duncan

Technology Hates Me

Everyday Adventures

Or, if not, it’s doing a pretty good impression of something capable of hate.

Last week I was making some steady progress on editing and uploading videos to the Crafty Branch’s YouTube channel. Or, well, I was making progress on the editing, I should say, but when it takes 11 hours for a 7 minute video to upload, progress isn’t exactly the word that comes to mind.

I used SpeedTest.net to check out the network, only I don’t know what we’re supposed to be getting, speed-wise, so I have no idea if we’re right or not. I’ll need to do some follow-up with the city on that. And I know that connecting through WiFi instead via Ethernet cables can cut upload speeds, sometimes as much as in half, but before this week I was not having this problem. A video under 10 minutes might have taken an hour to process, total, which makes more sense. Not 11.

One of the other YouTubers I watch, though, was having a similar issue with her daily vlogs–Bumble Bailey–and she was reporting the same activity: the progress bar would show a normal upload time estimate, then it would jump to a higher estimate, then it’d just give up on a time estimate altogether (and I’ve had that progress bar tell me it was going to take 5 hours, before, so I know it can count pretty high). She also said that she had better luck when using Firefox instead of Chrome, so I was going to give that a try last night.

Yeah, about last night.

So I’m watching the Tony’s (which was pretty awesome, I must say) and finishing up the edits for the last Gingerbread Diaries video (you know, the one before Todd’s birthday? In March? yeah, sorry about the delay on that one!) and I set it to export from Premiere Pro (which, for once, had not put up a fight when I tried to insert some simple titles, yay!). Exporting was going very slow, and I chalked that up to the fact that I was simultaneously streaming said awards show via CBS All Access.

After the show ended and I was still only at 14% exported, I figured it was just hung up and I restarted the export. I also set Firefox to install and went up to take a shower. My plan (ah, yes, the so-called plan… ) was to start the YouTube upload this morning but when I came downstairs the export was still only at 88%.

Dammit all!

So, yeah, that video update will be a bit late, and I think Paisley (that would be my laptop’s name) is due for a defrag, etc. I might also need to shift some files onto the external HD to free up space (videos take up so much room and I’ve been doing a lot of them, lately). Of course, this could also be a Win10 issue, as I was upgraded without consent a couple weeks ago, so who the hell knows?!

/rant

In other news, Duncan may not hate me, but he may be back to hating his crate. He’s still doing really well for meals and sleeping at night in there, but being home last week may have set us back a bit since I didn’t feel up to dealing with the barking (I even tried the cans Todd has for ear protection when he uses his power tools and they didn’t block the barking!) so, yeah. He was okay when we went to dinner on Thursday night (for an hour), but when we came home from the memorial service last night, ugh!

We’d been gone 4 hours. That’s a totally acceptable time for him to be crated, especially since we know he can hold it longer than that (as evidenced by his refusal to “go” in the rain that last all damn day the previous week). And he’d been doing so much better with the daily crating, more or less. So we were both disappointed and, frankly, disgusted with the smell that hit us as soon as we opened the back door.

And might I add we’d just given Duncan a bath the night before?

There’s no telling what we’re going to come home to, today. I really hope Todd doesn’t have to hose down the crate tray at lunch (and I even more hope that I don’t have to after work–it’s happened before).

Still, the 10 days off were productive–tech issues and puppy regression aside–so I’m not complaining too much. The job hunt continues (and there’s a story for another day in that), but I’m looking forward to being back in the office, today. I like my routine, after all, and even having those days to do whatever I wanted/needed, I still knew it was a temporary shift so it wasn’t the same as if/when I may work from home full-time in the not-too-distant future.

Here’s hoping for a good week!

~Jenn

What’s The Date Again?

Everyday Adventures

It’s one of those weeks, you know? The calendar says it’s Thursday, but it feels like a Wednesday, even though today is my Friday–and yes, I realize how confusing that sounds!

I had a full 4-day weekend thanks to the fact that we don’t work on Fridays anymore (a perk? of the business being in shut-down mode). But having Monday off means this was only a 3 day work week, so I’m completely discombobulated.

I know, I know, cry me a river, right?

The Fridays off thing sounds fabulous, and it is, but I admit I had a hard time adjusting to it this past month. I’m so used to taking a day off for a certain purpose–travel, appointments, party prep, etc.) that having a weekday off for no reason threw me for a bit of a loop. The first week I believe Duncan and I chilled on the couch for a few hours catching up on NCIS New Orleans before finally heading into the Abyss to be semi-productive. The weeks after that were a little better to the point that I’ve gotten into a bit of a rhythm for my Fridays.

  • Catch up on the RSS feeds
  • Check Craigslist and Indeed for new job listings, apply if anything promising appears (it’s been slim, lately)
  • Edit videos and/or film a new video
  • Blog if I’ve got a post in mind

So that’s my new normal, though it still feels very weird.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining–far from it! I’m acutely aware how lucky I am to a) still be employed, b) have a rather flexible schedule, and c) have extra time off during the week to work on my own projects. Being a creature of habit, though, it’s a little tough sometimes to be so go with the flow. And next week? Next week we might not even work at all! (I’ll find out later today if that’s the case or not.)

Again, I hear you, don’t complain over an impromptu 10-day staycation, right? Right! Half of me is overjoyed at the prospect, half of me is frantically trying to come up with a plan so as not to waste said week of opportunity, and a sliver of me is dreading being at home, alone with just the dog for company, for a solid week. I may have to take an afternoon down at Grassroots or something just to keep my sanity in check.

Duncan’s doing pretty good, by the way, but the barking is still a bit out of control. At night he’s down to maybe a 5 minute token protest before settling down to sleep, but when we crate him to leave the house, or even to leave the room (crated or not), the barking is large and wanting to be in charge. The trainer is coming back on Sunday for our follow-up and we’ll discuss options then. Duncan also has his first vet visit on Friday–wish us luck on that!

Oh, but at least as of yesterday I’m once again insured–we had a month gap in health insurance thanks to being misinformed about deadlines, but I managed to avoid calamity for the month of May and I have a shiny new insurance card just in time for my next prescription pick-up. I’ll be very happy NOT to have to pay the $72 (for 3 months of bc pills) the reminder email listed as due. Whew!

That’s been our scrambled week so far, how’s yours been?

Operation: Crate Love, Part 1

In The Doghouse

We are deep in the training trenches, my friends!

On Friday I put his big bed in the crate and just left the door open, he got in there several times on his own to nap, but when I closed the door on him Saturday afternoon he was back to being unhappy 🙁

On Sunday the local Bark Busters trainer came out and showed us the ropes of their training system. A lot of it was familiar to us, but some things were different than either Todd or I had learned in the past, and we’re in the process of training ourselves to train him.

The big ask is that she help Duncan with his crate training. Of course, to do that, everything else has to be worked on. While we’re meeting his basic, fundamental puppy needs already, the BB take on things is that in order to get him comfy in his crate he needs to see us as in charge so he doesn’t have to worry about one of his “pups” going off without him into the big bad world.

That’s a different way of looking at it compared to the “I’m lonely, please don’t leave me” side that we would normally think, right?

So, yeah, we’re working on his leash manners, commands like come and sit, and his attentiveness to us vs the plethora of things out there to distract him. We’re helping each other remember the relative body language cues–things like standing for corrections or redirections, crouching at his level for the fun things–and proper use of the correction command (that has us sounding like zombie sheep, Bahh!).

Overall, though, it seems to be working.

  • Night one, the same day as the BB visit, was a bit of a cluster. It was completely our own fault that we didn’t go to bed until the wee hours of the morning so Duncan’s hour of protest meant it was 2am before we got to sleep.
  • Night two was more on-time. (Actually, Todd tried to go to bed early, bless his heart, but Duncan wasn’t having it.) It was still the same hour of protest (he really would rather sleep with us, and we were tempted to let him, but we have to stay strong until he fully groks his crate is his den) but it was louder, more insistent, and less open to correction. And then, when he did quiet down and let us sleep, it was only for 15-40 minute intervals for the first several hours. Finally, around 3am, he exhausted himself and we got a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.
  • Night three, last night, was better, though! It only took him half an hour to settle and there was only one “relapse” of loud whining about 30 minutes later. After that he kept quiet and we all got a much-needed solid six hours of sleep!!!

Now, there’s a few things at work, I think, that made the difference between nights 1 & 3 and the hell that was night 2. Mainly, I suspect that it’s because I have had more time with him–between bringing him to work that week and a half plus getting home before Todd and having Fridays off with Duncan–so I’ve had more opportunities to work with him, I have more authority to him. Plus, Todd has been a little more indulgent with Duncan than I have, he’s a little more tolerant of the nipping, for instance, and other behaviors. Still, we’re both working on consistency. It could also have been that I was working downstairs while Todd was trying to go to bed early on night 2 and Duncan might have heard me moving around.

The FOMO is strong with this one, so I’m making an effort not to stay up later than Todd & Duncan to, hopefully, lessen some of that. (Though he wasn’t as bad about it when he slept with us, previously, when I’d come to bed it would definitely wake him up and he’d think it was playtime again.)

Sleeping in the crate is part of the process of getting him comfy with it, the other part is feeding him in the crate. This, I think, moreso than the night-sleeping, is what has yielded the biggest change: no messing in the crate during the day!

Granted, it’s early days yet, but Monday and Tuesday were mess-free when Todd came home and lunchtime as well as when I got home after work. That’s a big step for little D, and one that makes it worth toughing out the barking and whining at night.

Plus, we decided if he could keep up the good crate behavior for a week, then we might let him back up on the bed for a night and see if he maintained that habit. If so, we could all sleep easier and avoid the hassle of moving the crate downstairs and back up again each day. (We thought about a second crate, but that dilutes the “this is your home” vibe, and we can’t leave the crate upstairs in our room during the day since the upstairs tends to get very warm during the summer.)

The other crate issue, though, is the barking. Oh my stars, the barking. I’m not sure how we’re going to “cure” him of the incessant barking during the day, but we have to figure something out. The goal is that he gets used to his crate and doesn’t feel the need to voice his displeasure the same way he’s figuring out not to mess in there and that he’ll make the correction on his own.

As our Bark Busters trainer noted, though, Duncan is a smart puppy, and the smart ones are tougher to train (she said “I don’t get called for the dumb ones”). It’s a mixed blessing, that, but one we’ll figure out. There was talk of maybe a puppy cam with a feature where we could talk to him during the day. We’re leaving the TV on for him for some white noise, and have draped his crate to make it darker and cozier. While we’re currently leaving the soft bedding out of the crate until he proves he won’t mark it (the laundry spike was like having an infant, at first)–that was the trainer’s suggestion–he does have a couple of toys in there with him, and he gets a filled Kong each time he goes in for the morning, afternoon, and overnight in there.

If we can’t get the barking under control, we may have to look at the humane collars out there with various deterrents. There are scent-based ones, vibration-based ones, and ones that emit a high whine (that last one was used successfully by a friend with a headstrong Havanese). All with the idea to distract them from their barking and keep them from ramping up into a full-blown fit without shocking them or other harmful methods. We’re not ruling it out, but we’re hoping we can avoid it, too.

Overall, we’re really pleased with the progress he’s making and definitely happy with the Bark Busters system so far. We have our follow-up appointment in a couple of weeks to see how we’re doing and reinforce her training, and in the mean time we’re doing our homework by working with Duncan a little bit every day. More than that, though, the trainer helped us (okay, mostly me) feel like less of a puppy-training failure by assuring us that, no, Duncan really is a smart little bugger and that he’s pushing limits and testing us.

And if you read through all of that, thank you! Here’s a well-deserved treat: some clips of Duncan being the sweet boy he can be, and the reason why he’s worth all this training hassle.

Direct link for the feed readers: Puppy’s First FroYo

Wish us luck! (And sleep!)

And Puppy Makes Three

Just for Fun

Everyone, meet the newest productivity buster in our lives: Duncan the Basset Hound!

jvanderbeek_duncan_bassethound-2000

I’m pretty sure I mentioned that our plan was to get a dog this year (maybe in my new year’s goals?) but whereas we’d planned to pick a pup from one of the rescue organizations in Florida or Georgia, a couple weeks ago we stumbled on a puppy listing on Craigslist up in Macon (about 2 1/2-3 hours north of us) and that same day we brought Duncan home!

Duncan's first shopping trip!

Duncan’s first shopping trip!

Well, okay, technically it was the next day because we didn’t get home until 1 a.m.

Isn't he precious?

Isn’t he precious?

 

Since then it’s been pretty much all-puppy all the time. Our conversations revolve around what Duncan did or didn’t do, what we need to do for him, and how we’re going to get there. Even on my birthday the little fuzzface usurped everything! Usually Todd wishes me happy birthday as soon as I’m awake but the puppy needed walking, then breakfast, then cuddles and so forth. This is our life, now.

A man and his dog

A man and his dog

Duncan has a bit of a sad origin story–he was a pet store puppy, so very likely the product of a puppy mill. The woman who purchased him was in the midst of major life happenings (a death in the family, a move, and a new job which led to the long and late hours that made caring for Duncan unfeasible–her story is so sad, she had really gone through the ringer and I think Duncan had been an attempt at consolation) and she put him up for rehoming after only a week. He was with her two weeks or so, total, and then we brought him home to live with us.

How is this even comfortable???

How is this even comfortable???

Now, we’re really hoping that that’s his happily ever after, but I’m not sure he’d agree just yet. You see, Todd and I believe in crate training, especially for puppies who are teething and still learning what is acceptable to chew on and what’s not–toys and bones, yes; furniture, floors, and people, not so much. Duncan hates his crate. Or, rather, he hates being left alone. In a confined space is bad enough, but even just being left in a room while we walk to another room to fetch something, oh no, he’s not having it. The FOMO is strong with this one.

He might be bored at my office, but at least he's not in his crate, right?

He might be bored at my office, but at least he’s not in his crate, right?

And I get it, he’s been through a lot in his short little life and needs some stability and comfort. Which is what I remind myself of when I start to get frustrated. And Todd reminds himself of this when he comes home and lunch and has to clean the crate bumper, toys, and Duncan himself. Which is why Duncan will be coming to work with me for a little while until we meet with a trainer on the 22nd who can help us help Duncan to be a happy, well-adjusted pup–including finding peace with his crate!

Direct link for the feed readers: We Got a Puppy!!!