Day 967

Do you know what you get after an August rain in Texas? You get steam. After an unexpected downpour this morning, I climbed up on the roof to remove the water and was greeted by clouds of steam rising from the rapidly evaporating water. I guess I should thank the sun for helping me get the water off the roof, because it wasn't all that long before the roof was completely dry again. Although I usually dread rain, today's shower was welcome. The grass and shrubs in the yard got some much needed attention. The areas on the roof that I patched last month appeared to hold and there were no discernible leaks. Since the rain came without the usual thunder and lightning, Dot and Dash weren't even all that upset. Although today's shower was welcome relief, it's going to take more than a single day of rain to turn things green again. It's still very hot and dry.

I saw this new website called Instacanvas this morning that claimed it could take all your Instagram pictures and turn them into large frameable canvases that you could sell online. Cool! Since passive income is the holy grail of most bloggers, I immediately requested to join this site. They couldn't have made it more complicated to set up a gallery if they tried. First, you had to send a message to your Facebook friends and ask them to request to see your gallery of photos.  Then you had to do the same thing on Twitter. Finally, you had to take a photo of their invitation to join and upload it to Instagram. Phew! Suddenly this whole thing wasn't nearly as interesting. Something this complicated will probably never work. I'm still hoping to set up a gallery on this site though. I take a ton of Instagram pictures and I never expected that any of them would earn me a dime of income. If it turns out that a few people actually want to buy prints of these pictures, that would be great.

This morning's rain cooled things down by at least fifteen degrees, so I was hoping that dog training class would be pleasant tonight. No such luck. The temperature was cooler, but there was absolutely no wind and the air was so humid and muggy you could cut it with a knife. Once again, the dogs thought we were crazy for taking them out of a nice air conditioned house for something like this.

I'm still fascinated by the new pictures coming from the Curiosity rover. Did you see the picture of Curiosity floating to the surface of Mars at the end of its parachute that was taken by another satalite orbiting the planet? Amazing! They say that if this picture was snapped even one second later, it wouldn't have captured anything. I used to love astronomy when I was in high school. I never was good at physics and math though. That's probably why I ended up in advertising. You don't have to be good at math to excel in advertising. Truthfully, you don't really have to be good at anything.

Lilly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 965

I was disappointed to see so many disparaging comments about the Curiosity lander on the Internet this morning. Where was the universal applause that followed the moon landing in 1969? Sure, there were a ton of positive comments about Curiosity, but they came with an undercurrent of disapproval. Some said the NASA money should have been used to feed the hungry. Others said that the imagination and technical wizardry of NASA scientists was misplaced and should have been used to turn the Sahara, the Gobi, and Antarctica into gardens instead.

You've got to be kidding! What would be the point of turning the Sahara and Antarctica into gardens? If you turned the entire planet into a wonderful place for humans to live and breed, that's exactly what they would do. Why is it that overpopulation is the one problem that most humanists just don't want to deal with? There are way too many people already. Personally, I applaud the audacity of the Curiosity team at JPL. I think the most appropriate role of the best and brightest among us has always been to test the limits of what is possible. What a waste it would be to use the best and brightest to simply level the playing field for the rest of us. Yay Higgs boson. Boo endless debates about universal healthcare. Ultimately, there is more benefit in a few reaching Mars than in millions sitting in front of televisions, watching future episodes of "The Real Housewives of Antarctica."

This is the beauty of dogs. They aren't judgmental. They don't nitpick about website designs. They don't take an amazing technical achievement and try to turn it into political fodder. I like the simplicity of eating, sleeping, and doing the best you can at whatever happens to capture your fancy. By and large, I don't care what other people do with their time and their money. I am human though, so occasionally I get up on a soapbox like everyone else. I'll admit that I do like technology and admire people with big dreams. If there was a starship headed outbound, I'd want to be on it. So, three cheers for the Curiosity team and their amazing achievement. If you have to raise my taxes to pay for more ambitious spaceships in the future, go right ahead. If you want to raise my taxes for anything else though, just forget about it.

Margo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 964

I'm looking forward to watching live coverage of the Curiosity rover landing attempt later this evening. This landing seems incredibly difficult compared to the bouncing beach ball landings of Spirit and Opportunity in 2004. Even though I have a short attention span, I was utterly fascinated by these two earlier rovers and would visit the JPL website just about every evening for at least three months to look at the new pictures that had been transmitted to earth. I cheered the unstoppable Opportunity on as it made its epic journey toward the Victoria Crater. I rooted for the intrepid little Spirit as it slowly climbed through the Columbia Hills. When I was in college, I was convinced that there'd be humans on Mars by now. I never dreamed we'd channel all our creative energy into making smart phones instead. At any rate, even though the space program has slowed to a crawl, I still welcome any sort of forward progress. If the Curiosity makes a successful landing later this evening, maybe we'll still make it to Mars in my lifetime.

It was so hot today that I didn't even attempt my normal Sunday to-do list. The dogs got their walks and a little off leash time at the dog park, but that was about it. The yard chores will just have to wait until a cooler day. Since I couldn't find anything good to watch on TV this afternoon, I was forced to do a little website work. This was probably a good thing, because I finally finished the loathsome online form revisions I've been avoiding for weeks. Forms have always been problematic for me because I'm not very good with tedious details. All you have to do is mistype one little thing in an online form and it won't work properly. Hopefully the seven new forms I created today will work perfectly when the client tests them on Monday.

I was eating dessert tonight when something came on TV saying that sugar was increasingly being linked to many forms of cancer. Damn! I've known for years that sugar isn't good for you, but this show made it seem worse than tobacco. According to the doctors being interviewed, you just shouldn't consume any sugar at all. This probably wasn't the best show to be watching while eating chocolate gelato and peach pie. So far, alcohol, salt, sugar, white flour and of course my beloved bacon are all to be avoided. What's next?  Personally, I miss the days when everybody smoked cigarettes and nobody wore seatbelts.

I don't really know what's on the docket for tomorrow. Maybe I'll just wait and see which of the squeaky wheels squeaks the loudest.

Morgan is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day