the small treat already in her mouth, Angel picked the twist up, too.  

Then she went and found another of the small rawhides.  

She stood in the family room with all three rawhides in her mouth, waiting for me to leave. 

As I opened the door to the garage, she took her mouthful of treats outside to enjoy.

This is Angel.

Double-stuff versus Mega-Stuff

Chocolate can be a migraine trigger for me.  The odds are about 50/50 and are influenced by allergy season, level of fatigue, whatever else I ate that day.

So, generally, unless it's a killer piece of fudge, or a special dessert, I stay away from chocolate.

This is a long-winded way of saying that I am grateful for the creation of the Nabisco Golden Oreos.

The Golden Oreo Double Stuf are my favorites.  

I couldn't get to them one day at the grocery store when the floor was being waxed. (I shop very early in the morning.)

So I bought a package of Mega Stuf from an end cap display.  

Who knew that you could actually have too much filling?  

I don’t like them.  The flavor seems different.  Maybe the balance of filling and cookie is tipped too much in favor of the filling.  

I can't bring myself to finish the package.  

I am actually going to throw the Mega Stuf out for the birds and the ants.  

Caught on doggy cam

I like to check on the dogs periodically from work.  Not really sure why. I can't do anything from 26 miles away.  But it is comforting to know they are okay.

Or that I will have a mess to clean up when I get home.

Tuesday, I noticed a mess of torn up "something" on the loft floor.  While I pondered it, my coworker, looking over my shoulder at a different camera, noticed the kitchen cupboard door was open.  The cupboard that holds the dog treats.

"I swear I shut that when I left this morning," I insisted.

So I went back through the clips to when I left and found that yes, indeed, I had closed the cupboard door.

With two of my coworkers in avid attendance, I searched through the clips until I found this:

I have to admire Bogie's skills, but I did move all of the treats into the pantry.  The pantry with the round door knob.  If he can get them out of there, he totally deserves them. 

Well, he deserved the ones he snagged in the clip, too.