The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Today's Daily Parker

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am very thankful that this wonderful puppy has come to live with us. Since I'm an atheist, I'm not sure what or whom there is to thank for it, so I'll just thank Parker himself for being the wonderful puppy he is.

We're at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters this morning so I can get some stuff done. At this writing he's being a sleepy little angel. Or, not so little, as you can see from this photo I took today at the dog park:

Another view, which makes it clearer that Parker is now more than twice the size of Jackson:

For comparison, here they are seven weeks ago:

That photo was from October 2nd, when Parker weighed about 10 kg (22 lbs). As of Tuesday he weighed 15.6 kg (34.5 lbs). This 900 g (2 lb) per week gain shows only one sign of slowing: now Parker will occasionally walk away from his dinner if he thinks we're doing something interesting. (He goes back to it pretty quickly though.)

OK, I need to get to work. But the ParkerCam is up until 1 pm CT (19:00 UTC) this afternoon, so tune in and watch the dog sleep. (Too bad there's no audio, because he groans and sighs when he's happy.)

Office guard dog

I just discovered my mail on the credenza in the office foyer. A letter carrier opened the door and put it there, with nary a woof out of the office puppy. Maybe this is why:

I'm beginning to wonder about his contributions to the company's bottom line.

Today's Daily Parker

OK, I think I've got the ParkerCam figured out. Here's the current arrangement:

And here's what the ParkerCam sees:

It's impossible to keep up with him sometimes, so very often you'll just see an empty rug. Or, after Parker has done some redecorating, a scrunched-up rug:

Now we're going for a walk, so I can get lunch before Whole Foods turns into a zoo.

Liberal college towns

Some memes obscure deeper truths. "Liberal" and "college town," for example, often go together, as in the lede from a story in Tuesday's New York Times:

BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 14 — Voters in this liberal college town have approved what environmentalists say may be the nation's first "carbon tax," intended to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases.

This lede bothered me for several reasons. First, I don't believe that wanting to reduce catastrophic climate change is so much a "liberal" idea as it is a "sensible" idea. Second, if Boulder is "liberal," that makes my home town (Evanston, Ill.) "socialist" and puts Cambridge, Mass., on the loony fringe. And I'm not sure Greenville, S.C. really wants the label "liberal" any more than Evanston wants the label "reactionary right-wing religious nuts."

New ParkerCam

The ParkerCam is such a hit (Anne refreshes it more than I do, it turns out), I replaced the ailing, sunburned, five-year-old Intel camera with the same model that I use for the Inner Drive webcam. It's easy to see why; here's the "before:"

And the "after:"

(The new camera is so good, if you open the bottom image in its own window you can read half my programming library.)

<Geek Stuff>

Alas, the new camera and I had a disagreement initially. It's a Logitech QuickCam Orbit that I'm running through Sascha Keller's VisionGS Webcam software. I had to reduce the thread priority of VisionGS to get it to play nicely with my computer. And I have Microsoft Index Service turned off until I shut down the Webcam, because it was taking every available processor cycle. The Index service sometimes repopulates its database after an unexpected reboot, and There were also several reboots involved. I also disturbed poor Parker's sleep a few times commenting *ahem* on the installation process.

</Geek Stuff>

It's working now. And if Parker moves we'll see if the face- (puppy-) tracking feature works.