links for 2008-11-11
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How to disable RFC1323 Window Scaling on the TCP/IP network stack of Mac OS X.
Emmet Story #5: The World is your Swimming Pool
Emmet loved water. He would try to swim in anything that looked like it might be swimable. Out at the farm, we used to water our animals using large stock tanks that held 100 gallons of water. For some reason, Emmet got it in his head that this was large enough for him to swim in, so we would regularly find him with his entire body in the stock tank, splashing around with glee.
Periodically in the summer, we would dump out the water and scrub them out and then refill them. Being 100 gallons, it would take quite a while to refill them when using just a garden hose. One afternoon after I had scrubbed them out and dropped the hose in to refill it, I had gotten distracted and walked away for a few minutes to check on something else. When I got back, Emmet was no where to be seen. Fearing that he had wondered off somewhere, I called his name and immediately saw his head pop up from the stock tank. It seems that he was laying in the bottom of it, waiting for it to refill. Crazy dog!
–Pete
links for 2008-10-08
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Mac OS X has a bunch of ways built-in for taking screen shots. There are also third party tools that can add even more functionality. This guide goes through the whole gamut of screenshot techniques.
Story #4: Emmet Wets The Bed
OK. So it hasn’t turned out to be a story every day for 30 days. I’m changing it. It’ll be 30 stories about Emmet. Satisfied? Good.
When Emmet was around one and a half, I was regularly taking him with me to my office, which was the Tech Support Office at Hopkins High School. I had set up a bed for him in the corner and his job was to sleep on the bed until I wanted to work with him. Just the act of having him stay on the bed was part of the training.
One late morning, I was sitting at my desk working on my email and I hear Emmet start to move his legs a little and to do a little mini-bark — a noise he sometimes made when he was dreaming. I’ve always thought it was adorable when he did that, so I just chuckled a little to myself and looked back at my computer. The next thing I heard was the sound of water running, which is an odd thing to hear in a technology office. I looked up and saw a stream of pee coming from Emmet — but he was still asleep. He was wetting the bed! I called his name and snapped awake and the stream of pee immediately stopped. He looked at me, then looked down at the bed. He knew immediately what had happened and it was obvious that he was embarrassed, because he got up and slunk over to the other corner of the room and wouldn’t look me in the eye. Poor pup!
That was the one and only time I ever saw or heard him wet his bed.
–Pete
Emmet Stories Day 3 - Emmet Goes to the Mall
I thought I had all the stories about Emmet. Our friend Sue sent us this story, that I had forgotten about.
“But I hope that you find some comfort in the many touching and funny memories you have of Emmet. He did provide plenty of material :-).
My favorite memory of Emmet was when Bucky and Emmet were in Big Dog class together, and one particular class we met at Kohl’s at Knollwood Mall to train the dogs with the wheelchairs. Carina was training Emmet that night because Pete was doing something else that evening. Carina and I decided to head back to the women’s lingerie department; typical of lingerie departments, we knew the clothing racks would be packed closely together and would therefore provide good opportunities to practice the dog-wheelchair positioning skills.
We women are well aware of how frustrating it is to shop for bras; they are by nature easy to knock from the racks and their flimsy hangers as you attempt to find their little tag with the size and sort through them. Well, there was a couple of round clearance racks of bras. Since the bras were packed in tight, previous shoppers had knocked quite a few to the floor in attempt to sort through them.
Emmet just could not stand the sight of all those abandoned bras on the floor. They should not be there, delicate objects touching the uncouth floor! They must be presented to Alpha-Carina! Unsolicited, as I recall, he dove under the racks and began retrieving each bra, with typical over-the-top Emmet zeal. A big male black lab with a mouthful of bras, in public, is quite a sight! Carina was in stitches, and she and I were crying we were laughing so hard! Seems to me Carina asked Emmet something to the effect of, “Emmet, what’s Pete been teaching you?”.
I also recall that night Emmet retrieved, unsolicited, an enormous, heavy gift basket filled with fancy toiletries, which made the mistake of being displayed on the floor. Emmet was an unmatched retrieving maniac, and housekeeper, I imagine!”
Isn’t that a great story?
–Pete
links for 2008-10-01
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A nice article that details the choices available to tweak the performance of the Xserve RAID.
An Emmet Slide Show
I recently ran across this article on the web that explains how to embed a Flickr slideshow into a blog post. I embedded a show of photos of Emmet in this post. Does it work in your browser?
30 Days of Emmet
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In honor of my late Labrador, Emmet, I want to share with you a story a day, for the next 30 days about the life we shared with him.
Here is the first story:
How did he do that?
When Emmet was a puppy, I was a teacher at Heritage Middle School in West St. Paul. Since Emmet was a service dog (in-training), I had arranged to bring him with me to school every day, since in Minnesota, dogs in training are allowed in public places. It was also easy for me to have him at school. I was a science teacher, so my room was equipped with a private storage room that was easily big enough to accomodate a dog kennel. Emmet slept in the kennel while I was teaching class during the day. He would come out at lunch time so he could have a bathroom break and spend a few minutes training. He’d sleep the afternoon back in his kennel and then after school was out we’d spend some more time with training, and my students would get a chance to interact with him a bit as well. My room was also equipped with a separate fire exit, so a quick trip outdoors was also quite manageable whenever he needed it.
One of the hard parts of having him at work with me was that it was about a 25 mile drive through rush hour traffic (each way) to get to work and again to get home. We had fitted Emmet with dog harness and a special seatbelt so I could keep him in the back seat where he would be safe in an accident and where he couldn’t get in the way of me driving. We kept up this routine for several months. One afternoon, I felt Emmet’s head suddenly rest on my shoulder as I was driving. My first thought was, “Ohhh….. That is so cute that he’s doing that.” My next thought was, “Hey! How is he doing that? The seatbelt should be preventing that!” I pulled over at the next available opportunity thinking I had not properly set up the seatbelt. The good news was that I set up the seatbelt perfectly. The bad news was he had chewed through his doggy seatbelt and half of the car seatbelt as well. Yikes!
Needless to say I didn’t bother to seatbelt him in the back seat after that. He never chewed through another seatbelt either!
–Pete
links for 2008-09-29
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The signup for the excellent MACENTERPRISE Mailing list.
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This is the signup page for the Mac OS X Server mailing list from Apple. The Mac OS X Server Mailing List is for discussing issues surrounding the installation and administration of Mac OS X Server and related technologies.
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The signup page for the excellent Client Management mailing list at Apple. This list is focused on Workgroup Manager.
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A master list of all of the public mailing lists that are hosted by Apple.
Our Beloved Emmet — Rest in Peace — You’ll Always Be In Our Hearts.
I’m heartbroken as I write this. Our beloved lab Emmet unexpectedly died last night after 10 years of bringing joy to our lives.
We raised him from the time he was eight weeks old. He was a remarkable dog. The original plan was for him to be a service dog for Helping Paws, but after he completed the training, it was decided to not place him as a service dog for several reasons that I won’t detail here right now. The good part of that decision was that he was permanently placed with us.
Emmet was one of the sweetest dogs you’d ever meet. He greeted everyone with a wagging tail. He was quick with his kisses and he overflowed with enthusiasm for everything. He brought more humor and joy to our lives than I can even coherently express right now. My wife and I will miss him greatly.
The only consolation about losing him tonight was that his last day on Earth was the kind of day that was his favorite. We spent the day at the farm and he got to play frisbee for hours, play in his kiddie pool (the one pictured here), play with other farm animals, and run around like a nut. We lost him to a relatively common problem in dogs, a malady called GDV (Gastric Dialation and Volvulus). In layman’s terms, he twisted his stomach, cutting off vital blood flow to his stomach and probably his intestines and other internal organs. It all happened fast and we were too far from an emergency vet who could perform the surgery needed to be able to save him. We had another vet help us put him to sleep while we held him in our arms.
I put together a collage of photos from his life. It is incomplete right now, and I hope to put up more over the next few days. You can see the set by clicking here.
Photos of the Week — Two Harbors
I had a chance to visit Two Harbors again last weekend with a friend of mine from my Hopkins School District Days. It was a great weekend for taking photos and I took a few fun ones. Here are some of the ones I’m more proud of. You can see the whole set here.
links for 2008-09-25
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A nice article, complete with pictures, showing the right way and the wrong way to handle your MagSafe power adapter for your MacBook or MacBook Pro.
links for 2008-09-03
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A short article comparing the mp3 format and the AAC format.
links for 2008-08-31
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This will resolve the problem of a ghost image on an Apple LCD display — what some people would call burn-in. Fortunately, this is a fixable problem with easy steps to take care of it.
links for 2008-08-21
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A new mechanism to give you the ability to view PDF documents in-line within Firefox 3 on Mac OS X.
How do you explain a Wiki?
I work in the world of technology and I often get asked questions like, “What’s a Wiki?” Recently I ran across a really cool series of videos by the fine folks at Common Craft that explain, in plain English, what some of these technologies are. Take a look at this:
#47 on Flickr’s Explore for January 30, 2008
I didn’t realize it until just now, but I actually have one photo that has made Explore on Flickr, and it is this one. I wish I would have realized it seven months ago. It would have been more exciting to me then!
One of the things that amused me about this photo when I snapped it was that the driver of the sleigh looks the part, except for the fact that he is wearing a bluetooth cellphone headset in his ear. 
–Pete
