Russ and his monkey arm

Well, with fiest determination and long “monkey” arms, Russ was able to reach around his e-collar and scratch his eye. With that he was able to tear the sutures from his surgery and now his cherry eye is back. We ran him to the emergency pet hospital aeond midnight to confirm. Now he gets to go back on Wednesday to have the surgery all over again

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Accident, luck…I think not

We’ve had our back door open all day today because it’s so beautiful. This has allowed Ester and Russ to go out as they please. We just sat down to rest a bit after hanging curtains in our dinning room. We looked outside and to our chagrin, Ester had grabbed Russ’ e-collar and he backed up therefore taking it off. They proceeded to play.

Luck? I don’t think so, they teamed up…I can’t stop laughing.

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Gulp – embarking on rebuilding my computer

And you may be asking why is this such a big deal? Mainly b/c I have about 2,100 files @ 500GB in my iTunes library spread out over multiple locations on my disks. The problem is, if I don’t account for them all, I stand to loose all the items I’ve purchased from iTunes.

Backing up that many files to DVDs would take forever. With a quick search, I found a way to backup your iTunes library to an external hard drive. I’m going to give it a shot. Wish me luck.

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Russ Getting Much Needed Rest

Today, Russ finally got his cherry eye fixed. When the vet called letting us know he was ready to go home, she said he was grouchy. He was more loopy as the anestesia had not completely wore off yet. He just ate a little bit and is now resting as well as you can rest wearing an e-collar.

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Wish I would have thought of this

Here’s a great stop animation film about dueling t-shirts. The best part is, the t-shirts are for sale.

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Take Off

While reviewing the commercials from the Super Bowl out of some morbid curriousity, saw the one from the NFL that is just cool.

In case if you missed it, here it is.

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Posted webcam on WeatherUnderground.com

When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be a weather man. I never became a weatherman, but thanks to the Weather Underground, I have taken one step closer to reporting on the weather.

Camera 1
Camera 2

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Wow, 5+ inches of snow

We have an honest to goodness snow storm going on in Nashville. Actually, we are closer to Columbia. Russ is enjoying his first real snow. It’s the most snow I’ve seen since living in Colorado.

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Receive 404 Error When Implementing Custom httpHandler with .NET

Recently, I was working on a web application that provides the ability to download data to a CSV file. It is a .NET 3.5 web application.

To generate the CSV file, I created a custom httpHandler for the extension *.csv. The goal was to allow any request for a *.csv file to generate the desired output by querying a DB.

Everything worked great on my laptop but did not work when I deployed to the web server (IIS 6.0).

What gives?

The problem was that on IIS, I needed to add the *.csv extension to the MIME type map. I pointed the executable to the ASP.NET dll and viola, it worked.

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The Kennel and Gun Range

This Christmas, we decided to travel down to Houston. It was a last minute decision as I did not want to travel.  I wanted to stay home and have a nice, quite, and low key Christmas.  
 
We decided on Sunday.
 
There is only one problem, how were we going to find a kennel for our dogs while we were gone?  After all, it was only 5 days before Christmas by the time we decided to go.
 
We tried 6 different kernels in and around Nashville.
 
No luck.
 
I got the bright idea instead of looking in the Nashville area, look in the Spring Hill/Columbia area (small towns outside Nashville).
 
Viola, I was in luck.  I found a kennel about 5 minutes from our home.  I quickly made reservations for 12/24 through 12/29. 
 
Flash back to last night (12/23)…4:00pm (the kennel closed at 5:00).  I was getting the dogs stuff ready and about to load them into the car when it hit me…the kennel is next to a shooting range.  You may think no big deal, but you see, we can’t even watch movies with our home theater system turned on because Ester, our greyhound, is deathly afraid of loud noises.  Thunderstorms and 4th of July’s are especially her favorites.  To the point where we have a prescription of Valium for her.
 
There was no way in hell I was going to make her, nor Russ for that matter, stay at a kennel next to a shooting range.  It would literally scare her to death.
 
When we thought we were going to have to call the whole trip off, Charlotte called her son in Houston and asked about kernels he uses for his dogs.  He called one that was full and then called a second that he uses and had space.
 
I quickly called (mind you, this is on Wednesday, 2 days before Christmas at 4:00pm) and made arrangements.
 
The next problem, they were only open until 3:00pm on Christmas Eve!  This meant that we had to get from Nashville to Houston by 3:00pm the next day.  Remember, at this point it was 4:00pm.
 
The drive is about 13 hours.
 
We did the logical thing, we packed up the car, put the dogs in the back of our SUV and took off.  At this point it’s 8:00pm.  Normally, we do the 13 hour drive in a straight shot,  but driving through the night was out of the question. 
 
We compromised and booked a room at La Quinta in Hattiesburg Mississippi (just about half way to Houston).  It is 6 hour drive to Hattiesburg and then another 7 hours from there to Houston.
 
We arrived in Hattiesburg at 1:30am (yes, I was speeding). 
 
In order to make it to the kennel in Houston by 3:00pm, with a 7 hour drive meant that we had to leave the hotel no later than 8:00am.  But, to give ourselves plenty of padding, I set the alarm for 5:00am. 
 
5:00am the alarm promptly went off…I hit the snooze button…and then hit it again…and again…and again…finally, I turned off the alarm and went back to sleep.
 
Luckily, something woke me up…at 6:00am. I quickly load up the car and get on the road by 7:30am.  It takes 1.5 hours to load the car b/c we put all our luggage on the roof of the car and it takes some time.
 
On the road again.
 
More speeding.
 
Ah ha…thanks to all the speeding, we pull up to the kennel at 2:15pm (remember, I said it was a 7 hour drive from Hattiesburg to Houston).  We made it with 45 minutes to spare.
 
And to my chagrin, the kennel we are using is the same kennel the GPA (Greyhound Pets of America) in Houston shares!  Yes, Ester, our Greyhound, who we adopted from GPA Houston is now nicely tucked away in the same kennel where she stayed before we adopter her.
 
I didn’t catch on that it was the same kennel until we were turning on to the street where it was located.  Go figure.
 
We are now safely tucked away in our Hotel after 24 hours of fury.
 
Thank goodness.  So much for that quite and restful Christmas.
 
 
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