Important Update From Friends of Greyhounds

∗∗∗ IMPORTANT UPDATE FROM FoG ∗∗∗

Friends of Greyhounds is very pleased to tell you that we are no longer in business!! Since the Florida greyhound tracks are closed, our adoption group is no longer necessary. We have waited a long time and worked hard to get to this point. This is a very good thing!

We do not have any dogs to adopt or feed or take to the vet so we do not need donations. Our charity has been dissolved.

Thank you so much for your years of support and friendship. We are still here as friends for advice and any help you and your dogs may need.

∗∗∗

Recently a Friend Visited and Took a Photo of My Dogs.

From left: Slinky, Wendy, Vic and Akira.

I Stopped My Home From Being Burglarized!

Yesterday evening I heard some voices and a truck outside. I thought it was some neighbors.

Ten minutes later I looked out the front window and saw something that I could hardly believe. There was a very big U-Haul truck sitting in my driveway.

I went outside to take a closer look. It was parked so close to my garage door that I was afraid the door may have been damaged. All of the doors on the truck were locked.

I checked with my neighbor across the street. He said he saw three men back the truck into my driveway and then leave in a car.

I called the police and while waiting for them to arrive I called the phone number for U-Haul on the truck. The U-Haul representative told me the truck was rented a few hours earlier. He called the number on the rental agreement. He told me he spoke with the renter who would call his people to tell them to get the truck.

When the police officer arrived he took down the license plate and VIN to check if it had been reported stolen.

Finally, three men is a car arrived. I asked the truck driver of the group what address was their correct destination. He refused to answer.

The police officer didn't check their IDs or the U-Haul rental agreement to verify if the driver was permitted behind the wheel of the truck.

The truck with the car following drove off. I expected to hear the truck within a few blocks of my home when they went to the correct address, but they left the neighborhood.

Then, the police officer told he there had been several burglaries where a big truck was left in a driveway. If no one complained, then the house was broken into and everything was taken.

Greyhounds and Whippets Rescued from China now at Elite Greyhounds

Elite Greyhound Adoptions of South Florida (http://www.elitegreyhounds.org/) is now rescuing greyhounds and whippets from China. Both breeds are used at the dog tracks in China and they have no future without rescue and adoption.

A New Friend for Friends of Greyhounds

As you may or may not know, I am a volunteer for Friends of Greyhounds.

Several months ago, Scott found us and began to volunteer to help out in the kennel. Soon he noticed and fell in love with Dusty.

Then, Scott created a blog titled "Dusty and Me" that he describes as "A blog about an old dog and his young greyhound".

Hurricane Matthew

The dogs are sleeping while I'm hunkering.

Horses & Hounds 2016 Was a Big Success

Horses & Hounds is an annual event sponsored by the Horses & Hounds Charitable Foundation on Sympatico Farm in Lake Worth, Florida.

Both greyhound and non-greyhounds are invited along with their owners.

This year, the activities included a dressage demonstration, a presentation from Medieval Times in Orlando, free hot dogs (yum!), an exotic car display (I love the color of the Corvette!) and a silent auction.

Click to Enlarge.

[SOLVED] "error running shared postrotate script for '/var/log/mysql.log /var/log/mysql/mysql.log /var/log/mysql/mysql-slow.log '"

Recently I upgraded Linux on my home server and every day I would get this email:

Subject: Anacron job 'cron.daily' on server.local

/etc/cron.daily/logrotate:
error: error running shared postrotate script for '/var/log/mysql.log /var/log/mysql/mysql.log /var/log/mysql/mysql-slow.log '
run-parts: /etc/cron.daily/logrotate exited with return code 1

I first examined the /etc/cron.daily/logrotate script.
There was only one executable line: /usr/sbin/logrotate /etc/logrotate.conf

I next examined /etc/logrotate.conf and found this: include /etc/logrotate.d

logrotate.d is a directory of scripts to run.

Since my error message was for MySQL, I examined the /etc/logrorate.d/mysql-server script. One line in this script is
MYADMIN="/usr/bin/mysqladmin --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/debian.cnf"

I examined /etc/mysql/debian.cnf and found the cause of the error message:

user = debian-sys-maint
password = oMhAfEiEiO


It was the PASSWORD! There was a mismatch between the password in debian.cnf and the password for the debian-sys-maint user in MySQL.

Finally, I changed the password for debian-sys-maint in MySQL to the password listed in debian.cnf and the daily error message email stopped.

mysql -u root -p

use mysql;
update user set password=PASSWORD("oMhAfEiEiO") where user="debian-sys-maint";


It seems like every time I reinstall the backup of my databases on a new system I overwrite the password.

Charlie

I recently began fostering one of the greyhounds from Friends of Greyhounds.

Charlie is a sweet boy and gets along well with people and other greyhounds. He does have issues with children and small animals. You can read Charlie's profile here.

When Charlie first came into my house he was a "slow starter". It took him 2-3 days to relax and feel at home. He has a favorite bed and loves playing in the backyard. My other three greyhounds run and play with him like he is an old friend.

The biggest problems I have experienced with Charlie are:
1. He will hit you with his head when he wants to be petted and you are ignoring him.
and
2. He will bring his outside toys into the house.

The Magic of Greyhound Adoption

The 17 Standard CSS Color Names

The 17 standard colors are: aqua, black, blue, fuchsia, gray, grey, green, lime, maroon, navy, olive, purple, red, silver, teal, white, and yellow.

Color Name	HEX	Color
Aqua	#00FFFF
Black	#000000
Blue	#0000FF
Fuchsia	#FF00FF
Gray	#808080
Grey	#808080
Green	#008000
Lime	#00FF00
Maroon	#800000
Navy	#000080
Olive	#808000
Purple	#800080
Red	#FF0000
Silver	#C0C0C0
Teal	#008080
White	#FFFFFF
Yellow	#FFFF00

A Gnome 3 Script to Change Your Desktop's Wallpaper Every 5 Minutes

This is a Gnome 3 script to change your desktop's wallpaper every 5 minutes.

Copy this script to your ${HOME}/bin directory. Remember to make this script eXecutable.

Create a wallpaper directory in your Pictures directory and add your pictures.

Add the line "*/5 * * * * ${HOME}/bin/wallpaper.sh" to your crontab. It is set to run every 5 minutes. Enjoy!

---

#! /bin/bash

# crontab: run every 5 minutes
# MIN HR DOM MON DOW CMD
# */5   *  *   *   *   ${HOME}/bin/wallpaper.sh

DIR=${HOME}/Pictures/wallpaper

file_list=(${DIR}/*)
X=$[ $RANDOM % ${#file_list[@]} ]

DISPLAY=:0 gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri file://${file_list[${X}]}

---

The script is free, but explanations will cost extra.

The New Android Smartphone

I Don't Have Bad Handwriting

USB Serial Port Converter for Wine

I installed a Windows program on my Debian laptop that interfaced with a radio receiver. The purpose of this program was to allow for the reading & writing of the radio's memories. The connection to the radio was through a USB to Serial converter.

First, I installed Wine (originally an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator"), from the Debian Repository. Then, I could install the Windows program from its CD. When the program is first run, it asks for the COM port number. Because there are no COM ports, this is where the challenge began.

I did some searching with Google and found that the first step was to add a link in the Wine subdirectories for the USB to Serial Port device. There were several suggestions on how to locate & identify the device. The simplest method was in a Terminal window and issue the dmesg command right after plugging the device into a USB port.

jerry> dmesg | tail
[  108.678576] usb 2-1.2: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[  108.679609] usbcore: registered new interface driver ftdi_sio
[  108.678613] ftdi_sio: v1.6.0:USB FTDI USB Serial Converters Driver

Note the line that indicates the USB device is "ttyUSB0".

With this device name, I added a link in the Wine subdirectory identifying this device as "COM1"

jerry> ln -s /dev/ttyUSB0 ~/.wine/dosdevices/com1

When I attempted to run the program, it was not able to connect to COM1.

I did some more searching and the answers were of two opinions. Either "it worked for me" or "it doesn't work" with only one person actually noticing what was wrong. The permissions for ttyUSB0 were wrong and the solution involved writing a short script to run which would set ttyUSB0 permissions to allow access.

When I examined ttyUSB0, this is what I saw:

jerry> ls -l /dev/ttyUSB0
crw-rw---T  1 root dialout   4,   6 Nov 18 20:34 ttyUSB0

The device is accessible to only root, the owner and to the "dialout" group, but has no world access. This explained why the one solution required a script to grant access to the device.

However, I realized there was a simpler solution that did not involve running a script every time I wanted to run my program. All I had to do was add my username to the dialout group.

Using a text editor, like vi, you will have to edit the group file, but since it is owned by the root user you will need superuser permission.

jerry> su
Password:
root> vi /etc/group

Locate the line that begins with "dialout":

dialout:x:20:

Add your username to the dialout group:

dialout:x:20:jerry

Save the group file and exit your text editor.

Now, when I run the Windows program and select COM1: I could finally say "this works for me".

Counting in Binary

The Difference Between a Cat and a Dog

A Cause of Seizures With My Greyhounds

Two of my greyhounds, Cole and Rowdy, suffer from seizures.

From the beginning I have been tracking all seizures, medicines, dosages and blood tests in journals for each dog.

I also have been charting the seizures since I noticed that Cole was having seizures when I took him on I-75. You can read about it here.

Rowdy has had so many seizures this year that I began to notice something unusual in his chart.

First, to describe this chart. The vertical axis represents the number of seizures and the horizontal axis is counting down the number of hours until the next administration of his medicine that he get every 12 hours.

You can see that most of Rowdy's seizures happen either right before or right after the time of his next dose because there may not be enough medicine in his system to control the seizures. The previous dose is running out and the new dose has not been absorbed by his system.

Now for the interesting discovery. You will notice that there is also a "blip" in the graph at the point that is 4 hours until the next dosage.

I realized that this "blip' was one to two hours after I fed Rowdy his daily meal.

Cole also has this "blip" in his chart, but Cole has seizures less frequently than Rowdy so it was not as noticeable.

Now I have to determine if there is something in the food that is triggering seizures or if the act of digesting food changes something in theirs blood chemistry that reduces the amount of medicine available to control seizures.

Friends of Greyhounds' Collar Chain

This is a video from Friends of Greyhounds celebration of the 1,000th dog adopted which took place on October 10, 2010 (10/10/10, 10*10*10=1,000).

By the time Friends of Greyhounds was evicted from the kennels that were being provided by the dog tracks of South Florida, over 1,900 ex-racer greyhounds had been adopted out.

Since then Friends of Greyhounds has had to down-size because of the lack of kennel space, but their rescue and adoption of these wonderful dogs continues.

When a greyhound is adopted, its kennel collar is added to the chain, in chronological order. On special occasions the chains are hung for all to admire.

This chain of 1,000 collars represents the 1,000 dogs that had been adopted out up to October 10, 2010.

Some of the original collars were lost or dogs came in with no collar at all and we use a wooden bone with the dog's name on it. 

Most of the collars hang open but a few are buckled closed.  Those are the dogs who have passed away and are waiting for us at the Rainbow Bridge.

 

Words That My Dogs Know

• out - Let's go out to the yard.
• potty - Time to relieve yourself.
• water - Drink some water.
• yummy - Eat some food.
• cookie - A dog biscuit.
• chewie - A rawhide chew stick.
• bed - It's 3 AM! Return to your bed.
• walk - Would you like to go for a walk?
• car - Would you like to go for a ride in the car? (and this time I'll drive)
• let's go - Opposite of stay.
• this way - Change your direction to the way that I am indicating.
• stay - Don't move.
• come - Come to me.
• hug - Come here and get a hug. (This was Roger's favorite word.)
• run - Run.
• up - Jump up.
• off - Jump down.
• ramp - Walk up or down on the ramp (Roger could not jump).
• move - Get out of my way.
• no - Cease and desist.
• leave it - Cease and desist.
• done - Cease and desist.
• all done - Cease and desist.
• no more - Cease and desist.
• more - Do that again.
• two-fee - Time to brush your teeth.
• brushy - Time to be groomed.
• pill - Let me give you your pill.
• home - Let's go home (turn up the driveway).
• PetCo - Let's go shopping.
• garage door - I convinced some of the kids in the neighborhood that all of the dogs have swallowed garage door remotes and they can open the garage door whenever they want to. (The remote is in my pocket, but don't tell the kids.)