Year: 2007

Dog Rat Squeaks

I’m sure you recall that a couple of weeks ago I was on Stu’s Show, a feature on Shokus Internet Radio. I promised to post my five minutes on the program, and here they are.

[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Nov/ShokusRadio.mp3|titles=Stu Shokus with Monte Schulz]

I was pleased to have an opportunity not only to speak with Monte, but to provide a quote from the book attributed to him that he could directly refute. And Monte certainly does that.

I got wrapped up in listening to Monte and forgot to hang up! So I took advantage of that to add a comment. I end the audio clip with Monte answering a question I had asked here on the blog, about David Michaelis’ first draft of Schulz and Peanuts.

Wednesday, animation expert Jerry Beck will be the guest on Stu’s Show at 7 PM ET. Jerry is Webmaster on CartoonBrew.com, where much of the discussion about the Michaelis book has been taking place. Charles Schulz’s wife Jeannie has kept things interesting by adding a comment on Monday.

Simply Sibley

Brian Sibley's Production of "A Christmas Carol"I am very honored to be among the blogs and Web sites listed on author/actor/broadcaster Brian Sibley’s blog, which can be seen by clicking here. Sibley hails from England, and I have always felt a very strong association with England, the land of my ancestors; although I do wonder sometimes if my ancestors left on good terms, what with words like “pratfall” and “prattle” to live down.

Sibley writes about many things that I find interesting, including Disney animation and Nick Park’s Wallace & Gromit. I am pleased to have introduced Jimmy Johnson, creator of the comic strip Arlo & Janis, to the delights of Wallace & Gromit in 1995.

Sibley has an innovative and very well-received stage adaptation of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” playing in London at the Greenwich Playhouse, through January 6. You can read the theatre reviews and blog reader comments at this link.

In our house we have a copy of The Annotated Christmas Carol, which is a book that I recommend highly. Sometime this week I will post an Orson Welles radio adaptation of A Christmas Carol, starring Lionel Barrymore.

It’s a Khan Christmas!

I don’t know about you, but Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan makes me feel so Christmasy all over. A couple of years ago we gave Eric a Khan ornament, and this year we gave him Hallmark’s new, deluxe light-and-sound Khan ornament.

Trek Khan Ornament From Hallmark

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/DEC07/KhanChristmas.mp3]

Click a little button and you hear Shatner and Montalban going at it! Blasters and overacting combine to make this year’s tree the most festive ever. I give this ornament a rating of Warp 10.

No Heat!

With ten inches of snow already here, another six have fallen. It’s still coming down, and the furnace is off. I pushed the reset button and it ran for a minute and popped out again. Aaugh! This is the second blog post telling of the furnace being out. Here is the first.

We have a contract with a new oil company. It’s a very old company, but it’s not the outfit we used for nine years. One of several reasons why I left the other place was long delays in service, often eight hours or more. I’m told we’ll have a service tech here before noon, and it’s 10 am now. The roads are in terrible shape, but fortunately ours just got plowed.

I’ll let you know how it goes. Meanwhile, I’m glad I had electric heat put in the remodeled porch. Now I’ve got to get outside with the snow blower and clear the driveway for the service truck.

P.S. HEAT! Half an hour later, it’s working. He came, he fixed, he went. Impressive. Clogged fuel nozzle.

Tech Notes

There’s a way of defining a link in a Web page that either replaces the window or tab you’re looking at, or opens up a new one. Whether it opens a whole new window or just a tab in your present window depends on how your browser is set.

To open up a new window in a link, the command target="_blank" is needed. The problem is, this tag is no longer considered to be valid in the strict rules and regulations of Web pages, and there’s no replacement for it. The assumption is supposed to be that links will replace the existing window or tab. Fortunately, newer browsers have a feature where you can right-click a link and select whether or not you want to open a new window or a new tab.

I have been selectively using the target="_blank" tag, usually for external links that aren’t on my own site. I have decided to end this practice. For one thing, it’s a pain to do because I work in the non-graphical WordPress editor, and I have to enter the tag manually. So from now on if you want a link to open up a new tab or window, you’ll have to remember to first right-click. Sorry for the inconvenience.

On another matter, today I had tons of fun replacing the Computer Associates security suite with Norton Protection Center. It’s what Verizon wanted me to do, and I’d been putting it off, but the software is part of my FiOS package so I had to go along with it. Norton is uniformly rated as more secure than CA, so I didn’t really mind, but I’ve had Norton in the past and had a lot of trouble with it.

After some futzing around I got the CA suite uninstalled and Norton installed, I ran a full system scan that found five pieces of malware, and I customized the firewall feature. The system seems stable and it’s not running slowly the way McAfee made it do when it was part of my old Comcast service.

One incentive I had for installing Norton was a problem I’m having with my Web service. FTP — File Transfer Protocol — isn’t working. And I can’t post a couple of videos without FTP working, so I had nothing better to do. Sorry for this very boring post, but when I can upload the videos there will be something more interesting here!