Nathan's blog

In @AshleighGardner’s session about reading/social media/location I proposed that Foursquare comes up just short of perfect by not letting me check into content in a meaningful way. I can say I’m at Jimmie Simpson Park but how do I tell you I’m there on a bench reading the latest issue of The Believer? And how do I find where other readers of the same magazine, or even the same issue, settled down to read? Conversely, how do I know what’s being read in my vicinity? In the age of the ebook, how will anyone know that I’m reading frickin’ Pynchon? 

When will the crowdsourced catalogue of LibraryThing be overlaid on the crowdsourced map of Foursquare?

@NicholeMcgill asked why anyone would do this. Took me a couple days to formulate an answer. It’s the same one I give to doubters of Foursquare and Twitter: wait until 3 of your friends are doing it then see how you feel.

Further thoughts from @RJWheaton in an old (*sigh*: they’re all old, these days) post from Datachondria.

Great session. Don’t remember much of it. Wish you were here.

But as it happens, they’re actually a sound investment in low-cost hi-fi.

About a month ago my Koss PortaPro headphones, pictured above (I think: more on this below), crapped out in the left channel. They’d only cost me about $30 on eBay (new, packaged) and I’d gotten around 2 years of near-daily use out of them, so I wasn’t going to mourn their demise too deeply. But 3 pairs of replacement foam earpads arrived the same day (also cheaply procured through eBay; I have no idea why people still go to retail stores for this kind of thing) so I was a bit annoyed at my luck.

Before I ordered a pair of Sennheiser PX100s I thought to contact Koss to see what recourse I had with my half-dead cans. That’s when I stumbled upon their lifetime guarantee. It’s a pretty simple deal: send the headphones and a money order for $7 to their factory in Milwaukee and they’lll send you back working headphones.

Allie went to the post office the next day and bought a USD$7 money order and a bubble envelope and sent the package to Milwaukee with a note I’d written saying “left channel dead”.

Today I got a pair of working, suspiciously new-feeling, Koss PortaPros in the mail. I don’t know if these are the headphones I sent them. It doesn’t really matter. $7 every couple of years is a fair price for perpetual, no-questions-asked, straight-shooting service.

You should buy yourself a pair. They sound great and look ugly as hell.

Every year or so, in the winter months when cold weather inclines me towards heavier, denser brews, and the holiday season catches me with my wallet open, the LCBO suckers me into buying a gimmicky beer brewed to taste unlike beer.

3 years ago it was Innis & Gunn’s revolting whisky-cask brewed lager, which tasted like a not very sophisticated argument at an airport bar.

Last year I don’t remember what it was. Probably a raspberry lambic. I enjoy those for about a mouthful. Unfortunately I periodically forget that it’s the first mouthful and so I buy a bottle with an enjoyable to annoying mouthful ratio of about 1:12.

This year’s mistake is presently decarbonating in front of me. A German “smokebeer” made by apparently treating the malt like sausage, which I’m sure it’s no accident it tastes like.

Next year who knows what perversion I’ll see as “interesting”? Predictions? Recommendations? Warnings? 

Addie's a strange dog. I know: everyone thinks their dog is exceptional, but the thing is, just when I've gotten used to Addie's idiosyncrasies she does something in a public place that draws laughter, shocked expressions, or general confusion. I'm constantly reminded that I've grown accustomed to weird.

Things Addie is afraid of (random order)

* birds of prey
* dogs bigger than her
* sailboats
* kites
* gunfire
* some of her toys
* feet
* flashlights (on)
* TV
* dalmatians

It's been said by more than one member of my family that she's high-strung. I don't think that's quite it, but it gets a bit at what's off about her. She's… sensitive. And intelligent. But also (technically) non-verbal. She's a lot like a horse in some ways, with cues and triggers for all kinds of weird behaviours. She has a couple obsessions. She comes off as crazy. "Crazy" is one of my nicknames for her.

Neither Allie nor I knew what to expect from our loopy coonhound when we found out late last winter that we'd be bringing a baby into the house.

Sidenote: we adopted Addie when she was 8 months old, which was about 3 years ago. We nursed her through spaying, kennel cough, eye infections, ear infections, and a gastrointestinal sensitivity that took almost a year to diagnose and stabilize. We now buy one brand of expensive food and she gets nothing else to eat, lest it upset the balance we achieved at great expense. Most people at the dog parks are considerate enough to ask if they can give a cookie. The ones that aren't get a stern reprimand. Occasionally the effect is immediate enough for Addie to demonstrate the cookie's ill-effect on-site.

Further sidenote: I do realize my wife and dog have eerily similar names. To explain: my wife's full name is Aleksandra. Her parents call her by the Polish diminutive, Ola. Friends from high school call her Alex. Our dog was named after Addie Bundren, the corpse hauled across Yoknapatawpha county by the Bundren clan in As I Lay Dying. When we were bringing our coonhound home from the Keswick animal shelter we knew only a little about her: she had southern roots, was skinny as death, and didn't have anything to say about where she was going or where she'd been.

When we brought home the car-seat and stroller Addie was extremely interested. Sniffed both thoroughly with ears laid back and tail wagging low, just as she's always done when approaching small children. For the first few days she'd check each one when she entered the room just in case. She's only ever met a few kids, but there was every indication, which we took to be confirmed by her behaviour around these various baby accoutrements, 

My in-laws returned Addie to us the day after we got home from the hospital with The Baby, and we began The Renegotiation. 

We were confident we could look after an infant because we'd looked after Addie. 6 weeks into parenthood I still believe that anyone who says raising a puppy to doghood isn't at all like raising a baby has done one of those things badly or not at all.

Of course there are differences. We can't leave Samson unattended. He doesn't respond to commands of any kind. He's completely immobile. His preference for where and when he poops are totally indiscernible.

If we were comparing them (and we're not) it would be hard to ignore the fact that the dog is way out ahead. A real champ.

Addie insists on attending most diaper changes. We discourage rooting in the diaper pail, but a stray hand or available cheek is fair play for a sniff or lick. She hasn't voiced any opinion about having to share the backseat. When Samson's on the floor in the front room (usually through some intention of his parents) Addie's a bit put off, but she's generally polite and patient. When speaking to Samson we refer to Addie as "your dog"; as yet this hasn't had any material effect on household operations.

I wouldn't say they "like" each other. You'd have to be deluded to see Addie growing "protective" over the tiny pink ape we brought home. She's getting over her mistrust of a mammal whose movements have nothing to do with what's going on around them. Samson's not easily stirred from sleep by a coonhound bawl. We don't ask for much, and we're pretty satisfied so far.

I'm sure I'll return to this subject later. Probably when Samson starts crawling and really freaking out the dog.

First official session of tummy-time adjourned and turned into a dog vs. baby quilt match. Dog wins on hits, but baby dominated with style.

After sparing the life of a large house centipede I found shivering in the cold yesterday morning, I found two juveniles in the bedroom as we were settling in for the night.

I lived in Kingston, Ontario when I was in grad school. It was a big year for me. I learned that what I’m capable of and what I want to do aren’t necessarily the same thing. I lived the student life I missed as a commuting undergrad. And I became sworn blood enemy of house centipedes.

For reasons that I don’t really understand, Kingston’s oldest houses, which tend to be the ones you wind up living in if you’re attending Queen’s University, are crawling with house centipedes*. In Toronto you might occasionally find these guys in your basement or laundry room. In Kingston you’d find them on the ceiling on the 3rd floor or crawling up the legs of your bed at night.

Out of sheer primal disgust I started killing them all on sight. Pick up a shoe and whack, even on carpet; they’re frail enough animals that that usually does the trick, sending twitching legs in all directions and splatting the striped thumb of a body. A magazine is always sufficient to take them out on the wall. The trick in any case is being quick enough without startling them into fleeing, because when they want to they can move as fast across the floor as a man walking briskly. It’s the speed that I’d always catch in the corner of my eye; a small invertebrate moving faster than it had any right to.

By the end of my year in Kingston I was twitchy. I saw them everywhere. Sometimes they were actually there. I interpreted smudges on the walls of the hallways of my building as marks of battle between man and centipede. Usually there was a leg still attached to tip me off, but often it was just the direction of the smear that told the story. I’d be working at my desk and a wisp of my own hair would drift into my field of vision and I’d spin around with a rolled-up Esquire in my hand that I couldn”t remember picking up.

We see them not infrequently in our place now. Addie’s kooky enough about shadows that she’ll often paw one of these running bandits into a corner and keep them there until I can find a suitable weapon (I still favour Esquire for the purpose). Wifey saw one last week but I couldn’t get downstairs in time to make the kill, so I’m still on guard whenever I go down to bed.

This fellow Addie I happened upon in the Distillery District really caught me by surprise. He’s quite large, just about as big as they come**, and in perfect physical shape. The only thing apparently wrong with him is he seems to be having wandered out of doors on a particularly brisk autumn day and found his tiny muscles chilled nearly to halting. As you can see from the video I broke my rule of killing on sight, though that probably won’t do him much good as he lolls about in the middle of a sidewalk.

As I crouched next to him checking on his vitals I think I was taken for an art installation by passers by. This was Distillery, after all. That bodes well for the centipede if he can crawl up a parking meter and pick up some decorative frost overnight.

*They’re predators, so presumably there’s an abundance of some other bug that isn’t as visible that supports house centipede populations. Though they eat spiders, somehow I’ve never lived anywhere that felt overrun with arachnids.
**The biggest I ever saw was about twice the size of this one and stampeding across the floor at work. I ran after it, launched into a grand jeté, planting my toe right on it and finishing it off with a quick pirouette. True story.