Gun totin`

Today I bought myself a super-soaker. A big flourescent orange and purple water gun. Because they're stylish and sexy, and I look like a brute hunk of man walking through town with it. Actually, it's because of a nasty hairy turd that spends the day barking itself retarded outside my front door. I'm very fond of my flat, it's great and I've put a lot of work into fixing it up, I don't want to move. The catch to living here is this shitty idiot animal my elderly landlady dotes over. She actually calles her house the [dog's name] house.

I've tried to explain politely that I work nights and need to sleep at least some of the day, and ask her not to let the thing out the second she gets up and about (5am), but it's hard to explain anything when she's absorbed in cooing at the thing. What makes old people talk to animals anyway? She's otherwise sane and has plenty of friends. The animal is widely hated, several neighbours and aquaintances have offered to help me mete it with an 'accident', but I'm just not arsehole enough to upset the owner. She's like 90 years old.

Anyways, I did some reading on animal psychology online and it turns out that when not caused by painful rectal mites, endless barking is caused by dogs being stressed or bored. In either case, dogs seek attention or resassurance from people, so hollerin' at them is only going to make the problem worse. It's not effective negative reinforcement. Repeated electric shocks and exposing dogs to citronella - a smell dogs don't like - does tend to solve the problem. Not real practical for me though.

A better recommendation was to throw a can of water in the face of a barking dog, like across a fence, or to use a pressure hose. Apparently, it's important to approach the dog calmly and quietly, to simply be around it friendly like - right until it barks for the first time. Then as it does, throw the water in its face, same time as yelling at it. That way the dog comes to know 'Quiet!' means 'shut the hell up' ratherthan 'I'm paying attention to you'.

My hallway's carpeted, so I can't use a bucket of water, hopefully shooting water up the thing's nose will be coersion enough. Oh well. If I had enough time, I'd go sit on the beach and read a book. If I had spare time after that I'd make a violent computer game called 'Poodle Hunter'. As it is I have stuff to do.

I've put the stream ripper on hold for awhile. When I get into crazed-enthusiasm-for-programming mode everything tends to get put on hold, I barely eat or sleep and drag myself to work by force of will, much as I like my job. So after the last week stuff like housework is backing up on me, think I might take today to set it right. I always feel that it's time wasted. I can spend six hours doing a week's ironing and then my afternoon's gone, nothing achieved. All this ironing and tidying is just vanity anyway, clothes are exactly as warm and practical unironed. But I can't go work dishevelled, and I guess I do care if people think I'm a slob, so I iron. I know I shouldn't care and nor should anyone else, but hey.

The island's electricity comes from antique and roaring diesel generators, the waveform of their output has been decribed as 'a row of bloody christmas trees', as opposed to a smooth sine wave. This puts a lot of stress on the cheapo AC to DC power supplies of small consumer electronics (switchmodes like on a PC seem to do OK). These power supplies wear out relatively quickly and then blow their internal fuses like they're supposed to, so that the power unit can be replaced without damaging the rest of the device. Only not everyone knows this so I see a lot of VCRs and Sky boxes at the tip, I have a couple I found there with perfectly good mechanisms and circuitry that just want standardized power units swapped in.

What has this to do with ironing? Well, I don't usually watch TV, I don't keep one in my home because I don't have the time to watch one and because terrestrial stations in the UK are dire. BBC and ITV broadcast the most incredible parade of crap and sports, focused around terrible British soap operas and football matches, in between the same baby product and homeloan commercials day in and day out. Soul sucking stuff. Come 2am, however, the lowest common denominator is asleep and they broadcast some quality programs, documentaries that are actually fresh and interesting and some adult education material, open university, et al. I think the government makes them do this.

In any case I think I might fix a VCR and record some 2-5am broadcasting, then hitch the VCR to my computer with a tuner card - which I also found at the Impot, amazing what people throw away - and see if I can't feed my mind a little while I get on with this ironing lark.

Oh well, best get on with it. And I've downloaded some new Evanescence music videos to watch. And there's an annoying sound biting at my concentration. Time to go water the dog again...