Fathers and Joey

Happy Father's Day to all the dads.

And we're sorry, dads, as this would be more appropriate for Mother's Day but it's a bit late so we're going to share this today anyway.

Many of us don't live in an area where kangaroos are native so this is probably a first for many of you, as it was for us. Baby joey decided to experience a bigger world than she's used to but panics and runs back to mama.

We don't know why everyone is so surprised to see this reaction, with all those excited humans watching. They would probably have scared the adventure right out of us too. Except for Sam. He'd likely have done a few zoomie circles to show off first.


If the video doesn't play, click here.

Hope you all have a good day.  

Maria Goose Update

Hey, Merci here with today's news.

Well, actually there isn't any news. We've had more wind and rain, with more storms expected, so now the lawn will turn green again and the weeds will start growing even faster than they have been. This makes Jan very unhappy as she will have to be out every day waving a swing blade and muttering between pants. (Pants: Short labored intakes of breath with the mouth open.)

Thursday we posted on Maria the goose and her best friend Dominic. Today we have a follow-up video.


If the video doesn't play, click here.

What a surprise. Maria is actually Mario. But we're not well-acquainted with geese so we wouldn't have known that either. He just looks like a tasty snack to us.

Have a good weekend.

Rusty Intros Maria Goose

Hey, Rusty here. Please excuse me **crunch, crunch** if I eat and talk at the same time but Jan has just gotten around to feeding us. I don't know why she **crunch, crunch** thinks it's more important to walk with the dogs before breakfast. We could die of starvation while they're gone.

I've finished breakfast now. I tried to chew quietly, but I hope you didn't have your speakers turned up too loud.

Oh, okay, Cotton has just reminded me that Jan and the dogs don't get to eat first either. So maybe I'll forgive her. But she better not dawdle, or pass out from hunger, or trip over the sidewalk again. Cause next time she might have to crawl home and that would mean we'd have to wait much longer to eat.

I have an unusual video for you today. It's about a Toulouse goose named Maria and her best friend Dominic, a human. Maria is a very devoted friend.


If the video doesn't play, click here.

We had a bad thunderstorm last night, preceded by high winds. When Jan heard the noise, she thought it was a downpour. It wasn't, so she rushed the dogs outside for their last potty break of the night. Then she stood in the doorway and watched the wind blowing the trees and snapping off branches. The ones hitting the metal roof of the shed next door sounded like large branches but this morning she saw they had been pieces of branches. The dog pen was littered. Sam tried to help Jan pick up the twigs and small branches, but Jan kept taking them away from him before he could eat them. Spoiled his fun!

What really startled her was watching all kinds of small litter blowing down the street with a cloud of dust chasing it. Kind of like a debris parade for a minute.

Jan has been enjoying our break and working on other projects. We don't know why she's been busy working up a sweat. We've all been busy napping through it.

And I'm still racing past the dogs to get out the door before Jan can stop me. It's really fun to go outside, eat grass and survey the neighborhood from my personal domain - my cathouse. Jan claims it's a doghouse, but not a one of the dogs will enter it, and I've claimed it by putting my scent on the doorway, so it's my cathouse!

It's cooler today, but we're expecting more bad storms. If you're in the line of storms, be safe.

Cotton's PSA and Decision

Hey, I'm Cotton. Sorry, but I fell asleep while waiting to use the computer. And it's been a long wait, but Jan finally made a decision.

First though, a Public Service Announcement from Zoolatry. Ann has a very good post on why many blog readers would appreciate it if the the word verification found on many blogs would be disabled and why it can be a hardship for those with a disability. Jan has health problems that are affected by her computer time too and she has been glad to be spending more time away from the computer lately.

We can't speak for other blogs, such as Wordpress, but Blogger has been doing a terrific job of filtering out spam for quite a while now. It has become rare that a spam message gets through and has to be deleted from a post or that a good message ends up in with spam. But bloggers have to do their part. It's easy. Just go to comments in your dashboard (check them occasionally if you choose not to receive email notifications) and check/clear your spam folder.

An easy way to keep up with what is posted on your blog and what is not is to have Blogger send an email for each new comment. If the email asks whether permission to post or delete, that comment has not been posted, so you just delete it from the Blogger spam folder nest time you think of it. But you have to keep your email address current. Just go to -

Dashboard.
Comments.
Scroll down to "Comment Notification Email" and type in your email address.
Click Save Settings.

But before you save your settings, you might want to change "Who Can Comment" to only registered users. We used to allow anonymous comments because we have non-blogging friends, but since many spammers try to post a comment as Anonymous, we finally had to change the setting.

We understand why many of you use word verification but as Ann points out, there is also the problem of time, often having to do two or more verifications, as some are almost impossible to read. A big problem for us is that we have the slowest DSL and way too frequently, there is such a delay, we think our comment went through, but as we are already leaving the site we glimpse word verification appearing. So we either wasted our time making the comment or we have to go back and do it again.

We thank Zoolatry for her Disable for the Disabled graphic and for the post. We don't know that all of you will be able to disable word verification for one reason or another but we hope at least many of you can.

Our last post was to let you know where we were with our blog at the time, but so many left advice on what to do with stolen content, which was not the problem, so we took the post down.

We were trying to warn you about a site using hundreds or thousands of bloggers RSS feed posts to steal your traffic - not steal your post - to boost their own traffic in search engine rankings - and to get visitors to download a program. All bloggers should be doing a periodic Google search of your own blog name. Don't search for this company, as you will only increase their their "popularity," but if you see brokencontrollers.com/yourblog name, you might want to ask them to remove each of your posts and links from their site. Which they will do but you have to notice them and make the request.

Their are many reasons a blogger needs or wants a domain name. But we will never own JFF dot com again. It wasn't because Jan didn't try to pay them for the domain names. They just kept refusing to accept her payment.

As long as we keep posting on JFF, our old dot com will be following us and can be resold. Today it is owned by a foreign company and it's all ads. Tomorrow it could be purchased by a porn site. Jan really wants to end JFF so this can't ever happen, but she just doesn't have the time or energy to start over and try to build up a new blog, a new zazzle store, Twitter, and everything we're signed up with. And Jan has been busy trying to downsize as we might have to move.

Reluctantly and with trepidation, this blog stays open, but we're going to have to find a new heart for it.

Stop right here. And read the last line again. The way it was written, not the way you are expecting it to read. Please.