Day 3848

I've discovered some curious things about Facebook that reveal equally curious things about me. When I created the Some Assembly Required group, I just assumed that my daily posts would always appear in chronological order. Nope. If someone comments on an older post, Facebook automatically changes the order of the posts so the post with the most recent comments appears first. It messes up the timeline.

I can manually change the order back so that the most recent post appears first, but Facebook seems determined to prioritize activity rather than chronological order. I have to keep changing "New Activity" back to "Recent Posts" almost every day. It drives me nuts. There is also often a suggested list of other Facebook groups that might interest members. Why is this here? I'm always deleting these groups because I'm not interested in them at all, but Facebook just keeps suggesting something else.

At first I thought I was really clever by creating a version of the blog that was just a series of JPEG images. Facebook loves pictures and appears to hate links. I'm still mad that Facebook arbitrarily erased years and years of blog posts because their AI robots decided that the daily links back to my Blogger address were spam. I wish more people would just read the real blog on Blogger. The type is crisp and much easier to read. You can click on each day's main picture and enlarge it. And you can click on each Dog of the Day to go to a more detailed story about the dog on the Dalmatian Rescue website. The Facebook blog is just a daily JPEG image of the real blog. Apparently when you give people a choice between good and easy, they will always pick easy. At any rate, the blog really does exist independent of Facebook. I don't even like Facebook. Hey, if you ever feel like reading the real blog, just go to https://john-sealander.blogspot.com and bookmark the address. It's easy.

I guess Facebook has come to represent many of the things I dislike about modern life. If I click on a story about the new Ford Bronco, I instantly get an endless stream of updates on my timeline about four wheel drive vehicles. There must be a connection between Facebook and Google, because if you Google anything, you will automatically start receiving information about that subject on Facebook. I love all the dog pictures, but I hate seeing people I actually know trying to shame people who don't share their beliefs. I've grown tired of all the "If you blah, blah, blah, just delete me now" posts as well. Who cares.

I've spend a significant chunk of my life designing websites and writing for online clients. It seems totally natural for me to turn on the computer every morning and spend hours in front of the screen. This is how I made my living for many years. I'm finally starting to realize that there is no need to do this anymore. I'm retired. I think a worthy goal would be to find something satisfying to do for long periods of time that doesn't require a computer or even interactions with other people. My dad never used a computer and seemed happy making little wood carvings of animals after he retired. I do like technology though and am fairly lazy. It's a dilemma.

The weather was much cooler this morning and there was no threat of rain. We were able to walk five miles with Dawn with no problems at all. I wish these daily walks took longer so I wouldn't have to think of how to spend the rest of my day. It's a shame that my little niche of following rocket launches has been taken away by the coronavirus. That was working pretty well.

Delaney is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3725

I think I figured out a way that my Facebook readers can still see the blog. I created a new Facebook Group called Some Assembly Required and each night after I publish my blog entry, I take a picture of the post and upload it to the Facebook Group. There are no links and no text for the robot censors to pass judgement on. The only thing I'm actually putting on Facebook is a JPEG image. The group is private and only people who seem to like reading the blog anyway are invited. I think this is a clever plan. Let's see if Facebook can block this. If you read the blog on Facebook and didn't get invited, let me know and I'll add you to the group. I know who some readers are, but I certainly don't know all of you. If you have trouble reading the blog entry, just click on the picture and it will become larger, making everything much easier to see. I'm not sure if you are notified when new posts are added, but the Group is easy to find once you've joined. Let's see how this works. Posting this way is certainly a lot easier than convincing all of you to move to Twitter.

Today's big event was giving Dawn a bath. We took her to a self-wash place where we always used to bathe Dot and Dash. I didn't expect Dawn to enjoy the bath, but she was much better behaved than we expected. She even let the lady who runs the place clip her nails and clean her ears. Why did we go to all this trouble to get Dawn looking sparkly clean? Someone wants to look at her tomorrow and she might get adopted. Janet and I both have mixed feelings about Dawn going to a new home. She's a wonderful dog and we've become attached to her.

This is why so many fosters fail. I wanted to keep Ginny and it wouldn't have been hard to convince me to keep Hank. Basically, I've wanted to keep every Dalmatian we've had at the house. We knew this would happen when we agreed to foster dogs. The bottom line is that if Dawn gets a great home, that's all that matters. I still think that fostering is important. Janet and I don't have a dog now, which make our home the perfect place for a sick dog to recover or a scared, shy dog to develop trust. That doesn't make it any easier to say goodbye to Dawn though. She's just about perfect. We'll see what happens tomorrow. I don't think we would ever let Dawn go to a bad home. Dalmatian Rescue has an excellent record of matching the right people with the right dog.

I'm still worried that the Spring activities at McDonald Observatory are going to get cancelled at the last minute. I was shocked to learn today that SXSW was canceled this year. This is a huge event for the city of Austin. The city will lose millions and millions of dollars. Is the coronavirus really that bad or is this a case of mass hysteria? It's hard to tell at this point. If the observatory is going to cancel their Spring Break activities, I hope they tell me before I start the long drive to West Texas. I'd hate to discover that things have changed when I'm stopping for gas in Amarillo.

I think Spring might have finally arrived. Today was beautiful and I'm starting to see small flowers pop up everywhere. Crow Poison is always one of the first flowers to emerge. I wonder how this plant got its name. There are huge fields of the stuff in the park, but there are still plenty of Crows. Acording to Cherokee legend this plant was used to make a poison that would kill the crows eating their corn. The jury is still out on whether Crow Poison actually kills crows. Don't add any of the flowers to your salad though. The plants are poisonous to humans.

I bought some more socks and underwear today since I was told to bring enough clothes for my entire trip. Probably most volunteers would do this automatically. I like to travel light and would much rather do laundry every few days. I don't think this is an option.

Anne is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day