This silly boy is called kevin and he hates to be hit on the head with celery. He’ll be honest, he’s quite shallow and that is just about his only peccadillo.

What a strange day, gone on holiday to Devon. Just about the only reason for this holiday is Eddie the PBGV with a big heart, because there’s plenty of countryside around here for him to walk, and he hasn’t seen the sea before! Aww. We’ve rented a cottage in the middle of nowhere, I can’t even remember what the village is called its so remote, and the road its on hasn’t even got a name. But its near Bideford, or some such place. I can’t link to it on google maps because i’m having to write this offline.

Eddie has been such a good boy! Including service station stops the trip down here took about 6 hours and he was totally patient and restful. Sure he was a little hot and bothered and showed the odd signs of stress but he never made a big fuss. Bless!

First thing we did when we got here was find a pub… of course. And OMG its the most darling pub ever! It’s called the Thatched Inn, and it really is thatched. Not pretend thatched, but proper and recently done by the looks. If I ever made a good pub guide I’d definitely include it. It’s dog friendly… as long as its a nice day. haha.

We found a public footpath beside a farm that took us to the coast, unfortunately although it did take us there the path down to the actual beach had kind of eroded away, leaving a quite hefty jump, which may be ok if you’re on your own but with a portly but short legged dog wasn’t very convenient and we headed back instead.

Internet issues. There’s no wifi signal to hop onto announced. The cottage has a phone socket, but it isn’t connected.. as in there’s no dial tone. Which leaves just GPRS, ouch. So, I lets see if this gets posted shall we.

Had a rather annoying day yesterday. Went to the royal mail sorting office to collect a parcel I had missed. When I saw the package I knew straight away that it was an SATA HD USB2 Adapter I had bought super cheap style from an ebayer based in Hong Kong of all places. Tell you what though, I walked there and I felt a right tit walking the streets while grasping Chairman Mao. Still, it would make a great start to anyones stamp collection. So when I got back and went up to try out the new fangled contraption the obvious happened… somehow, since gutting my old PC the HD had perished. Well, I’m presuming it has, HD Clicks.m4a. Doesn’t sound good does it. Luckily, hitachi’s website has a form for entering the drives serial number and it will tell you whether it qualifies for an RMA. It did! Woo!. Hmm, ah, look at the freaking packaging instructions! Here’s my favorite bit..

Use thick foam rubber to secure the hard drive on all sides during shipment or use a GeoSprings kit (a specially approved box with plastic spacers).

and

DO NOT USE foam peanuts, bubble wrap, cloth, paper, newspaper, or padded envelopes.

Nothing like making things tricky. What I don’t get is, why go to this care?… ITS BROKEN! What the heck is a geosprings kit? And where the heck do you go to buy foam rubber? Grrr

Went to take Eddie for a walk in the country, some place called Lineker (sp?) near Chesterfield. Lovely walk set around a cluster of reservoirs. Anyway, took quite a funny photo, I’ll leave you to come up with the caption.

It’s Eddies first birhday tomorrow, aww. I’ve made him a card, unfortunately my epson printer is absolutely useless with certain dark shades and the blue sky just came out black. Stupid thing. Nay mind. Don’t look too closely at the mock-reflections, particularly the present, its totally fake looking and all screwed up. haha, well, i don’t think Eddie will notice. Also, i dunno why but it seems to be incredibly difficult to find a good picture of a bone online, that low res yellow thing was the best I could find!

The comments system has been kinda screwy on my site for, well since forever I think. I was messing on my site the other day and figured whilst I was at it I may as well have a look at the comment issues. The current problem is that it doesn’t seem to pick up on avatars anymore. I didn’t get very far with the investigations when I discovered that the openid-comments plugin had been screaming at me for attention. I’d never looked at the MT’s system activity log doodar. The following message appears many times, over and over…

Plugin error: /home/scissor/public_html/itchmerry/cgi-bin/mt/plugins/openid-comment/openid-comment.pl Can’t locate object method “add_tag” via package “MT::Template::Context” at /home/scissor/public_html/itchmerry/cgi-bin/mt/plugins/openid-comment/openid-

Cuts off there annoyingly. The method its looking for is in the file mt/lib/MT/Template/Context.pm which is all present and correct on the remote site, so I dunno what it’s farting on about. Also, when I was playing with the site I installed MT on my mac all set up the same as I have it remotely so that I can try things out nice and quickly. Transferred the MT DB from the remote site to mysql on my mac using MySQL Administrator so that its exactly the same site as it is online and it all works fine, including avatars. So that’s annoying too. I hope MT 3.3 is out soon, then I’ll completely gut the install on the website and set up it from scratch. Apart from the DB obviously.

Been forgetting to blog again, I really am hopeless at this. I fell asleep a while back and awoke with major pollen overload. I feel sooooo crappy. Also been feeling quite anxious today, with no apparent reason as per usual. Stupid mind.

Last Monday Eddie had the snip. Poor guy’s been feeling less of a man… how can he be a man?..he’s only a 11 months old. Anypoop, when he came home he was still drowsy from the anaesthetic, and he was like this for the rest of the day. He seemed a little confused and he kept looking at me with eyes that read “Why am I so tired? i’m scared! ”. He kept making the most adorable wimpers all day too and my heart really bled. Awww. His ball sack… or what used to be a ball sack, its just a sack now… looks revolting, it went all multicoloured, different shades of bruisey-brown and bloody-red. I wanted to post a photo but someone may have been having lunch when they saw it, plus I’d like to respect Eddies privacy… Well how would you like your balls posted on a blog?

Saturday was wonderful. Went up to my brothers, which despite the cost of trains these days is really easy to get to from here, I can just catch a train from sheffield, and just hop on another train at leeds station to horsforth. Leeds has quite a nice little local train service. Um what was I saying. Oh yeah, so I got to his in time for the FA Cup Final, which was one of the most rollercoastery footie matches i’ve ever watched. My brother being the more important than life or death type where liverpool is concerned was all over the place, and for the majority of the match it looked as if I was going to have one hell of miserable trip to see Radiohead in blackpool later on that day. Then in the dying moments Gerrard being the genius that he is (and he should so captain england) scored a most amazing goal with cramp and all manor of nagging injury’s going on getting the team into extra time. Then extratime went by and the bubbly west ham fucked up royally on penalties. Woohoo.

So we just had a few minutes before we had to set off for Blackpool with a smile on our faces. Gosh Blackpool is such a dump nowadays. Or maybe it always has been. Radiohead played the Winter Gardens which turned out to be a super duper place for a gig, with a big bar all the way down the length of the ballroom, what more could you want? Views were a bit restrictive though, i dunno if it was the venues fault but i’m sure they don’t have the stage elevated quite high enough, well I’m small and my views at standing gigs are poor at the best of times, mostly seeing heads and shoulders but this was worst than ever, and it wasn’t as if I was a long way from the stage, in fact I was pretty close to the front. Getting near the front is a feat in itself at a radiohead gig ‘cos their fans are total obsessives, they queue for hours beforehand just to guarantee getting to the front, seriously the only gigs I’ve been to that have had queues around the block have been radiohead ones, they’re nuts. Their new songs are fantastic, they sound kinda dirty and bassy but with angelic melodies of the bends/ok computer style period. Oh and the set for the tour is wonderful, they have these screens behind them that are like shards, and they project feeds of them playing from different angles, but they warps and saturate the footage in different ways, it has a really freaky 60’s psychodelia look to it, and it sure hell is a lot more interesting than just a big video screen. The most amazing use of the set was for the opening part of ‘you and whoes army’ where Thom sat at the piano with the cameras zoomed right into his face in a fishbowl lens type way and he occasionally did feaky come closer hand gestures that looked generally scary and personal. Gosh, still an awesome band.

The pic from the gig isn’t mine. It was the best I could find on flickr but it still doesn’t do the set justice. Um, should probably give credit but i’ve closed the page now. hah.

Last week Eddie the PBGV with a big heart developed a mysterious limp, mysterious because no amount of prodding and poking of the leg seemed to cause him any discomfort, and yet he was limping weird. Also, he’d wake up fine but start to hobble a little by mid-afternoon, come the evening and he’d be limping wildly. So yesterday we took him to the vets, he too couldn’t find anything particularly wrong with him, but stated that these things come and go as they grow up. Canines sure are strange creatures, he gave us some anti-imflamitaries, charging a million euro for the privilege. Miraculously, today no limping in sight. I reckon Eddie was putting it on the whole time, threatening him with the vets making him wise up.

There was a pre-crufts show on TV the other day and there was a GBGV! It was adorable too! That stands for Grand Basset Griffon Vendeen, the slightly bigger version of the Petite BGV, which Eddie is. It whimpered most of the time it was on camera and sounded EXACTLY like Eddie does! So now we know, all that whimpering and whining, even when happy is part of the breed, not just Eddie being a nutcase. Haha aww.

PBGV’s, and GBGV’s are hounds, so be sure to watch Crufts this Friday as the hound category is judged. You may just catch one of Eddie’s relations. Well, I would check to see info on the dog’s entered this year to be sure, but the UK Kennel Club website sucks ass.

Last night I went to see the Mighty Boosh perform at the city hall. It was a marvellous spectacle. Like a scattergun of obscenely silly happenings, they were putting it out there. So much so that I really dunno where to begin, so I probably won’t. Vince Noir was chased around the auditorium by a giant rabbit, who went on to rape him. I think that’s all you need to know. Oh and Howard Moon has become a bit of an expert in mime. huh, the audience was full of students, many of whom seemed to have big bushy castro beards. Is this the fashion with students now?

Some things annoying me right now. When Americans attempt British accents they always sound Australian, why is this? Eddie keeps leaving doors wide open, letting the warm air out. It’s freezing cold. Several dusty Dutchmen have dirty diamonds hanging from their dapper dungarees, I fear.

All this talk of dognapping has driven Eddie over the edge. We first noticed a change of behaviour on Tuesday, suddenly out of the blue he decided to risk the stairs for the very first time. Unfortunately he hasn’t the guts to attempt downwards, so every time he goes upstairs someone has to help him back down. It’s getting rather tiresome as he’s really milking this new found freedom, following everyone upstairs as if it’s the promise land. It also means now that nowhere is safe from his prying jaws.

To add to this craziness and for the first time since the first week he arrived here he spent the entire night crying and scratching at the kitchen door, seriously, all bleeding night and there was absolutely no reason for it. No gale howling, nothing. He seems a bit touchy today as well.

Oh god, and, earlier today he brought in something from outside, I grabbed it from his mouth thinking it was a big lump of dried mud. It wasn’t mud. I spent what must have been 10 minutes washing my hands and I still don’t feel clean. I don’t think i’m ever going to get over it. Gross. Repulsive. Ugh. Dogs…

I’ve been messing with Trackmania Nations a lot and have come up with some circuits of my own, not only are they fast, challenging and lots of fun, but they are also multimedia extravaganza’s, with custom made music and silly little intro’s to the races. What more could you possibly want? Download Trackette.zip and extract it into the “gamedata” folder from within where-ever you installed Trackmania.

Apparently there has been a spate of dog-napping here in the UK, criminal gangs taking off with folks dogs and then demanding ransom money. Well, to anyone who fancies doing the same with my Eddie, just you try it, I can be pretty violent when pushed. I’m sure they’re shaking. It’s happened to both Lionel Blair and Dave II’s beloved Liz Hurley. Poor things.

Oh yeah, I forgot to add that the tracks say they are by a Mr John Pickles. Haha, well that’s the name i’m playing the game under. Um, don’t ask why, it’s a long story. Something about a mission caper.

I’m going to be moaning again today, i still feel like shite and it gets worse. Last night I was playing with Eddie and I had lay down on the floor so that eddie could trample on me (don’t ask why) and he did and he stuck his paw right on my left eye, I didn’t flinch away fast enough and it hurt like hell. I figured ah well, it’ll go off but I hasn’t and i awoke this morning with quite a pain in my eye and as the day has worn on it become increasing apparent that my left eye has gone a bit blurry and it has gone very photo-sensitive. So now i’m worried as hell that there’s some perminant damage. Fuck sake, it’s all I need.

Now for sudden change of tact. Cool! I just this second as I was moaning above recieved this email…

The replacement part for your iBook has arrived. If you want to bring the machine in at your convienence to the AppleStore Meadowhall.

Awesome! And now I don’t have to answer the phone too! Hmm, my tummy is making some damn strange sounds. Oh yeah, as part of Eddie’s training, every day we have to tie him up nearby whilst we get on with something quiet such as reading a book and all the whilst ignoring him. Fun eh? It’s so that he gets used to settling down when in company. To be honest Eddie is pretty good at settling down anyway, but i suppose we ought to do it. It’s homework, so i’m doing it right now, he has dozed off by my feet whilst i tap away on the iBook. I’m not sure whether or not i’m allowed to look at his sleeping cuteness, does looking count as interaction?

I’m not at all sure why i have done this, but here is the route of Eddie’s favourite walk.

The route on the left hand side going through the woods is kinda guessed and the whole thing takes about an hour and a half.

Despite not having a clue who over half the celeb BB lineup are, talk about no-ones. Barrymore and George Galloway make it for me. I admire Galloway greatly for his courage of conviction in the shallow world of politics, even if i don’t agree with some of his opinions. It will be fascinating to see what his character is like over an extended period. Barrymore, well i just can’t wait to see how he is after all this time, he needs an audience and he’s been starved for, well when was ‘the party’ that whecked his career, must be a few years ago now, and he’s the type of character that needs an audience, he almost broke down when the cheers started after leaving the car. Says it all.

Yesterday I went along to the first instalment of dog training, for the first we didn’t bring our dogs so I cannot report on Eddie shaming us, that’s for next week. It was kinda odd though, one of the ppl there I think I went to school with, and I was racking my brain the whole time trying to pin down extra who they were, i didn’t speak to them though and thankfully neither did she, it would have been soooo embarrassing. The woman who runs the class is a paauuush eccentric, as you would expect someone who runs a doggie training class to be, she smokes cigarettes with one of them silly holder things. haha. She’s amazing with puppies though, there was one token puppy, a gorgeous cocker and it did everything the woman wanted even though it had never seen her before. The cocker made me miss Barney so much. They have the most adorable puppies, spaniels don’t get that elongated schnozzle until they’re older so the puppies are all cute with little rounded heads. That’s a pic of Barney BTW, he now lives in Ireland, must be about 3 years old, don’t even know what he looks like anymore

As I’m sure i’ve mentioned before, the only reason we can have our own dog is because of a miracle dog shampoo which neutralises the irritants that would otherwise make my itch like crazy. I’m still undecided whether or not i’ll tag along to the next training session. I would absolutely love to, it would be such a laugh with all the untrained dogs causing havoc, but all them doggie irritants flying around would be hell for me. If only I could get all the owners to use our shampoo on them before they come. Probably a tad too much to ask.