Day 2296

The landscapers came out today. They think it's funny that I have to replace the grass every year. I think I'm their only customer where they have to do something like this. The turf is always installed properly and I water and feed it properly. The problem is that the roots from the large Oak trees in the back yard suck up all the water and the canopy of leaves blocks out direct sunlight. The yard just doesn't get enough sunlight for St. Augustine grass to thrive. Bermuda Grass needs even more sunlight and won't grow at all. I've planted most of the yard with ground cover that does well in shady areas, but the dogs like to sit out in the grass during the Summer, so we put in a small patch of grass every Spring for them. The yard looks great until August and then it gradually starts to die out. It's not an ideal solution, but it's better than nothing.

I added an SSL Certificate to my website this afternoon. The certificate is probably overkill, since I'm not selling anything on the site and have little need for security. Modern browsers increasingly expect a secure site though, so I guess it was worth the effort. The whole process was a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be. I had to add some code so that people who had already bookmarked the http: version of the site wouldn't get an error message and would go to the new https: version instead. The web hosting folks said that the SSL Certificate would improve my search rankings. I kind of doubt this is true, but we'll see what happens.

It was time to get more Allopurinol and Levothyroxine for Dash today. It seems like I'm always picking up pills for somebody. Dot takes meds to control her blood pressure and chemotherapy drugs to control her cancer. Dash takes Phenobarbital to control seizures, along with his daily thyroid and blood pressure meds. My own prescriptions are mostly to control high blood pressure and cholesterol, although there are a few for other things as well. I can't even remember why I'm taking some of them. There's a whole little area in the kitchen now just for pills. Dot takes her chemotherapy medication every third day, so we never end up taking the pills on the same day. I have to use a calendar to keep track of all this. It gets complicated.

It's ironic that I used to have to use a calendar to keep track of work deadlines. Now, I just use the calendar to keep track of prescriptions. Work is pretty easy to manage these days. When a job comes in, I usually just do it right away because I'm so bored. I haven't had a backlog of work in quite a while.

I finally got the forms working again on the new web server. This was a questionable use of my time, because nobody uses the forms anymore. Typically, they get filled out by spam-bots that randomly type gibberish in each of the form fields. I probably should have eliminated the forms instead of fixing them. They were fantastic in 1995. Now, they're just a nuisance.

Spring is when the Purple Martins return. Unfortunately, it's also when the cockroaches return as well. While I was writing this, I looked down and saw a huge roach sitting on my foot. This startled me and I flinched, flipping the bug up in the air. Lord knows where it landed, because I can't find the disgusting thing now. My office is so full of clutter that the bug could stay hidden for another month. Such is life in the South.

Elliott is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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