On Friday Tonto went off to Doggy Day care on Friday and from all accounts had a great time.  He gets a full A on his report card for playing well with other dogs and he practically didn’t want to come home!!

I have some pictures the Dog Inc people took of him to show me how well he enjoyed himself.  It was a great success and he will be off again soon.  He also got a full shampoo and trim and is loving the coolness of it all.  He was finding it a little hot with all that fur before. 

We recently went for a long walk to Rinshinomori Park which is about 30 mins from the apartment, has lots of old tree’s, trails amongst them, and best of all doggy friendly.  There are a number of pics from the day here

Here is one on the handsome chap with his new hair.

Just realised he has not been mentioned so far, and umm the website is now renamed after him.  So some details

After many months of thinking about this I decided that a pet would be a good idea.  My apartment does not allow cats (who knows why, but this is japan).

I thought about it for a while and came the idea that hey i love both cats and dogs so lets look at dogs.  I found an agency here in Japan that rescues both cats and dogs. 

After going over my list of dogs i had seen online and having them tell me each was unsuitable, I asked who they would recommend. On the top of their list was a little Cavalier King Charles Spaniel (Black and Tan). 

To be honest his online photo, not the best. But I thought about it and said yes (acutally site unseen as he was in middle of japan over 500kms away.  After some discussion with ARK Japan over his age and future care they decided that it would be better he live his life out in loving home rather than the ARK facility. 

He arrived 1st may, and has basically taken over my life, in so many good ways.  He is the sweetest little dog and very affectionate. I can’t move around the house without a little dog checking out what is going on.

He needs to have at least two walks a day for umm doggy do do things, and really prefers more time out, but will wait.

He also loves the big walks we do now, that take about 3 –4 hours and wears out a little dog quite completely. 

He hates me going to work and gives me filthy looks, but then I’m all forgiven when I come home and have a little pal telling me how happy he is I am home and when are we going for a walk so I can smell out the area!

To me Tonto is a amazing, I’ve fallen in love with my little dog completely.  My cleaning robots are on the dury about that, but seem to be coping with the dog hair!!

Tonto – he would be the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel that came to live with me – is everywhere i am

No more little quiet times in the kitchen or bathroom.  He is there.  He even sits outside the shower room.

Oh who is Tonto. Well he is a rescue dog that I spent about 4 months and a mountain of paperwork to have come live with me.

He arrived on the 1st of May after a flight from Osaka to Tokyo and then arrived with me. Well he seems to have settled in, or rather I have settled to him living in.

More later on this.

Just been reading one of the silliest articles on American politics, and trust me I’ve read some silly ones.  There are actually people in the US who believe that the flu outbreak is Obama’s doing.  Well not quite that, rather he is taking ‘advantage’ of it to get through a cabinet nomination.

The man is good, but even I don’t think he can arrange a flu outbreak to get things done in Washington.  Mine you ex President Bush created a war to get things done, so maybe I should look into this some more.

I’ve found American politics to be really rather interesting.  More for the sheer comedy of it all.  If the Republicans were in danger of actually believing there own bad press you would swear it was a comedy channel presentation.

oh wait, just found this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/27/limbaugh-obama-goes-to-me_n_191923.html

from Mr Rush Limbaugh.  Really you could write this stuff if you tried.  These people are so far detached from reality.  Just waiting for 10 mistruths in 30 seconds Michelle Bachman, and i won’t let you speak, make sure the camera is on me Ann Coulter to wade into this issue.  Would be a laugh a minute if it weren’t such a serious issue.

Update:  29th April 2009 – And here is Bachman, getting it wrong as usual, now is we need is Coulter, and i get the hat trick prize.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/28/michele-bachmann-links-sw_n_192493.html

After 10 years of owning the domain footsteps.co.nz I am providing it to someone else.  About a month ago they approached me asking if I would sell/transfer the domain to them.  The email was very pleasant and I replied that I would only consider transfering the domain name to a really good cause as I’m rather attached to the name.  

Well, the organisations footsteps.org.nz  replied back with a really great cause.  They wanted the domain name as they the work they do is educating children in NZ and who am I to stand in the way of such a great cause.   After they asked me I checked the site and they even use they same logo I had.  There goal is to provide early learning discovery and learning services, and work in early childhood education. 

I placed very stong conditions to them on reasons I might just let footsteps transfer and I’m delighted to say they didnt just meet those conditions they exceeeded them. 

Footsteps under my control will change soon, and the domain will be transferred.  My site now works (almost and for the main stuff) as www.tonto.co.nz

For me its actually an nice change.  I have loved footsteps.co.nz  and its been with me for all my travels around the world, but now its time for changes and ths one works well for me.  Going forward please change your browser to www.tonto.co.nz  my email address will work on the old address and well as the new one, its still david@tonto  (fill in the rest).

Please bear with me on the change over.  I was for a very good cause.

Its been a few weeks since I last wrote.  Many things have been going on.  Some very hard to deal with and others really positive.  Something I haven’t written about is that I’ve been thinking about getting a pet. 

Its actually been on my mind for about 5 months now.  I looked into having a cat, but my building management do not allow that.  Full stop period, end of converstation.  Go figure.

What my building do allow is small dogs.  So I looked into that.  Even then its been a mountian of paperwork. And you have no idea of the paperwork that can be generated here.

Any first story cut short, my new family member is joining me on Friday.  His name is Tonto and he is a rescue dog that needed someone to love him.  I hope I can do that.

Its is with totally mixed feelings I say goodbye to a wonderful friend.  Its never easy having someone leave you and my heart goes out to his wife and family.  There is also a release as well as the last month has not been easy for him and family as the process of dying took far longer than the docters gave him.  I guess that would also be a tribute to his spirit of never giving up.  I had the deeply privileged honour of being able to talk to him almost daily via email.  Given that I live in Japan and he was in New Zealand and going through so much every email was a treasure to keep.

 Ted also had a wonderful website which contained photo’s of the things he loved. You can find his site at the address below.

Ted Chappel Website

 I’m also so wonderfully touched that at album he has is from the Western Coromandel.  Ted was not only my friend, but also of my families.  I grew up with his voice on the end of coast guard radio!  And the voice of calm during some interesting rescue’s. It wasn’t until many years later through odd circumstances which I’ve covered before that I meet him finally via his wife.  Its one of the most amazing things about New Zealand, the connections between us all or only a few firends away!  He and Lynn ended up spending alot of time in the western Coromandel with my family after I left to travel and it is his departure is a big gap for alll of us.

Ted, we will you

May you find, wind in your sails, good following sea’s, and fantatic fishing.

d

Lucky for us, its coming back in June for season three.

Well firstly that I’m totally stupid and that just because a program is in the directory you are looking at doesn’t actually mean that typing the name of the program is going to make it run.

Apparently you have to do ./programname.  I’ll dig the entry that I found on this and share.  I’m thinking a new sub blog might be coming up.  I think I might call it ‘Linux for Beagles’ or something!  I am winning with this linux thing thou.

Or would be if I could get the sound to work.  I had this problem with Ubuntu a previous try.  The sound card is integrated into the ABIT AN8 SLI motherboard which is no big issue for me as it bypasses everything via SPDIF directly to the Logitech DTS/THX 5.1 decoder etc.

Theory being have a good amp and bypass the sound card.  Worked well in XP, passingly in Vista, and dodo dead in Ubuntu.  Now when then first came up I also tried Suse and had pure sound raining down upon me, so what the frak was Ubuntu up to.

Well it seems since then not a lot!  And the resources on sound in Linux are appalling thin on the ground.  This document gave me some good starting points and I’ll tell you how I did it in the next post.