A few moments ago...

My nefarious plan to acclimatize Shiloh to the crate I bought at a garage sale over the weekend consists of getting Shiloh used to entering the bottom half of the crate on command (the gate and top half having been removed in the course of cleaning the crate, and not reassembled), with the eventual idea of getting her used to entering the crate on command after the top half has been restored, etc.

So a few minutes ago, I went outside on the verandah, armed with something that looks like a Slim Jim and marketed under the name of Pup-Peroni. (For all I know, these are Slim Jims, though I must admit I haven't tried one.) It was time for some reinforcement.

I called Shiloh and she obediently emerged from the brush around the house, crossed the concrete pad outside the garage, and climbed the steps to the verandah. As she trotted along the part of the verandah that runs across the front of the house, I commanded "Crate!" and pointed to where the bottom half is located, near the door to the dining room.

The result was unexpected, for me. It was as if Shiloh had bumped into an invisible wall and rebounded with perfect elasticity, now moving away from me and headed down the stairs.

I called her name, made sure she could see me, and held up the Pup-Peroni. "Crate!" I commanded again.

Shiloh came back up the steps and calmly trotted past me, into the bottom half of the crate and sat down. Alles ist in ordnung.

In other news, a pile of work has arrived. Good Monday morning.

Cheers...

True words...

From a comment to a blog entry at Dave's Whiteboard:

“Track Changes” is relatively easy to understand — I’ve been able to teach people how to use [the feature] in less than 80 hours of in-person instruction, unless they’ve never coded in either COBOL or Fortran. Then it takes longer.

And the MS “ribbon” metaphor is just great for folks like you with Pheature Phobia. They take all the most commonly used features and hide them far, far away down inside somewhere — while leaving tasks only used by one guy in Micronesia right up top.

'nuf said.

Cheers...