Plumbing is annoying

There are a number of downsides to living in an apartment. One upside is that when there are plumbing problems you just call the maintenance line and say, "Send someone over, the toilet and bathtub are back flowing."

And no need to pull out the checkbook, since it's covered by the money you fork over each month to the company that runs the place. So tell me oh people who keep talking about how I should be rushing out to buy a house or condo, when the plumbing backs up can I call the mortgage company and say, "Send someone over?" And considering a mortgage payment would probably be higher than rent...

I would like a house some day. But I don't think I'll be rushing into it. Meanwhile I'll be keeping an eye on the tub. The toilet just drained, but the tub seems more reluctant to do so.

Click the kids

While reading a page about clicker training animals a list was given of animals that have been successfully trained using the clicker method. Dolphins (aparently where it started), dogs, cats, rabbits, fish... Somewhere in the midst of the list I mentally tagged on, "children," simply as a joke.

Next paragraph? Mention that the same methodology used with humans is referred to as TAGteach. We can't embarrass the students, gymnists, or sports team members by letting them know "dog training" techniques are being used on them. So instead of talking about a clicker it's all about tagging or, "Teaching with Acoustical Guidance."

Hey, if it works great. Positive reinforcement rocks, negative reinforcement sucks, but I have to wonder how many kids who have been TAGged are then surprised when they run into clicking. "Whoa, that's the same thing coach does. Wait a minute... They've been using dog training on me!"

Why not just call it clicking from the start? Oh wait, because then someone wouldn't get a bright shiny new trademark.


(What? No I'm pretty sure I'm not up way too late... what? Yikes, um, off to bed now...)

Fun new icon

The eagle eyed may have noticed that my default user icon has changed a little. I recently downloaded Inkscape (free/open-source vector graphics program) and as a first bit of playing around loaded in my old icon and created a vector graphics version. Among other things this means that if LiveJournal ever adds svg as an option for user pic formats then my icon could potentially be scaled larger and smaller depending on your browsers zoom settings or the size of the space its placed in. For the current time however it has to be converted to a raster format. So it has been saved and uploaded in PNG format. If your browser is a decent one then it should have a transparent background.

Inkscape looks like it should be a fun program to play around with. For now though I need to get back to my JAVA homework.

Now those are fun UML diagrams

Ah, UML, that of the stick figures for use-case diagrams. Unless of course you are in desperate need of procrastination. Then you might do like a guy going by 'Trapper Zoid' and create a set of cartoon peg person UML diagrams. I expect people could find these fun to look at without knowing one bit of programming.

Procrastination... Why am I thinking of that. D'oh! Java homework...