Day 2485

I wrote another letter to my Luddite sister today. I do this about once a month. Anything more often would seem excessive. I've grown to like these old fashioned hand written letters. They make me realize that there is really no need for instant answers. Speed and quality are two different things entirely. Wandering through a library looking at dust jackets on potentially interesting books seems more satisfying than reading reviews on Amazon. Waiting for a letter seems much more satisfying than being forced to instantly reply to an e-mail. I don't like how the Internet has sped everything up and destroyed our power of concentration in the process. Maybe I'm a Luddite as well. If the Internet ceased to exist, it wouldn't bother me one bit.

I discontinued Dot's physical therapy today. Maybe this is temporary and maybe it's permanent. I just don't know. What I do know is that the trip downtown take more out of her now than she gets back from the therapy. Lately, every visit has resulted in a perceived loss instead of a gain. I think it's time for a rest.

Dot had a lot of accidents today, so I did a lot of laundry. At one point I even had to take Dot outside and clean her off with a garden hose after a particularly nasty mess. I keep thinking that I should be able to anticipate and even master these incontinence issues, but nothing has been very predictable. I try to make sure she sleeps on a disposable pad and even put one under her while she's eating her meals. She never gives much warning when she needs to go unfortunately and I often get caught by surprise.

I picked up a new LED bulb for a kitchen fixture today because the existing bulb has been flickering for weeks. I thought that LED bulbs were supposed to be completely trouble free, but apparently not. I've had quite a few fail on me and have subsequently learned not to buy the cheap Chinese brands. I got a Philips bulb this time, but failed to notice the color temperature of the bulb on the packaging. I like the daylight balanced bulbs better, but the warmer tungsten balanced bulbs seems to be getting more popular. Oh, well. It's not worth taking the bulb back. I guess I can live with one yellow bulb mixed in with a bunch of white ones.

I wonder why Apple made so many changes with IOS 10? A lot of the changes seem purely cosmetic. There's a different kind of clicking sound when you turn the phone off. You no longer swipe from left to right to unlock the phone, but are asked to press the home button instead. Why?  I hate to see things change like this after I've gotten used to using the old system. I could understand if the changes made things better, but I think the designers just got bored and wanted to do something different.

I get bored frequently, but seldom see a need to arbitrarily change things. People used to kid me for continuing to use a very old version of Photoshop. I knew this version backwards and forwards though and could make it do things that friends with the latest updates still hadn't mastered. I see little point in racing into the future until we have learned from the past and mastered the present. I think this is what my sister is trying to tell me. She writes a good longhand letter.

Hobbs is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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