Day 2024

My unfocused Monday is rapidly turning into an unfocused week. I thought I'd get started on a new website project today, but ran into a major snag almost immediately. Instead of just using text for navigation buttons, I've always liked to use images instead. Having a photo that turns into a negative of the same photo when you roll your mouse over the link always looked kind of cool to me. This simple image swap behavior was always easy to do using Dreamweaver and Fireworks, but I still haven't figured out an effective way to accomplish the same thing using a responsive design framework like Webflow or Macaw. Basically, I wasted a lot of time experimenting with things that didn't work very well, and finally ended up erasing everything and starting over toward the end of the day. These trial and error exercises are usually how I learn things, but there are times when I think there's got to be an easier way.

I've created a monster by feeding the dogs a banana while I eat my breakfast. This worked well for a few days, but now both dogs start barking if I don't feed them a slice of banana every ten or fifteen seconds. Instead of training them to stay quiet and let me eat in peace, they've trained me to feed them the banana at regular intervals. Breakfast has become like a conditioned response experiment run amok. Dot and Dash have become Pavlov and I have become the dog. Now, they're starting to expect something at dinner too. I'm not sure how this is going to end.

I made a repeat trip to the park after sunset this evening to look for Venus and Jupiter and this time I was successful. The two planets weren't quite as close together as they would have been last night, but still it was a sight worth seeing. After walking about half a mile to find a good vantage point, I discovered on the way home that I could see the planetary conjunction just as well from my own backyard. This would actually be a good time to walk the dogs if it weren't so dark. The air cools down surprisingly quickly after the sun sets.

The Apple Health App has been sitting unused on my phone ever since I upgraded to IOS 8. I never really knew what it was for until I started wearing the Apple Watch. Now, I'm learning all sorts of interesting things. One thing I was completely unaware of is that my heart rate is higher than it should be when I'm sleeping. I supposed this has something to do with taking time release Niacin every night before I go to bed. Sometimes when I wake up at night the Niacin flushing drives me nuts. It probably also raises my heart rate. Since I'm taking another pill to slow down my heart rate, something is all wrong here. One more thing to ask my doctor about. I tried to do a little research on Google, but that is seldom a good idea. You can look up virtually any health condition on Google and find ten different plausible answers. If you keep reading long enough, you will inevitably conclude that you are going to die.

Sometimes ideas come to me in my sleep. I hope I discover a solution for my website dilemma while I'm sleeping. I certainly wasted enough time on this today. I guess I could just abandon using rollover images as navigation buttons, but I'm stubborn. I bet I'll find the answer I'm looking for tomorrow. I'll have to find the answer in the morning, because Thursdays are really Dot's day. I hope she does well at her physical therapy session. She seemed kind of shaky today. I'm hoping a good night's sleep will be good for all of us.

Bentley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day