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If you look closely, he has a few tan coloured hairs under each eye. It makes it appear as if he has rosy cheeks. Yes, I realize 90% of the photos of Burton are of him sleeping. This, we have learned, is most of a puppy’s life.

Whew, finally have a second to post! I’ll try not to ramble. The visit to the breeder was excellent and couldn’t have gone better. All my worries have been erased and I fully recommend them for any PON seeker (because everyone is looking for one of course). We got there around 10:30am and after the rush of dogs came, Lynne brought out Burton and he was adorable! Much like the video he’s pretty quiet and easy going but not too shy. Definitely not afraid of checking out new people and things.

We ended up staying for 3 hours talking about PONs, giving Burton a bath and some grooming tips as well as feeding. He was the pick of the litter and Lynne was saying how she would keep him and how much like his father he was (head structure, not too long), good legs (not too leggy) and generally very PON-like, also with his general laid-backneess and easygoing nature. I hope she’s right! While he’s extremely adorable, I can’t help but feel like he’s always so suspicious of us. Maybe he hasn’t had time yet to settle in since it’s been really less than 24 hours.

We’ve mainly been focusing on house training and nipping, playing with him and gaining his trust. We’re teaching him sit/down in very short bursts (like 10 minutes total so far) and he’s done one sit without being led into it and a couple of downs being led to it.

He’s had a few accidents, mostly predictable. We were afraid of him screaming his lungs out last night, so we were too chicken to close him in his crate and it resulted in him peeing all over himself last night which meant a 2am bath. He was up again at around 5 and then again at 8:30. As today is progressing, its getting better and hopefully he’s getting the idea after we bring him out, and praise him when he does his thing, open sesame, or “Open sezme”.

We took him to the vet, to Bark ‘n Fitz and to Petsmart to pick up a few quick things and so while at these places, met 6 or 7 “dog people”. All of them were all “aaawwww” and usually have no idea what he is. We’ve gotten one “is he pure shitzu?” and another “what kind of mix is he?” The Bark ‘n Fitz girl thanked us for bringing him in and one Petsmart employee kept popping up in our aisle asking us if we needed help and then proceeding to play with Burton.

Anyway.. he’s definitely not a complete pushover, but we push him so we can teach him the rules and who’s in charge.. and that we’re not bad guys 🙂

Friend introduced me to Melody Gardot this past weekend on the way to snowboarding… I don’t listen to a whole lot of vocal jazz (primarily because I can’t listen to it at work since it’ll put me to sleep, and its not exactly applicable to worship either), but she’s definitely quite talented. Just 2 samples of her work live.

This game is just.. wow. Definitely not for the faint of heart. To be honest I’m still getting it handed to me, but oh man is this game ever fun. I’ll keep it kinda short, which is hard since there’s just so many cool things about the game.

Where to even start! This is a far cry from a clean cut, accurate, solid feeling shooter like Team Fortress 2. This is gritty, unsure feeling, all-out chaotic war. The main mode I’ve been playing in multiplayer is Rush: one team attacks, one defends. It starts with two active checkpoints (called Alpha and Bravo) and the attacking team has to blow up both (by setting an explosive charge) and once that’s done, the map unlocks a new area, and two more checkpoints become active. The attacking team has a finite number of lives per checkpoint and so to win as defenders.. you just kill.

The maps are BIG, and a lot of “extra” space for you to go find sniping spots as well as to flank. When you start and each time you die you have a choice of picking which class you want to be (Assault, Engineer, Medic, Recon (aka Sniper)) as well as choosing what weapons/items you want to use. Additional weapons/gadgets unlock as you gain experience, and some weapons can be used across all classes (like the one shotgun and a couple of submachine guns that I have).

Recon is my most played class, but I now realize that I’ve been playing it too much: It is NOT a good idea (as a noob) to play sniper when you’re either on defense, or your team sucks. You’ll either just get rocked by some close combat guy, or picked off by an offensive sniper. My kit for the sniper has the mortar call.. with it you can use your binoculars to call down mortar strikes on specific targets. It’s awesome to do on a checkpoint that the other team needs to defused, since all of them tend to rush there to defuse. Usually end up with at least one kill.

One awesome thing in BC2 you can do as recon (and as any class, but usually more as recon) is to spot people. What you do is hit the spot button and it calls them out, it puts a little red triangle over their head and also shows them on the mini map to your entire team for a little period of time. It’s amazingly useful because close combat is usually in little alleys and in general you have very little visibility.

In general it’s very chaotic.. lots of dust flies up. If someone throws a grenade.. as a sniper you’re waiting patiently for the dust to clear. Almost every wall can be shot down, buildings collapse, trees can be destroyed (I saw one guy take a tank and clear out all the nearby trees/bushes so no-one could use it as cover). It feels a lot like paintball when you see someone run from one building to another and then you lose sight of them.. no idea where they’ll pop up from. You also can only sprint forwards.. you can’t move at sprinting speed while strafing left and right, so it’s less free looking around. A lot of seeing people is based on movement.. especially in jungle/snow maps and the one night map (which is insane).. so a lot of the time you’re in your own hiding spot.. watching to see when something moves. Everyones wearing camo gear, so everyone blends into the environment.

Very cool game.. I’ve only been in a couple of squads that actually communicate.. and there’s SO much potential in an organized squad.. with all the roles you could play. Vehicles are super fun too and can be devastating if used properly. (EXTREMELY hard to pilot a helicopter)

So on Monday night I had the urge to go find these deck tiles. Back up a day, on Sunday, I had the urge to go find these deck tiles. Sam and I went to go find these snap-together deck tiles at the Canadian Tire on Major Mac (website said they had stock) but couldn’t find them in store, we left and I was kind of disappointed.

On Monday after work, we were supposed to go grocery shopping but I decided to quickly check the CT on Highway 7 (also had stock) but we found nothing there either. We asked the guy to check the computer and while he said there were 2 in stock (we needed 9 packs of 4 tiles each), he found a few other stores with stock. Now quite driven in the hunt, we ended up at CT at Yonge + Steeles and finally found a stack of the tiles. We debated on them for a little while, and eventually were on our way home, extremely hungry, with no groceries, and a trunk full of plastic deck tiles.

I started installing them at around 7:30pm and the first 31 tiles went down in about 20 minutes. The last 5 took about 2 1/2 hours, after a dinner break. We had to cut them with a handsaw and also used a dremel to cut the plastic underneath which is used to keep the tiles off the ground to allow for drainage.

By around 11pm I was pretty cranky at these tiles and all the little things which cropped up, like the side of the building at the edge of the balcony required extra modification, and then the drain comes in about a half inch so I needed to cut a little slit in one tile to allow for that. Eventually I jammed the last tile in (it could probably use 1-2mm clearance) and was done with it. After all was said and done, I vowed the first thing I buy if and when we get a house, is a table saw. It would have cut down the whole install into under an hour for sure.

Anyway, fairly happy with the end result, makes it walkable and a little more pleasant. A good, fairly cheap investment which upgrades the balcony from “tiny concrete-slab-write-off” to “tiny-balcony-garden”.

It was also actually fun to pick up a camera again.