This orca is all business

This orca is all business by Corinne S.

Nothing says Halloween at Work like an Orca in a tie. :-)

Our Halloween costumes

Wolf and Piggie by Piper Drake Deardorff

Here's Benjamin and me at Piper's Birthday-Halloween Costume party. You can see Maple with half-shaken off costume in Piper's Pig Mama with Pig-Dog . We were the three little pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. Unfortunately Benjamin already ate the pig that built his house of straw. The good news: I win in the end (see the original three pigs story plotline on Wikipedia).

Yea for photo inspiration

you are looking at a dream come true by sesame ellis

A photographer I really like on Flickr, Rachel Devine, was selected to be featured in a Nikon Pro ad. Very cool.

Annual "freak fest"

Piper and Maple dance by Corinne S.

On Saturday night, Benjamin, Maple, and I went to Piper's 30th birthday party--also our annual Halloween costume "freak fest." It was fun as always, and an interesting twist having Maple there (she was part of our costume).

Piper took pictures of Benjamin, Maple, and me (though not altogether unfortunately) so I'll post a link once she posts them to Flickr. In the meantime, you can see other freak fest photos in our Piper's costume parties group on Flickr.

Visiting Piper in Hellingham

Piper offers me deodorant by Corinne S.

This past weekend Benjamin and I went to Bellingham to visit Piper and family. Maple stayed overnight with her Boston Terrier friend Fanny (plus humans Chris and Graham). In Bellingham we hung out, ate good food, talked, and Benjamin played Final Fantasy XII while Eric coached. Then we all went out "on the town" to a local improv comedy stage, where we saw the improv murder mystery Hellingham. After that we went to Bellingham's gay dance club Rumors and gave it our best boogie. But with a DJ who specialized n train wrecks, we gave up pretty shortly and wandered home. It was a really nice visit and Benjamin didn't even explode from contact with the three kitties.

Windows DRM video patch

If you're using Amazon Unbox or any other application that uses Windows DRM for video (including Windows Media Player), then you may want this patch. The key symptom: your application crashes when you try to play a DRM-protected video. Note that it doesn't necessarily happen when you play any video; it could be only specific videos. For me, it was only episodes from Season 11 of South Park (available uncensored on Unbox) that triggered the bug for me. Odd, but this patch fixed it completely. Microsoft Support: When you use an application to play DRM-protected video content in Windows XP, the application may fail

Rat maze?

Swimming laps tonight was like being a cog in a machine or a rat in a very crowded maze. There were ~6 people per 25 yard lane swimming in counter-clockwise formation.

It reminded me of swimming at the IMA in college, but this time I was less angry at the other swimmers. ;-)

Despite the crowd and the headache I've mysteriously acquired again post-swim, I feel great about reaching my 3/4 mile goal even after a long work week!

Dead duck

Dead duck by Corinne S.

You know Maple likes a stuffed toy when...

I think this is especially funny when you know the background. Maple has developed the behavioral problem of poo-eating (yea, ick). The vet suggested that boredom is one reason dogs starting doing this, so I should make sure she had plenty of stimulus. I decided that Maple needed a new stuffed toy, since she loves them and all her previous ones were destroyed. I bought this adorable duck from Mud Bay. I gave it to Maple and she loved it. She also had his little duck butt ripped open in under an hour and the poor thing was pooping white fluff.

So last night I decided, in a fit of guilt for coming home late and not walking her yet again, to sew the little duck butt closed so she could play with it again. Less than 20 minutes later, I found Maple crouched over the duck in the hallway. She'd busted open his armpit and his fluffy white guts were strewn about. Apparently the seams on this adorable made-in-China duck are no match for my persistent little pug.

I guess I've got to find tougher toys and get on the ball with the dog walking to truly fight her boredom. ;-) In the meantime, thank god for the "big dog" walk Maple goes on every Wednesday for many hours at Marymoor park!

Harsh, amusing iPhone review

This is an interesting, funny review of the iPhone. It’s long, but the “summary” is a good read. Also note that it hasn’t been updated since July and some of his gripes have been addressed or improved upon in the 1.1.1 update that came out last week (other gripes have actually been worsened—mostly the lack of 3rd party app support).

Gizmodo: No BS iPhone Review