Montreal Pitbulls

     So I've been hearing a lot about this lately and to be honest, it really makes me a little bit angry. I absolutely love dogs. I think they're one of the best creatures in the world and I would happily have my own pack of them if I could. Hearing about this sort of thing going on really saddens me that so many people in the world really don't understand the nature of dogs.

     I've heard it said that Pitbulls are so much more aggressive and dangerous than other dogs. I would have to agree that Pitbulls can be dangerous. They were bred for certain traits such as having large and powerful jaws. Yes, this makes them very dangerous if one were to attack you, but no, this does not make them more aggressive than other dogs. A dog is not born wanting to attack and kill humans. A dog is born being able to be trained to reinforce good behaviours and to not do unwanted bahaviours. What makes a dog dangerous and unstable so that it would attack a person is being in an unhealthy environment, whether that means being abused, or just having an owner who has absolutely no idea what they're doing.

     Speaking of having no idea what they're doing... there are so many people who think a pitbull is easily identifiable just by the shape of it's head or body. This is so incredibly untrue.

Can you tell which one of these fifteen dogs is the pitbull? I'm sure some of you can, but not everybody knows exactly what to look for. And there are some cases where a dog is in fact a pitbull, but won't look like what you'd expect. Visual identification is not recommended by the scholarly community, so why people decide they should do it anyways is beyond me.

     I'm really not sure where to go with this besides the fact that this topic really upsets me. People who don't understand how dogs work are making laws about them when the scientific facts staring them in the fact tell them they're wrong. Yet they make these terrible decisions anyways. It seems like there's a lot of questionable things going on in the world right now, and I almost feel like the majority of them are being done just because people want something to fight about.

     Anybody who's reading this, please PLEASE educate yourself on how dogs work and why labeling a dog based on how they look is a poor choice. It's basically equivalent to labeling a person based on their skin colour or how tall they are. I currently have some experience working at a kennel where I've personally seen some of our best behaved dogs are in fact pitbulls. The worst dogs we have? Usually unfixed males are most aggressive, especially when near other unfixed males. The next worst dogs are ones who are clearly not trained well; ones who don't know their own names. In fact, I've been bitten at work by one one dog so far... by an itty bitty little shih tzu.

     Have a wonderful day everybody.

~ Kyle

Blizzard is dropping the Battle Net brand.

     After years and years of playing some of my favourite games on the good old Battle.net, Blizzard will be dropping the brand and changing it to be Blizzard Tech. To me, this doesn't really change much except to put some nostalgic thoughts of playing games like Diablo II online with friends and other random strangers across the internet.

     I'm always intrigued when it comes to changing up branding and seeing where things go from there. It always seems to be a bit of a gamble to me. That, and I see some brands like Coke changing it up quite often. I can't imagine having an entire brand rely on me coming up with some sales-pitch with the hopes that it captivates the target audience. There's the very real chance that it fails miserably and you actually lose customers in the process.

     In this case (for long-time customers like myself), I imagine it'll be a little bit weird for a bit. Ultimately though, I think it makes a ton of sense; and I think a little bit of weirdness is a minor concern considering new customers will have an easier time adjusting to and finding the new system.

     Really, this is simply a thought-provoking announcement to me. Something which makes me remember the past with games like StarCraft and WarCraft, and look forward to the future. Oh how I love watching the beautiful progression of technology since my birth in 1992. It's amazing to me how I've grown up with it and through it and I cannot imagine how older generations must think about it when they remember their past.

     That's all for now. Have a great day everybody! ^_^

~ Kyle

Nobody Teaches You This Stuff In School

     So recently I've come into a couple issues when it comes to money and things. There's a lot of backstory to it, but I'm not going to go into all of that. Now that I think of it, I'm not really sure what I want to talk about or how to say it. All I know is that I'm just a little bit disappointed and the only thing that can be done is just to find more regularity and stability. If you have ever lived paycheck to paycheck, then I would imagine you'd know exactly how I'm feeling. Everything is going great, maybe even looking up and like you're going to get on top. Then suddenly you get a little bit messed up. The good news for us right now is that it can still be fixed, whether we get help or not.

     Usually I have a much better idea of how I want to order things and link things together, but today I'm just not really sure. I guess I wish handling money and making decisions with it was something they taught you in school. If you're really paying attention, they kind of teach you about how interest works when it comes to credit cards and mortgages. Nobody tells you how to decide which bill to pay when you can only pay for one of them.

     There's a lot of things we feel kids don't get taught in school and a lot of ways we feel like school doesn't encourage children in their true interests. Hence, Carley and I have agreed that we'd like to home-school our children. Yes, it would be a lot of work, but that's the kind of thing Carley really enjoys doing; I would also love the ability to encourage my children to put their own time into learning more about something that really interests them without it feeling like they HAVE to because an assignment is due in a week.

     I don't know, I guess today is really just more of some kind of rant or vent than an ordered idea as usual. My apologies if this isn't the usual post you like to read, but every once in a while it's nice to get things off your chest. I'll make up for this with a post on an actual interesting topic sometime soon. I know there have been some things to do with space recently that I'd love to give my opinion on (not that anybody NEEDS my opinion on things).

     Anywhos, have a wonderful day and stay awesome everybody out there! You're all the best in some way. Keep doing what you do best! ^_^

~ Kyle

First Post of September

     You know, I do this sort of thing all the time where I say "I should post more" and I then continue on to forget what I said and get caught up in everything else. However, now that I'm building a routine, I think this may actually be more of a reasonable idea.

     I'm still working at Paws Claws 'N Tails and I'm loving it. Spending so much time around all those happy and friendly dogs, and I get plenty of time to talk to myself and wander around. I absolutely love it. I would also in theory have plenty of time to go over the things that I've read in my studies. My favourite shift to work so far is the closing shift where I get to drive the dogs home. Seeing how happy people are to get their fuzzy friends back is just so nice each and every day.

     A little side-note here... Seeing as I'm unable to live-stream with our current internet connection, I'm planning to upload some recordings to YouTube in the near future. All I really need is a half-hour video every once in a while. At least that would be better as a content producer than doing nothing at all. I'll definitely concoct something and see how it goes.

     Gotta go! Have a great one everybody!

~ Kyle Welykholowa

I know, I know, I need to post more things.

     I haven't been posting as much since I started working full-time I just haven't really had as much time to think about posting things lately. I have started listening to news talk radio again so I'm sure I'll soon have much more to talk about.

     In the mean time, I've been playing a ton of Baldur's Gate recently. I'm not going to do a review on it in this post because that's not the purpose of this particular post. I'd just like to mention how much fun and awesomeness I've been having lately. Baldur's Gate is a game we had back when I was younger. I'm pretty sure we had the demo of it... and then I remember my brother got it on disk. And by disk... I mean there were six disks. This was before the expansion... which I believe brought it down to three disks instead.

     I've never had the chance to get into a real group to play D&D. Also the rules these days have been updated quite a bit... so having so much experience with the 2nd edition rule-set probably doesn't help a ton. In any case, playing so much of this game and getting prepared to play the NEW expansion followed by Baldur's Gate 2 has really made me want to get into some D&D, or at least play some more boardgames with people. I've really thought about finding a group to play with. It would likely have to be online, but that wouldn't make it any less awesome. Who knows... maybe I can get Carley interested in it as well. In the mean time, once I get going again with streaming again, I'll may be streaming quite a bit of Baldur's Gate.

     I think we may be caught up with bills and things in about a month. Maybe slightly longer, but I'm not sure. I'm excited to finally be back on track. The good news is that we're at the very least staying afloat, and it's only a matter of time until we have the means to pull ourselves out of the hole of money. What a silly thing... money... If we lived in a barter system, we'd be rich thanks to all the crafts Carley likes to make. And maybe my entertainment value to other people would be valuable as well. Ah well, we'll figure it out.

     As always, have a great day everybody! Keep being awesome! ^_^

~ Kyle

August Update

     It's the beginning of August. I've found a full-time job and school is coming up soon. We're making our payments for rent and catching up on our bills. I think things are going well. The real challenge will be balancing work and school and still finding just a little bit of time to do my own things every once in a while.

     I don't feel like I have a ton of time to myself these days. I always feel busy. I really can't imagine how I'm going to feel once I have to devote time to schoolwork and whatnot; surely I'll survive though.

     In other news, Carley's gecko Ryker has started moving around more again. He's much more interesting when he actually leaves his rock and does things. Really makes me want to get a puppy, but I suppose I'll just have to continue getting my dog-fix through work for now. I'm sure we plan on getting a Shih Tzu once we're ready and I also have a goal to get an American Eskimo one day in the future.

     I may have to be alright with moving out of the city and onto an acreage to be able to get all the dogs I want plus rescuing a few. That might mean awful internet out in the country if we go ahead with that idea, but that's thinking for quite some time into the future. I'm sure we'll figure out what we want to do when the time comes.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

A Blast From The Past

     So last night I started playing a game on PS2 I haven't played in forever called "X Squad". I remember I rented it once upon a time from Blockbuster and at the time I thought it was pretty awesome. My mistake was wanting to play on the hardest difficulty as soon as I started it up. This game... is from the year 2000. On the hardest difficulty, you get shot four times and you're done, then you start over again from the very beginning of the mission.. ugh. So I eventually gave up and started over again on the easiest difficulty instead.

     Now I consider myself to be a pretty good gamer... on PC. I'm not so great with controllers and things; they feel weird to me. Plus, this game is so old that there isn't really any sort of way to be awesome at it. So I don't feel ashamed in any way that I'm playing through this game on easy. Who knows... maybe I'll play through it again on harder difficulties later if I figure something out about how to play better... or maybe I'll just play through it the one time because I have it and I'd like to say I've completed it.

     In any case, playing a game I haven't played for so many years really brings me back to my childhood. Apparently I've played much better games than this... but hey, it's a working game and I might as well start finishing some games. I have lots of them and I would really like to find the time to do just a little bit of something for me every once in a while, yet still spend enough time doing all the other activities I need to do. I don't quite know what I entirely need to do yet, but I'm settling in here and figuring things out. I think we're looking pretty good.

~ Kyle Welykholowa