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Tag Archives: yaris

A post about dogs

Remember how I was thinking about teaching Choco how to drive because she’s sixteen (almost seventeen now)?  But then I didn’t know where to find a driving school that would accept dogs?  Well, I finally found one…except that it’s new New Zealand.  Surely you’ve seen this story already.

The SPCA trained three different dogs to change gear, steer, and brake.  They can do this in a real car.  This is just what Choco would have needed if she were to learn to drive.  I don’t think she’s much interested now.  She has a terrible case of old.

Speaking of, those dogs don’t look like they’re sixteen.  Granted, they are in New Zealand.  New Zealand probably has different age limits when it comes to driving.  Maybe Yaris would like to go visit New Zealand and learn how to drive…

In other news, there was a hoax story about Canadian politician wanting to pass a law requiring dogs to be bilingual in Montreal.  I was trying to see if I could find a cached article about it, but alas it looks like they’ve all been taken down.  But here’s a CBC report telling you about the hoax.  Oh, the silly internets.  Always fooling legitimate news houses into thinking jokes are real news.

But anyhoo, all of my dogs have been bilingual.  It’s not that big a deal.

Superpower: Invisibility

Did you know I have the power of invisibility?  It’s true!  But I shall qualify that statement: it is a very specific type of invisibility.

You see, I am mostly invisible to motion detectors that turn on lights.  I very rarely am able to trigger motion sensor lights.  That means that I often end up frightening people inside their homes when I knock because they expect their porch light to turn on because someone obviously should have triggered the motion sensor when going up and knocking on the door but surprise no one did so obviously it must be someone with Nefarious Purposes™ because why else would they sneak up on an unsuspecting house and knock on the door without triggering the motion sensor?  (The previous sentence contained 76 words.)

Being mostly invisible to motion sensors also means that I work in dark a lot at both THEM offices.   Both offices use motion sensors to trigger the main office lights.  Something about being green.  Well, that’s fine except that the lights are forever turning off on me.  Not that I mind, exactly.  I kind of like working in the dark.  But it also depends on what I’m doing.  Generally, the glow from the screen on my laptop is ample illumination for what I’m doing.  But sometimes it’s not, like when I’m reviewing code printout in extra small font because I didn’t want to waste paper.  It’s hard to read extra small font code in the dark with only the light of your laptop to illuminate things.  Those are the times that I turn on my handy-dandy magnetic desk lamp.  I really like that thing.  Except for the fluorescent bulb buzz.  But that’s not really the lamp’s fault.

Perhaps you are reading this post with great skepticism right now.  Perhaps you are just thinking that the motion sensors are all just poorly calibrated and are not sensitive enough.  Perhaps you are thinking that the motion sensor probably doesn’t react to anyone, not just me.  Aha!  But that is untrue.  In the case of people’s homes, the motion sensor turns on the lights for just about everyone who walks up to the door.  But not me.  In fact, we have a motion sensor controlled floodlight in front of my house.  It never turns on for me.  Interestingly enough, it also doesn’t turn on for my car when I drive up to the house even though it turns on for everyone else (and their cars).  It even turns on for Yaris.  Hmm…

At work, for one of the offices, I am in direct line-of-sight of one of the motion sensors that controls the main office lights.  No matter how much I wave my arms, it does not sense me.  So I work in the dark.  If one of my colleagues, should there be any in the office that day, looks up from his desk, the lights turn on.  There’s a red LED on the motion sensor housing that blinks when the sensor detects movement.  It does not blink when I move around but it blinks when other people move around in approximately the same manner.  I am invisible to it.

So there you have it.  I have the superpower of invisibility!  …to motion sensors that control lighting…