Day 2951

I'm mad at the FDA. I got a letter today saying that Nokia was removing the ability to measure Pulse Wave Velocity from my nifty WiFi scale. The company is apparently worried that they will be in violation of several new FDA rulings regarding medical devices. Why? I have read numerous reviews from well respected doctors saying that the Nokia scale is surprisingly accurate for a consumer device and that Pulse Wave Velocity measurements are a valuable tool to evaluate hypertension and heart health. Since the ability to measure Pulse Wave Velocity was the only reason I bought the scale, this decision makes me angry. It also illustrates the tenuous relationship we now have with the things we buy. Tesla can instantly change battery life and the performance of its cars through software patches. Apple can download U2 songs to your phone whether you want them or not. Apparently Nokia can remove features from its products whenever they wish. This all started with music and movies. You don't really own anything anymore. You are just allowed to use it. Now I have one more reason to hate bureaucracies, digital rights management, and any and all information stored in the cloud.

I still don't understand why the FDA wouldn't want people to have valuable information about their own health. I have a feeling that there is a lawsuit at the bottom of this decision. Maybe there are doctors who feel this new generation of home health tools will cause their patients to self diagnose. Who knows? The sad thing is that Nokia wasn't even forced to remove the Pulse Wave Velocity feature. They proactively trashed their own popular product because they were fearful of future regulations.

Probably this product will reappear for dogs soon. There aren't nearly as many regulations for pets. Sometimes I wish there were fewer regulations for humans, but more for pets. I'm never really sure whether what Dash is taking is safe. Vets have often suggested Gabapentin for our dogs. Apparently it is very effective at reducing some types of pain. I never gave Gabapentin a second thought until I started reading about how horrible it was in articles about the opioid crisis. It is an addictive drug with some frightening side effects. I would never give it to Dash after what I've read.

Life has become entirely too complicated. Some things are over regulated. Other things are under regulated. Everybody means well, but very few of us actually know what we are doing. Just look at our legislators. They are supposed to be our best and brightest, but they continue to act like idiots.

I try to keep things simple. I walked and fed Dash today and finished one of my two articles. I also sent an e-mail to Dash's vet with some questions about his upcoming exam. It wasn't a terribly busy day, but I didn't feel bored or unproductive. The weather still has me confused. It was warm enough yesterday that I could wear shorts and a t-shirt. Something apparently changed overnight. When I woke up this morning, Winter had returned.

I'll finish my remaining article tomorrow and probably brood about Nokia some more. What is wrong with that company? Don't they realize they are no longer in the cell phone business because of their cautious, backward attitude? I wish they had never bought Withings. Withings had some really cool, innovative products and now Nokia is ruining them.

Raider is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2641

Delivery services must hate me. I track everything obsessively and when a package doesn't arrive when the website says it should, I feel compelled to locate it immediately. Almost always, these missing packages turn up the next day anyway, but that isn't good enough for me. Today, the post office website said a package was out for delivery, but I'd already received my mail and there was no package. Was there a separate mail carrier for this type of package? I didn't think so, but it didn't hurt to ask. I called the number listed on the website and listened to an automated voice tell me that there would be a thirty minute wait for the next available agent.

On a whim, I called my local post office, because this was the last listed location on the tracking app. A familiar voice answered the phone immediately. It was the lady I buy stamps from. I described my situation and she called the postman's cell phone on my route. He had inadvertently left the package in the truck when he was delivering my mail and said he'd swing back by my house within the hour. Thirty minutes later, I had my package. I only mention this because doing something the old fashioned way worked out wonderfully. I talked to someone I knew on the phone and quickly found the answer I needed. It made me nostalgic for the days when everything was this simple.

When I take Dot out to pee, I typically leave the back door wide open because Dash usually wanders outside while I'm holding Dot up in the backyard. This probably makes my heating bill go up in the Winter, but it's a lot better than having Dash barking and scratching at the door to get out. Today I realized that there was a flaw in my strategy. Bugs. Specifically, the Crane Flies are back. These awful bugs look a lot like flying spiders. They're everywhere when the weather warms up. Crane Flies don't bite and they fly very slow, so they're relatively easy to catch. They're still irritating though, because they love to fly in the back door and buzz around the house until they fall in your morning coffee or get trapped in the refrigerator. Today, about ten of the pesky creatures entered the house while I was waiting for Dot to pee. It's going to be a long Summer.

This morning, I noticed that my fancy WiFi scale had updated its firmware overnight and had added something else to the long list of things it measured. I wonder if this high tech gizmo is on the Wikileaks list of home devices the CIA can hack. Maybe they could slowly drive someone crazy by inputting the wrong weight of someone on a diet. Who knows. Personally, I don't really care if the CIA listens to my TV or messes with my scale. They can listen all they want. All they'd ever hear is an occasional "Goddamnit" when I inadvertently stepped in Dot's poop.

My camera really didn't capture the spectacular rays radiating outward from the rising sun this morning. The effect was subtle, but quite beautiful. The fan shaped shafts of light were kind of like a solar pillar, except that instead of a single shaft of light, there were many. I watched for about thirty seconds as the sun crawled above the horizon and then the effect was gone. I love seeing things like this on my morning walks. I'm a cynical person and I need to be reminded occasionally that the world is a wonderfully mysterious place.

Dot's left rear leg was still very weak today. I hope this isn't permanent. I tried to massage the leg, but she couldn't put much weight on it. Somehow, having one rear leg that is more reliable than the other is causing her to walk in a circle. I have to keep gently nudging her with my knee as we walk to keep her headed in a straight line. I wish I had my own underwater treadmill. The water therapy really did help her maintain muscle tone, but the stress caused by traveling to and from the vet is just too much for Dot these days.

I looked at my calendar for tomorrow and it's absolutely empty. I'm sure something will happen though. It always does.

Bacardi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2597

It feels strange now to have a busy work day. A client called while I was having breakfast this morning and wanted some help getting things working properly on his new web server. I listened to what he needed and told him it was a piece of cake to take care of his requests. Of course when I turned my computer on a little while later, I quickly discovered that making the changes wasn't a piece of cake after all. It never is. I called technical support, sat on hold for a long time, and asked why my quick fix wasn't working. The tech support guy was very patient and answered all my questions. Of course, I didn't ask all the right questions, so I had to call him back again about an hour later. Everything is fixed now. At least I think it is. If I ever need to make these type of changes again, I'll be able to say "it's a piece of cake" honestly.

The weather was beautiful today. For the first time in ages the sky was completely clear for most of the day. I should have gotten up early and looked for Mercury on the Eastern horizon before sunrise, but I was too tired. I'm staying up later now, mostly so I can get Dot to pee outside one last time before going to bed. We can usually make it through the night this way, but it necessitates a long week of going to bed late and getting up early. If it's still clear out when I go to bed tonight, I'll make more of an effort to look for Mercury tomorrow morning. There should be a thin sliver of a waning crescent moon to help guide me to the right spot.

I've been seeing a lot of kestrels lately on our morning walks. It used to be rare to spot one of these small falcons, but they're everywhere now. These birds are lazy hunters and often perch at the top of trees, looking for mice and insects in the fields below. I have a strange relationship with birds. I enjoy watching them while I walk the dogs, but I hate them when they poop on my car. Birds of prey like the kestrel have little interest in hanging around my yard and making a nuisance of themselves. It's the bluejays and the mockingbirds that are the problem.

I've been experimenting with my new WiFi scale and have discovered that your weight and body composition change throughout the day. It's surprising how much a normal meal weighs. I guess you should always weigh yourself before you eat a big meal. I also lose about a pound after I go to the gym. Does sweat actually weigh that much, or do the calories you burn directly translate into weight loss? Hey, I'm a curious person and I have to amuse myself somehow. Somebody needs to invent a scale that automatically deducts the weight of the clothes you are wearing to give you a true weight. For a scale that can measure bone mass and pulse wave velocity, it would seem like this would be a piece of cake. All you'd have to do is weight yourself with clothes and then again without and have the scale store the difference in memory. Nobody makes a scale like this that I know of. When I go to the doctor, I'm always about ten pounds heavier because I'm wearing boots and my pockets are full of cell phones and keys. It always irritates me when the doctor says I've gained weight and I'm just wearing heavier clothes than I was on my last visit.

I've got more website updates to make tomorrow. I think I prefer writing jobs, but beggars can't be choosers. It this point, I'll take any work I can get. Truthfully, I won't take any work I can get. I guess this is just a convenient way of saying that I'm still interested in keeping my business alive. I really couldn't do a whole lot of work anyway. Dot has become such a high maintenance girl that I only have about three uninterrupted hours each day. I'm really glad the dogs were healthy when my business was booming. There was a time when it wasn't uncommon to work eighteen hours a day.

Chloe is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2595

I found my missing fitness tracker today. This thing disappeared almost two months ago, so I'd totally given up hope of ever seeing it again. It was always a mystery where the tracker was, since just before the battery died, I noticed that it was still paired with my phone. Logically, the wristband had to be nearby, but I never could find it.

Today, I was cleaning the car after getting the interior dirty bringing stuff back from the storage warehouse and while I was brushing a crevice under the rear seat, I dislodged the illusive bracelet and swept it, along with a lot of dirt, to the driveway. Weird. The car was the first place I looked, but it never occurred to me to look under this seat. The tracker must have fallen off my wrist while I was loading photo equipment and found its way under the seat while I was driving. I'm glad the mystery is finally solved. Now, I can finally quit wondering whether one of the dogs ate it, or if I inadvertently vacuumed it up while cleaning rugs.

I never would have found the fitness tracker if I hadn't decided to bring home the garment rack from the storage warehouse and bring some order to my growing collection of coats. Don't ask me how the garment rack got muddy. I don't recall that it had ever been outside. At any rate, I disassembled the thing at the warehouse so it would fit in the car, and then cleaned and reassembled it when I got home. I had to take a bookshelf apart too, so the bulky rack would fit where I needed it to go. I always forget how heavy books are until I need to move them. These books and magazines hadn't been moved in decades. There were old Communication Arts magazines from the 1970's. There were German language textbooks from the 1990's when I was doing a lot of work in Germany. I threw away about thirty pounds of old B&H catalogs from the days before the Internet when they used to mail out massive two inch thick books every six months or so. If I had more time, this cleanup job might have been a little nostalgic, but I was trying to get everything finished while the dogs were still sleeping.

Eventually, I rearranged all the books and gathered up the loose coats around the house so I could place them neatly on the garment rack. The job was a success, but it took longer than I'd thought. By the time I fed the dogs their dinner and got them ready for their evening walks, it was starting to look like rain. Dot's walk went fine, but when it was Dash's turn, the sky was pretty dark. When we were about a mile away from the house, I started to see lightning. I urged Dash to hurry up and amazingly, he listened. We arrived home again two minutes before a real downpour started. I guess today was a lucky day. We didn't get struck by lightning and I found a fitness tracker that I never thought I'd see again. The office is still a mess, but the coats look much better on the garment rack.

I'm pleased that the new wonder scale tells me I'm in pretty good shape. My body mass index, bone mass, body fat percentage, standing heart rate, and pulse wave velocity are all excellent for someone my age. I'd never even heard of pulse wave velocity before. You take the time it takes for blood to travel from your heart to the blood vessels in your feet and then compare this value with your height to determine your pulse wave velocity. Lower numbers are good because they indicate that your veins and arteries are elastic. Higher numbers indicate hardening of the arteries which could put you at risk of a heart attack. I guess I already knew that my arteries were somewhat elastic, but I didn't know what it all meant. Cool machines that actually teach you something are the best. I like my scale.

Molly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2593

My new scale that measures everything arrived today. I'm always intrigued by the latest technology; especially stuff I've never heard of before. This WiFi scale not only tracks your weight, it also analyzes your body composition, measures your body mass index, determines your resting heart rate and pulse wave velocity; plus it gives you a daily weather report. At first I couldn't figure out how this little flat box could calculate your bone and muscle mass, the percentage of water in your body, and half a dozen other things just by standing on it for a few seconds. I did a little research and discovered bioelectrical impedance technology. Basically, sensors in the scale measure the electrical impedance, or opposition to the flow of an electric current passing through through body tissues in your feet. The results are used to provide an estimate of body composition. Is impedance analysis accurate? Who knows. It sure is cool though. I bet my doctor will hate it when I start showing him results on my phone that contradict all his fancy machines. I'm convinced that this is the future of medicine. It's already getting harder to see a doctor in some parts of the country. As medical costs continue to spiral out of control and options for care diminish, a lot of people will just start doing the simple things themselves. I can easily imagine a future where my phone will give me a warning if my vital signs get out of whack and then make me an appointment to see a robot doctor.

It took me longer than I thought to pair the scale with my WiFi network. It always takes me a long time to configure network devices. WiFi gizmos that only include a superficial two page "quick start" manual are the worst. There's always something weird that prevents stuff from playing nice with my router. I eventually got everything working properly and was amazed to see that all my vital signs were automatically imported into the Apple Health app on my phone. The cloud knows everything apparently. I'm not sure that I want Amazon Alexa listening to all my conversations, but it's actually quite convenient that Facebook knows everybody's birthday. I guess it's OK that my new scale knows my body composition. I don't use Siri much on my phone, but that's just because I don't talk very much. If I did have one of those Amazon Alexa personal assistants, all it would hear is me swearing occasionally when I accidentally stepped in dog poop.

The weather was really nice today. I wonder how long this will last? Every Winter, people in Texas go around telling each other how weird the weather is, but the truth is that rapid changes have always been normal. What would really be weird is if it remained cold all winter like it does up North. Today was perfect for walking dogs. I didn't need a heavy coat, but it was still cool enough so that Dot didn't get overheated.

I had to pick up some more phenobarbital for Dash this afternoon, as well as order more printer ink. It seems like I refilled both these things only a few weeks ago. It's too bad I can't pick up printer ink at the pharmacy. My prescriptions and my printer ink seem to run out at about the same time.

I'm glad it's Friday tomorrow. I can't decide whether I want an egg sandwich or pancakes for breakfast. I should probably weigh myself before I leave the house though. I always eat a big breakfast. If it stays clear this weekend, I'm going to look for Mercury again. It should be easy to find in the pre-dawn sky for the next several weeks. I'm not really worried about the inauguration. I've got astronomy, a plethora of personal tracking devices, and a tasty breakfast to amuse me.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2587

I'm always a little superstitious on Friday the 13th., but I'll have to admit there was nothing to be afraid of. Today was a perfectly normal grey, Winter day. I should quit complaining about Texas weather, because with the exception of a few weeks in April and October, it's all bad. I did get to go out for breakfast this morning, because the all day rain that was predicted never amounted to anything. There were a few intermittent showers, but what else would you expect on a dismal, grey day.

I got an e-mail this morning advertising a WiFi scale that measures your weight, muscle mass, bone density, heart rate, body mass index, pulse wave velocity and a couple of other things automatically, instantly sending the results to an app on your phone. How can they measure all these things, just by standing on a scale? I do remember standing on a machine at my doctor's office last year that did a lot of the same things, but I never imagined that it would become an inexpensive consumer product. The scale was on sale too. Naturally, I bought the thing. Ever since I started wearing fitness trackers, I'm become obsessed with tracking everything. This is probably the future of medicine. There are already WiFi blood pressure and blood sugar meters available, with more sophisticated products on the horizon. In a few years, you probably won't even go to the doctor for a check up. You'll just have a medical account in the cloud somewhere where your doctor can monitor all these gizmos. This will be fine by me. You wait forever in the lobby for your doctor's appointment these days and half the time I catch a cold by sitting next to someone who is sick.

Janet saw a coyote this morning while she was walking Dot. Neighbors have reported frequent coyote sighting as well. This makes me a little nervous, because I walk the dogs at dawn and dusk, when the pack is active. I'll have to be a little more careful walking Dash, because he loves to walk through wooded areas. A lone coyote doesn't bother me, but they act differently when they're in a pack. I sometimes hear these animals hunting at night and it's an eerie sound when they make a kill. One year when there were lots of coyotes in the area, the local bunny population declined dramatically. Several neighbors have lost their cats as well. With an increasing number of aggressive loose dogs, snakes in the summer, and coyotes in the winter, I occasionally wonder why I go to the park at all.

I've got to figure out a better solution for walking the dogs in the evening. Morning are usually fine, because Janet walks Dot while I walk Dash. In the evening I walk each dog one at a time. The problem is that each dog wants to be first. If I walk Dot first, Dash gets moody and won't take a good walk later. If I walk Dash first, Dot often poops in the house while we're gone. I wish Dot and Dash understood how difficult this is for me, but they don't. They're dogs. At least Dot's urinary incontinence seems to be improving.

I hope the weather clears up this weekend. If someone ever makes a tracker that correlates your mood with the amount of sunlight you're receiving, I'm sure I'd discover that I don't do well on days like this. Even though I already know the answer, I'd probably buy the machine, because I'd like to see my mood on a graph.

Taylor is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day