Neighbors – Doesn't Fit In

August 19, 2012

Horses Being Abandoned Due To The High Costs Of The Drought

From the NYTimes article “Horses Fall Victim to Hard Times and Dry Times on the Range“

AZTEC, N.M. — The land is parched, the fields are withering and thousands of the nation’s horses are being left to fend for themselves on the dried range, abandoned by people who can no longer afford to feed them.

They have been dropping dead in the Navajo reservation in the Southwest, where neighbors are battling neighbors and livestock for water, an inherently scant resource on tribal land. They have been found stumbling through state parks in Missouri, in backyards and along country roads in Illinois, and among ranch herds in Texas where they do not belong.

Some are taken to rescue farms or foster homes — lifelines that are also buckling under the pressure of the nation’s worst drought in half a century, which has pushed the price of grain and hay needed to feed the animals beyond the reach of many families already struggling in the tight economy

November 1, 2007

The Three Martini Renovation Or How To Piss Off Bloggers

The Wall Street Journal has a article title “The Three Martini Renovation” in which the the article can be summarized to this

But when novices who’ve had a few drinks get a hold of crowbars, drills and Sawzalls, the results are sometimes less than satisfactory.

A number of house bloggers were interviewed for this article, including myself. Many bloggers believe the reporter of the story, Jennifer Saranow, misrepresented herself.

The reporter told me she was writing a story about such work parties. People helping people. That sort of thing. When I described the plaster party to her on the phone, she expressed the usual polite surprise that people still help each other like that.

Then the reporter admitted the story was not a feel-good story about people helping their neighbors. It was a story about people throwing renovation parties to save money and inviting inexperienced friends over to mix alcohol with demolition – friends who ended up screwing things up or getting injured.

1902victorian.com’s account of the story is pretty good. I recommend reading the whole thing.

I was contacted via my blog, but I took several weeks to get back to the reporter. By the time she had interviewed me, I think she pretty much had the story written and didn’t dig too much. I did have a demolition part with plenty of beer but there was no excitement like some drunken friend taking out the wrong wall. I’m not mentioned in the story.

July 23, 2003

A ECM for Barking Dogs

Lucky me. I have two neighbors with dogs. All of those dogs are kept primarly in their back yard with nothing else better to do than to bark at me when I’m in my back yard. Short of reporting them to the city I have tried this device call “Bark Free”.

One one side of out house is two dogs. They are still young and appear to be golden retrivers. Behind us is are 3 dogs. I can only see one of them and it appears to be the leader. In other words when it barks the other follows. It also is the one that can climb up on the fence and stick its head over. I have talked to both of these neighbors both of which took action after the complaint and slowly slacked off. I have investigated making a formal complaint to the city, but it may require going to court. I’m not prepared to do that just yet. So I have been investigating alternatives.

In steps the Bark Free by Lentek. It claims that it “has a specially designed audible sound selector that lets you choose high ultrasonic frequencies, which can only be heard by dogs, or lower sound tones audible to human ears. Both sounds have been proven to assist in controlling dogs from incessant barking.” So the idea is that when ever a dog begins to bark a sensor will recognize it and emit the irritating noise that only dogs can hear. Thus the dogs will stop barking so they wont hear the noise any more.

This is what you get in the package. (sorry for the fuzzy picture)

One thing I always look for in the packaging is if they put enough time an effort into the design of the product so it will work. Or did they just through it together to sell it. In this case they seemed to including everything. A 50 foot extension cord for the power brick and a water resistant cover are two examples.

I installed this thing on the back of my house under a eve of the roof. I first set the sensitivity to max for a while. Just about any noise will set this thing off at max sensitive. And I can tell when it goes on and off because the speakers will make a clicking noise. I did this so that the dogs would be aware that the noise is there. I left it at this level for a week and then set it an normal sensitivity.

Unfortunately this thing only has a 25 foot range in front of it for about 180 degrees. Which means the dogs on the side of our house don’t always get the benefits of it. And it doest quite reach all the way into the neighbors yard behind us. But it does react to the dogs that get near the fence.

Having had it up for about a month now I can say I have noticed reduced barking from the dogs. They still bark at me when I’m out there, but they seem to bark for only a short time then leave. I have also noticed that 2 of the 3 dogs behind us don’t come right up to the fence, they stay some distance when they start barking. The dogs on the side of our house I have not heard barking at me when I’m in the back yard for some time. The bottom line is I think it does modify behavior but depending on the dog it does not eliminate barking all together.