Day 1956

Good grief. We're under a tornado warning again. As soon as I heard the news, I began recharging my phone, laptop, and tablet. Strong storms and power outages go hand in hand in this part of the country. I'm slowly learning to stay prepared. We're eating dinner in a hurry too, in case the oven goes out. I wish the dogs had taken my advice and taken an early walk. They just stuck their nose out the door and didn't even go outside. I guess they could smell what was coming.

I feel better about Dash's limp. I called his oncologist today and asked about the possibility of bone cancer. He told me that it was very unlikely that Dash's type of cancer would ever spread to the bone. He also said it was unlikely that Dash would succumb to a completely different type of cancer at this point in time. It seems increasingly likely that the limp is caused entirely by the torn paw pad. The oncologist said that his own dog had injured a paw pad once and that it took several weeks to heal. "Give it time," he told me and asked me to call him again in several weeks if Dash's condition didn't improve. This specialist is always very busy. I was amazed that he spent ten minutes talking with me. Dot and Dash have some great doctors. I"m convinced that they get far better medical care than I do myself.

I spent most of the day designing a supposedly simple brochure for a client. They want to print the brochure using Vistaprint, but for some inexplicable reason Vistaprint won't accept Quark Express files. Why? I've been using Quark for decades. This venerable software used to be the gold standard for print designers. Apparently the software has fallen out of favor. I had to design the whole thing in Photoshop instead, which certainly wouldn't have been my first choice. It is cumbersome to have all these layers. The original brochure I was updating was done in PowerPoint and a lot of the images were created in Adobe Illustrator, but saved as a PDF. It was a mess. The actual design was pretty simple, but converting all the files to the proper size and format and remembering what layer they were on took forever. I hope everyone likes what I did today, because I definitely don't want to spend tomorrow doing everything over again.

I reluctantly confirmed my appointment for dental surgery next week. I was very tempted to postpone the surgery again, but I've got to get this done sometime. Since I was originally scheduled to have the wisdom teeth removed in late January, I guess I've delayed things long enough. I hope having this tooth removed solves the problems I've been having, but somehow I doubt that it will. Once you start going to the dentist, you have to keep going to the dentist.

While I was eating breakfast this morning, a group of guys at a nearby table were arguing about whether the original Star Wars trilogy should be viewed before or after the three prequel movies. There was a heated  discussion about whether the movies should be viewed in chronological order or in the order they were shot. Some said four, five, six, one, two, three. While others said, one, two, three four, five, six. They were serious. At another table, a group of older guys were talking about man caves. This pretty well summed up the state of the world today for me. It's hopeless.

I had weird dreams last night and woke up in the middle of the night worrying about Dash's leg. I hope I sleep better tonight. Actually, I'd like to sleep the entire weekend.

Sadie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1382

I fired up Quark Express today to put together a print ad. It's hard to believe that I used to use this application almost every single day. Now, I can go months without using Quark or InDesign. Print may not be completely dead, but it certainly appears that way. Client meetings revolve around social media now and I can't even remember the last time someone I know actually ran an ad in a newspaper. Although it was kind of enjoyable to have total control over fonts and image placement again, I don't think I'll upgrade to Quark 10. What would be the point? I doubt that I'll be asked to design many print ads in the foreseeable future.

I don't know what the dogs were thinking today. They started barking for their dinner around 2:30 this afternoon, and kept bothering me until I finally relented and fed them early a few hours later. I would have appreciated a little quiet this afternoon, because I was still trying to figure out the mysteries of Wordpress. So far, I'm not a huge fan of this popular blogging platform. It's super easy to throw something together using the hundreds of readily available themes. When you try to modify those themes in Dreamweaver though, you're dealing with an entirely different animal. I haven't even tried to create my own themes yet. The frustrating thing for me is that most Wordpress files reside on the server. It's hard to show a client a local, in-progress version of a site without actually putting it online.

Whenever I try to make thing easier on myself, I usually end up making things worse. Now, I've got to go up on the roof before it rains and get rid of all the accumulated pecan shells so they won't stain the puddles of standing water that still accumulate when the roof gets wet. I've already lost the battle to keep the new roof sparkling white. Just about any form of tannin stains the white coating an ugly brown. Since dead leaves, pecan shells, and tree bark usually litter the roof, there's quite a bit of ugly brown already.

Janet wants to give the dogs a bath tomorrow, so they'll be clean for the Dalmatian Rescue golf tournament. They probably won't stay clean for long, since it's supposed to rain tomorrow. I hope the rain moves on and the skies are clear again on Sunday. We've managed to avoid rain on tournament day for over a decade. Last year, it was raining when we left the house, but by the time we actually arrived at the golf course. the skies had cleared and it ended up being a beautiful day. We need this kind of luck again this year.

Sophie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1351

Some days are a lost cause. I thought today would be a good time to finish a print job with a looming deadline. I don't do much print design anymore, since most of my clients have forgotten what it is. I fired up Quark Express and proceeded to re-learn all the things I'd forgotten since the last time I'd used this software. As it turned out, I'd forgotten quite a bit, but it all started coming back to me after a couple of hours of fumbling around. Eventually, I had a nice looking design and I started reading the printer's file upload instructions. Oops. This printer couldn't handle halftones. They wanted line art only, and unless I wanted to pay a huge setup charge for multiple spot colors, they wanted single color files only. I should have read all this before I got started. Oh, well. All I've got to do is throw away all the photos, find some line art vector files that look kind of like the photos I threw away and re-do the entire design using Adobe Illustrator instead of Quark Express. Piece of cake.

In the dumb and dumber department, ABC news sent out a tweet today saying that Neil Armstrong had just died. I felt sad reading the tweet, thinking that pretty soon none of the men that walked on the moon would be left. But wait a minute! Neil Armstrong was already dead. He died last year. Just goes to show that you can't believe everything you hear on the Internet, or on the evening news.

The weather was so nice this morning that I started looking for signs of an early Fall. I didn't find any, of course. By mid-afternoon the temperature was up over 100 again and it was clear that Summer wasn't quite finished with us yet. I always look forward to Fall. As the days shorten and grow cooler, I start to see beautiful sunsets that tempt me to carry a camera with me at all times. I get to quit mowing the grass for another year. And a blanket of leaves covers up the landscaping mistakes. If I'm lucky, the bugs disappear as well.

I got a letter from my historian sister who refuses to use the Internet. I learned that she'd gotten a post office box because a truck knocked over her mailbox and she didn't feel like fixing it. That she'd  fallen off a tall ladder and was walking with a cane. And that after having half a dozen books published, she'd lost interest in writing. Sounds like everything's normal.

Jordan is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 799

Here's why I hate computers. I get this e-mail from Quark Express about a month ago telling me not to upgrade to OS 10.7.3 yet, because it was not compatible with Quark. I dutifully go to my control panel and deselect the automatic upgrade option. Several weeks go by and one morning when I start up my computer I get a dialog box asking if I'd like to upgrade to OS 10.7.3. By this time, I've completely forgotten about the earlier message from Quark, so I just click "yes" and the upgrade is installed. About an hour later a client says they need a reprint of a poster I did for them last year. I click on the Quark application so I can print the file, and you guessed it, the application doesn't work anymore, just like Quark warned me. Very frustrating, to say the least!

My Quark Express is toast. I finally figure out how to print the poster my client wants from an old PDF file and then halfway through the printing process, I run out of ink. I drive over to the printer store and buy $150 worth of ink, just so I can make a single courtesy print of an old poster I'd completely forgotten about.

Talking with tech support at Quark while trying in vain to revive my ailing application wasted several hours this morning. Talking with Network Solutions to help another client move one of their domains to a less expensive registrar ate up even more time. Evidently my name was listed as the technical contact for this domain, but it didn't show up in the list of domains I manage. I must have created an account for the domain years ago and then totally forgotten about it. The client forgot too, because no website was ever developed for this domain. Since I couldn't figure out how to log-in to the control panel of the mystery account I have created, I had to convince Network Solutions that I really was who I said I was and get them to make the changes for me. Maybe we should have just let the domain expire. It will probably still sit around unused for another five years.

For some reason Dot didn't want to go to class tonight. She refused to get out of the car and glued herself to the back seat, just like she does when we take her for a bath. She wouldn't budge. I finally had to get in the car and carry her out. Once she was out with the other dogs, she did just fine, but she clearly would have rather stayed home this evening. I can't figure out why she balked tonight. It was really one of the nicest evenings we've had all Winter. Even after dark, the temperature was still over 70 degrees.

A large printing company that used to send me lot of annual report writing work finally responded to my query. Apparently, all their customers are writing their annual report copy themselves this year. Why am I not surprised?

Maggie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 625

I'm enjoying taking my daily Instagram pictures. These casual little pictures remind me that there are still small moments of beauty in even the most ordinary of days. I guess the whole purpose of this blog is to remind me of these same small moments, but it's easy to forget when your day mainly consists of tasks and responsibilities.

The postman knocked on the door this morning and told me that he thought I had a plumbing leak, because water was streaming down the driveway and into the street. It really wasn't a plumbing leak at all. I was just watering a tree in the front yard and had forgotten to turn the water off. This lapse of memory falls into the same category as forgetting to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer after a load is finished, or forgetting to take the trash out to the street. I wasn't going to tell the mailman, but these things are common occurrences around our house.

I downloaded the new 9.1 update to Quark Express this morning. This upgrade contains the new ePublishing module that lets you create Kindle eBooks and simple iPad apps directly in Quark. I'm really intrigued with having the ability to create my own eBooks without outside help. I've written a ton of stories and it would be nice to have them all in a book sometime. I wonder if anyone would buy an eBook from me though. Virtually everything ever I've written is already available somewhere on the Internet for free.

I woke up this morning with a stiff neck. I thought the pain would go away in an hour or two, but it's still here twelve hours later. I can't hardly move my neck at all without turning my whole body. Sometimes this happens when I fall asleep watching TV with a pillow elevating my head. Whenever this happens, I usually blame the dogs. They move around on the bed so much during the night that they're always waking me up. One thing about neck pain is that it makes you forget about hand and foot pain. Hopefully, I'll sleep properly tonight and feel better in the morning.

Spot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 617

I started the day aimlessly wandering through the park with the dogs and ended the day aimlessly wandering through the Quark Express manual, trying to figure out how to make tables do what I wanted them to do. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I do so many different things as part of my job that I can never remember the nuances of the various software I use. By the end of my intense week of video editing last May, I had gotten quite proficient at using Final Cut Pro. Unfortunately, I haven't had a big video editing job since, so the next time I get put to the test, I'll have to learn a lot of stuff all over again. The same thing is true with printed advertising. So few people ask me to do printed pieces anymore that some of the finer points of desktop publishing escape me. I used to know Quark backwards and forwards. Now it's all backwards.

Amazingly, it rained today. It didn't rain long enough to help all the water starved plants, but it certainly rained long enough for Dot. She could tell the rain was coming when we took our afternoon walk and she didn't relax again until about an hour after the storm was over. I thought that dog training class might be canceled for a while, but by 7 PM, all signs of moisture had evaporated. The only reminder that it had rained at all was a vague musty smell in the air.

It felt like the end of an era when I heard that Steve Jobs had resigned from Apple today. I got my very first Macintosh in 1984, right after they were introduced. That first Macintosh didn't even have a hard drive. You had to load a floppy disk with the system software and then eject that disk to insert another disk with the applications. It was pretty crude and simple by today's standards, but it made the Osborne-1 computer I had used before look like an antique. If it weren't for Macintosh, Photoshop, Quark Express, Adobe Illustrator, Media 100 and dozens of other game changers, I probably wouldn't have been able to start a company like mine. So, thank you Steve, for opening some doors for people like me that might have stayed locked for a long time without you.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day