X-Tra, Miscellany and Admin: November 2007 Archives

I need to show her off to someone!

My wife and I had decided to hold off on a puppy due to some peripheral concerns, but she approached me earlier in the week and said, "Hilda needs a dog." So we decided to get a new puppy.

I visited four places today, including a fairly big breeder. Truthfully, I was pretty certain driving up that that breeder was not where I was getting a dog. Yes, they seemed very competent and very ethical (not puppy mill iif that's what you were thinking), but they just had too many dogs to properly socialize them to humans correctly.

My criteria were:

1) Must be miniature shorthair. Dachshund, of course! We're a dachshund family!

2) A dog that was hand raised by a family, not in a cage with other dogs or (worst of horrors!) alone! Dogs are social creatures, and the more and the earlier the human contact, the better!

3) The younger the better, subject to being completely ready to leave mom and the law. I understand there's an eight weeks law now. Well, you've got to comply with the law, but when I brought Thing home at a little under 7 weeks, the fact that I had to get up and feed him every two hours that first week helped us bond.

4) The only one that couldn't be checked over the phone: Personality had to be compatible with sharing a residence with a 7 year old and a 3 year old. Found one that was a possibility at this nice lady's house in Lakeside, but managed to say not yet, and I'm glad I did, because I found a two even better at the last stop of the day in Escondido. I gave serious consideration to a sweet little dilute red with a lot of spunk, but her sister was even better. She's not quite ready to come home with me yet, but we'll be able to pick her up after Wednesday, so we're planning Friday the 30th, so she'll have an entire weekend at home with the family before she's left with only Mellon for company.

After I chose, I took a few pictures, and here's the best one!

View image

Hilda doesn't know she's getting a puppy. We intend to surprise her Friday evening. I'll leave work early, and go pick up the puppy, getting home (I hope) before my wife. We've let the grandparents know, so they can be here if they like to see what happens when Hilda sees the puppy.

Hilda's first real pet! I'm excited, and Ramona is even more excited than I am! And it's going to be a surprise!

(Nobody could believe that coat color just wasn't on my list. But truthfully, I didn't care. I was prepared to search from now until Christmas or longer, because the personality part was that important. Disney notwithstanding, there's no such thing as an Ugly Dashshund)

I received 9 entries which might have read the the guidelines for this carnival. One was a duplicate, and so we have 8 entries here.

This carnival, we have a clear winner of the Editor's Choice for Most Useful Information!

Digerati Life Presents Why Your House Won't Sell And What To Do About It

Other articles of above average quality were:

SLC Real Estate Blog submits Real Estate Marketing Must Comply to Regulation Z, talking about the necessity for compliant and truthful advertising. As one additional note on false advertising, every government first time buyer program I've ever worked with prohibits buydowns.

Real Answers answers the question How many back up contracts can you have?

Mortgage Blog sends us an article from across the pond in the UK: UK House Prices to fall in 2008?

Your host explains Working with Multiple Agents for a Purchase

The rest of the submissions that met guidelines:

American Consumer News sends us Worried About the Real Estate Slump? Don't Panic.

Millionaire Mommy Next Door presents Renting beats owning, even in retirement; even if your mortgage is paid off. Here's why. I have minor quibbles about her assumptions, but they might be valid for her area. But the one issue relating to the major thrust of her article is that, far from being optimal for the purchase, "even if your mortgage is paid off" is actually the optimal case for renting and investing the difference.

Shop Smart Loans submits Loan and Debt Elimination Scams

Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate will return in two weeks, back at Searchlight Crusade, unless someone else wants to host. Deadline for submissions will be December 3rd.

(This message will remain on top until Veteran's Day. Through November 12th Scroll Down for newer entries.)

UPDATE: Thus far, the drive is a miserable failure. I just got this email:

ValOUR-IT will run thru MONDAY @ midnight, 11/12/2007

We're still struggling to get to $100K overall, despite Mrs G's lurid
attempts at getting others to donate to the USAF.

It's time to sprint. Don't forget to push the auctions!

If 5% of my usual traffic over the next three days donates $5 each, that will be over $1500 - two and a half laptops. Come on! Show that you're one out of twenty!

Once per year, I engage in fundraising activities, but not for me.

Project Valour IT helps injured service people reconnect with the internet by furnishing voice activated laptops to wounded service folk who have lost the use of one or more limbs. This is critical because it allows them to do things everyone else has come to take for granted while they're going through treatment for their wounds, and afterwards.

These folks stepped up to the line to defend you, me, our friends, family, and even that jerk who runs this website that everyone hates, and it cost them one or more limbs. Seems an awfully small measure of appreciation to help them be able to surf the internet and send email while undergoing treatment and afterwards, because I've yet to meet any of them who really got their hands back.

Please, give what you can if you can. These men and women deserve a lot more than this, but this is what I'm asking you to help with. I know it's rough with the fires having just happened; I understand if you're not in a position to do so.

(PS the manufacturer sells them at cost or even a bit below. They don't make a penny)

Here's the Soldier's Angels page that tracks the overall progress. (if you have a website, join there!)

Prevent this shame from happening to us:

There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,

There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.

They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;

They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,

That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.

They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;

And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;

Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;

And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes

The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."

They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,

To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;

And, waiting his servant's order, by the garden gate they stayed,

A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.

They strove to stand to attention, to straighten the toil-bowed back;

They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;

With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,

They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.

The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said,

"You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead.

An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell;

For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an, we thought we'd call an' tell.

"No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write

A sort of 'to be continued' and 'see next page' o' the fight?

We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell 'em how?

You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."

The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.

And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the scorn of scorn."

And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,

Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.

O thirty million English that babble of England's might,

Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;

Our children's children are lisping to "honour the charge they made-"

And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!

Rudyard Kipling

Please help if you can.