Two Sitting Ducks Pining for the days when blogs were cutting edge

Somebody Tried to Kill Indi

Today somebody deliberately tried to kill our dog.

We let Indi out of her bedroom (the laundry) this morning to go run out in the backyard, take care of her morning business, and just generally be a dog.

A little while later, Hannah went out to get her food bowl and just happened to notice some paper and green pebbly things on the patio. On closer inspection, it turns out that it was a packet of Ratsac rat poison that Indi had discovered and eaten.

The thing is, we don’t own or use Ratsac so there’s no way Indi should have had it. The only conclusion we can draw is that somebody threw it over our backyard fence deliberately for Indi to find and eat.

Why would anybody do this? Why would anybody elect to murder somebody else’s dog? What sort of arsehole do you have to be to do this?

Ratsac is a poison, but doesn’t take effect for 24-48 hours after digestion. So if it weren’t for the fact that Hannah noticed a bit of the rubbish left from Indi’s eating we would have no idea that she had eaten it and she would almost certainly have died this week.

We rushed Indi to the vet, who was able to induce vomiting and get most of it out of her stomach. She’s now got to take three weeks worth of medicine, and we are living in fear that the person will try again. So today we had the fear of our dog dying and the cost of the vet and medicine to save her, all because some prick doesn’t like our dog.

Indi is our dog, a member of our family and we love her. I can’t believe somebody tried to kill her.

Nightline with Graham Maybury

Last night I was listening to Graham Maybury on the radio. While I used to listen to him every single night when I was a kid (seriously, every night from when I was about 9 years old to when I was about 17) I haven't listened to him much since. I became a convert to BBC World Service instead.

Anyway, last night I was listening while having a shower. Right at that time, Graham recounted a wonderful story which I will try to paraphrase here.

Kim Beazley Snr used to call Graham from time to time, but would never identify himself. But Graham came to recognise his voice, although never said anything at the time. One time, Kim Snr rang in response to a situation where a woman had had her ring go missing after attending hospital.

Kim said that he had heard listeners ring in and say she was stupid for wearing the ring to hospital. He had heard listeners ring to say the hospital was responsible, and security should be improved. He had heard numerous excuses, accusations and anger. But not once had he heard anybody call through and say the real problem: there was a thief in the hospital.

Graham told the story much better than I did there, and I am not doing it justice. But in some way that shows both the wisdom of Kim Snr and one of the problems we as a society have today - always looking for the wider, endemic problem as opposed to focusing on the root cause.

Anyway, what made that story all the more meaningful is, of course, that Kim Beazley Snr is Hannah's Pop. I have known him for some years now and while age is now taking its toll, it's wonderful to occassionally be reminded of what a great, lovely, wonderful man he is.

Australian Idol – we’re addicted again

Hannah and I have once again caught the Australian Idol bug. I can't help but enjoy watching it, especially in the early rounds when you get a good mix of good, bad and ugly.

It's interesting that there still seems to be plenty of life left in this franchise. As opposed to Big Brother, which pretty much died a long and ignoble death this season. I didn't watch it, but then, I don't think many at all did.

I don't get to watch much TV at all these days, but I will continue to make time for Australian Idol. I wonder if they'll find another Guy Sebastian or Damien Leith, or if this year will only unearth a Casey Donovan? Time will tell!

Facebook

Okay, here's the deal. A few weeks ago I got into Facebook. Yes, it's MySpace for the cool kids. Whatever, I don't care - it's really fun! It's the first social networking site where I've really seen the value and worth in it. What's even better is that I've now gotten Hannah into it. Sometimes I love her addictive personality. Anyway, I recommend you sign up, it's a lot of fun.

Too Busy!

Hello! We just wanted to say hi to anybody who might still be checking our site. We obviously haven't been posting as much recently - our business has pretty much taken over our lives.

There are pros and cons to that but unfortunately does mean that TSD gets a bit neglected.

We might talk more when we have more to say. Hope you're all well out there in the world wide web.

My Web Activity is Changing

Things have been pretty quiet on the old blogging front recently. I think this is going to be the way of things, at least for the foreseeable future.

There are a few reasons for this, not least of which is the fact that we both simply have less time these days than we used to. It's hard to find time to construct an interesting and coherent blog post.

Thinking about what to write has also become more of a challenge. Most of the things that I wanted to say when I started out blogging, I've said. I don't want to re-hash old stuff (even though all the archives are now offline, making doing so much easier!) and I don't have too many burning issues that I want to publish to the world.

This blog was initially a photoblog, which worked well in the sense that I didn't permit myself to write a post if I didn't have a good photo to go with it. Then it morphed into a more traditional blog. Not having to produce a photo should have lowered the barrier to writing, but it hasn't really worked out that way. If anything, all it has done is led to me blogging less, but also taking a lot less photos than I used to. That's a shame, because I still really enjoy photography. Again time constraints make it difficult.

Another reason for the reduction in blog postings is that I'm getting my internet publishing fixes more and more from external services. The web has moved on a lot since twosittingducks.com started. Back in the beginning, it was running on a Moveable Type engine which needed a lot of management and fiddling to get it to work. It's since moved to WordPress, which is a more open and adaptable system, but it's still a full-blown content management system that needs some effort to maintain, update, patch and so on.

Over the intervening years, though, web applications have become much better. I'm finding that I'm posting a bit at [Jaiku](http://www.jaiku.com) - you can find me at [canion.jaiku.com](http://canion.jaiku.com). This service is a bit like SMS for the web where posts are limited to a small number of characters - making it very simple to fire off a quick snippet. As well as giving you an idea of what I'm doing at certain points of the day, it also aggregates my other activity on the web, including Flickr photos (again, surplanting Two Sitting Ducks as a photoblog), sites I've bookmarked through del.icio.us, stories I've liked at (http://digg.com) and even posts that are written at Two Sitting Ducks.

Also at my Jaiku you will find a feed of my other mini website that I've started recently at (http://andrewcanion.com). This is what they call a tumblelog and again features little snippets of stuff that I find and would like to share. It could be a website, a quote, a picture, who knows? It's ephemeral and fun and again, much easier and quicker to post than here at Two Sitting Ducks.

If you would like a comprehensive index of my activity on the web, you can always check out [my ClaimID page](http://www.claimid.com/andrewcanion/). This is a good index of all the sites that are directly related to me in some way.

So, as you can see, a single blog/website doesn't seem to be cutting the mustard as much anymore. I will still keep it, and will post when I see fit, but keep an eye on those other sites to see what's happening in my world. Subscribe to the RSS feed - it's the easiest way! Basically, if you hook into the Jaiku account, that will show you all my activity as and when it happens.

Thanks for reading!

Site Bling

I've been crunching away updating this site a little, making it look a bit more interesting. This mainly consists of me adding junk to the sidebar, but hey, why not?

Added to the site is a Flickr widget that shows a couple of my photos at random, a view of the music I've been listening to, sites I've recently bookmarked using del.icio.us, and a list of the sites I read in Bloglines. Also, if you click on an individual entry, you'll see a link to theoretically related posts - if any exist.

Of course, this doesn't make up for the lack of actual content, but hey, it's something.

A Day at the River

Hannah and I took Indi down to the Swan River today. We're keen to get the dog to experience water. Airedales are meant to like the water, but so far we haven't had much luck. She'll go to the edge of the water, but doesn't like getting wet!

She behaved very well. We had her off the leash the whole time, and she didn't run away, preferring instead to be nearby us. It's a nice feeling to have a dog following by your side.

We also had some degree of success with respect to getting Indi into the water. There was a point where we waded through a river inlet to get to the bank on the other side. Indi, realising that there was no way around, followed us and splashed through. What was cute though, was that it was pretty apparent she was trying to get acrosss as quick as possible, and without getting very wet. I've never seen her run so quickly and with such a high gait, as she tried in vain to keep her feet out of the water as much as possible!

I planned to take lots of pictures of our outing today. I took the camera with us for precisely that reason. Unfortunately, I forgot one crucial item - memory cards for the camera. How annoying!

New Year’s Day

It's New Year's Day (just!) and Hannah and I are here blogging.

Hannah just said the following to me, after I joked that I might jump over the fence and engratiate myself with a nubile mistress at the "young party" next door.

Hannah replied: "If I don't put out, and you put out elsewhere, you will be put out."

My wife, so very witty and concise, even when confronted with my most outlandish statement.

I consider me put in my place.

Christmas Eve

Hannah and I have spent a lovely Christmas Eve with my parents, complete with a delicious roast dinner. We had plenty of good conversation and enjoyed some laughs together.

Mom brought out a collection of old family memorabilia - some of it dating back to the late 1800's. It's amazing to see and read old letters, books and other keepsakes that have been carried half-way around the world and kept safe by a variety of people for more than one hundred years. Reading some of the letters that were written was so interesting. I doubt that anybody will be looking back at my emails a century from now. My prose would certainly not hold a candle to what my distant relatives were able to write, either.

In amongst the collection were a number of books. I was flicking through one, entitled Helen's Babies. It doesn't have a copyright date, but from what I can tell, it was published around 1890. The thing that tickled my fancy was the dedication. I thought it was so great that it needed to be brought into this modern age, by way of a blog post. So here it is, in all it's glory:

"Every one knows that there are in the world, hundreds of thousands of fathers and mothers, each of whom possess the best children that ever lived. I am, therefore, moved by a sense of the eternal fitness of things to dedicate this little volume to

THE PARENTS OF THE BEST CHILDREN IN THE WORLD,

with the reminder that it is considered the proper thing for each person, to whom a book is dedicated, to purchase and read a copy."

That, I think, is the best dedication I have ever read.

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