When I broke down and got a fancy new TV, I decided to get the Xbox 360 instead of the PS3 because of the sizeable selection of games you can download for a fee directly from the couch. This includes old arcade classics as well as new stuff. A couple of days ago, a game called “Braid” was released, which is a sort of puzzle game done up like a painting. It started blowing my mind about 5 minutes after I started playing it, and hasn’t quit. Since. Here’s what it looks like:

The music fits in perfectly with the look of the game. Here’s a little YouTube action so you can get the full aesthetic:

I usually get frustrated in puzzle games pretty quickly, when the difficulty ramp is too steep, or bored, if it’s too easy. Braid is perfect, right in the middle. I’ve solved 3/5 of the worlds, and haven’t been once tempted to reach for a walkthrough. What’s more, Braid doesn’t have any complicated rules–you learn everything by observation, and so the overall experience is very satisfying. It was $15 and has already paid for itself.

We’re still mid-trip, but there are some pictures posted from our road trip on gallery. We’ve had a great time, mostly because instead of being fussy in the car on 12-hour stretches, Sous just does this:

Let’s discuss a number of awesome things, some sarcastically and some earnestly. In an awesome meeting this week with my advisors, we decided that my schedule for finishing my dissertation was too aggressive to get all the necessary results in and text reviewed, so my graduation slipped by a month! Awesome! Leslie put together an awesome invitation to this year’s camping trip to Utica reservoir:

How could you not go? Looks too awesome to miss. Also assuredly awesome is our upcoming road trip out to Colorado with the pup. You would not believe how many motels will let you bring your dog right in the room with you.

You’re probably thinking that there are too many awesome things in the world for you to keep track of all of them in your head, and you’re right. That’s why God created Awesome Overload as an authoritative source on awesomeness. Don’t miss it… they need submissions!

Yesterday I gave Jonathan the first three chapters of my dissertation for review. There will be many more chapters and many more drafts, but its a good feeling anyway. Summer is here, the puppy is six months old and infinitely more tolerable. You should check out the three new albums Leslie just perfected on the gallery. Let me whet your appetite (this one was taken by Clare):

Beware the ferocity of the puppy!

The one bit of our sprawlingly complicated TV setup that can’t be manipulated via remote control is the turning on and off of our XBox, which we use for watching DVDs. We have to actually get off the couch to turn it on and off. One night whilst lamenting this burden, Leslie had the epiphany that we could train Sous to do it. You know, she’s five months old now, she should be pulling her weight around the house.

It turns out it was pretty easy to do with the clicker… I just had to glue a piece of a plastic easter egg to the switch so she could hit it with her nose. There have been calls for internet video of the feat, and we’ve finally gotten around to it. So, by popular request:

We just returned yesterday from a five-day mini-vacation to Austin. Leslie had to be there for work shortly after a trip to Boston, so instead of flying all the way back, she arrived a few days early and I joined her. We got in on a Thursday, rendezvoused with the Hall clan at Lisa and Eric’s place (Leslie’s parents were kind enough to drive down for a couple of nights), then crashed at my parents’ place.

Friday we kicked off with a shopping trip to Central Market for dinner supplies. That place stands up to any grocery store the Bay Area has to offer. The choices are broad, the atmosphere is pleasant, and it’s uncrowded (so take that, Berkeley Bowl!). I guess Austin probably couldn’t beat a Berkeley or SF farmer’s market for freshness, but there was plenty of trucked in Cali produce that I’d be happy to settle for. After stopping back at the house to make the guacamole and start the chicken brining, we embarked on a fantasy house-shopping tour of neighborhoods in Austin.

It was a blast–there are lots of areas near central Austin I’d just never visited before, and the parts I had have changed quite a bit. We’re pretty convinced that if we move back, we’d like a place in the “core” of the city, which to us means roughly in the box drawn by Mopac on the West, 45th on the North, I35 on the East, and Oltorf on the South. Of course, we also explored east of 35, which is developing fast. I don’t have the Austin geography chops to name all the neighborhoods we looked at, but we liked a lot of what we saw. There are plenty of houses all over this area in the 2-bedroom-cottage style we’d probably be looking at, though in parts there is an additional 3-story house tacked on the back of them.  It will be a deep rabbit hole to explore when the time comes.

Friday night we cooked dinner for my parents and Leslie’s parents, which was fun. Saturday we went out to explore the Hill Country, stopping by Pedernales Falls, a winery (not great), and then we met up with my parents in Johnson City for the “wildflower festival,” the highlight of which was the Kettle corn and $2.50 pints of Fireman’s #4, an excellent local beer. That night we ate at a great Japanese place, Uchi. We saw the chef on Iron Chef America and couldn’t resist making a reservation. I hit a party later that night at an old friend’s house with a bunch of old HS friends… it was quite a trip.

Leslie’s job responsibilities kicked in on Sunday afternoon, so we struck out in the morning after a great brunch with my parents at East Side Cafe. We took a stroll around campus (the Master Plan of covering all of central Austin with red-tile roofs continues apace), and then we explored downtown near the river, which is awash in new development. The skyline has changed substantially in the last 3 years, and I think there are several more sky-scrapers going up now. The new city hall looks cool, and Palmer Auditorium has been knocked down and tastefully redone.

Monday I amused myself, grabbing a Don Juan breakfast taco from Juan in a Million for a late breakfast, then mooched the AC at various bookstores. Here’s the taco, for those who don’t know of its glory (it took three supplementary tortillas for me to finish):

Finally, I returned to Yoga Yoga for an Ashtanga class with my old teacher, who, bless her soul, still remembers me. Exhausted, I bought a classy dinner of 32 oz fresh squeezed OJ, a smoked turkey leg, and a spinach salad from the nearby second location of Central Market and retired with Leslie. Overall, the trip kicked ass. I don’t see any real competitors to Austin at this point for our Adult Landing Pad. The timing of our return? Well, who knows.  But first, I do need to finish at Berkeley, so BACK TO WORK.

I figure I’ve left the profane Obama ad up at the top long enough, so a quick update on life and puppyness: Yesterday was our first day with Sous’s pen taken down, and overall it went great. Leslie is mixing up frozen kongs for her every morning now, so she quite happily munched on breakfast in her crate for an hour and a half while we ate breakfast and prepared for the day. Walking on loose leash is really getting good now that we have started using a Gentle Leader head collar. It really only goes into action once or twice per walk, or if she feels like lunging at another dog or friendly person to greet them. Whenever she spontaneously decides to fall into a heel, we give her pieces of kibble, so she tends to naturally hang out there a lot of the time.
I’ve just finished reading Jean Donaldson’s Culture Clash, which is basically a rant against traditional dog training and a plea and explanation for more humane and realistic training and behavior modification. Even after reading Ian Dunbar’s Before and After Getting Your Puppy, which gives you basically the same philosophy in a more practical package but without explaining “why?”, I was very impressed by her viewpoint. There is so much magical thinking that goes on with dog training, and the more I banish it, the more success I feel like I have. Her book inspired us to tackle a few of the remaining nagging behaviors that we’ve been ignoring. For example, Sous pretty much hates grooming and gets very squirmy when we brush her. We’d half-heartedly tried to fix it by feeding her treats during the process, but our consistency wasn’t great. Yesterday we tried giving her one brush stroke, then giving her a piece of kibble, then another stroke, then another piece. Sure enough, by the hundredth stroke or so, she was happily standing there collecting food while she got brushed. This process counter-conditions grooming to be something she likes, and you are supposed to slowly ramp down the rate she gets food until she stands for a whole grooming session for one treat at the end. We’ll see.

On the more fun side of things, we’re in the process of training her to turn on our DVD player (which can’t be done with a remote control). We used the clicker and have managed to pretty reliably get her to go turn it on and off from a foot or two away with her nose. The next step is adding more distance so that she’ll eventually jump off the couch and do it. At that point I’ll be sure to post a video :)

Pretty much the best political ad ever, as if created by Jay of Jay and silent bob. (Has some naughty words, click to see full size.)

It was January 18th when we drove away from the Pet Food Express in Palo Alto. I was up front, trying to take it easy on the turns, Leslie was in back, trying to comfort the 11-pound puppy honking like a monkey.  I don’t think I was well rested again for 3 weeks.

Now I’m typing this and Sous is quietly chewing on the ground beside my desk. She’s free to wander around the living room and kitchen, but usually settles down somewhere near me. I can more or less work all morning now, with a few pauses for a training session or a game of fetch (which, so far, she only plays indoors). It now takes her at least 2 minutes out of sight to get into trouble, which is like an eternity compared to the 4 seconds it was those first days. She has tried to put everything in the apartment into her mouth at least twice, and is starting to show signs of recognizing just how small the class of things allowed in there really is.

Things are in fact so much easier now that topics other than the dog occasionally cross my mind. Last week I finished my contract job, and I’ve been able to really turn my attention back to thesis research. The plan is to work with maniacal intensity for the next two months so that when I give my dissertation talk in May, I won’t have to fabricate the second half. I’ve also been trying to find worthwhile games to play. Most recently I’ve been toying with Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which I can’t figure out why everyone loves. Yes, it has a bunch of Nintendo characters, but how is the game actually fun?

Look! Sous can imitate internet memes:

It looks like Sous has reached an age where she is developing some self control. Not only can she occasionally do reliable stays while I stand around the corner, she now knows “leave it,” which basically means “don’t touch that thing you really want that’s right in front of you.” The corollary of course is “take it,” which is really her favorite part. For some reason tricks where she doesn’t do something are more impressive to me than ones where she does.

Even more exciting was our first trip on Sunday to the off-leash dog park at the Berkeley marina. Although the park is on a peninsula, it’s big (about 30 acres), and the off-leash area doesn’t actually extend to the edges of the peninsula. So there’s this little 17-acre circle in the middle where dogs are allowed off leash. I had kind of pictured a fence around it, but no such luck–just stakes with “leaving off leash area” written on them here and there.

Every previous dog of mine has had totally reliable behavior when you took off the leash, and that behavior is to rocket away from you as fast as possible. The next step was usually the “keep at least 100 yards away from Bryan” game, but it was also sometimes the “disappear for hours until you hop into a stranger’s pick-up” game. People walking around with their dogs dutifully following off lead has always seemed kind of like a fantasy magic world to me.

So, it was with considerable trepidation that we unhooked Sous’s leash. She immediately trotted directly away from us about 20 feet, and my heart sank. She bounded through some tall grass, scaring off birds as we sheepishly followed, and then something amazing happened. She looked back at us. I crouched down and did my most convincing “Sous, come!”, and she starts rocketing toward me with this huge puppy smile. I couldn’t believe it. We got a repeat performance a couple of minutes later, and then realized that we could walk along and she would stay generally with us, never letting us get more than 20 or 30 feet away. She would greet other dogs politely, maybe play a little if they were down, but we could always get her back to us, and in the absence of other dogs she stayed pretty close. I was on cloud nine… this was always part of my dog dream, but I didn’t think I was going to start living it at 4 months!

George and Jana joined us for the rest of the afternoon and we just strolled around, meeting interesting dogs and people, including a 120-lb old lady with her 145-lb Rhodesian ridgeback–quite a pair! I think we’ve got a picture that we’ll try to post soon, but I think you could have stuffed Sous into a jar smaller than this dog’s head.

So anyway… Sous is now officially the best-trained dog I’ve ever had. She’s spending 3 hours alone in her crate each afternoon while I’m at the office, she’s up to 10 days without a housebreaking accident (knock on wood), and acts more and more like a real dog any day. It’s almost like they give you a puppy at 8 instead of 16 weeks just to see if you’re serious.

Last week I got a pedometer to put in the bag that we take everywhere with Sous. It counts the number of steps we take, and so it can tell us what our total walking distance is. The total for the first week we had it: 25.51 miles. No wonder I don’t get so winded going up the hill to Soda anymore.

We always claimed that getting outside for consistent twice-daily exercise was one of our goals for dog ownership. At first, staring down another hour outside at 6:30 in the morning was nigh unbearable, but now by the time we get through the first block or so (especially on sunny days), I find my mood soaring. Probably the blood flow knocking loose some endorphins in my brain. Anyway, the alternative would just be staring at websites for another pointless hour in front of a monitor.

Unlike the world-shattering cataclysm that is taking in an 8-week-old puppy, the process of getting your life back as the puppy ages is the definition of gradual. Things from the last week that would have seemed impossible to the Bryan of January 19th:

• An evening spent in the south bay playing video games and drinking beer (thank you, Les).
• A 2.5-hour absence from the Great Sous Monster to go to a meeting and do some work at the lab.
• A trip with Sous to the lab to meet the graphics group.
• A relaxing hour at our computers with Sous quietly chewing some unspeakably literal dried cow anatomy.
• A day spent cleaning the apartment.
• A ‘down’ from 15 feet away with no hand signal.
• Reasonable confidence that when I put Sous down at 10:30pm she will let us sleep until 6am. Holy shit, this is the greatest thing ever.

These small victories have gone a long way toward repairing my psyche. Maybe its because the memory of my pre-dog life is fading, but I feel almost kinda sorta normal about facing a 45-minute walk at 6:30 every morning. And by the time 7pm rolls around, Sous is downright fun to be with. We started learning tricks (I taught her “shake” for Leslie’s birthday; she’s working on “roll over” now).

We’ve even started in on the new-age hippy clicker training that is all rage. I read a lot about it before taking the plunge. It seems unnecessary for a companion dog that you just want to well-mannered. But Sous has a big future of fetching beer for me, and as far as I can tell, clicker training is the way 90% of service animals and competitive obedience animals are trained. In my “beginner” clicker book there are instructions for teaching your dog to close cabinet doors, put errant dirty clothes in the laundry basket, and turn out lights. Think about it, man.

In the time I don’t spend molding my protégé, I’ve been working on a contract for a video game company that is doing a pretty good job of distracting me from my thesis. So I’m pushing hard to get that done so I can go back to my final sprint. Also, there’s this job search to do. It’s all seeming very possible these days.

Last night, Sous slept almost SEVEN HOURS between outside trips. Then she went promptly back to sleep until 7am. I feel almost like a normal person this morning.

Jokes have been made by some parties that our little Sous-chef has a lot of expectations to live up to. While we will be happy with any life path she chooses, it is true that we want to offer her every opportunity to excel in the world of dog awesomeness. She comes from good stock, and at our play date last weekend she and her sister Peanut took a moment out for some synchronized sitting (double click to play):

We’ve got applications in already to all the best prep schools… you can never start these things too soon. Leslie is starting her on Rachmaninoff drills, though her real passion seems to be early Charlie Parker licks on her doggy-tenor sax.

I’ll just refer you to Les’s blog to see some nice, detailed posts about our new charge. She’s put things coherently and that’s something I’m probably not capable of at the moment. I’ve been run down, but I think I’m on the road to recovery. Tonight is my night to sleep instead of worrying about trips outside, which will make it my first good night of sleep since last Friday—what bliss. What a project we’ve undertaken. Here’s a picture that Clare took when she came over to offer moral support on night 3 that helps me take the whole thing less seriously:

We went back down to Mountain View yesterday to drop off blankets to acquire the scent of the litter, get lectured a bit, but most importantly play with puppies and take lots of pictures. Look, she’s alive! (Double click to make it play).

Leslie already scooped me on this, but it’s still worth a post. After months of deliberation, we decided to adopt a puppy. In particular, this one:

We just heard yesterday from Pound Puppy Rescue that our favorite puppy from the visit we paid to the 12-dog litter was ours. She comes home a week from Friday. We’re still deliberating about the name. The best idea we’ve had so far is to call her “Sous Chef” because I’m sure she’ll be helping us cook. She would go by just “Sous.” Hee. Please post your awesome name idea in the comments!

As part of the CES insanity, a company is launching “Guitar Wizard,” a recreation of Guitar Hero with a real guitar, giving you real chops:

But you must play this flash game, which is probably the best ever. The developers should hook up with the Portal guys.

You may have heard something of Super Mario Galaxy. It’s the true successor to the last classic Mario platformer, Super Mario 64 (let’s not bring up the aberration that was Super Mario Sunshine). Anyway… I picked it up on the internets a couple of weeks before the release and have playing it in basically all of my free time since then, which has been limited. The game is basically perfect–the controls are sublime, the difficulty ramp finely tuned to gently hone your skills from rank n00b to the point that you are capable of accomplishing outrageous shit like this:

Or this (in both cases the goal is to get 100 purple coins–you die, you start over. No second chances!

Every level you finish nets you a star, the currency of success in the game. Your star count is what it’s all about, and once you’ve got 60 stars, you’re welcome to go kick Bowser’s ass and save Princess Peach (again, yes!). You get a nice movie and the credits roll. But as any fan knows, this isn’t the half of it. There are 60 more stars, some of them diabolically hard to finish (as in the video above). So great! You buckle down, play through the last 60, now you’ve got 120! Must be done, right? No! You’ve just unlocked Luigi, who starts back at the beginning of the game with 0 stars, and you get to do it all over again.

It takes a special kind of person to play a game they just beat (twice) all over again, and I am that kind. Actually, Luigi is subtly different from Mario. He slides around when you try to stop him, which makes most things harder, but he’s also skinny, so he floats further when jumping and flys farther as a bee. He still can’t get the chicks that Mario is landing though, poor guy. So anyway, I write you this now, having just finished 120 stars with Luigi, thus unlocking GRAND FINALE GALAXY where I got to meet all my old friends and recall the joy and sadness and screaming frustration of all 242 stars, and that’s a wrap!

Oh, and… I also finished my last class of my life, and graded final exams for 6 hours, and generally polished of the last annoying tasks of the semester. In a few hours we’ll get on a plane headed for some serious holiday relaxation and shit. And it couldn’t come soon enough.