New Dog!






We took the plunge and adopted a new dog from the Animal Humane Society. We named her Nelli in memory of my Grandpa Ron Vannelli who passed away last week after a tough few years fighting corticobasal degeneration, a neurological disorder similar to Parkinson's. The wake and funeral were very touching talking to a ton of family and friends and hearing some great old stories. Afterwards Gabe's by the Park hosted a closed memorial and we filled the entire place. More rembrances, a bunch of old timers down to his newest great grandchildren. We had some laughs, a few beers and some good pasta. Just like he would have wanted.

As I said we met Nelli at the Golden Valley Animal Humane Society which is great facility. It's a huge complex that cares for a ton of animals and helped make the adoption process easy with some great volunteers. She's a two year old pit bull found as a stray. She had just weaned puppies and we fear she may have been tossed aside after the puppies but we don't really know. She has a great temperment and just loves to cuddle so we did some research, (more here, here and here)called the insurance guy (did you know some home owners insurances will drop people for owning pit bulls?)and picked her up the next day. She has been really good despite the cold weather which is tough with her short coat. Only one accident, and no chewing, barking or any aggressive behavior. She has made friends with just about everyone who has come over, including the pizza girl and a NARAL campaigner plus the few dogs we've met at Petco and on walks.

A couple of interesting stories lately, thought I'd link to them rather than nothing. I'm horribly unqualified to give an opinion on the Economic Downturn TM, but I think this article is pretty interesting and sets out clearly alot of ideas that I would like to think I would have gotten to with some time, research, ambition, etc.

Why haven't I heard Bill James take on the BCS before? Seems like he would be an authority and he cuts right through it here.

Nicole accidently sent LinkedIn invites to everybody in her address book the other day so I signed up. It's basically just a facebook for your career and it's got some interesting stuff in there so I'll might end up using it. Turns out I know a decent amount of people in there with a few quick searches. Anyways, that's not the interesting part, what led me to post on this was the acute occurance of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. I had never heard of LinkedIn and I surf the internet all day at work and I'm fairly plugged into whats going on even if I'm not particpating. For example, I've heard of Twitter a while back, I never signed up or used it or anything but I was aware of it's existence. Not with LinkedIn. Anyways an hour after Nicole sends me the link I see a deadspin commentator mention it. Next I see another article mentioning it, and then I click on the NY times story about the top ten sites for IT pros in '09 and number 1 is, you guessed it, LinkedIn. Hilariously when I click on the "share" button next to the article it offers options to, well, share the story the first option is through LinkedIn. I give up.

Some new local music caught my ear tonight. Although I am loathe to visit a myspace page, this was the easiest way to link to the song. Check it out: Hyder Ali w/ Paper Dolls