Day 948

Today was full of odd little surprises. When I went out to the street this morning to retrieve the garbage cans after the trash truck arrived, I came back to find a small bushel of fresh tomatoes on my doorstep. I was only gone for a minute or two, but I didn't see any sign of who had left the tomatoes. They just appeared, and I still don't know who to thank.

Later, when I went to the empty restaurant for breakfast, it wasn't empty. There was already another couple eating breakfast. I was kind of disappointed, because when the place is empty, I get to choose the music. The food was still good though. I can't for the life of me think of a single good reason why this isn't the most popular restaurant in the neighborhood.

There were scattered storms in the afternoon and the dogs didn't want to go outside.  I finally found a little break in the weather on the iPad radar and took the dogs outside. Things were going well until Dot heard thunder off in the distance. I told Dash that if he would poop right where we were, we could all go home immediately. Amazingly he did. It was the first time he's ever pooped on command. I was very proud.

I took my video camera to the dealer this afternoon to get the firmware upgraded. I'd been dreading doing this myself for months, because the instructions from Panasonic were so incomprehensible that I was certain I was going to screw things up and turn the camera into an expensive doorstop. When I was at the Panasonic seminar yesterday, I ran into my sales rep and he told me that they'd do the firmware upgrade for me. What a relief. The camera still works fine and has even more capabilities than it did yesterday.

It looks like it's going to be a dog filled weekend.  We've got new Dalmatians to photograph at the Velvet Snout tomorrow and I think we're going to take Dot and Dash to a Dalmatian Rescue meet and greet at a pet store on Sunday. It sounds good to me. Spending time with the dogs definitely beats mowing the grass.

Lady Jane is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 947

Have you ever noticed that if you took away all the cute cat and dog pictures on Facebook, all you would be left with is an endless stream of politically correct and occasionally incorrect opinions from people you actually know? I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't want to know this much about the beliefs of people I actually know. Please guys, just let me live in blissful ignorance. All this being said, I still think my Facebook stream is better than my Google+ stream, where everyone seems to think that a dash of science and a giant group hug will cure all the world's problems.

Coming face-to-face with all these opinions everyday is a bit discouraging for me. It has made me realize that as a society, we have reached a point where we will never come to a consensus on anything. Instead of uniting behind a common goal, like going to the moon or winning WWII, we have  become a bunch of ineffectual competing tribes, with no loyalties beyond our own tribe. Maybe it won't even matter. I have a feeling that in thirty years or so our world will start to resemble that Mad Max - Beyond Thunderdome movie.

Since there's a good chance I won't be around in thirty years, I concentrate on more pleasant things. I really enjoyed going to the Panasonic seminar this afternoon. I couldn't begin to afford most of the video equipment that the manufacturers demonstrated today, but it's nice to know that it's out there. So, who goes to these types of seminars? Increasingly, it is the cameramen and editors who are employed by professional sports teams. I routinely see folks who work for the Cowboys, the Mavericks, and the Rangers at these events. I guess it makes sense. Professional sports organizations still have the money to buy boatloads of this expensive high-tech equipment. The rest of us don't. The rest of us are faced with the prospect of making cheap YouTube videos on our iPhones.

I think I'll go back to the empty restaurant with good food tomorrow. It's really peaceful there. I'll listen to a piano concerto and watch birds splashing in the bird bath right outside the front window while I eat my whole grain pancakes and a pulled pork breakfast taco. It's only Thursday evening, but TGIF anyway.

Jade is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 698

I spent most of the day at Pet Fair. The volunteers did a fabulous job of organizing the event this year. There was a little bit of everything. There were tons of games for the kids, including a large bounce house, teddy bear surgery, and something that involved throwing water balloons. One of the most popular areas was the reptile exhibit, where kids who dared, got to touch and even hold large pythons and other snakes. I never dreamed that there would be so many kids who wanted to walk around with a large snake around their neck, but there were lines waiting to get near the reptiles. The girls were just as interested in holding a snake as the boys, and one little girl was so fond of her snake that she sat with the snake in her lap for most of the afternoon. The reptile exhibit was well supervised by two herpetologists, and although I wouldn't want a snake as a pet myself, I'll have to admit that they are interesting animals. While I was filming the reptiles, I noticed that parents were much more skittish around snakes than their children. For the most part, the children were fearless. I guess fear of snakes must be learned behavior.

There was a great neighborhood Doo-Wop band, playing hits from the fifties and sixties. Unlike some garage bands, their harmonies were on key and their musicianship was quite good. Sometimes I think that half the men over forty play in one of these garage bands. They're everywhere, and no charity event would be complete without one. As the afternoon was drawing to a close, a young man in his late twenties came to complain about the noise and said he'd call the cops if the band didn't stop playing immediately. Actually, the cops had been at the event all afternoon, and none of them seemed to have any problems with the band. The ironic thing was that the old men in the band were the rockers and the young guy complaining was the old fuddy-duddy. Nobody seems to want to accept their role in life these days. It gets confusing sometimes.

The new Panasonic camera is fabulous. One of the first things I noticed about shooting with a memory chip camera is that you can actually use the on-board mics. Since there are no moving parts in the camera, it operates completely silently. The next thing I noticed was how light the camera was. After years of carrying a Beta-SP camera around on my shoulder, this thing seemed almost weightless. The picture quality was amazing, especially considering that I didn't bring any lights and there were hard shadows everywhere. I think I'm going to like shooting with this camera!

Dot and Dash were a bit miffed that they didn't get their usual trip to the dog park today. Hey, you can't do everything. To make up for this faux-pas, I did take them on a longer than usual evening walk. By the time they finished dinner, I think they'd forgotten all about the dog park. Tomorrow, it's back to our usual schedule.

Puppies are our Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 639

It was twenty degrees cooler today. I was really surprised when I took the dogs out this morning, because there wasn't much to explain the mild weather. No overnight storms. No big cold front. It was just nicer today. I wish I could convince Dash to take it easy on these walks. He tugs and pulls on the leash and is making it an uphill battle to get my neck back to normal. At least my neck pain isn't getting worse though, so maybe I can learn to deal with my rambunctious dogs.

I went to another seminar about the Panasonic AG-AF100 camera this afternoon. I'm getting closer and closer to purchasing one of these cameras because it meets my needs almost perfectly. Too bad I don't have a big video job in the pipeline to make the decision a little easier. This is really a good camera. It records high definition video to an SD memory card. It can use all the Olympus lenses I already use for my still camera. It has time code, professional microphone inputs, a built-in vectorscope and much more. For the purchase to make sense, I just need some more of the corporate video jobs that used to be my bread and butter business.

My bread and butter business now seems to mainly consist of low budget, quick turnaround website design and equally low budget writing assignments. It's weird to actually be making less money than I was ten years ago, even though I'm much busier than I was then. This seems to be a common problem though. Everyone from other photographers and advertising freelancers to the guy who frames my pictures tells me they are having the same problem. Basically, this economy totally sucks.

I had to rewrite an article I did yesterday, so that means that the article I was supposed to write today gets put off until tomorrow. Hopefully, everything goes smoothly tomorrow because now I've got two articles that need to be written, plus at least four websites that need changes. If only I could trade places with the dogs. They just slept on the bed all day.

Spot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 448

I was a little nervous when I took Dash to the vet today. When a dog is losing weight and has blood in their stools, it can can often mean there are very serious problems. Luckily, Dash is just fine. After a thorough exam, we discovered that although his weight has been dropping, he is actually at an ideal weight now and was a bit too heavy six months ago when the gradual weight loss started. The blood in his stools turned out not to be serious either. There were no polyps or signs of parasites. The vet suspected that a piece of bark that Dash ate had scratched his colon. If I can just keep Dash from eating bark, we'll be fine.

I went to a Panasonic seminar this afternoon and learned more about their new AG-AF100 video camera. I really want one of these cameras. It records HD video to SDXC cards and can use just about any 35mm lens in existence. I'm glad I haven't upgraded to HD already, because this is the camera I've been waiting for. I have the lenses that I need already. The AG-AF100 is compatible with a Final Cut Pro workflow. Timecode, vectorscope, XLR +4 audio inputs, zebra, it's all there. What more could you want? Well, I guess 4.2.2. video would be nice, but I can live with 4.2.0. I think I've convinced myself that this camera would be good for the company. It is going out on a bit of a limb though. I'll have to admit that people aren't exactly standing in line asking me to make films for them anymore. Nevertheless, I've made movies before and I can make movies again. The simple truth is that my current equipment is out of date and if I ever expect to get serious bids on projects again, I have to be able to shoot in HD.

Luckily, there's enough website work to more or less pay the bills until the film/video business picks up again. I've got a ton of website updates to complete tomorrow. Oh, and I just found out that there's a new Dalmatian at the Collin County pound that's entering the rescue program too. I need to find out if this new boy needs a ride back to the K-9 University kennels.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day