Over the 15,000 year span that the dog had been domesticated, it diverged into only a handful of landraces, groups of similar animals whose morphology and behavior have been shaped by environmental factors and functional roles. As the modern understanding of genetics developed, humans began to intentionally breed dogs for a wide range of specific traits. Through this process, the dog has developed into hundreds of varied breeds, and shows more behavioral and morphological variation than any other land mammal.^[5] For example, height measured to the withers ranges from a few inches in the Chihuahua to a few feet in the Irish Wolfhound; color varies from white through grays (usually called “blue’”) to black, and browns from light (tan) to dark (“red” or “chocolate”) in a wide variation of patterns; coats can be short or long, coarse-haired to wool-like, straight, curly, or smooth.^[6] It is common for most breeds to shed this coat, but non-shedding breeds are also popular.

Dog food varies for different breeds of dogs.

Entwöhnung der Welpen von der Muttermilch und ihre Umstellung auf ”feste” Nahrung hat begonnen. D.h. Eukanuba-Welpennahrung lange, lange eingeweicht und dann mit der Gabel zermatscht.

Hier ein Video von der allerersten Fütterung:

Hary hat gestern dann noch Welpenmilch mitgebracht, die wir während der Umstellung noch zusetzten und die Welpen schlappern es weg wie nichts…

Its been awhile since i really done real work. God, i still need to get the website layout to be done. Anyway i not bitching, i am happy with work. I just done up a few pictures and words up on my About page, i’ll update more again =) I am off for now, heading for some coffee and back to website planning, and hey if you are a girl  reading, do add me msn or smth. (thinking: i am sure ling is cool with me having more “girl friends”) work for now! Byes

do visit me www.SGDOGMART.com

I’m starting a blog about what not to say in cover letters or job interviews.

Ein paar Fußball- und Sportblogger tun sich gerade zusammen und versuchen einen Podcast zu entwickeln. Ich bin sehr gespannt. Einen ersten ungeschnittenen Versuch für die Öffentlichkeit findet man bei Probek. Ich höre es gerade und es findet wirklich ein Gespräch statt (im Unterschied zum eher spaßigen Doppelpass).

Welcome to minis blog,

Each week I will write about what mini did like go to petco,go to the vet,take a bath ect.. I will also keep you posted on her also. I have a pets.com page all you have to do is go to www.pets.com and serch chihuahualover8 and you will see mini and my page. I also have a blog for dogs go to http://dogsfanclub.wordpress.com/ note: I only update it a couple times a month.

THANKS

Savannah

Have you ever had a dog brithday party?

Well this post will show you how!

Lets start with the PUP cakes.

What you need for PUP cakes.

# dog bones & water.

# A old cupcake tin (that makes 12 or 6 pup cakes but make sure there is some for all the dogs that come.

How to make:

Crush dog bones in bowl till all most all the bowl is filled then add a table spoons of water to make food wet.

Then scoop dog food in the cup cake tin and put them in fridge.

Icing for pupcakes.

WHAT YOU NEED:

wet dog food & sprinkles.

How to make spread a tablespoon of dog food on each pup cake or intill the whole pup cake haves wet dog food on it.

Then sprinkle all of them with sprinkles.

Order up give the yummy pup cakes out to dogs after singing happy bday to pet.

Other things to server up at the party:

# Dog bones

# dry dog food snack mix  ( dry dog food and favorite treats mixed.)

# dog bones + wet dog food + sprinkles = dog bone cookie!

Dont forget the OWNERS!

server:

icecream,cupcakes,popcorn,pop,cookies,cake and everything else to serve at a party!!!!!!!

___________________________________________________

Party hats

• Cut a rectangular piece of cardboard as follows:
  For tiny dogs: 3 x 5 inches [75 x 125 mm]
  For medium to large sized dogs: 4 x 6 inches [100 x 150 mm]
  For giant dogs: 5.5 x 7.5 inches [14 x 19 mm]

• Along one longer edge, bend the corners in to meet in the middle
• Overlap one corner over the other
• Staple in two spots

• Draw a line to round off the pointy edges
• Cut along that line with scissors

I like to put a pompom at end of each hat

Web site wher this craft was found: http://www.make-and-build-dog-stuff.com/

__________________________________________________________

                          invations

Well for my invations I used the coupter and a border like this one   and wrote the adress,phone,time,date, and everthing else you put on a invation.

Here are some cool invations you can print off and write on your self.

And a thank you note too! Ps: write on back!

_________________________________________________________

                         Decorations

Crafts for dogs and owners

Dog place mats:

What you need:

# foam (I used the 3 Rs and used old sheets of plastic)

# stickers ( in dog shapes, letter stickers ect)

put it togter:

Well you just stick on stickers on foam I also helped owners spell there dogs name(s) on place mat.

CRAFT MATERIALS:
	Flat wooden frame
	Dog-bone treats
	Water-based high-gloss polyurethane
	Small paint brush
	Hot glue
Time needed: Afternoon or Evening

1. Remove the glass and the cardboard backing from a flat wooden frame and set them aside. Lay the wood, face side up, on a flat working surface and arrange crunchy dog-bone treats on top of it. Place them horizontally, end to end to fashion a border all the way around, or diagonally to accent the corners.

2. Once the pattern is determined, remove the dog bones, lay them face down, and apply a coat of water-based high-gloss polyurethane to the backs. Once dry, hot-glue the bones to the frame so that the polyurethaned sides are against the frame (adults only).

3. Apply polyurethane to the tops and sides of the glued-on dog bones, let dry, and apply another coat of polyurethane.

4. When the final coat is completely dry, insert the puppy’s photo and reassemble the frame.

to get more crafts for you dog go to http://familyfun.go.com/ and serch “crafts for dogs”

_________________________________________________________

Costumes for the 4 leged guest.

if you are having a themed party go to:http://www.make-and-build-dog-stuff.com/costumes-for-your-dog.html to learn more.

__________________________________________________________

                          Gift bags to say thanks to the dogs for coming!

Dont forget the owners too!

What to put in the dogs bags!

1. A rawhide bone I found a pack of 4 for 1 buck  at http://locator.albertsons.com/StoreLocatorAction.do?action=showZipEntry tipe in your zip and you can shop at your local albersons.

2. Some dog bones Or dog treats can be found at most stores in your area.

3. A DOG toy exp: a tennis ball you can buy at your local sports store or at http://www.petco.com/Shop/petco_SearchResults_Ntt_Dog+toys_Nav_1_N_0.aspx?Ns=P_Price%7c0&pso=1 and there is also some other items that could go good as the toy.

4. DOG scarf I found some cute one’s for a buck each at walmart http://www.walmart.com/ and the brand was american dog.

And for the bag get gift bags at your local store they should be around 3 to like 7 bucks.

For the owners

Get a party bag and fill it up with lots of fun party favors From you dollor store local store or go to this link http://searcha.familyfun.go.com/?q=make+brithday+party+favors to make your owm

and dont forget a thanks for coming note in there.

_______________________________________

The last thing you need to do on your check list is to:

Have fun!

____________________________________

Have a great time! Savannah

This was a great show, I especially enjoyed Lessons in Failure, follow the link to check them out same with Dogfood.  Majority Lost killed it and got a great response for being an “out of town” band.  Thanks to Shakers Pub, Travis from Lessons in Failure and everyone who made shooting this show so much fun, even Majority Lost.

Dogfood @ Shakers Pub 6-19-09

Majority Lost, Shakers Pub 6-19-09

Lessons in Failure, Shakers Pub 6-19-09

Are you wondering whether making your own dog or cat food is worth it? Just look at the length of this list! Please note the premium brands that are on it and read more about the class action suit here.

This is serious and it makes me wonder what is still lurking in commercial foods. Remember, this industry is unregulated.

What our pets eat is something that we can manage in a world where so many other things seem beyond our control.

Information like this makes me renew my commitment to providing wholesome food for all our pets.

Anyone have any good cat food recipes?

Everyone wants free stuff right??

Are you thinking of adopting a new dog but just dont know if you can take care of it how does 1 months food sound?

If you adopt a dog from a shelter then you get one months food from pedigree.

That is alot of savings and you also gave a dog a home and you have a new friend! For more info please click  on the link  http://www.pedigree.com/03Adoption/Adopt%20A%20Dog/Adopt%20Free%20Food/default.aspx

and for more info on adopting click on this link!

http://www.pedigree.com/Images/PDF/adoption_guide.pdf

Good luck,

Savannah & Mini

I like to make my own dog food. I think it is healthier (for them) and more economical (for me).

PROTEIN-40%

Chicken thighs

Lean roast beef-little bit of leftovers

P-Nut Butter

VEGETABLES-30%

Carrots

Green beans

Fresh Spinach

Parsley-(helps Little-Bits tummy)

Mint-”

STARCH-30%

Yams-(no sugar or salt)

White rice-(had to add because it was so gooey)

TO MAKE-

Cook chicken in olive oil.

Cut into small pieces.

Cook vegetables in chicken stock. Drain.

Mix chicken and vegetables with yams and p-nut butter.

Cook rice with stock and saved vegetable water from fridge.

Mix everything together and cool in the fridge.

Put in snack sized Zip-Locks and freeze.

Made about a week’s worth. And the boneless, skinless chicken thighs were only $1.00 a pound. Yea!

GOALS-

My goal for next batch is to try the brown or wild rice again and see if it still affects Little-Bits tummy.

I also want to try tomato to see if we have any allergies. Since I cook with tomatoes so much, it would be easier and I think they are very healthy. There is a bit of debate about this for dogs, though, so I am not so sure.

I also want to see if I can find a better freezer process, although the snack sized bag is perfect for one dog for one day with a little fresh food mixed in. Also, and this is no small matter, the bags stack perfectly in the freezer drawer of my fridge.

Um gleich mal mit der Tür ins Haus zu fallen: ich habe oft Lindenstraße geschaut, recht regelmäßig Marienhof, manchmal Unter Uns und gelegentlich auch GZSZ. Und noch einiges mehr.

Phasenweise bin ich recht tief eingestiegen, habe mich für den Fortgang der Geschichte interessiert, und wenn es ganz schlimm kam, musste ich kurz nachdenken, ob ich eine Geschichte aus dem echten Leben kannte oder nur aus einer Serie: “Ja, mir hat neulich auch jemand von einem gekauften Doktortitel erzählt – ach nee, das war ja Carsten Flöter.”

Genug der Übertreibungen. Heute kann es zwar noch immer vorkommen, dass ich mich kurzzeitig (zu) tief in eine Serie versenke; viel mehr als das Übernehmen gewisser Zitate resultiert daraus aber nicht. Copy that?

Ich stehe also mit beiden Füßen auf der Erde, im Real Life sozusagen. Oder auch nicht: an die Stelle von Fernsehserien ist ein anderes UnReal Life getreten. Das aus Blogs, Twitter und dem anderen Kram: als ich neulich von den gesundheitlichen Problemen eines Bekannten erfuhr, war mir sogleich klar, dass ich kurz zuvor etwas Ähnliches gehört und Anteil genommen hatte, und zwar bei, äh, dogfood.

Mir ist schon klar, dass seine Erkrankung sehr real war und in ihrem Konsequenzen noch immer ist, dennoch: zu meinem Real Life zählt dogfood im engeren Sinne (d.h. wenn man seinen Einfluss auf meine Seh- und Lesegewohnheiten außer acht lässt) nicht. Gleichwohl ist mein Interesse deutlich größer und die Informationen weitaus umfangreicher als zum Teil bei Menschen, die ich gelegentlich persönlich treffe.

Muss mich das beunruhigen? Ich denke nicht – insbesondere nicht in einem solchen Fall, in dem es um Anteilnahme und, ein großes Wort, Mitgefühl geht. Aber es gibt ja auch noch die anderen Fälle, die belanglosen, wenn man fast unterbewusst feststellt, dass sich da wohl etwas aus dem Netz ins Real Life hinübergeschummelt hat:

Falls jemand nicht weiß, wovon damals die Rede war:

Überhaupt, Bilder. Beziehungsweise Avatare:

Wenn ein Mitmensch die Unterarme zum Schattenspiel kreuzt (was in der Form eher selten geschieht), denke ich an @oliverg, die Legomännchen meines Sohnes erinnern mich an @probek, und so weiter und so weiter. Und wenn jemand seinen eigenen Avatar nicht zu kennen scheint, muss er bzw. sie halt daran erinnert werden:

Womit wir bei Twitter wären, das – allein schon der Frequenz wegen – in punkto UnReal Life deutlich penetranter wirkt als Blogs und diese irgendwie überlagert. Um beim obigen Beispiel zu bleiben: fallen beispielsweise die Begriffe “Union” und “Steffi”, lautet mein erster Gedanke “@rudelbildung”. Dabei betreibt die selbe Person doch ein großartiges Blog mit dem noch großartigeren Namen “Textilvergehen“, der bei mir aus den genannten Gründen etwas in den Hintergrund gerückt ist.

So ist es halt, dieses Twitter. Es ist schneller, kommunikativer, kurzlebiger, es frisst Zeit, und es bereichert mein Real Life. Genau wie das andere Social Zeug. Anders als Marienhof. Weil’s einfach realer ist, denke ich.

]]> http://angedacht.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/stuttgart-5-marseille-1/ Wed, 15 Apr 2009 12:08:30 +0000 heinzkamke http://angedacht.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/stuttgart-5-marseille-1/

Wie bereits in der Vorwoche angekündigt, konnte ich das sonntägliche VfB-Spiel gegen den HSV nicht im Neckarstadion verfolgen. Da zudem mein bester Freund beschloss, seinen Geburtstagsumtrunk für den späten Nachmittag anzusetzen, fand auch die Bildberichterstattung sowohl live als auch zeitnah ohne mich statt.

So habe ich mir also im Nachhinein das Liveblogging von dogfood und Oliver Fritsch angesehen, die ausführliche Analyse bei der Hirngabel und das etwas knappere Gegenstück bei Frau Pleitegeiger studiert, den einen oder anderen Zeitungsartikel gelesen, einige Telefonate geführt, die Statistik im ZDF-Videotext ausgewertet und gestern zu guter Letzt noch die Premiere-Zusammenfassung angeschaut.

Fazit: Glücklicher Sieg, nicht unverdient.
Und irgendwie passend zur Stuttgarter Entwicklung der letzten Wochen.

Der fünfte Platz ist erst einmal gefestigt. Ich bin mir mittlerweile ziemlich sicher, dass der VfB Hoffenheim in Schach halten und Hertha noch überholen wird (die Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre lassen wir hier einmal außen vor); dies ließe mit Blick auf die Qualifikation für den Wettberwerb formerly known as Uefa-Cup ein wenig Luft für den nicht ganz unrealistischen Fall, dass Schalke und Dortmund nicht locker lassen und einer der beiden den VfB noch abfängt. Nach oben will ich derzeit keine Spekulationen anstellen.

Rang 5 reicht wohl noch nicht für eine Nennung in der Aprilausgabe des Europäischen Fußballradars. Ist aber nicht so wild – wenn ich den VfB guten Gewissens im Mai platzieren kann, wäre mir das viel lieber…

Platz 1 in der Ligue 1 sollte hingegen eine Nennung rechtfertigen, und den hat seit Ostern l’OM inne: nach einem klaren Sieg gegen Grenoble (via @droitauBut) und dem anschließenden Punktverlust von Serienmeister Lyon hat man im Vélodrome gefeiert:

Singt man das eigentlich noch?
Lyonnais, [...],
sur la Cane-Cane-Cane-Canebière.

My dog food recipes are rather like a Chinese menu-one from column A, two from column B and so on. I focus on what is in season, what is on sale and the percentages for each category that I have decided on.

PROTEIN 40%

Boneless, skinless chicken breast or

Turkey or

Lamb

This is usually poached in salt-free chicken stock, removed and shredded.

I reserve the liquid for the:

VEGETABLES, FRUITS, BERRIES-30% any or all of the below:

Carrots

Celery

Green beans (B.B. used to pick these out but now I saute them in olive oil to make them a little mushier and she doesn’t even notice.)

Green peas

Zucchini

Squash

Apple

Cranberries-few

Blueberries-few

Broccoli tops

Parsley-fresh

STARCH-30%-any or all of the below

White rice

Sweet potatoes

Yams

Potatoes

Pumpkin

TO MAKE:

Don’t cook anything longer than you need to.

I use the reserve stock to cook everything. If I have any left over, I freeze it for next time.

Mush it all together.

I might add olive oil and/or molasses before I freeze the food.

TO FEED:

After I defrost the frozen food to, I may add some Belgian yogurt, cottage cheese or Eggland eggs to the mix before I feed them.

ADDENDUM- They do get supplements. Everyday they get salmon oil, vitamins, and Kraft cheese with Angel Eyes hidden inside. (The Angel Eyes goes in cheese rather than their food so that I know each gets the correct dosage.

For training (the never ending story) I use the Kraft, home made meatballs, or chicken chews.

For chewing (I think their teeth must grow like rabbits.) I use bully sticks ( Don’t ask. It is SO gross!) and dental chews from the vet. I will leave a p-nut butter Kong but they are messy to clean. We do not use Greenies because of articles like this.

A lot has happened since I last blogged about adding real tab support to Bespin. Since then, my code was merged into the main repository and things have taken off. I later tore apart a huge chunk of Bugzilla by way of sorting through and updating a lot of the old bugs, many of which had been on the books since before Bespin went public, or had been fixed a long time ago. I still have not sorted through all of them, and there are probably still a number of open bugs that fall into that latter category.

Since appointing myself the de facto Issue Manager (hat tip to amotsjonov for the link), I have been watching the incoming bugs like a hawk, and have determined that using the whiteboard to organize bugs has already become too unwieldy. Bespin needs to pop itself out of the Mozilla Labs product so that it can have components of its own. So I’ve filed a bug to that effect. I hope it will get approved and put in place soon, so that I can really attack all of the remaining unloved bugs and narrow down the focus of what there is to do.

Last week was also the first Bespin Status Meeting. After some technical difficulties getting our more foreign correspondents into the call, it went well. We discussed the near and far future of Bespin and what we plan to do. April is dogfood month, so we’re going to have to sort out the most glaring bugs and get the most important features implemented. That way, we’ll be able to use Bespin to edit Bespin. I’m looking forward to it.

Our next meeting is tomorrow. Though the agenda is not quite set yet, I do hope to discuss how things are running, and how to get them running even more smoothly. Perhaps I will chime back in after the meeting with more details.

LOOKS LIKE A DOG’S DINNER

This is not like A NEW DAY FOR ME. Really, what do my dogs have to worry about? (Except getting caught.)

This is about making the dog’s food, something I have referred to before.

Coton de Tulears are a rare breed and not a lot is known about their diet.

First, I followed what their breeders recommended. I wasn’t happy. Their coats were dry. Bebe couldn’t seem to keep weight on and Little-Bit was always scratching, chewing on her paw, burping and spitting up.

The research began. I added an egg once a week and salmon and olive oils. They seemed to do better with dry foods that had fish, chicken, venison or lamb. Also commercial foods with rice, sweet potatoes or avocados. Soy, wheat and corn do not agree with them.

I tried what the vet recommended. Very little improvement. It occurred to me that veterinarians sell dog food. Maybe they have a vested interest.

I kept researching. I went to various sites and read the ingredients of many, many dry foods. I was very surprised at some of the ingredients in the so-called “natural” or “organic” foods. I realized that there is no FDA for animals. There doesn’t seem to be much regulation at all.

More research. There was so much on-line to sift through. No one was regulating them either.

There are several books written about the horrors of commercial dog food that, if ANY of it is true, will turn your stomach. I started tracking down those claims and had to stop myself. The goal was, after all, to simply feed my dogs.

My Grandmother made her own dog food and so did we when we lived out of the country. (They thought Americans were crazy for actually buying dog food and they turned out to be right.)

I made a lot of my childrens’ baby food. Making dog food is far easier.

I do not give the dogs raw or vegetarian food. I settled on 40% protein, 30%  vegetables/ fruits/ berries and 30% starch. My goal is for 80% of their food to be homemade-for now.

At the beginning, I fed them nothing but the homemade food. The results were amazing! They quit picking and developed healthy appetites. Bebe finally stabilized her weight. Little-Bit stopped throwing up altogether (when I stopped using brown rice and switched to white), only burps when she eats too fast and has stopped clawing at herself and chewing her paw.They have more energy and Bebe is even sleeping more deeply (abiet with one eye open).

They had check-ups about six weeks into this regime and the vet is very pleased. She said their condition was perfect. I have never, ever heard that before!

The vet had answered lots of telephone questions about various foods and convinced me to avoid avocados. She was a great help, as was our trainer (who has his pulse on “dog doings” everywhere) and other owners.

I chose a fish dry food because I like to leave dry food out when I am gone for awhile and I am not cooking fish for them-yet. I settled on Halo after an obscene number of hours of research.

I am still tweaking and will gradually add new foods- just like we did with the babies. Slowly, to avoid allergic reactions. The vet and I are still discussing tomatoes, for instance.

It is very satisfying to make the food which I do all at once and then portion out in snack sized Zip-Locks and freeze. Just like I did for the children, I try to pack as much nutrition into every bite as possible. The results are very gratifying.

And in this economy, I do not feel good about spending $30.00 for ten pounds of dog food- especially when homemade is better!

Note to Reader: If you are new to this blog, please start reading Chapter 1 through 2 from the bottom of the page. Thank you.

I have been self-employed for most of my adult life. For me, the idea of going into a job  9-5, 48 weeks of the year seemed impossible. I have had “a couple of real jobs”, but pretty much most of my adult life I have been self-employed doing one business or another.

For 10 years of my life, I ran an organic dog food company. It was called Green Ark. Because of my dyslexia, I did all the sales and marketing and most of the company connection, verbally, over the phone. I rarely wrote a letter. And when I needed to I would ask one of my colleagues to help.

This was fine while we were doing well. But when it came to potential bankruptcy, verbal agreements over the phone do not hold water. I found myself in a real dilemma. I had made agreements with companies, that of course, because there was no paper trail were meaningless.

Did you know that organisations want money to help you go bankrupt? How absurd really when you think about it! You are going bankrupt because you have got no money and people want money from you to help you go bankrupt! Nonsense!

So I had to go it alone. I rang Companies House UK and found out the procedure. Going bankrupt means that you have to write loads of letters to acknowledge — agreements of payments, agreed amounts, and whether the amount is disputed or not. I was at a loss as to how to do that.

I am an ideas person. An entrepreneur. I love coming up with new business ideas. So, to cut a long story short, after finding myself without a business I could only come up with new ideas! My idea then was to sell weather information to expensive hotels in Scotland via fax. Remember this was in the days when faxes were still all the rage.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, the Weather Centre whose information I had agreed to sell, were on Mac computers. So it wasn’t very long before they gave me an Apple Mac.

Now you have to realise, that while I was running the dog food company I had tried to put the administration and organisation of the company onto a computer — a DOS machine at the time. It was awful. Being dyslexic, I really couldn’t cope with remembering “C/whatever” or whatever else you had to remember to enter for every single command. So when the boss of the Weather Centre brought a computer round to my house I was horrified, and I had no intention of using it.

It sat on my desk with a scarf over it for weeks. Then of course came the day that the boss was fed up that I wasn’t using it. He sent his best person over to teach me. (I hadn’t even turn it on, so I was a bit embarrassed when this young man came over).

.. my box in the corner!

He turned it on. And I couldn’t believe that what I was seeing was the equivalent of a picture rather than the green screen with loads of C/blurb. He showed me how to open folders, that there was a small tutorial that could help me learn how to get around, he showed me word processing documents where I could write stuff and he showed me how to clean up after myself and how to put it away for the night before I turned it off! He left.

I was shocked. Here was something that I could use easily. Here was something that was fun.   The first hour was just spent playing around with the Mac, and just making untitled folders and labeling them was  fascinating. After doing the “how to get around this Mac” tutorial a couple of times, I felt good to go!! It was amazing. Having a desktop, and being able to create folders on that desktop to hold my stuff was just so simple and user-friendly compared to the old DOS machine.

I was over the moon. I started to play with the box in the corner of the room, that no longer was covered in a scarf! In fact, the little white/grey box in the corner started to consume my waking moments. I was hooked.

I was hooked because I was aware of the potential of what this box could do from me. I knew that I could write the letters that were necessary to stem my monetary demise that, of course, any bankruptcy brings.

I was irritated though. I was irritated with learning how to word process. I was irritated with getting my spelling wrong. Sometimes I had somebody to tell me what letters I need you to use and how to spell a word but most times I didn’t. The spelling wizard, however, was always there. It would give me several choices of words that it thought I meant. Great! yes that was great… but….!!! If you don’t know how to spell a word pretty much at all, that’s like being in a large sweetie shop with too much choice and you don’t know which one to pick!

I picked anyway, and checked with other people where I was able. But more than that, I noticed that over and over I used the same words. And they used to come up, with monotonous regularity.

I really was irritated with the spellchecker. Over and over again it picked up the same words. So it occurred to me, that one of the things I was really good at (before the days of mobile phones) was remembering peoples phone numbers. I wondered — “if I can remember phone numbers, which after all are only marks on a page, why can’t I remember letters and the order of those letters?”

It was a breakthrough for me. I knew how easily I remembered phone numbers. It didn’t take me long before I was priding myself on  being able to write a letter without the spellchecker bringing up the same old words. The spell checker and I had another problem…. I now spelled words correctly but I would not necessarily get the spelling correctly of the word I wanted. So for instance, stationary and stationery  – the wonderful internet tells me they are ‘homonyms”

I was also, having a hard time with obeying the word processor’s rules.

But I had discovered games…………. i was really enjoying learning and playing games like “Factory”, “Aperion”. “Bubble Trouble” and more!

And I needed to write letters…….. so I decided that if I could master these games, that if I had the same “attitude” to “playing” the word processor then I would get the letters done.

It worked. But more than that… I was hooked on Apple Macs!

I started to spend all my time on this new machine. I would a lot myself chunks of time to play games and chunks of time to write the official letters that I needed to send. What I started to notice, was that I had a very different attitude to learning a new game, or to advancing up the levels, than I did when I was learning how to do wordprocessing.

It occurred to me that if I undertook the process of writing the letters as if it was a game it might make it easier to become proficient with the programme. This worked to. I even got to the point, where I began to enjoy composing letters and documents. At the same time, because I was using Apple works as my word processor I came across the drawing environment.

I certainly am no artist! However, with this drawing environment I could make boxes, circles, rectangles, triangles, colour these objects at will and placed text wherever I wanted on the page. Bearing in mind that this was before the days of the Internet, and my focus was towards what I could publish on paper, I was soon able to make presentable quality documents that had a professional look and feel.

Prior to getting my Apple Mac, as I said, the written word and writing anything had felt almost impossible. I was staggered with what I could now do and what was possible.

The story continues in Chapter 3 of a Dyslexic’s Diary.

Chapter 1 is at the bottom of this blog and the latest chapter is at the top.

“Eating your own dogfood” is a term that we use in the software business to basically say, “use your own product” or prove that your product is useful, not by telling others that it is, but by utilizing it yourself.  Many companies that I’ve worked for do this.

The video below is from a coding blog that I read called “Coding Horror” (not macabre) that talks about coding practices and philosophy.  The video shows a table saw developed by a guy that created a technology to prevent people from losing their fingers.  Supposedly he tested it on his own finger…but not in this video.

You can find this band at www.scrappymusic.com

DOGFOOD STYLE IS LIKE NONE OTHER, BROTHER. FUNKY RIFFS, DANCE BEATS, SLAP BASS, INTENSE VOCALS, AND MAD ENERGY. SOMETIMES FUNNY SOMETIMES CRAZY ALWAYS SEXY. IT SOUNDS LIKE A HURRICANE FUCKING A VOLCANO INSIDE A SPACESHIP, KIND OF. BUT DONT TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. I’M LAVAR BURTAN SAYING “LISTEN TO DOGFOOD”