Funny Stuff is all around

Archive for May 31st, 2008

The story of Diane de Poitiers should serve as a motivation to all of us who feel not-as-young-as-we-used-to-be. Diane was born in 1499, the daughter of Jean de Poitiers and thus a member of a very ancient line. A beauty from a very young age, at 13 she married into another distinguished line when she became the spouse of Louis de Breze who was 39 years older than Diane and a grandson of Charles VII.

When she came with Louis de Breze to the court of Francois I, she found herself immersed in the wonderful Renaissance atmosphere that she loved. This was a time when France was discovering the new wonders of architecture and art brought back to France by Francois I from his travels in Italy, where, of course, the Renaissance was in full swing.

In 1531, her elderly husband died, but Diane remained at court. Whilst there she not surprisingly managed to catch the eye of young Henri who later became Henri II. Although she was in her 30s by then, and surrounded at court by many women who were much younger, she was considered to be one of the dazzling court beauties. Before Henri’s arranged marriage to Catherine de Medicis in 1533, Diane became his mistress. Henri was 14. Incidentally, at the time of the marriage, Catherine was herself something of a looker and she was 18 years younger than Diane.

Despite Henri seemed to try to shun Catherine as much as he could, continuing to pursue his interest in Diane. [Spin] |You might guess that [/spin]Catherine de Medicis did not take nicely to her husband’s pursuit of Diane, especially when Diane was officially acknowledged as his mistress three years after the marriage. The age dynamic added insult to injury, and things just seemed to go from bad to worse for Catherine.

As Henri’s wife, it was of course her duty to produce an heir (or better yet, several of them), preferably male, since, a daughter could not succeed to the throne in France. Catherine appeared to be incapable of fulfilling her duty in this respect. Of course, this failure may have had something to do with the fact that Henri seemed resolute to spend all his time, day AND night, with Diane.

Now this is where the story gets really good.Diane appreciated that there was no love lost between her and Catherine, of course, but she was also conscious that if Henri’s marriage were annulled because there was no heir, he might have to marry someone even less accommodating. Being something of a pragmatist, she made a deal with Catherine, agreeing that on some evenings Henri would spend a few hours in Diane’s bed, then go to Catherine’s for a while, then return to Diane’s bedchamber. We are told that Diane also gave Catherine some practical hints which we guess were not directed toward how she could cook a better pot roast.

This apparently did the job, because the future Francois II was born in 1544, followed by the future Charles IX in 1550, and the future Henri III in 155l, plus several other children..

So Diane did not exactly marry a younger man. She did come close, managing to retain Henri’s interest and love until his demise in 1559. Although Diane did present an enduring distraction, Henri II managed to enjoy some other interests. One of them, unfortunately, was jousting.

Often Henri would host a huge fete, which would customarily involve consuming copious amounts of wine, eating the French equivalent of a bar-be-que, and enjoying, as entertainment, a sort of recreation of a medieval tournament. Now this would have been fine, as long as the King just sat in the stands and barracked for his favorites. But that was not the sort of man Henri was.

So, on one of these memorable tournaments, Henri, always the life of the party, mounted his horse and prepared to have a go at his opponent with what we believe were tipped lances. This did not turn out to be a good idea. Although the sport was aimed at simply knocking your opponent off his horse, something went horribly wrong. Henri zigged when he should have zagged and the next thing he knew he had been nearly run through by a lance, which pierced deeply into his eye.

Henri should have known better than to intentionally expose himself to such danger, because there was really no able heir ready to succeed him. In spite of his heroic efforts to produce children by his wife Catherine de Medicis, not one of his sons was yet of age to assume the throne. This meant, of course, that when he succumbed to his injuries subsequent to the tournament in 1559, he left France in the hands of at least one minor children.

In any case, witha new king on the throne, Diane suddenly found herself persona non grata at court. Since Catherine de Medicis was now in a better position to exact her revenge, being the mother of the king instead of simply an out-of-favor wife, she began to pressure Diane to hand over one of the most important presents she had been given by Henri II - the castle of Chenonceau, something of a sore point between the two women.

Diane loved the castle of Chenonceau. In 1547 Henri II had made her a gift of the castle and in 1551, she had become the Duchess of Valentinois there. If the accounts are correct, she ran the castle with an iron but artistic hand, turning the already lovely area into a garden spot with plants and trees personally selected by her, including such exotic offerings as artichokes and melons. The balls and hunts given by her at Castle Chenonceau became legendary.

By 1552, Henri was spending most of his time, frequently without Catherine, at Chenonceau. It was probably expected that Catherine would want Chenonceau returned if anything untoward ever happened to the man in both women’s lives. But when Henri died, Catherine discovered that Henri had not simply given Diane the use of the property instead, the title to the castle had been given outright to Diane, in spite of legal restrictions which specified that such royal property could not be alienated.

Since it was potentially no longer part of the royal estate, it would be difficult for Catherine to assert a claim to Chenonceau on purely legal grounds. On her side, Diane had not been naive enough to trust that all would be well forever between her and Henri, and she had sensibly set about to make her own castle of Anet quite comfortable just in case.

A period of sparring ensued, but since Catherine’s power was clearly on the ascent, Diane did the sensible thing and decided to yield, however painful that may have been for her. There is some reason to believe that Catherine offered to provide her rival with the castle of Chaumont in exchange for Chenonceau, but in the end, Diane retired to Anet, where she died in 1566, seven years after Henri’s passing.

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It is a perfect location for a castle wedding. Why get married in your home town when instead you could get married in a fairytale wedding castle.

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Most new puppy can be very intelligent and owners need to realize that in the first step of dog behavior training. However, this is good news because it means that your dog’s training is not going to be too difficult if you go about it accurately. Here is some solid advice for those interested in dog training and what is involved:

Specifics

The timing of corrections and congratulations needs to be regular when you are training your dog. Your actions should be near flawless. Dog behavior training allows little room for error. If you do not advise or praise the dog while the action is occurring, it will be too late. In this type of training, you need to assist the dog as the behavioral action is occurring.

Consistency

When training your dog, you need to be consistent. If you never want your dog to scratch the door, do not ever let him do it no matter what the situation is. Dog behavior training is very sensitive to regularities.

Be habitual with your actions. If you do not want your dog to go on the sofa, then he never be allowed on that sofa—or your bed. In dog behavior training you learn that dogs do not understand the concept of occasionally or “if.” They only understand consistent permission or no permission– ever.

Good Boy!

In dog behavior training and dog exercising, we often center on perfection in our dog, but do not congratulate the dog’s good behaviors as much as we should. If your dog is sitting where you want him to be sitting and minding his own business, tell him he is a good dog. In training our dogs, we believe in giving praise when the dog is not being naughty.

Try not to get too angry when he does something bad. In training our dogs, we believe that you should reinforce positive actions and let bad ones slide once in a while.

Stand Your Ground

If you do not show your dog who is boss, your dog just may show you. You have to command your dog when dog behavior training. Do not be weak or shaky when you ask for an action. When training your dog, if dogs do not comply, we show them the way.

When you are dog behavior training, let your dog know exactly what you want from him to avoid dog diseases. Once he starts to really communicate with you, you will find it easier to explain good behavior.

When it comes to handling Home Improvement DIY Projects, it is important that you get the proper items or materials that you need, such as floor tiles or light fixtures. You would also require the right tools in order to complete the task. However, No Home Improvement Project can be completed without the proper. If you do have some home improvement experience, there is a good chance that you already have most of the tools needed.

The tools you need will all depend on the remodeling project that you are doing. Which is why it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with project instructions, as well as the tools needed before you get started. If you are buying your remodeling materials from the home depot, it may be a good idea to save yourself an extra trip and buy your needed tools all at the same time.

Most people like to put up a front especially at the home depot just to look more knowledgeable. But if you have any question you are unsure of before beginning your DIY project, do not hesitate to ask the senior staff at the home depot or store for their assistance and recommendations. Most of them have the necessary skills and knowledge to advice you on the various aspects of your project. Take some notes and be sure to compliment them too. The best way to start is the right way to start.

In many ways, Hit List should have placed second in the Comparison of tracking website visitor’s software, but its performance when processing our 80MB log file was six times slower than WebTrends’, which greatly affected its score. Nevertheless, we found that
Hit List offers an impressive set of reporting features and some management features that neither WebTrends nor NetIntellect offers, such as managing your log-file database, for example. Users are also given the ability to access and create reports remotely, which is a feature that the WebManage solution lacked.

Hit List also provides flexible reporting options, including path, trend, or iis log statistics analysis. Further, it was the only solution that allowed us to optimize, cycle, and update the entire log-file database. Performance was Hit List’s only drawback.

Although Marketwave officials identified Hit List Professional as its midrange solution, it was not designed to handle log files larger than 50MB, and as a result is best-suited for those sites generating an average number of hits that is less than 600,000.

Pros
(1) Database maintenance
(2) Flexible reporting options
(3) Wide range of log-file support
(4) Individual remote report access

Cons
(1) Slow performance when handling files larger than 50MB
(2) Must manually enter advertisements to be tracked

WebTrends, the market leader and a pioneer in visitor marketing, is the perfect solution for Web developers who want to get a better handle on providing a stable environment for their company’s Web site. Of the three solutions we tested, it provided the most comprehensive set of features, including log-analysis reports to help you understand traffic patterns, its own link-analysis utility, proxy server analysis, and device management capabilities. For its well-rounded approach to Web site maintenance and its comprehensive analysis features, we awarded WebTrends a Test Center Hot Pick.

Priced at $599, WebTrends costs about twice as much as the others, but you also get twice as much, and it offers the greatest number of utilities of the three solutions we evaluated. In addition to its log- and link-analysis tools, WebTrends includes built-in utilities for monitoring whether devices are up and recovering devices that are down. For instance, should a Web server go down, WebTrends can be configured to reboot a designated machine, thus ensuring that your site is always available. When there are problems with devices, administrators can either be paged or sent an e-mail. This kind of support ensures that Webmasters can respond quickly to problems that can result in downtime, and that your customers are not trying to access your site and finding it unavailable for hours at a time, which is a good way to lose customers.