Day 4175

Another busy day. It's rare that I get two 20,000 step days in a row, but today was one of those days. The weather was pretty decent, so Dawn got her Sunday outing. She really likes the park we take her to on Sundays, but other places we've tried have been dismal failures. Dawn is a hard dog to figure out. I'm just glad when something works. We always get ice cream cones on Sunday. This time we remembered to bring towels so Dawn wouldn't get ice cream all over the car.

We finally got rid of all the dead Asian Jasmine in the back yard. We spent hours pulling the dead vines off our back fence, which looks pretty bare right now. Surprisingly, the Asian Jasmine that survived the big freeze is coming back strong. In a few years the yard will look just like it did before. This doesn't necessarily mean that the yard will look all that great. There are still several dead photinia trees, bare patches where the grass has died, and a half destroyed greenhouse that was damaged in one of our periodic windstorms.

I was tired after Dawn's Sunday outing and all the yard work, but I still took my long walk anyway. The park was surprisingly crowded today. It was probably the holiday weekend. Usually people stay away when the weather is cool and overcast. Now that crowds are returning everywhere, I'm starting to miss the lockdown. It was nice to fly on empty planes and drive on uncrowded roads. That's all over now. Everyone who has been waiting for an opportunity to gather together is making up for lost time.

I made another effort to understand PixInsight this afternoon. I watched the first four videos in a twelve part series called PixInsight for Total Beginners. The complex astrophotography processing software was still hard for me to understand. Photoshop was designed for and by visual people. PixInsight seems to have been designed by mathematicians. It's clear that the software can do some amazing things, but it's not intuitive at all. I still think that maybe I picked the wrong hobby.

It's difficult to learn things on your own. It's easy to go down a rabbit hole and become hopelessly lost. No wonder classes and clubs are popular. I seldom take classes. I'm too much of a loner. I flounder around and eventually figure out what I need to know on my own. I'm probably doing a lot of things backwards, but does it even matter? People sometimes ask why I use such an old version of Photoshop. My answer is always the same. I'm still discovering new things that CS5 will do.

I'm not sure whether we'll visit the Dalmatians tomorrow or not. The kennel might be closed for Memorial Day. It's hard for me to relate to this day. I've lived a long time and it still seems odd that I don't know a single person who died while in the military. All the people I knew from my parent's generation came back from World War II and Korea. Several people I knew in high school got sent to Vietnam and they all came back. I don't even know anyone who got sent to the Middle East during all the various Gulf Wars. A lot of people did die though. Were any of these wars even necessary? Maybe World War II, but the others accomplished nothing. I'm not a globalist. I guess I'm basically an isolationist at heart. We ought to make all our own stuff in our own factories and stay out of other people's business. 

Ollie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4168

Dawn got her special outing today. It wasn't a clear day, but it wasn't raining either. We thought we'd take her someplace new, but the strange surroundings scared her and we got back in the car and went back to her usual Sunday park. What a dfifference. Dawn would hardly move at the new location, but she bounded out of the car and immediately began smelling things when we returned to our regular Sunday park. This park was new to Dawn at one point too, but I don't know how much new Dawn can handle. Of course we got ice cream cones on the way home. Even though it was a gray and somewhat dismal day, I think Dawn really enjoyed herself.

I took a short nap when we returned home and then I went walking again. I could be doing other things, but walking still seems the best way to fill an otherwise uneventful day. I daydream a lot when I walk. I seldom think about serious things. I plan future trips. I think about what kind of car I'd like to buy next. I count ducks, And I wonder what the neighbors are doing. Sometimes these walks are tiring. Other times they are boring. They always beat mowing the lawn though.

I had to do some website updates today and I couldn't figure out why my changes weren't showing up in my browser. I uploaded the new pages several times and still kept seeing the old site. It finally occurred to me that I needed to clear my cache files. When I refreshed my browser, it was just reloading the old site that was already in the browser cache. Problem solved. I vaguely wondered why I don't always have to do this. I probably used to know the answer, but my web development skills are fading fast.

I watched a YouTube tutorial titled "Getting started with PixInsight" this afternoon. I thought if I understood the basics of this complex program, I might actually get some use out of it. This video was supposed to be for beginners, but it still seemed very complex to me. It was hard for me to stay interested. Things that were easy and intuitive in Photoshop required ten mysterious steps here. I still don't even understand the PixInsight menu. It baffles me that a lot of people love this program. Maybe I picked the wrong hobby. I've been taking photographs for the better part of my life. You'd thing this would be easy, but astrophotography has been a struggle for me.

I'm getting bitten by mosquitos inside the house. Where did these things come from? Mosquitos seem unusually bad this year. It must be all the moisture. I'm starting to see lots of ants too. I guess it's that time of year. Where can you go where the weather is pleasant and there are no bugs? Bugs are everywhere. There were moths inside the Astronomer's Lodge. When I go to rocket launches in Florida I always get bitten by bugs. I always get the most powerful insect repellent I can find and the bugs don't even care.

I still haven't finished unpacking from my trip. The clothing has all been washed and put away, but there's still a lot of equipment I need to deal with. I took the star tracker apart and put it back in it's box today. That's a start. Now I've got a case I can use for pet photography again. Maybe I'll deal with the rest of the camera equipment next weekend. I doubt that I'm going to be using it any time soon.

Tomorrow we visit the rescue Dalmatians again. It only seems like a few days have passed since we saw them last week. Where has the time gone? We are almost halfway through 2021 and it still seems like the year is just getting started. Covid has changed everything. I'm so used to doing nothing that it's starting to seem normal.

Willie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4157

I'm posting early today. I've finally realized that there is no point in trying to write something at 2 AM after a long night of starwatching. I am usually incoherent at that time of day. It might be better to start writing during the day anyway. Years and years of posting something at the very end of every day have deprived me of a lot of sleep. 

So far the day has been interesting. I woke up this morning surrounded by a heavy fog. When I looked out my window at the Astronomer's Lodge the whole world was grey. I couldn't see the telescopes or the visitor's center in the valley below. It was cold too. The temperature was around 50 degrees for most of the morning.

After breakfast I put on some warm clothes and took a walk around the mountain. There is a road that circles the top of Mount Locke providing access the Astronomer's Lodge and some of the smaller telescopes. The road is not as long as I thought. I had to circle the mountain five times in order to walk two miles. It seemed like I walked longer than this because of some steep slopes and the high altitude. The top of Mount Locke is the tallest mountain in Texas accessible by road.

I met the guy from Planewave Instruments who will be conducting the workshop with my friend from the observatory. This is probably as close as I will ever get to a Planewave telescope. They sell mostly to universities and smaller professional observatories. Their telescopes start at about $20,000 and go up to over $500,000. A little rich for my blood. The Planewave guy isn't here to sell us a telescope though. He is here to teach us how to use PixInsight, the software program that I had so much trouble installing on my laptop. The first time I opened this software it seemed incomprehensible to me. I hope I learn something in the next few days. So far, it's all Greek to me.

The fog is already starting to lift and according to the latest weather forecast it should be clear tonight. I'm glad I brought my warmest winter coats with me. I have a feeling that I"m going to need them. When I was here last March, the temperature got down in the mid-30's at night. By the time we were through with our photography session, I was frozen. I've learned to be a little better prepared on subsequent trips. With any luck, I should be warm enough tonight.

Later this afternoon I'm going to assemble my star tracker so it will be ready for this evening. I'm really beginning to wonder why I bought this thing. It's heavy and a royal pain to put together. Also I have to kneel down and look through a small scope built into the tracker in order to line everything up correctly with Polaris. This was made for younger knees. When I'm down, it's hard to get up again. I"m going to regret not going to REI and getting a collapsible walking stick. I'm also going to regret not bringing a small folding chair with me. I hope to learn a lot about astrophotography at this workshop, but I may just learn that I'm getting too old for this.

Have I mentioned how good the food is at the Astronomer's Lodge? I always gain a few pounds while I'm here. Maybe I'm weird, but this is my idea of a nice vacation. The food is great. The place is quiet and peaceful. Quiet might actually be an understatement. It is dead silent out here. When I took my walk in the fog this morning, I heard nothing at all. There is no traffic noise, no airplanes, no police sirens, and no yard crews with their irritating leaf blowers. I didn't even hear any birds this morning. 

The fog continues to lift and I'm starting to see some blue sky now. Things are looking up.

Dixie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4151

I got a haircut today, so that means I'm one step closer to being ready to travel. I always get a haircut before I take a trip. I guess it's kind of like putting clean clothes in your suitcase. It's not totally necessary, but it's nice to get started out on the right foot. I definately look more presentable now. I don't get haircuts as frequently as I did before the pandemic, but I'm certainly not going back to the way I looked in college. Back then I thought long hair made me look like a rock star. Now I think it makes me look like a homeless person. I asked my stylist when she was going to feel comfortable cutting hair without a mask. She said maybe never. This didn't seem strange to me at all. A lot has changed during the past year.

I got another rejection letter from NASA today. This notice was a bit different. It said that my credentials had been verified but my request to cover the launch was declined because the launch had been canceled. I will be given another chance to reapply when the launch is rescheduled. Is this good news or bad news? I have no idea. Since the launch was supposed to take place last March, it seems like they could have just waited a little longer instead of starting over from scratch. I'm kind of hoping that there are no important launches until all the post-pandemic travelers get their first vacation out of their systems. Planes are full and prices are insane right now. I'm in no hurry to join the madness. At least my trip to the observatory should be fairly quiet. There's not a lot of people traveling to that remote mountain.

I successfully added the astrophotography software to my new laptop partition. I thought that this would be easy, but it was surpassingly difficult because the software was developed by Germans. These guys were obsessed with verification and security. I had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get access to their download servers. When I launched the software to see if it worked on my computer, it seemed totally confusing to me. I have no idea what this actually does. That's OK. Learning how to use PixInsight is one of the reasons I'm going to the workshop.

We decided to wait until I returned from my haircut to walk Dawn today. I don't think she was happy with this plan. She was definitely eager to get out of the house. I was surprised at how hot it was this afternoon. Maybe this was why Janet and I walked Dawn really early last Summer. Neither of us can remember why we started doing this. It seems crazy to walk before sunrise now.

Dawn was hot and tired when we completed her short one mile loop. I probably should have gone back to the house with her. By the time I finished my long walk I was sweating profusely and was pretty tired myself. The temperature was in the high 80's today and it was very humid. I hope this isn't a sign of what's to come. I'd like our nice Spring weather to last a little longer.

I've taken the trash out to the curb and am ready to restart the week again. It looks like I'm going to have to mow the grass again this weekend. I'm not looking forward to that. This mower isn't self-propelled and it's getting harder and harder to push. I'd like a weekend with nothing to do at all.

Patches is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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