well why not

$20 for an online ('personalised') dog training course with money back guarantee? OK (though I don't know how I would be able to prove it didn't work). Anyway, it's an unusual one, and starts with strong insistence that you watch training module videos. The first two of these videos, which I have watched in full (OK - I stopped watching after a while for reasons you will soon understand) were different shots of the same woman standing in what looks like a kind of gym or studio with an inattentive beagle wandering around. She is talking to us, the viewers, though shot from different angles, yet her mouth does not match up at all with the audio, which is almost certainly computer generated. 

At the end of the first one they asked me how I felt about it, so I told them 2 stars out of 5:

To be clear the voice is not exactly saying the same thing over and over but the same thing different ways, mainly, 'don't ask us questions before you've watched all the content'. Fair enough. 

Disconnected video-and-audio is a strange approach though and I assume it indicates firstly that people won't listen to something, unless they have something to watch even if it clearly doesn't match. Also, there's a possibility that what I'm watching is the same thing but translated into English and overdubbed, though definitely the voice I'm hearing is not actually a human speaking. 

But for me it's a low bar - I'm assuming that at absolutely worst this course will have a neutral effect. It is my plan to power through as quickly as I can. I'm hanging out for Keilor Dog Obedience to start for 2024, and for the personalised lesson which is also, by the way, 'guaranteed'. 

One thing that I am going to concentrate on first up is getting Perry to shake my hand. I mean, it demeans us both, but he is so firmly against it (to the extent that he'll leave the room if I try to make him do it) that I assume he thinks it means something other than that which it means (or he thinks it demeans us both, in which case, I agree). Oddly though occasionally I try to get him to jump on the couch next to me - sometimes he'll do that voluntarily but other times he needs persuasion - and in that instance, he'll raise his paw instead to couch height and let me shake it. So wtf does that mean? 

'It means you got a problem, fool'
 

then i realised...

...that in fact my blog is actually pretty dull. It's mainly just about episodes of Homicide! Which is... I mean... which is just an old tv show, about as old as me, and actually about as dull! So it's either that, or Pintandwefall records! Why didn't anyone tell me?!

But then, I'd tell you other things from my life but they're either about meetings with students - which are interesting, at least to me and I hope also to them, but naturally confidential. Things like that. Trying to negotiate university online systems. Which is not necessarily confidential but you want to hear about it just as much as I want to try to do it. 

Anyway I shouldn't even be writing this now. I have a ton of things I need to get done in the next few days, inc. a conference presentation for next Monday. 

Here are four pictures from my bus ride to work this morning (yes, I take the bus sometimes. I know it's ridiculous but I get-so-bored-by-walking-the-same-route). 

I love this building, it's 80s Housing Commission. 

I love this one too, for different reasons. It's on the opposite side of the road. 

This is inside the bus. There were few people on it. 

Close to where the rail station will be eventually I gather.