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Tag Archives: work

Commuter dogs

The topic of commuting has been on my mind recently.  Probably because I have to do it all the time.  I average probably 15 hours on the road during the work week.  I currently drive and there’s no one to carpool with, so it’s a good chunk of my time taken away from doing other things that need doing.  You really can’t multitask when driving a car.  Well, you can, but it isn’t safe and you shouldn’t do it.  So don’t.  Especially if I have to share the road with you.

ANYWAY.  I’ve looked at taking public transportation so that I could get wrestle some time back from commuting.  It turns out, it wouldn’t work well for me at all.  I’d probably spend twice as much time traveling.  Sugh.  Such is the life in Southern California with our pitiful public transportation system (more on that another time).  But did you know in cities where there is a good mass transit system, the masses might involve more than just humans?  Did you know that they might involve dogs?

In Moscow, the stray dogs commute from the suburbs to the city center and back, as if they were commuting to and from work.  Well, they kind of are.  They live in the suburbs because after the collapse of the USSR, the industrial complexes where the stray dogs lived were moved to the suburbs.  So, the dogs also had to move to the suburbs.  But the food was still in the city center.  So they had to learn how to take the subway to and from the city.  They go to work during the day to get food and then they go back to the suburbs for the night.  This is just…so amusing to me.

There are scientists who study the dogs and say that the dogs will help each other get off at the right stop by judging the amount of time they’ve been on the train.  But sometimes they’ll fall asleep and get off at the wrong stop.  The dogs have also learned how to use traffic lights to cross streets and they have tactics to get food when they’re in the city.  I particularly like the tactic where they sneak up behind someone who is eating and then bark loudly causing the person to start and drop some food.  THIS IS JUST SO AMUSING.

Unfortunately, the only information I have on this is the article I linked to.  The article doesn’t list any sources.  I would really like to read more about these dogs that commute to and from work.  Looks like I’m going to have to do some rooting around to see if I can find some more info on this.

I also wonder if Yaris would be willing to commute like that to and from work.  Of course, she has her driver’s license so she just might opt to drive instead.

Lots of people use something called a “door” to go in and out of their houses…

Oh, those NPCs.  Always saying the weirdest things.  In this case, our superfluous usage of quotation marks comes from one of the toads in one of the Mario RPGs.  I don’t remember which one.  But at least you know it occurred in the first half of the game because of my unusually severe final boss syndrome symptoms when playing Mario themed RPGs.

But anyway, have you ever considered what it takes to be an NPC?  It’s probably hard work coming up with non sequiturs (especially the kind that actually propels the story forward) when asked about how to get to the next castle, or whether or not the blacksmith’s spunky daughter was kidnapped by monsters that dwell in a nearby cave, or whether the potions are on sale today, or what happened to the burned out fountain in the middle of the town square, etc.  I mean, would you know to answer that the goats have been unusually restive at night, or pies are your favorite dessert, or the well at the edge of town used to have magical properties but is now dry?  You probably wouldn’t.

Coming up with just one non sequiturs that somehow unfolds the storyline is hard enough.  How about when you have to come up with a LIST of possible answers to a question a playable character asks?  And what if it’s a list that the playable character then has to choose from?  And then you, the NPC, has to be able to deliver a dissertation on that particular subject?  Even if it isn’t relevant to the storyline or gameplay?  It’s tough work, says I.

So what do you do if your fondest desire is to become an NPC?  Surely they should have some kind of trade school where you can learn these skills.  Well…huzzah!  They do!  Just inside Commerce, CA, there is an NPC College!  I know, because I often pass by the building of said college when I’m commuting to Clib.  I haven’t looked into their program or anything, since I already have a career that I am satisfied with, but I would assume they have professors or something lecturing on the theories of proper NPCing.  They probably have labs and stuff where they can do field work and get some hands-on experience.  I wonder if they have internships.  I bet they have to play this simulation game to help them learn how to interact with the really difficult playable characters.

Um…ok, so this NPC college isn’t really an NPC college.  It’s really NPCollege and I just read it wrong the first time I drove by and saw the sign.  But all that stuff above?  It’s approximately what went through my mind when I saw “NPC college.”  I kind of which there was such a thing as an NPC college.  But as it turns out, this NPC college, which is really NPCollege, is another one of those technical schools.  It looks like they specialize in…well, what you see a lot of the technical college specialize in on those TV ads of yore, with the listing of all possible programs they offer.  Sugh.

And also, I was going to draw something for this post…but I just lack the motivation to do any such thing.  So, you go doodleless.  Doo-da, doo-da…