Puppy Crying all night..

As much as I love our new family addition, I’m not sure what to do about her crying all night. I know I’m a complete wuss but I couldn’t bear to leave her when she’d been crying for an hour, so I went and comforted her and then put her back in her bed in the kitchen. She was asleep for about 30 minutes and then it started all over!! But her bed is going to stay in the kitchen so I don’t really want to confuse her by taking her up to our bedroom and getting into bad habits. It’s bad enough we ended up with our daughter in there every night, let alone the dog as well! Any advice welcome from fellow dog owners.

But Betty is very cute and so good in the day when she’s not attacking cables!

One of these days I’m going to get some time to do some work for the new business!

****UPDATE**** I gave her one of my husband’s old T-shirts, got her a large box (Dell of course!) and she has slept through the night ever since…in the kitchen

Betty Rocks!

We picked Betty our new black lab puppy earlier today and she is so good.  She already sits and does as she’s told, better than our 4 year old daughter actually :)   Here’s a picture of Betty with her new friend Duck

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Saddest Story..

I’ve just read this on the BBC News website.  I used to work at a hospital in Surrey and at the attached mental hospital there were scores of old ladies who there seemed to be nothing wrong with when you talked to them.  But no one seemed to know who they were and why there were there.  I’m horrified that 15 years later this situation has still not changed.  How many others are there?

Puppy update

Yes I know, I’m obsessed But here’s a new photo of Betty. Thankfully she’s not huge yet!

Personality Skills for IT Grads?

I’ve just read this in The Times, now I know that it’s lazy journalism to just call IT people geeks.  But I’m finding it increasingly odd that IT students/Grads are still being called rude and charmless with little or no knowledge of business.

20 years ago, hell even 12 years ago I could totally buy into it (having known a good few awful IT bods) but these days, everyone and their granny uses computers, the internet and social networking sites.  Why the charmless geek tag for the few who are very good at it?

Most young IT people I’ve met over the last few years are a little quiet, but you can have a conversation with them and they are genuinely nice talented people .  They also have a much better grasp of business than I did at that age, however are generally never asked for their opinion and are dictated to by business people who don’t understand IT and how it can improve their productivity.

Anyway young geeks be proud, chat a bit more to your bosses who don’t get what you do (and never will) and take their money, until you can have your own startup

1 Week to go..

We are on Betty countdown, only 1 week to go before we pick up our new puppy.  Lucky for us her breeder has a webcam, so we have been stalking her non stop since we chose her.  Geek husband at one point thought about writing a script to pull all the webcam pictures of her…….seriously he would have taken out his hard drive!

But here is the cute Betty picture of the day

8 Random Things about me

I was tagged by the lovely Vero fellow Geek Girl and Pimms drinker last week, but I’ve only just got round to doing this.

So these are the rules:

But first - here are the rules:

• We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
• Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Okay……

1.  My degree is in English and History, which was a complete waste of time and money.  I tried to transfer over to Computer Science in the first term and I couldn’t get in as the course was full.  So I spent the next 3 years hanging out with the Computer Science kids and learning about the new and wonderful world of the internet from them.  It was 1993 so the only way to view it was via the uni pc’s in unix. It taught me a lot and I ended up bullshitting my way through my degree by doing daft things like essays on ‘Poetry and the Internet’!  Happy days

But if I go for job interviews now, even with 10 years industry experience saying you have a dual honors in English and History does get you some odd looks!

2.  Most of my friends I’ve met since 1993 have been through the internet.  I met 3 of my best friends on an X-file ’shipper mailing list back in the day.  Okay, that really sounds worse than it is

3.  I love to move house.  I really hate living in the same place for more than about 3 years.  I think that I might have some gypsy in me.  My poor husband is very tolerant of my showing him new houses virtually everyday - even if some of them are in Canada!

4. I was a really athletic kid (amazing for anyone who knows me!) and I am the laziest person on the planet now.

5. I adore musicals, the older the better.  Singing in the Rain is the best film ever!  I’m now trying to corrupt my daugher into watching them.

6. Martha Stewart is my hero, I just wish I could make all that stuff she does and have such a perfect clean house…one day eh?

7. I was taught to walk by an Alsatian dog

8. I want to own my own company and never work for anyone else again.

Hmmmm I don’t know 8 people with their own blogs but here are some people who might do it:

Brontejd - best friend and soul sister

Mel - very good mate and fellow Dr Who addict

iPhone in the UK

As you’ve probably read the iphone is going to be launched in the UK on the 9th November. I’ve already contacted Carphone Warehouse about breaking my contract from Vodaphone and moving over to O2

I know there isn’t any 3G on the phone, but where I live you can’t get 3G anyway and I’ve never actually found it to be that fast when I’ve been in London or Cambridge.   But you can get onto Cloud in my home town and I really want it for the wireless round the house and at friends.

However the main reason for getting it is the price of the contract.  At the moment I’m paying for my N73 (which is constantly blue screening and dropping calls) £35 a month for 300 minutes, 100 texts plus £7.50 a month for the data package and about £1.50 for voice mail on Vodaphone.

O2 is offering  a £35 package for 20 minutes talk time, 20 texts and Unlimited data!! oh and free voice mail.  So it’ll save me about £9 a month and at least the bloody phone won’t crash every 3rd hour.

The only thing that really puts me off is the resolution of the camera, but I think I can live with it.  The pictures  I took on Vero’s pre-release phone were pretty good and much quicker than the Nokia.  And the rest of the functionality I think is worth it.

Wish me luck on breaking my contract!

Betty!

This little beauty will be the latest addition to our family at the end of the month - how cute is she?

I’ve now launched into finding puppy training classes, investigating the best toys and bedding. I realised that I’d maybe gone over the top when I found myself looking at organic dog food….. Everyone has given me an opinion about which dog to choose, how to choose them, the best way to train them etc it’s like being a new parent again.

ipod Touch

I’m beginning to think that maybe I should just have done and buy one of these little beauties.

The iphone isn’t going to be out here in the UK for a while and god knows how much it’ll be or on what network? If the information was more forthcoming it would be much easier to make a decision!

Where we live the only real option for coverage is Vodafone not much else works, so I’ll be stuffed if the iphone is on O2. If that turns out to be the case then an ipod touch will be mine!