Quotulatiousness

August 26, 2013

The worst part of being a pet owner

Filed under: Personal — Tags: — Nicholas @ 13:34

Saying goodbye. Goodbye Buffy.

Buffy 1999?-August 2013

Buffy 1999?-26 August 2013

Buffy was a rescue dog we adopted in July, 2007 as a companion for our first dog Xander. Xander accepted her immediately as the top dog in the pack. She’d had a very rough early life, including being used as a breeder dog in a puppy mill and had clearly been abused (the pet rescue organization said she’d been thrown from a moving vehicle on an interstate highway in Ohio). She was blind in one eye (which we had to have removed shortly after we adopted her) and had only minimal sight in the other eye. In spite of her injuries and the increasing debility of age (Cushing’s Disease and diabetes), she was a very dignified dog … and other dogs almost always gave her the space a dog ten times her size would command.

We like to think we gave her a happy home.

Preseason “action” as Vikings lose to San Francisco

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:10

This was a nationally televised game, and both teams were expected to play their starters for at least the first half (except the 49ers have like a dozen quarterbacks on the roster, so each prospective backup was going to play less than a quarter). The Vikings didn’t look good. In fact, they looked particularly bad with the first team offence on the field. The defence looked much better, but not good enough to make up for the lack of offensive productivity on display.

Adrian Peterson got a few symbolic snaps, but no meaningful action (no contact at all), and was quickly replaced by Toby Gerhart at running back. Stephen Burton, who has been pushing to make the roster as a wide receiver, gave up an interception to end an early series and reduce his chance of being on the 53-man roster at the start of the season. Both of the starting tackles ended up with personal fouls — Matt Kalil drew two unsportsmanlike penalties and Phil Loadholt was flagged for holding.

The Vikings special teams gave up a kick-return TD which immediately wiped out any momentum from the Zach Line touchdown reception. Joe Webb caught a second TD from Christian Ponder to round out the scoring for the Purple. Chris Cook left the game with a groin injury and Kevin Williams will have an MRI today after he was injured on a nasty-looking block away from the ball.

I saw the first half, then a thunderstorm rolled through our area and took out the power briefly. When the power came on a few seconds later, the cable was out and I couldn’t watch the rest of the game. From the reports, I missed very little indeed…

The first round of roster cuts (from 90 players down to 75) are due by Tuesday, so this game was the last chance for some players to make any kind of showing.

ESPN‘s Ben Goessling says the final stat line is kinder to Christian Ponder than it appeared on the field:

Ponder went 7-of-9 for 48 yards on his final drive during the Minnesota Vikings’ 34-14 loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday night, directing a 12-play, 78-yard drive that ended with a 3-yard touchdown pass to Joe Webb on a fade route. It was as assertive and accurate as Ponder has looked all preseason, and though most of his completions were underneath the 49ers’ coverage, he converted two third downs (one on a 7-yard scramble, the other on his touchdown to Webb), and the scoring pass was Ponder’s second of the night. It helped him finish with his best stat line of the preseason — 17-of-23 for 116 yards, two touchdowns and an interception — but it also dressed things up after another ragged start for Ponder.

Stephen Harper’s media aversion

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:01

Michael Den Tandt seems puzzled that Stephen Harper and his staff treat the media as though they were a bunch of rancid/poisonous/radioactive zombies that would love to eat their brains on live TV:

Stephen Harper, it will sadden some to learn, is not an ogre or a troll. Nor are the members of his staff orcs, goblins, hobgoblins or cave wights out of Tolkien. They are all, shockingly, human beings.

Having spent the last week locked up with them cheek by jowl — the staffers that is, not the prime minister, more on that later — in rattletrap buses, dingy hotel basements and in the belly of a flying tank, I can attest that they work very hard. Managing a tour of the Arctic, on a very tight schedule, observed and criticized at all times by a gaggle of touchy, tired, grumpy journalists, can’t be anyone’s idea of fun. Yet I saw Harper’s staff do that, with good nature, resilience and aplomb for the most part.

But for the incident Friday afternoon, in which a Chinese journalist from a state-owned newspaper was prevented from asking a question of the PM and shoved a female staffer, last week’s Arctic tour, Harper’s eighth as prime minister, went off without a hitch, from a Conservative standpoint. He hit all the thematic and policy notes he intended to, appeared in a series of photo ops that reinforced those themes and policies, and avoided any major missteps. Another job done, on to the next.

That said, they — meaning Harper and the Conservatives — could be doing so much better than this. To watch the PM in action, up close, is to see repeated opportunities missed, for reasons that make little sense. Much of this appears to stem from his aversion to, and discomfort with, the national media.

Why, it’s almost as though Harper has learned not to trust the media or to allow them to get too close. I wonder how he’d have come to that conclusion? It’s a mystery, sure enough.

Suddenly of greater interest to the media – where are the carriers now?

Filed under: Britain, France, Middle East, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:39

Zero Hedge pulled a quick summary of US, French, and British naval units in light of the rumours of some kind of attack on Syria:

  • A U.S. military source said on Friday the U.S. Navy was increasing its number of cruise missile-carrying destroyers in the Mediterranean to four from three by delaying the return to the United States of the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Mahan.
  • The aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman, by far the most powerful warship in the region, left the Mediterranean last weekend, passing through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea.
  • Defence experts say the carrier could still strike Syria from south of Suez. As well as the strike aircraft carried by the Truman, several of her escort ships are also capable of firing Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles.
  • Since earlier this year, the United States has also had F-16 jets in Jordan, where they remained after a major military exercise this year at the request of the Jordanian government. It also has a major air base at Incirlik in Turkey that could easily house multiple aircraft as part of a wider military campaign.

Carrier locations - late August 2013

The French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle is still in or near Toulon, while the Royal Navy is said to have at least one Trafalgar or Astute class submarines in the Mediterranian. The RN no longer has in-service aircraft carriers, so any British air support would have to be from the RAF, possibly based in Cyprus (but subject to local government approval).

Update: This report says that the USS Ramage is also being retained in the Mediterranean along with the USS Mahan.

Update, 27 August: It was just mentioned (no link) that the Charles de Gaulle has been ordered to leave port, bound for the Eastern Mediterranean.

A small note from the hand tool trade

Filed under: Business, Tools, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:02

In a discussion of the plight of Sears in the major appliance market, Coyote Blog mentions an earlier Sears mis-step in a different market:

Oddly, I witnessed a similar Sears private label fracas when I worked for Emerson Electric over a decade ago. For years and years, Emerson (not the folks who make the cheap radios and TVs) manufactured many of the Sears Craftsman hand tools and power tools. Sears got tough one year, and negotiated a better deal of some sort with someone else, and an entire division of Emerson saw its sales basically going to zero. So Emerson bought a bunch of orange paint and plastic, went to Home Depot, and cut a deal for a private label tool line at Home Depot (Emerson separately owns the Rigid tool company, so a lot of the items were branded Rigid). Emerson ended up in potentially better shape (I did not stay long enough to see how it turned out), partnered with a growing rather than a declining franchise.

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