Friday, December 31, 2010

Day 381

I don't know about you, but I'm actually looking forward to 2011. Blogging has re-energized me in an odd sort of way. The glass doesn't look half empty anymore. Maybe I'm just looking at it from a funny angle, but it's actually starting to look half full again. For the first time in quite a few years I feel like anything could happen in the year ahead.

This year was certainly full of surprises. I never thought I get an opportrunity to do cinematography for National Geographic. I never thought I'd be featured in a major ad campaign either. I lost my biggest client this year, but the business didn't go under. I got three brand new clients instead and life goes on. I saw a lot of doctors this year, but I don't have diabetes and I don't have cancer. I'm actually healthier than I thought I was. Dalmatian Rescue did such a good job of finding our dogs homes this year that we hardly have any Dalmatians left. That's a good thing.

At this point in time, I don't see any reason why next year can't be even better. We don't need another huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and we don't need another financial meltdown. We don't need anything big to happen at all. I'd just like a year where the dogs who need a home actually find one. I'd like a year where my roof didn't leak. I'd like to learn something new without forgetting something old. There aren't going to be any formal resolutions this year. Life throws you too many curves for resolutions. I'll definitely give 2011 my best shot though. I'll try not to be overly lazy and I'll do my best to keep the dogs safe and healthy. What more can you ask?

There's a bottle of champagne chilling in the refrigerator right now and I'm going to share a glass or two with Janet later this the evening. Tomorrow, I'll go right back to drinking bottled water, but I survived 2010 and that's definitely worth celebrating. I wish all of you a happy and prosperous New Year. See you next year.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Day 380

There must be a 12-step program somewhere for people like me who have trouble throwing things away. It's painfully obvious that I need to start tossing some things in the office, but it's not nearly as easy as it should be. Today I needed to find a place for the new computer. You'd think I could just set it down somewhere, but every square inch of available real estate was already covered with something. There was literally no room for the computer in the entire office. I finally decided that since I hadn't recorded any songs in almost five years, some of the recording gear could go to the storage warehouse. This carved out enough desk space to set the computer down, but it also made me a little sad. Why haven't I written any new songs lately? Songwriting used to be one of my favorite things. I think there's a part of my brain that just like my storage room. I store away old interests in hopes that they will be rekindled sometay. You never know. I might have a song or two left in me.

It was unbelievably warm today for the end of December. When I walked the dogs this afternoon, I didn't even need a jacket. I don't know long this T-shirt weather is going to last, but I'm certainly enjoying it. The park is really pretty in an austere kind of way in December. All the native prairie grass has turned dry and golden. It almost looks like wheat waiting to be harvested. The leaves on the ground still have their Fall color and the dogs love to run through big piles of them. In another month or so, everything will start looking soggy and bedraggled, but right now there's a picture waiting to be taken around every corner.

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve. I used to always buy something for the company at the end of the year to take advantage of Section 179 expensing, but I think that's how the office got so cluttered. I don't think I'll buy anything tomorrow. Lowering your tax liability isn't quite as big of an issue when you aren't making any money.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Day 379

I have a confession to make. For almost a week there has been a large box sitting in the hallway containing a new computer. I've been very reluctant to open this box, because a box containing a new computer is just about as close to the proverbial Pandora's Box as you're going to get in this world. As soon as you open the box you can expect an avalanche of problems you never expected. All that being said, today I opened the box. Now, setting up a Macintosh is so easy my dogs could do it. The hard part is getting the terabyte of information from the old computer moved over to the new one. That's a little more difficult. I made the mistake of opening the Apple Migration Assistant and hitting go before giving serious thought to how big a terabyte actually is. Both the old and new computers seemed to totally freeze. I watched things for a couple of hours and absolutely nothing seemed to be happening. Then I did a Google search on my iPad and started reading horror stories about other people who had spent three days transferring their files, only to discover that the transfer didn't work. Unfortunately, the Migration Assistant doesn't have a cancel button once the transfer has started. To avoid having things tied up for three days or more, I had to unplug the computer right in the middle of the transfer, clean the mess I'd made off the hard drive and reinstall the system. As you might expect, I'm still writing the blog on the old computer.

Dog class didn't go very smoothly tonight either. Dot and Dash both started jumping the gun and coming to us before we called them during the recall excercises. Dash wanted to play with the other dogs and wouldn't listen to anything I said. It didn't rain this evening, but the ground was still very wet. At the end of the evening, everyone was muddy.

You may notice a new ad for a product called Twhistler over on the left hand column. I'm running this ad because I actually like the Twhistler. What it does is automate the entire process of using Twitter to drive traffic to your blog. You just create the messages you want to send and decide where they should link back to on your blog. Then the application takes care of the rest. Twhistler monitors your Tweets to determine which messages are the most popular and then tracks everything over time to determine the best time of day to send them. I've been experimenting with this to see if I can drive traffic to my business website and was amazed to see that within a week, visitors to some pages almost doubled. Pretty cool. Especially for someone who never really understood what to do with Twitter anyway.

The Dalmatians got another Paypal donation too. That's twice in two days. Thanks Richie!

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Day 378

It was a cold rainy day, so I did cold, rainy day things today. Mostly this involved cleaning mud off the dogs. When I let them outside, they would spend ten seconds racing to the back fence to bark at something only they could see on the other side. Then they would immediately come inside again where I would spend ten minutes cleaning the mud off their paws. This scenario would repeat every few hours.

I lingered over breakfast to make the day seem shorter, but that didn't work very well. It was still raining when I finished. Since work projects are more or less wrapped up for the year, I was forced to do things I try to avoid. I attacked a pile of receipts gathering dust on the side of my desk and balanced my checkbook. I folded dog blankets and finally got them to fit inside the dog blanket cabinet. I did a load of laundry. Real exciting stuff.

I noticed yesterday that someone finally donated to help the Dalmatians using the Paypal donation tool on the blog. A big thank you to Kimberly wherever you are! Some people told me this would never work on a blog, but I think a lot of things just take time. On a different note, people are also finally starting to purchase my photos on iStockphoto. These small rays of hope make me wonder if it might be time to try publishing the blog on Kindle. I know some bloggers are already doing this. Others think the idea is ridiculous. Personally, I can't imagine making any money publishing the blog on Kindle. Especially since Amazon take 70% of anything you might make. I might do it anyway though. It would be so cool to be sitting in an airport waiting for a plane someday and notice that someone was reading my blog on their Kindle.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Monday, December 27, 2010

Day 377

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, but I really need to think more about establishing priorities next year. Somehow, everything I do is equally weighted. The little, trivial things get just as much attention as the big things. I'm not even sure I could recognize a big thing anymore. Today, I wasted an inordinate amount of time going to the grocery store just to buy a bottle of maple syrup after realizing all the syrup in the house was gone after I finished cooking my morning pancakes. I guess I could have just poured honey or molasses over the pancakes, but no...I had to have maple syrup.

Did I think about new ways to make money or identify any new customers to contact today? Not really. I did spend a lot of time wondering why my garbage can was the only can on the entire street waiting to be picked up when I took it out Friday morning. I always take the garbage out on Friday morning. Do the other neighbors know something I don't? When the city only picks up garbage up once a week, you really can't afford to miss garbage day. Now, I've got to keep an eye on the street in the mornings again to see when everybody else is putting their cans out. Why does the city have to keep changing garbage day?

I guess I did do something productive today. I finally got the new E-5 camera configured and running. This is a great camera and has some features that I can actually put to good use. With any luck at all I'll be able to pay for the thing with photography revenues before it becomes obsolete and needs to be replaced with an E-8 or a E-11 or whatever Olympus comes up with next.

If you guys want to find out who you ought to be friends with but probably aren't, just add the mayor of your community to your Facebook friend list. The mayor will always accept your friend request because...well, because the mayor is a politician. I tried this recently and noticed that all the movers and shakers in Dallas immediatelly started showing up on my "people you might know" list. Do I actually know any of these people? Nope. Will I ever meet any of these people? Not very likely. It is interesting to see how low on the food chain I actually am however.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Day 376

I woke up feeling sick this morning and still haven't returned to normal. I don't know whether I came down with a case of stomach flu or got food poisioning or what. Whatever intestinal bug that set up residence in my stomach overnight certainly has put a crimp in my plans for the weekend. I haven't felt like I could hold down food all day and only ate a small piece of toast for dinner.

Luckily, I don't get sick very often, but when I do, it is almost always around the holiday season. So much of my time is spent alone with Dot and Dash instead of with other people that I think I've lost some of my resistance to normal holiday germs. Maybe I picked up a cold doing gift wrapping on Christmas Eve, or maybe the butcher sneezed on the Crown Roast. Who knows. I just hope this passes quickly, because I'm going to be real hungry tomorrow if I still can't hold down food.

Janet and Ann took care of the Dalmatians up at K-9 University today while I went back to sleep under one of Dash's new Christmas blankets. The dogs are good little nurses. They both curled up next to me and kept me warm for most of the day. I did go up to Wagging Tail Dog Park later this afternoon with Janet and the dogs. I was getting tired of sitting under a blanket all day and thought some outdoor air would do me some good.

Hopefully, I'll feel a lot better tomorrow because it's back to work for me. I've got a lot of little projects that I need to get finished before the end of the year. I guess it wouldn't really hurt anything if I deleyed some of these projects until January, but it's just easier to get them done now. They're all on this year's budget's anyway, so I doubt that anyone wants to pay all over again next year.

It seems like it's been almost a month since I got my new Olympus E-5. I still haven't even taken it out of the box. Maybe that would be a good thing to start with tomorrow.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Saturday, December 25, 2010

Day 375 - Christmas

It seemed like today was a non-stop eating extravaganza. After eating a big breakfast ourselves, we took the Dalmatian Rescue dogs up at K-9 University their Christmas dinner. Each of the dogs gets a fresh chicken breast on holidays after their walk. The dogs love this special Christmas treat, but they certainly don't linger over their meal. This year Alvin won the fastest eater award. It seemed like he finished his entire bowl of chicken before I could count to ten. We played with the dogs for a while after feeding and walking them and then went home to fix our own Christmas dinner.

Janet cooked a Crown Roast of Pork this year and the house smelled delicious while it was in the oven. We enjoyed our meal with a sweet potato casserole, green beans and cornbread stuffing. It really seemed more like Sunday today than Saturday. I think will be strange not to go back to work tomorrow, because it definitely feels like Sunday evening to me right now.

It was a lot colder today than I expected. I don't think the temperature got above 35 degrees all day. Dot and Dash wore their Winter coats on their evening walk and we all got a big surprise when we rounded a corner in the trail and saw a disheveled looking man sitting on a green folding chair up in a tree ahead of us. The man was talking on his cell phone as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be sitting high in a tree on Christmas Day in a green folding chair. On a cold day like this I would have thought that all the nuts would be home talking to their television sets, but clearly this guy had other ideas. I'm still not sure if the guy was a bird watcher or a serial killer. Dot certainly didn't like him though. As soon as she saw the guy in the tree, she started the high pitched, frantic barking she usually reserves for the garbage truck.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Friday, December 24, 2010

Day 374

For the past four or five years we've spent Christmas Eve afternoons doing gift wrapping at a Barnes & Noble store. The bookstore lets various charities do gift wrapping in their stores during the holiday season for donations. This has been a good fundraiser for Dalmatian Rescue. Chrismas Eve is usually the best day of the season for us, because the stores are filled with forlorn looking guys who have waited until the last possible minute to do their Christmas Shopping. Most of these guys would do anything to avoid wrapping their last minute gifts themselves and they often donate generously when they learn we'll do their wrapping for them. Sometimes, these guys will even ask if we would pick out their gifts for them as well. Today, we thought we could attract a little more attention to our gift wrapping station if we had some real Dalmatians with us. Dot & Dash were our ambassadors for the breed today and they did quite well working the crowd. Whenever Dash made his trademark squeaking noises, people would go "Aww..." and throw five dollars into our donation pot. Everyone thought Dot and Dash were cute, and the odd little noises Dash made were much more effective for soliciting donations than those brass bells the Salvation Army guys always ring.

Last Christmas Eve, we had a major snowstorm in Dallas. This year it only rained. It's definitely the kind of weather where you want to stay inside where it's warm. With the weather so bad in other parts of the country, I really wouldn't want to be flying anywhere today. I'm content to spend the holidays at home doing as little as possible. The dogs must feel the same way. They're both already asleep. Dot and Dash didn't really do all that much today, but you'd never know it by looking at them now. You'd think they'd both climbed Pike's Peak instead of standing around letting little kids pet them in a Barnes & Noble store.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Thursday, December 23, 2010

Day 373

I did some last minute shopping at Northpark today and was amazed at the crowds. I've never seen the mall this packed with people before. The place was total gridlock. I was stuck in parking lot traffic for so long on the way home that it reminded me of the Dr. Who re-run I watched during breakfast this morning. This was the episode where the doctor encounters a group of people trapped on a motorway in New Earth. It often took the people on this motorway six years to reach the nearest exit. The Northpark parking lot was pretty much like this today. Either the recession hasn't hit Dallas yet, or people just don't care. Every time I've ventured out of the house this week, I've immediately become immersed in a beehive of buying activity. Some stores are so picked over that they look half empty.

As Christmas approaches I get fewer and fewer work-related calls. Some clients are on vacation and the rest are in the process of wrapping things up for the year. I'd be amazed if I get any new projects for the rest of the year. I should use these slow periods to do something fun, but I seldom do. Slow periods like this make me nervous. What if things don't pick up again after the first of the year? What if it stays slow like this forever? Business almost always does pick up again after New Year's Day, but I'm in a very unpredictable profession. You never really know.

Being nervous isn't entirely bad. It forces me to think about how to improve what I do. One thing I've already decided is that I'm going to do is upgrade my office computers and software. I didn't really think that getting a cell phone and an iPad this year would make any difference at all, but surprisingly it did. It just makes sense that I should take the next step. If I bring everything in the office up-to-date, maybe I'll see even more dramatic improvements in the year ahead. I hate to spend the small profit I made this year just buying new equipment, but as they always say: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Day 372

I had another meeting with my financial advisor today. We agreed to buy some things and sell some things, but I still don't feel very comfortable. Five years ago, I felt like like I could retire whenever I felt like it. Then along came the financial meltdown of 2008. I lost so much between October of 2008 and the March lows off 2009 that I still haven't fully recovered. I'm left with a feeling somewhere between irritation and dispair. Let's just say I don't think about retirement much anymore. Sure, the market has gone up in recent months and I've even benefited from the current bullish sendiment. It's all pretty fragile though. One day of bad news can easily erase an entire month's worth of market gains. I still hope to get back to even one of these days, but I've got a long way to go. One or two of my friends have already gotten back to even. They were the ones smart enough to buy gold at the end of 2008.

The dogs were jumpy at training class tonight. There was one aggressive dog that went after some of the other dogs and this incident put the rest of the dogs in class on edge. Dash seemed scared the entire evening. I think most of you already know that Dot an Dash were rescued. We don't know much about their life prior to adopting them, but I'm convinced that Dash was abused at some point. On evenings like tonight when there is a lot of commotion and people start yelling at their dogs, Dash doesn't do very well. We made it through the evening though and now both dogs are happily asleep on their beds.

I've got to go back to the doctor tomorrow for a follow up visit to eveluate my recent surgery. I'm feeling pretty good this week, so I don't anticipate any surprises. I'd just as soon finish out the rest of the year without any more surprises at all. Dalmatian Rescue does gift wrapping at Barnes & Noble stores during the holidays to raise money for the dogs. Janet & I usually take the Christmas Eve shift, because we seldom have anything better to do. This year they want us to bring Dot and Dash to the store with us. That might be an afternoon full of surprises right there.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Day 371

Yay! Not only did I happen to see one of my Paypal ads on the Internet today, I also found out that Dalmatian Rescue was selected as one of the winning charities in the Paypal FundRazr contest. We got off to a slow start, so I didn't think we actually had a chance of winning. Everyone worked really hard to share the application though, and in the end our efforts paid off. The whole idea of a viral fundraising tool that you use on Facebook is pretty new to most charities, but I think it could be a game changer for many. Once you try it, you realize that there are whole new ways of reaching out to people. Hey, if you've got a charity or a cause that you care about, you ought to go take a look at the FundRazr application yourself. If this tool can raise money to help save Dalmatians. it could certainly help your church or charity as well.

With the year drawing to a close, it's time to start thinking about what I'm going to do in 2011. About this time last year, I decided that it was time for me to quit being such a Luddite and try my hand at social networking. I started this blog. I got myself a cell phone. I even joined Facebook. I don't think the verdict is in yet, but can certainly see the potential in this brave new world. Social networking tools are a super easy and efficient way to stay connected with friends and colleagues. I've already re-established a few business connections that might actually bring me some work in the year ahead. On the other hand, all this social networking can be incredibly time consuming. Once you've got a blog, you've got to keep feeding it with new content. It's very much like putting out your own little daily newspaper. Once you've got a bunch of Facebook friends, you can't just ignore them either. After all the blogging, the messaging and the posting to forums is done, there really isn't much time for anything else.

At any rate, we'll see how it goes. I do know that the house is a bit messier since I started blogging. Things on a time line, like client website updates and getting this post published before midnight always seem to take priority over things that can wait until tomorrow. Even keeping the large printer unclogged seems to have taken priority over basics like vacuuming the carpets and watering the plants. Maybe next year's goal should be to strike some sort of a balance. This is easier said than done, since I'm not a very balanced person. I usually either get obsessed by something or completely ignore it. We'll give it a shot though. Balance is good.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Monday, December 20, 2010

Day 370

I love an eclipse. I've actually seen quite a few of these events. I've seen one total eclipse of the sun, half a dozen partial eclipses of the sun and countless eclipses of the moon. I haven't seen anything like the eclipse that starts a little later this evening though, mostly because there hasn't been one quite like this for 372 years. Tonight a solstice and a total lunar eclipse coincide for the first time in a very long time. We watched the full moon rise on our evening walk and later tonight I'll go outside again and watch the eclipse itself as it starts around midnight.

For the first time in three months I finally remembered that bulky and brushy trash pickup is tomorrow morning and hauled the large pile of dead tree limbs that have been an eyesore in our backyard out to the street to be collected. It's hard for me to remember "big trash" day, because the city won't let you bring your trash out to the street while it's on your mind. You've got to wait for one specific day each month and if you forget, you wait again until the same day next month. I'm not good at this sort of thing, although I guess it would be easier if I just marked "Big Trash Day" on my appointment calendar, like everything else I tend to forget. At any rate, all the unsightly limbs are finally gone. Now, I just need to replace the unsightly dirt with some new grass.

I tried using my iPhone camera on my walk with Dot and Dash tonight for the first time. This is much easier than trying to take pictures with a heavy DSLR camera around my neck while the dogs are tugging and pulling me around the next bend in the road. I actually managed to get a few halfway decent pictures while the dogs were busy smelling critters in the bushes. I think I'll try this again. I've missed a huge number of great photos on our daily walks over the years, simply because I didn't have a camera with me. I'm really impressed with this little camera. Too bad I have no control over the shutter speed or aperture though. Maybe there's an app for that.

Little Lexi, the new Dalmatian I met last Sunday at K-9 University already has a home. Sometimes a dog just gets lucky. I can't remember a dog in our rescue program finding a home so quickly for quite a while. She still gets to be "Dalmatian of the Day" though and today seems like a good day.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Sunday, December 19, 2010

Day 369

It's hard to believe that it was snowing in much of the country today. It was another pleasant Fall day in Dallas. The sky was clear and the temperature was seventy-five degrees. The trees in our backyard are finally starting to acquire the beautiful red and gold colors that people further North experienced several months ago. I know there are people in town who are wishing for snow right now, but I'm not one of them. I enjoy these mild Indian Summer days we've been having lately. Last year we did get some snow around this time of year and it was a huge mess. We tend to get ice storms here instead of snow and the roads become a demolition derby. It's bad enough driving in the rain here in Texas, but when the roads ice over, all bets are off. I remember returning from an evening Dalmatian Rescue event last Christmas during an ice storm and I thought I'd never make it home. I"ll leave the snow and ice to my Northern friends. Days like today are much more enjoyable.

There was a new Dalmatian up at K-9 University when we went to walk the dogs today. Her name is Lexi and she's cute as a button. I think this girl is already adopted and is just here temporarily until she goes to the vet and gets all her shots. When we get a small female in the rescue program, they tend to find a home almost immediately. The larger males aren't always so lucky. When you get to know these dogs, you start to wonder why some dogs get picked and others don't. Sometimes extremely nice, well behaved dogs get totally ignored. Other times dogs with serious behavior problems get picked right away. I guess the dog world isn't that different from the people world. Life isn't always fair.

It's hard to believe that Christmas is next week. The year will be over soon. It's always interesting to listen to the politicians and the TV commentators make their predictions about what 's going to happen in the year ahead. I don't think any of them even have a clue. Nobody can predict the future. I don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Saturday, December 18, 2010

Day 368

I want the Tardis for my storage room. I definitely need something like the Tardis that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside, because my storage room is completely full. Full or not, I was forced to shoehorn even more junk into the tiny room this afternoon, because it was cleaning day at our house again. It's amazing how stuff accumulates. I had totally forgotten about the hazmat suit I got in a moment of panic on the day after 9/11. I guess I don't need that anymore. I haven't found much use for a basketball Dick Vitale gave me fifteen years ago either. We found an old fashioned matched set of luggage that had Janet's name on the baggage tags, but she couldn't remember ever using them. I also found the install disc for a Palm Pilot that I'd looked everywhere for several years ago when the Palm crashed and took all it's contact information with it. Of course, now that I found the disc, the Palm Pilot is gone. I think it got thrown away on a previous cleaning day. Janet takes her unused stuff straight to the Goodwill store on cleaning day. I usually take my stuff to the storage room instead. The storage room is kind of like a holding cell for obsolete objects that I've grown fond of. Eventually, I do throw stuff away, but only when the room becomes so full that the door won't shut. If only I had the Tardis.

I fixed my favorite recipe for breakfast this morning. Actually, it is the only recipe that I've ever come up with in my life. I like it though. I start by cutting up sausage and ham into small squares and letting them brown in a fry pan. Then I slice and dice red and green bell peppers and add them to the meat. When this has cooked a few minutes, I add some black pepper and four tablespoons of hot chipotle salsa to the mix. I let this simmer for about five minutes and then fold in three eggs. I whip the eggs really fast with a spatula until the whole mix acquires the consistancy of peanut butter. The eggs are not like a scrambled egg at all, but are smooth and creamy instead. Finally I spread the dish on thick slices of toast and eat it. It sounds ridiculous, but it is actually quite tasty. Maybe I should try something more ambitious, but my culinary quest seems to have ended at breakfast eggs. I guess I have invented a few weird variations on French Toast too, but I don't know if that counts.

I needed to get another memory card for one on my cameras today and came home with something that holds 48 GB of data on a tiny chip the size of my thumbnail. This is simply amazing to me. Earlier in the afternoon, I came across one of my first video editing hard drives in the storage room. It was state-of-the-art at the time. The thing weighed fifteen pounds and was the size of a toaster. I thought it was an enormous hard drive at the time. This expensive brick could store a whopping 5GB of data.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Friday, December 17, 2010

Day 367

I feel poor today. I usually pay bills around this time of the month, but today there were a couple of extra checks to write. Property taxes are due. I never used to think about property taxes when I had a mortgage. The property taxes are built into your mortage payment and you don't really notice them. It is only when you pay the mortgage off that you begin to notice just how much the government is taking for the privilege of letting you own a house. I hate these property taxes because they always come due at the end of the year when there are a lot of other obligations anyway. What can you do though? You either pay the tax or lose the property.

When I discovered that I wasn't completely broke after paying all the bills, I decided to buy a few things online. I must be the world's worst online shopper. Every time I try to buy something, I find myself calling the company's help line to ask why the whole process isn't working as I expected. Today, when I tried to check out, the website kept charging me postage, even though there was a big banner on the website landing page saying that all postage was free from now until Christmas. When I finally reached the help desk, the conversation went kind of like this: "I'm trying to check out and I can't find the free postage option on your shipping menu." "Let me look at your ticket sir, and see what you are ordering." "OK, I"ll wait" A short pause and then I hear "Sir, that item doesn't qualify for free postage." "Why not? Your website says you are offering free postage on everything you sell until Christmas." "Well, everything except the item you're buying....we still have to charge postage on that."

This kind of thing happens to me more than you might think. There's always a Catch-22 that lets them weasel out of the sweet deal I thought I was getting. I went ahead and ordered anyway, but the experience was irritating. Catch-22 scenarios like this are commonplace when I take my car to be repaired. I'm starting to realize that online shopping can be just as confusing.

I'm glad the weekend is here. I never really caught up on things after spending Tuesday in the hospital. I guess it doesn't take much to throw me off schedule. Hey, weekends are for catching up though. Tomorrow, I'll catch up on everything. And if I don't? Well, there's always Sunday.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Thursday, December 16, 2010

Day 366

I feel a lot better today. I'm almost back to my old self again. It's still surprising to me when a doctor delivers exactly what they promised. Too many times you try something your doctor suggests and end up feeling worse than you did before. At least this guy didn't just give me another pill to take. I'm tired of all these pills. Every time I listen to one of those pharmaceutical company commercials on TV and hear the legal disclaimer at the end telling people that the pill can cause everything from hair loss to sudden death, I wonder why we've grown to depend on pills so much. I'll take a guy with a space-age laser any day of the week.

Gremlins are getting into some of the older websites I've designed. Increasingly, I'm discovering that things I designed five years ago just don't look right in modern browsers. I had to re-code something today that looked good several months ago, but now looks horrible when viewed using the latest version of Firefox. Luckiy, I was able to fix the problem, but looking at what I'd done before made me realize that I was a pretty sloppy designer five years ago. Live and learn I guess. By the time I bring my current crop of mistakes up to code, I imagine that the web will have morphed into something entirely different again.

I got a call on my cell phone today and it startled me. I get so few calls on this phone that at first I thought the ring tone noise was the sound the phone makes when the battery is fully charged. It's still hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that phones are for incoming messages too. I mostly just use them for outgoing messages. Truthfully, I mostly just use my iPhone to take pictures with. It's got a great little camera.

Now that I'm getting more familiar with Facebook, I'm starting to wonder whether it's rude to ignore game requests. I really don't have the time to play those Facebook games, but I'm starting to get a lot of requests. I don't even know what half of them mean, but usually they have something to do with Farmville. Hey, don't be offended if I don't play Farmville with you. I've still got watches to photograph.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Day 365 - Blogiversary

I think I picked the right name for this blog. On a day where my doctor said I should relax and take a long hot bath, I celebrated my first blogiversary by doing what I always do. I worked. I tried to make a foolproof map for a client who said that Google maps were sending his customers to the wrong place. I added links to a Facebook fan page for a company that only has four fans. I tried to understand why my financial advisor was in such a hurry to get me to buy something today after ignoring me for three months.

I did these mundane chores while trying to pass broken pieces of the kidney stones that the surgeon broke apart with his laser yesterday. I thought I was home free when I was released from the hospital, but evidently it is not uncommon for pieces of the stones to be left behind after the proceedure. All in all, it felt more like a day to simply endure than a day of celebration.

The day did deserve a celebration though. At least a small one. Today was a milestone for me. I completed an entire year of blogging without missing a single day. Each day ended with a new post and a new photograph. I became a more disciplined writer this year and in the process, I made new friends, became part of a larger community of bloggers and gained some valuable insights into where my life was headed.

I thought my life was boring before I started the blog. Nothing has really changed, but I feel more connected now. I think that writing everything down one day at a time has made me a bit more appreciative of what I already have in life and a lot less likely to whine about what I don't have. It's really not a bad life. I'm active in animal rescue. I have a few clients who still depend on me. I have Janet and two of the best dogs in the world. That's more than enough for me. If I started this blog five years ago, every day would have been a major whine fest. I don't feel that way any more. I'm still a bit cynical and I don't always feel like getting up in the morning, but at least I can acknowledge now that there's a reason why I'm here on this earth.

Year two is likely to be very much like year one. I don't think that's a bad thing though. There are still plenty of Dalmatians who need a home. I lost my largest client this year, but was able to replace the billing by adding three smaller clients and doing a lot of hard work. I intend to keep working and keep learning. Hey, I may have been the last person on the planet to get a cell phone, but I did get one this year. I finally got a Facebook page as well. Who know what next year will bring. It might be hard to top a year where Dot and Dash got on the evening news and I was selected to be in Paypal ads, but it's worth a try.

I'll continue taking things one day at a time. I'll write it all down. And I'll do my best to appreciate each day as it comes. I hope you guys will continue the journey with me, because I've certainly enjoyed having you along for the ride.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Day 364

Getting kidney and bladder stones removed isn't the most pleasant thing in the world, but it certainly could have been a lot worse. I don't like hospitals. I'll have to admit though that the doctors and nurses at Medical City couldn't have been nicer. I struck up a conversation with my anesthesiologist and discovered that he took his cat to one of my veterinarian clients. It's a small world. I think I may have taken pictures of the anesthesiologist's daughter while she was working as an intern for the veterinarian. I couldn't really remember however. I've taken lots of employee pictures. The anesthesiologist said his daughter couldn't decide whether to become a writer or a vet. I told him that she should stick with veterinary medicine. There aren't many unemployed vets, but there are tons of unemployed writers. As the drugs started to kick in, the last thing I remember was my surgeon and the anesthesiologist talking about dogs.

When I woke up, I remember telling the surgeon that I didn't want to be catheterized if at all possible. Too late. I already was, and I ended up being wheeled out of the hospital with a bag full of pee strapped to my waist. That old rule that says the customer is always right doesn't seem to apply to doctors. They're going to do whatever they want no matter what you say. I'm sure that most doctors get sick of listening to me anyway. I'm always suggesting that they try treatments that my veterinarian has used on my dogs.

My day at the hospital put me a bit behind with my work, but I'll have plenty of time to catch up tomorrow. Based on my current condition, I doubt if I'll feel like going anywhere. On the eve of my first blogiversary, I'll have to admit that it was a pretty interesting year. I didn't miss a single day either, which is amazing for a lazy guy like me. Come back tomorrow and share a little virtual birthday cake with me. I hope all of you will join me for another year.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day