So, the guy that took Astoria from us last weekend called today to say that it wasn’t really working out with her. He explained that she hasn’t gone to the bathroom and that they have kept her out on their porch for the last 2 days. This was NOT what we had in mind when we decided to get her into a different home.

We thought that this person was a good choice as he explained that he works at dog friendly work place and would be able to take her with him. He said that his wife stayed at home and in a few weeks, they were moving to an home with more room. They seemed like they really wanted the dog.

So… why is it that I need to tell a grown man that he is responsible for an animal that he chooses. If he decides that this animal is not for him, it is HIS responsibility to do what is right for that animal. Who doesn’t know this?

Here is the email that I ended up sending him (I wasn’t able to call as I am in training):

Firstly, my apologies for not being able to call you. I am currently in training and not able to make outgoing calls. I did chat with Victoria about your conversation.

I am saddened to hear that it’s not working out for you with Astoria. Unfortunately, we are not able to operate in the same capacity as a shelter. In this case, a shelter would just take the dog back. We are not able to do so. The only suggestions that I can make are the following:

1) Get the animal that you decided to take and care for the care that it needs. We took this dog from someone’s house. She did not have shots and was not fixed. We, as the people that took her were responsible for her care. Now, you are. Please act appropriately. If you wanted a dog that you could “return” it might have been better to adopt from a shelter. I am not trying to be harsh or rude, I am just trying to make it clear that by accepting an animal, it becomes your responsibility.

2) Bring the dog to a shelter. If you take this option, please, I beg of you, take her to a no-kill shelter.

He did respond appropriately after that message.

As you are most assuradly aware, my blog has now been migrated over to wordpress. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get my blogger posts over into my new wordpress blog. The blogger import utility is broken if you host this yourself. The original method I followed was:

– Get an account on WordPress.com.
– Use the import tool on there to import my blogger posts.
– Export the blog as WordPress blog.
– Install wordpress on my web hosting FTP site.
– Import the posts as a WordPress blog.

This method sucked.

When I did Victoria’s new blog, I did it this way, which was MUCH better:

– Download your blogger blog as an RSS 2.0 file.*
– Install WordPress.
– Import the RSS file. Done.

*To get this file:

– Point your browser to: http://<yourblogname>.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss&max-results=500
– Save the resulting file as <whatever>.xml.

You can change the value of  "max-results" to however many posts you have in your blog. This number can be obtained from the blogger dashboard.

Happy blogging!

So, I guess this is my first official posting on the new blog.

I am sitting here watching the news waiting on my training to start today. The weather is on now. There’s a "6" over the NYC area. I suppose that makes me take solace in the fact that my windows sidebar weather gadget says "19". I don’t know if I can feel much of a difference between 6 and 19. At any rate, I had to sleep with 3 blankets last night.

Anyhow… as you have gathered by now, I am in NYC. I was supposed to be upstate for the majority of this week for work related IAG training, but there were some issues with that. Basically, the person leading the training called my boss at 9am on Monday (that would be 2 hours after embarking on my 3 flight/2 transfer epic journey) to tell him that he couldn’t come out to NY to lead the training and that he would have to do it remotely. Sigh.

So, I spent about 14 hours traveling:

– Austin -> Charlotte, NC
– Charlotte -> Philly
– Philly (sat on the runway for about an hour for de-icing) -> Stewart Airport
– Stewart Airport -> My parent’s house via Ben’s car.

Needless to say, I was completely shot by the time I got home.

We had our first day of training yesterday via GoToMeeting. It went pretty well. Aside from a 30-40 delay on the powerpoint slides, it was a veritable avalanche of information which is now swimming around in my head waiting to be digested. I feel like I went to a IT buffet and haven’t finished digesting yet only to eat the same amount, if not more today.

In other news, Victoria went to pick up Atley yesterday. He is our second shot at a dog. Being 1/2 the size and a different breed from Astoria, I have much higher hopes for this one. Check out her blog for some pics.

I am hoping to see some of my friends while I am here. So far, responses from them have not been encouraging though. I know they are busy… but… come on. I am not here often. Oh well, that’s a whole other blog rant/post.

I’ve gotta go sign into the training meeting now. I am hoping my brain increases it’s capacity today…

P.S. I miss home…