Day 1427

It was one of those days. I was late to a meeting, but when I arrived full of excuses for my tardiness, I discovered that my client had completely forgotten about the meeting and I had to reschedule anyway. This was the start of a day jam-packed with miscommunication.

The service that put my account on auto-renewal without my knowledge is now saying that I have to formally request a discontinuation of service in writing before I can leave them. When I asked why, they said the necessity of making a cancellation request in writing was listed right on the back of their invoice. I looked on the back of the invoice I had just received and this unusual requirement was nowhere to be found. I can already tell that severing ties with this bunch is going to be a problem.

 I took a bunch of stuff from this weekend's rescue event back to the storage warehouse today. Janet told me later that I had taken back the wrong stuff, so I'll have to go back and bring it all back home again. I guess we're going to use some of the stuff at the Santa Paws photo events that begin later this month. There are a bunch of these fundraising photo events this year. Since my knees are even worse than they were last year, it makes me tired just thinking about photographing dogs all day.

There was one silver lining in the largely dark cloud that was today. I got some lab results back that said my lipids and cholesterol levels were all back within the normal range again. My glucose and blood sugar levels have come back to acceptable levels as well. Now, all I've got to do is get my liver working as well as my other organs.

I clicked on one of those "would you like to upgrade" buttons that frequently appear when you launch certain types of software. When the upgrade finished installing itself, I discovered that it would no longer work. After spending almost an hour trying to track down the problem, I discovered that the new upgrade will only work with the new Mavericks operating system. Jeez, it would have been nice if the company had told me this before I clicked the upgrade button. I don't want or even need Mavericks yet. I was eventually able to re-install an older version of the software, but I wasn't able to regain the time I lost messing around trying to fix this irritating problem.

Maybe everything will click smoothly into place tomorrow. One can always hope. Dash has a vet appointment and there's a writing assignment with a tight deadline as well. As long as the sun is shining, I should be able to get everything done without a problem.

Today is Veteran's Day. I noticed that a lot of people were changing their profile picture to World War II era photos of their Dad in uniform. This is a nice tribute, but it made me wonder if this tradition will continue when today's children grow up. They didn't call our parents The Greatest Generation for nothing. Today, we all express gratitude to those who serve, but fewer and fewer of us have actually worn a uniform ourselves. It's a much different world than our parents lived in. I'm not sure it's a better world though. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's not.

Dolly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1413

Nothing big happened today. I took a small stack of documents to the new safe deposit box. I took an even smaller pile of shirts to the dry cleaner. And I picked up a single prescription at the pharmacist. Dot was tired today, so we took a small walk, instead of our regular much longer trek. I thought I was going to pick up a small puppy from animal control this afternoon, but someone else from Dalmatian Rescue had already arranged to pick up the dog before I could get my act together.

Work was equally slow. I had a meeting scheduled, but it got canceled. I made two small changes to client websites and answered a few e-mails, but that was about it. I should have used my time today to upload a large number of new pictures to Shutterstock, but I didn't. Once you get locked in a small frame of mind, it's hard to snap out of it.

I was just about to upgrade the computers to the new OSX Mavericks operating system when I saw a small notice on the Avid website saying that the latest versions of Pro Tools and Media Composer are not compatible with the new system. This always happens. Apple makes a big deal out of their flashy new system and none of the software I actually use for business works with it. Eventually the vendors come out with new, compatible versions of their software, but by then Apple is already off on another tangent. It's frustrating.

The cold front that passed through town this weekend seemed to accelerate the seasonal changes that were already underway. All the trees are changing color now and some are already dropping their leaves. Hopefully, there will be a few nice photography days before the trees are bare again. Since we have a lot of large, mature trees in our yard, there are a ton of leaves on the roof in the Fall. If it didn't rain so much, I would just leave the leaves up on the roof until Spring. A thick stack of leaves is sure to add some insulation value. Unfortunately, the leaves do get wet and turn into a soggy mess that retains water forever. For the rest of the Winter, I will have piles of heavy, wet leaves to push off the roof in addition to the standing water that accumulates year-round.

Dash has a vet appointment tomorrow, so it is questionable whether I'll be able to make it to the gym as I had planned. You'd think with the simple, uneventful life I lead, it would be easy to schedule things. Somehow, it never is.

Abi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 545

I'm finally starting to get comfortable with the idea of giving stuff away. Don't get me wrong. I still don't feel any inner peace from this process of simplification, but I am able to get rid of stuff now. Maybe the reason this is all so hard is that I always envisioned that at some point I'd have this huge loft building where I could spread everything out and have lots and lots of room all my photography equipment, musical endeavors, painting experimentation, woodworking projects and so on. Maybe there would be a separate huge room for electric trains and another just for framing pictures. I don't think this is ever going to happen though. I have no desire to live in marginal industrial neighborhoods with affordable lofts anymore. The dogs rule now. A small house near a beautiful park where the dogs love to walk is a much better alternative.

It's time to toss stuff. Maybe, even though I'm a die-hard Gemini, one of everything is actually enough. Today, I took three very large CRT monitors and an old aerial reconnaissance camera down to the animal rescue resale shop. I thought this effort would clear out a large amount of space in the storage warehouse, but when I was ready to leave, the place looked just as full as ever. At first I was confused and then I realized I'd put the big stack of boxes that was blocking the door back on the shelves I'd just emptied by removing the monitors. It's slow progress, but I do feel like I'm accomplishing something.

I also finally resolved the mystery of how my recent software purchase got totally screwed up. When I made one of my daily calls to the support center, my call mistakenly got routed to the company's headquarters here in the United States instead of going to the offshore call center like it normally did. This time the representative I talked with almost instantly had a grasp of the problem. She found my account, told me that it had mistakenly gotten merged with the account of someone else and then proceeded to cancel my order as I had requested. This all took less than five minutes. When I asked why repeated calls to the support center weren't able to produce this result, the representative said. "Oh, we only provide the offshore call center with a very limited amount of information. They can't access the same database that we can." I'm still puzzling over this one. What use is a customer support center if they don't have any information? If I hadn't accidently reached the wrong person this morning, my order would still be in limbo.

It was interesting to me to see how many people seemed genuinely happy to see Lebron James fail last night. The Internet was buzzing with Lebron James jokes this morning like: Today is National LeBron James Day. Everyone gets to leave work 12 minutes early! and Why didn't LeBron James go to college? He didn't want to show up for finals. I think this all has a lot to do with people's expectations of loyalty. You certainly expect loyalty from a friend and Cleveland definitely considered James a friend. Not anymore. John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, issued a resolution today praising the Dallas Mavericks for their loyalty, integrity and teamwork. Of course there were all these people in Ohio saying the governor should be concentrating on "serious things" instead of praising the Mavericks. Hmm. I'd say loyalty actually was a serious thing.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 544

I made a major effort to reclaim the office from the clutter monster today. I found warranty cards that I had never filled out for things that had broken years ago. I found a radio that was full of old corroded and oozing batteries. If I had taken those batteries out five years ago, the radio would probably still work. I found some blank quarterly estimated tax vouchers from 2003. I wonder if that was the year I paid a penalty for not doing my quarterly's correctly? I found hundreds of floppy discs. What do you do with floppy discs? I don't have anything in the office that will even read a floppy anymore. After filling two large black trash bags with useless crap, shredding a bunch of papers that were totally meaningless to me, and taking a big plastic Container Store tub full of maybe items to the storage warehouse, I managed to clear about nine square feet of floor space that had remained hidden by boxes for months. I still have a long way to go before I have a tidy looking office again, but I'm making progress.

The yard looks better too. I mowed the grass in the front and the back and pulled up the vines that have been trying to strangle the Wax Myrtle tree in the courtyard. I even cleaned the air duct filters, which I should have done three weeks ago. When I was cleaning up today, I couldn't believe how many unopened things I found. There was unopened software. Unopened small electronic gizmos. There were a lot of unopened envelopes. I don't know when I thought I was going to get around to opening these things. Some of them were five years old.

The dog park was virtually empty again today. I kind of like it this way. There are no parking problems and very few worries about fights breaking out with other dogs. Actually, any kind of park is more enjoyable to me when it's empty. The Winter empty days are more pleasant than these 100 degree scorchers though. I can't wait for the cold, foggy mornings to return so the dogs and I can have the park to ourselves again.

I'm writing the blog a little early tonight, because I want to watch game 6 of the NBA finals. I'd like to see Dallas win this. I think they deserve it after all the struggles they've had over the years. It's kind of amazing that they're even in the finals. There were certainly a lot of years when getting in the finals was the last thing on anybody's mind.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day