Official Off Topic Discussion Thread #1

[Desert Bus]

I'll bet that you had an excellent reason for that...and the past few days here have probably reminded you what that reason was...

Nah, y'all are fine and dandy. My main forum that I've been on for longer than here would eat up this convo and vomit it back to you still alive. 30 years of being heavily on the internet (physical disability, agoraphobia, etc.) has given me a thick skin.

I'm literally banned from FB. That takes years of effort.

I have a lot of opinions about a lot of this stuff but a person must know their audience and I love this site thus I am treading carefully. I've been called an Authoritarian Leftist and an Anarcho-Communist and a Eugenist etc.

I really just want everyone to be healthy and happy.

 

[jjohnwm]

Life is best enjoyed when one doesn't worry about what others think of them.

I embrace a life philosophy that I first learned when I was a kid reading the "Peanuts" comic strip by the incomparable Charles Schulz, who was able to convey the entire gamut of human facial expressions and emotions with only a few quickly-sketched simple lines. To quote Lucy's pithy explanation:

"I want to make the world a better place for me to live in."

 

[skjl47]

Hello; An interesting thing on TV at 3:14 AM this morning. Fell asleep on the couch before 10:00 PM. Now I am wide awake at 3) AM. A group of educators in Minnesota are calling for ICE to leave the state. Not breaking news, I know. It was just background noise for a bit. The thing that eventually caught my attention was repeated reference to students not coming to school.

Made me think of the ADA (Average Daily Attendance). While i cannot say for sure about the way Minesota schools are funded, ADA was the method in the three states where i worked. Fewer students in actual attendance equals to less state money.

In KY where I did the first 27 & 1/2 years, I was responsible for a home room group of students each year. The school day started with a short home room session before the students went to their first period class. For the first decade or so the HR teacher had to take attendance. We had to keep the "blue book" of attendance. The book was an official legal document and had to be filed at the end of the school year. For some reason a school month was 20 days. The 20 days did not include weekends or any other days school was not in session

As a side note- my first years as a KY teacher we did not get a paycheck during the summer months. You had to save enough or have a summer job. A second aspect of the 20-day rule was when school restarted in the fall we teachers did not get a paycheck until after 20 school days were logged in the blue book. There were a few times weather or some other event closed schools for days. Might be five, six or more weeks before you got a paycheck. Made it hard.
Eventually the state went to paying every two weeks throughout the year. Made it easier. Same money but a regular check.

Well as the situation in the schools began to go bad terms of students laying out of school the authorities sought fixes. Because the blue book was a legal document which carried penalties for falsification, I was careful to dot the i's and cross the t's. I marked the attendance at the HP period. That meant if a student missed HR they were marked absent in the official book. As I recall such was the official instruction. The principals started telling us to hold off on marking the book in case we happened to see a student coming in late.

I and a few others would point out the clear instructions about such things in faculty meetings. That we could get into trouble doing it that way. A few teachers did get into some hot water if their blue book did not add up. Eventually my school changed the procedure. May have been statewide but i had not a reference at the time. The blue books were taken from HR teachers and kept in the principal's office.

We HR teachers had sheets with the names of our HR students. We marked attendance on the sheets and sent a note to the office with the names of absent students. Later in the school day the office would send around a master sheet listing absence and tardies. We then had to adjust our personal records to match. It was a relief in a way as my signature was no longer on an official attendance record.

 

[skjl47]

MSN

Hello; Back to the old routine and away from the fraud for a while. The above linked story happened in TN. Not close to me though. The woman raised a dog from a young pup. One day it attacked her so badly her leg had to be amputated. The woman made mistakes which aggravated the situation but do not fundamentally change the story.

The following are my opinions to be sure. First mistake was bringing in a second shelter/rescue dog. I do not know the dynamic between the two dogs but there appears to be evidence. That evidence being she felt the need to lock one of the dogs in a room before taking the other for a walk. Story says she failed to secure the door and the dog got out. The dog went after the second dog. Got a feeling the dogs did not get along and she had to know it.

The second maitake was getting in between two fighting dogs. A mistake i made as a young child with two fighting buck rabbits. One of the rabbits was mine and the other was supposed to be a female but was not. I stuck my hands in to grab my rabbit and got a bite thru my hand. Still carry the scar. So, i get her impulse to stop the fight. Did it the wrong way. This is where those who know can chime in on how to break up a serious fight between two big dogs.

The dog which cost her a leg was the pup she raised. Having a ten-year-old child she had the dog put down. She is sad about that. And yes, the dog which bit her leg so badly it hung by a thread was a Pitt type. Not clear if anything was done to the rescue dog.

Some dogs get along fine from the get-go. Others have to determine dominance. Once one submits the other will break off the attack. Then there are those times when neither backs down.

 

[Desert Bus]

The last time I got bitten by a dog it was a Chihuahua named Kenny. I love Kenny, Kenny hates me, and his owners are nice enough to let me keep trying to pet him cause he needs socialization and we all know i'm never going to call animal control about it.

He wants to eat my face but so far he's only managed a tiny bite on a hand that's already covered in scar tissue from cats and IV's and ??? AND I've managed to pet him once.

 

[tlindsey]

I've managed to pet him once

I learned alot about dogs from watching the Dog Whisperer Caesar Millan. Were you nervous while trying to pet Kenny the times he bit you?

 

[Desert Bus]

Ceasar Milan has some screwed up views regarding dogs and dog training. Like the whole "alpha" BS he subscribes to.

And no, Kenny is like 8lb of fury, even if he got a good bite in somehow I'd be okay.

My normal approach with dogs is to ask the owner if I can try and pet them, and then if they okay it reach out a closed fist for the dog to smell, which doesn't give much access for dangerous bites. If the dog accepts then you check with the owner to see if there's any spots you should avoid and then pet the cute furry beast.

I'm only really nervous around giant dogs that can just chomp on the whole fist.

I've lived with a Malamute and a Tibetan Mastiff that both outweighed me, so I've got some experience there still.

 

[Ulu]

Wow this is way too much verbiage for me to keep up with. The art of brevity is something to master.

People here are trying to argue complete cases before any objection was made to the original propositions.
————————————————————
That being said, today I’m in the welding shop, making good use of the new bench I built for my big vise, holding a steel frame which held the plastic gas tank in my plastic car…


These were once the frames from my blueprint rack from back in the days when engineers made blueprints. This steel actually dates to the late 1960s.

I saw them, then they are joined forever in welded bliss.


Here’s the back, set up with the rusty frame and the plastic tank. Now I have to make the front legs, just like I did the back ones.

 

[Ulu]

By the way, it appears I was mistaken somewhat when I said that the ICE officers had guns drawn. Guns were not drawn until the last second when shots were actually fired.

Seen from the officers point of view, the car was actually hitting him, although not very hard; but it was pushing him back and would have run him down had he tripped.

The whole thing happens in a second. With that much time to think I probably would’ve done exactly the same thing.

Idiots were claiming the officer should have “jumped out of the way.”

Essentially, he was able to get out of the way, but anyone who has ever tried to jump in any manner while standing on a frozen street, well let’s just say the results are unlikely to be positive.

 

[skjl47]

And no, Kenny is like 8lb of fury, even if he got a good bite in somehow I'd be okay.

Hello; Have you tried food?
A neighbor got talked into taking in two dogs. The first is a beagle of some sort and not shy at all, very friendly but hyper. Just cannot clam down. Not aggressive at all.
The second dog is a female short hair of some sort. I think something bad must have happened to her when young. He takes both dogs out for walks using one of those long leads which can be let out to maybe 20 feet or so. At first she was super skittish and would not let me come near. She would go as far away as the lead would allow.
The man & I started meeting at a section of fence at the side of my yard. We would gossip at the fence. Eventually the dog would settle some. I have been buying boxes of milk bone dog biscuits after asking if I could feed them to her. The first few times the dog would go to the end of the lead away from me, maybe six to eight feet. I would throw a biscuit near her. She soon enough decided the biscuit was worth having.

The plan was to eventually get her to accept me using the food treat. Before too long she began to change behavior a bit. She wanted the biscuit but still would not take it from my hand. I tried holding it thru the chain link fence. She will dart up and appear to make a quick grab at the biscuit but then back off and look at me.
Took a while to understand she has trained me. After she would back off, I eventually would just toss her the treat. Her darting at the fence had become the game.
Now I often carry a treat in case they are out. When the dog sees me, she lets out a hound like call and surges toward the fence. She likes me but still will not let me pet her. Not a big problem. She is no longer scared of me. She will run up to the fence and then back off a few feet. I just throw the biscuit to her anymore. Just took her a little over one box of dog biscuits to train me.