Nov 1 - a new retriever in the family

Sandy started off the new month mostly working in the garden and has that mostly complete.   There's only a short stretch left to do.  With that pine mulch, there are no weeds only the St. Augustine grass.  We now have piles and piles of clippings etc. out at the curb.

I, on the other hand, had a go at the three USB DVD drives that arrived via Amazon the night before.  I've been ripping some DVD's with Handbrake and three more drives plus the internals means that I can rip an entire season at a go -- it still takes time but I'm not tending it.  The drives were cheap; $15 each.  Guess what.  I now have a return mailer to send them back to Amazon.  One wouldn't consistently be recognized as a DVD drive vs CD drive; oftentimes wouldn't be recognized at all.  The second one would "usually" be recognized correctly but wouldn't read disks.  The third works, apparently.  All three are internally different names, if you go to Windows Device Manager.  I guess that the people selling them just buy no-name drives in bulk from China and repackage.  Well, these are going back.  I've posted a "1" rating on Amazon (because there's no "0") and have ordered another batch of three, similar price, different manufacturer.  They could easily turn out to be the same drives !

I tested the drives with the PC upstairs as well as the laptop. It really didn't make any difference.  Same crap hardware.  Perhaps I should have ordered a dozen to find a few that worked ....

This actually didn't take much time.  I helped Sandy minimally, carrying stuff out to the front; I entertained Cassie; I went to Mass; There must be more but it doesn't come to mind.

Here's an interesting ride:  http://vol1200.ru/index.php/en/

I'm not sure that I'm up for quite that much adventure !.

We definitely have a retriever in the family.  Over and over and over and over and over -- it appears that she won't tire fetching the ball in the kitchen.  She's also getting smart, running around the other side of the island sometimes because she knows where the ball will likely end up, even though she cannot see it.  She's going to be another Vickie -- we'll tire of throwing long before she tires of fetching !  Now we have to get her swimming !

She's growing quickly.  Even we notice it.  That makes sense when you think that by this coming Thursday she'll be 25% older than when we picked her up. 

Knock on wood ... there have been no accidents in the last few days.  We take her out regularly, so we're not at the stage yet where she asks to go out.  That will come with time.  This morning, taking her out after her breakfast for her morning poop, we ran into a problem ... the sprinklers were going.  She didn't want to walk past the sprinkler at ground level on the pavers.  I guess that's no surprise since it would have been hitting her straight at head level !  We found another way to her favorite pooping spot by the bananas.

Today or tomorrow we'll go out in the boat.   The other day I'll get in my November 200k; better to do that early rather than waiting for crummy weather !

We had sauteed chicken and veggie curry for dinner; very good.

Onward !