What My Puppy Has Taught Me, Part 2

This is the second part in a multi-part arch.

Consistency
While consistency is a huge part of raising any type of creature, it's also helpful with life in general. It's setting rules, for yourself and your puppy. If you declare that your puppy must always sit before she's allowed to say hello to people or other puppies, you have to be consistent. The same goes for tricks or basic commands. You have to use the same signals and words for each trick and command. You also have to give rewards consistently, whether they're treats, affection or toys, you always have to give them something.

I very quickly learned that these same principles are used within my everyday life. I have to be consistent with how I interact with people, and with myself. When someone does something that helps me out, I have to thank them, and give that same kind of thankfulness to everyone that helps me out. Obviously things that require more rewards are given what they deserve, but all in scale. I give the same rewards to myself, when I do something particularly difficult or deserving. I also give myself rules that I have to follow. Like always brush my teeth at least once a day, don't let people underestimate me, always give everything I can to a project, so on and so forth. Realizing that the skills that made my puppy awesome could also make me happier and eventually, more awesome, I started to be more strict with myself on being consistent. It's led to some very good results, but those are another post entirely.

Patience
Puppies aren't geniuses. I mean, yes, mine is very close.. but it still takes her awhile to realize what I what. It also takes awhile for her to learn a skill to the point that every time I say "down," she lays down. I have to be extremely patient to teach Ichi a new trick, build it up piece by piece, give her enough time to realize what I want, and then keep repeating the process. I also have to be patient when walking her.. living without a backyard is probably the best way to learn patience. When Ichi was still being potty trained, I had to walk her out to the patch of grass across the way every hour or so. And even then I had to stand there and wait for her to find the perfect spot. Sometimes she found it, sometimes not. Eventually I could wait to take her out every two hours, three, four, until now we're at about 5. Which is very convenient.

Learning patience is probably one of the most valuable skills that Ichi has taught me, so far. I'm more willing to wait, more able to wait. I build up to things piece by piece instead of trying to just jump right to building the final product. That can be applied to building anything, from material goods to financial status to relationships. It's an obvious concept, often overlooked.

Love, Peace, and Puppy Kisses,
Tar

What My Puppy Has Taught Me, Part 1

It’s been said that if you raise a puppy from full-out puppydom to hard working adult you’ll have learned a lot of the skills that come with raising a child. First time parents that have raised a puppy aren’t as stressed and react more calmly when something happens. They understand the importance of scheduling, consistency, and a good carpet cleaner. Waking up at the crack of dawn for diaper changes and feedings is easier than waking up to find Fido chewing on your down comforter and peeing on your pillow (or, god help, pooping on your pillow). Oh, and don’t forget the ability to speak in baby-talk. That’s something that you learn very quickly with a puppy.

There’s some advantages that raising a puppy has over raising a child, and some obvious disadvantages. I think my favorite advantage is the speed. Accidents and potty training lasts for only a fraction of the time, as with midnight wake-up barks and destruction of prized comforters and pillows. They don’t understand what you’re saying, though.. so you can’t eventually have a talking companion as with a child. They’ll never leave you, like a grown child would, which may or may not be a bad thing depending on the dog and the child.

So in raising my bouncing Corgi Ichiko, I’ve learned and practiced a lot of skills that will help me in my “full adult” life, which is to say “when I have kids.” I’ve compiled this list, that's broken up over several posts, for all those wishing to have a little insight into the life of a single chick living with a cat who thinks she’s a dog and a dog who thinks everyone and everything was put on this planet to play with her. Or, you know, if you just want to have a laugh.

Scheduling
I never was a stickler for keeping a tight schedule, even when I was in college and trying to keep 5-6 jobs from not crashing into each other. Try as I might, I was never able to stick to a schedule for more than a week or two. Enter Ichiko. I learned very quickly that if I didn't get her (and myself) onto a schedule, I'd be getting way less sleep and way more accidents then I bargained for. I had to feed her at relatively the same time everyday, let her out every couple of hours, make sure she didn't get food or water however many hours before bedtime, and get her to sleep at close to the same time every night. If I didn't follow this schedule well enough, she'd be crying at 3 in the morning to go potty.. and once she was awake, she was AWAKE.

So I soon learned that the best thing to do was stick to a schedule. She taught me that unless I kept her up past 11, I'd be getting up before 7. Getting up at 7 actually is nice for work, so I decided that I'd keep her with her natural clock and just adapt mine to her's. Now I am exhausted and looking for bed at around 11 every night and up and at them no later then 8 every morning. On weekends, when I used to sleep in until noon, I now wake up at 9. Not only has picking up my dog's schedule helped balance my life between work and play, I feel more energized throughout the day.

So the moral of this story is: Stick to a sleep schedule. You'll feel better about yourself and once you get really into it, you won't need 4 alarm clocks to wake up in the morning. Just a cellphone and a puppy.

Until next time,
Tar

Cubed Moss Stitch Scarf

So now that I'm not in college anymore, should I change the title of the blog? I think so..

Anyway, this is so I can post a pattern for a scarf I made up. I ended up making it on accident, I think, but I loved it so much I kept going with it and it became a gift for a friend. And then my mom wanted one so I have to make it for her too. It's rather simple pattern, easy to shrink or expand to your gauge, yarn, or desired size of scarf.

Cubed Moss Stitch Scarf

Yarn: Jiffy's Thick & Quick
Needles: US 11
Gauge: Not Important

Cast on an even number of stitches, S, divisible by 4
Row1 & R2: *K2, P2* to end
R3 & R4: *P2, K2* to end

Repeat Rows 1-4 until you have what looks to be a square (the length, done in L rows, is equal to the width [Note: L may not equal S])

Then, starting new row count:
---------------------
Row1: K(S/2), P(S/2)
Repeat R1 until you have L/2 rows (including R1)
R(L/2 + 1): P(S/2), K(S/2)
Repeat previous row until you have gone L/2 rows
---------------------

Begin original rows 1-4. Repeat until desired length is almost reached. Repeat section between the --- once more, going for the same amount of rows as before. Then repeat the first section for the same amount of rows. Cast off & finish.

"Head Injury, So Typical Tar"

So the title has nothing to do with what this post is about, except for the fact that I haven't posted because of the head injury and I wrote what I'm about to post while in the middle of recovering. I'll give more details on the injury later. For now, my silly attempt at writing a paper that turned into an iPhone review. Enjoy.

What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
- Steve Jobs (1991)

It’s nearly impossible to see the day of any person living in the 21st century without some sort of technology involved somewhere within it. Television, vehicles, phones, computers, escalators, doors, clocks, lights, games, tools, cameras, they all uses some sort of technology. Charting the uses of an average college student reveals that the span between technology uses can be as little as 2 seconds to as much as however long they sleep, but that’s only if you don’t consider all of the systems out there that keep their personas in touch with the world 24/7 (social networks, voicemail, SMS, etc.). While the internet is a huge resource for students and really people from any demographic, the cell phone is usually a student’s first choice for immediate communication. Today, the cell phone is more than just a phone. It’s an instant messenger, a calendar, an address book, a map, and an internet browser. Of course, no phone is more than what an iPhone can be, truly an all-terrain bicycle for our minds.

I purchased my iPhone on a whim and out of necessity to change service providers quickly. I’d played with the phone in Apple stores since it had come out and always kept up-to-date on the system with reviews, tool updates, and technical issues. From what I’d read, the phone was really all that it had been hyped up to be, minus a few details. So when I needed a new phone, it seemed the wise, if not splurging, choice. From a user interaction standpoint, the iPhone does meet a lot of natural assumptions, as well as present somewhat of a learning curve. The look and feel of the actual physical device is like heaven in your hand, something you wish every phone would feel like. The interface is just as jiggly and pretty as you’d expect from Apple, and just as intuitive. The device is a powerful machine that really can be used for so much more than just a phone, an iPod and a web browser. The problem lies in that Apple restricts the user from harnessing that power, at least legally.

Within an hour of activating my iPhone I was disappointed with how little control I had over the device. Sure you can change the ringer, put in custom images for contacts, and move around icons, but nothing else is really available to change. You’re allowed to set a wallpaper image, but that image only shows up when you unlock the phone or when you’re on a phone call, everywhere else you’re stuck with the plain black background Apple sets. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t completely disappointed. I was still thoroughly impressed with the motion sensor on the screen that would rotate the display any which way I wanted, the shiny iPod cover-flow, the ability to flick images around my screen, it was all very cool. I just felt like a kid in a candy store who was told to only look and touch, not taste.

The applications that the phone comes standard with are obviously chosen because they’re what people most often want out of a hand-held computer. I’m calling the phone a hand-held computer because it really is more than just a phone. People have converted to using their iPhone as their personal computer, which is actually rather simple to do once you learn to get past the restrictions Apple’s based on it. The calendar, camera, notepad, photo album, calculator, clock, map, web browser, text messaging, YouTube, weather and stock applications take the iPhone and place it in a much larger demographic than most smart phones on the market today. Not many teenagers are seen carting around a Blackberry or Treo.

So guess what! I got a new toy.. and you all probably expected me to end up with it eventually. That's right, it's an iPhone. Thanks to my mom finally getting fed up with Sprint and no other carrier having a decent phone or reception in San Jose, I used my tax return to get a new toy. I've been eye-balling them since they came out and now that I finally have one, I'm glad I got it. It's a powerful computer, not just a phone, iPod, Internet browser and calendar. It's an Apache server, SSH access point, calculator, Javascript editor, Nintendo game system, alarm clock, and chess game. It's pretty much my go-to system now. Not to mention I hacked it to make it half of those things.

One of the nice things about my hacks is that I can take screenshots.. so here we go. First off I modified the screen to have custom icons.. and then installed a ton more apps. It's pretty easy to find free apps out there, you just have to be sure not to get incomplete or extremely badly built stuff. The cool thing is that it's making me want to build my own apps. We'll see what happens there.

Check out all my pretty applications!

Crafty Wilds

So I think one of the reasons I haven't posted in here in such a long time is because I was trying to make myself post something I was kinda bored of. What I've really been wanting to post for the last few weeks is all about the crafting I've been doing! That's right folks, I've gone crafting crazzzy. Mainly knitting.. but I've been indulging in a few other crafts. This semester has most definitely been more about relaxing and exploring my creative talents outside of the academic world.

I started knitting in the summer of 2006, thanks to Gail (and Ed). Gail had started knitting with the instruction of one of her friends and passed that knowledge onto me when I came to visit. I pretty much finished my first scarf the weekend I spent with them (my mom wears it proudly now, as seen blurrily here). I was addicted! I think by Christmas 06 I had gotten to the point where I could make a scarf that didn't have some sort of hour glass shape to it, but after Christmas school picked up and I didn't have the time. Then one day in Target I noticed a "Knitting for Dummies" pocket book in the $1 bin and grabbed it. Within a weekend, I was hooked again. Sadly I don't have pics of the few scarves after my first, but I do have pics of the ones I'm working on. I like to gift most, if not all of the stuff I make because honestly, I have too much junk. I'm trying really hard to slim down all my belongings to something more manageable for my move out to Cali. I've been selling/giving away a lot (yay for craigslist).

I guess I'll just show off my projects now... cause I'm soooo in love with showing them off.

This is a binary scarf I knitted for a friend in Rhode Island. I actually ended up folding it in half (length-wise) so that it was doubly thick and not 12 inches wide. I encoded a message into it, but I'm not letting any of you read it.

This is my stack of yarn as of two weeks ago. It's been added to a bit since then, and reduced a little. I had the pleasure of learning how to wind my own balls after Abby discovered she liked yarn. She's managed to great some fantastic knots with 6 skeins so far.. which means I've gotten to wind 6 balls. I think the balls a little better than the way the yarn comes from the store, just because it looks cute & doesn't take up as much space. They're all center-pull, too ;)

Abby's new found love of yarn gave me an idea to make her a toy that she can shred to pieces and not get in trouble for. It took me a few days to finish the ball, but that's mainly because I worked on it only for about an hour at a time. The pattern can be found here. I stuffed it with some plastic bag scraps (I'll get into that later) that I have, a plastic Easter egg with a bell inside, and a bit of cat nip. It took her awhile to get into it, but I caught her carrying it around and wrestling with it a few hours ago. I'm not sure where it is right now to get a better pic of it, she rolled it out of the room a little while ago.

This is actually the second of this kind of scarf. It was the first pattern that I ever just made up, and the first time I had done more than just a solid row of knits or purls. I gifted the original to a friend in Montreal (who loved it, by the way) and I was telling mom about how I almost didn't give it up because I loved it so much. I pointed out the brand of yarn I used to make it and she liked it so much, she asked me to make one for her. I'm making this one a little wider than the last one, but still just as awesome.

This scarf has taken me literally all semester to get done, and I'm still a ways off. It's Besotted scarf that I found the pattern for a modified to be a bit.. cooler. I've only really knitted it in my Tuesday & Thursday clases and I don't really have the urge to work on it anymore right now. Abby's tore into it three times now and this last time she really went to town. It'd probably take me an hour to just get it all back together, so I'm focusing on other projects right now.

I actually started this one sometime last summer, I think, but Abby hid the other needle from me in the middle of the night, so it's gone sitting unloved for almost a year. I finally got a new set of needles in the correct size, so I can finish this puppy anytime. It's gray and blue stripped garter stitch, and super soft. The only reason I haven't finished it yet is because I don't know who I'd give it to. If anyone wants it, shoot me an email.

Not only am I knitting, I'm also recycling! I fell in love with using plastic bags for crafts, mainly melting layers together into a fabric. My first attempt I ended up melting the plastic for too long and only got one chunk of good material. I sewed it into bags, which I gifted the scarves in. My next project was a needle holder, which I love! It holds all my knitting and crochet stuff and the best part is, because it's plastic I can write on it with dry-erase markers for stitch notes!

I still had my first sheet of plastic that I melted too long and it turned into a hard vinyl-like material, and Tim was always complaining that I never had my money with me, so I turned it into card wallets. The urge struck me randomly last night so I made one and then after using it today, figure out ways to improve it. Tim liked it so much he asked for one, so now I've made three! They're super simple and take only 10 minutes or so (once you already have the plastic material). I used clear packing tape to hold it together, and to create a clear pocket on the front for IDs. There's a tab on the inside that when you pull, lifts up some or all of your cards so it's easier to get them out. I also put a flap on it so that nothing falls out. The best part about these is that I could cut out the plastic just right to get designs on the back.

I have enough material for one more, maybe two. Just let me know if you'd like one. I absolutely love mine. It's great because I never liked wallets because of their ability to gather trash and a ton of change/receipts. This way I know I only have room for my cards and maybe a bill or two, and I don't have to worry about losing one (just about losing them all, lol).

Alright.. I'm exhausted and want to knit some wrist warmers for my hold hands.. so I'm wrapping this up. I'll post pics of the Goomba hat I made later. If you'd like patterns for anything, just let me know and I'll write them up or go digging for them.

Love, Peace, and Green Tea is Yummy,
Tar

Not a real post

I know I said I'd be keeping up with blog posts and I'm trying, really I am. This email is about something else, so much more important right now though. It's about technology and the classroom, and the students of today's educational system. The video is a little long.. but well worth it.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o&feature=related

Tar