Day 3724

I managed to fix the furnace by myself and didn't need the HVAC guys after all. I did need an electrician though. I bought a new security light yesterday, but didn't have the nerve to install it myself. The light is on a pole where the electricity comes into the house. I'm clumsy enough that I don't want to get anywhere near a high voltage electric line. It's worth the money to have an electrician do the foolish, risky stuff. Luckily, the electrician was able to come out this morning and when he finished installing the new security light, I asked if he had time to do a little more electrical work. I had him rewire a few things so I can now turn on the roof pumps from inside the house. This will be a huge improvement. I've grown to hate going out in the rain just to turn the pumps on and off.

I got a haircut today and now feel ready for my trip to West Texas. I asked the folks at the observatory if they were considering canceling their Spring Break activities because of the coronavirus. Nope. The show will go on, but they did say they bought some extra hand sanitizer. It looks like I will be very busy, conducting tours during the day and helping with star parties at night. I hope I enjoy this unique experience. As a rule, I don't enjoy driving long distances. Jeez. I don't even enjoy working. The people at the observatory are extremely nice though and the dark night skies on Mount Locke are hard to beat. Hey, I may even learn a little about astronomy.

I finally assembled all my tax records and took them to the accountant. I always burn a copy of my Quickbooks Pro files to a CD and give this to the accountant as well. It turns out that they had just updated their office computers and none of the new workstations had a CD drive. It made me feel old.  Apparently nobody uses CD's and DVD's anymore. "Why don't you just e-mail us the files," the office manager told me. Duh. Why didn't I think of that?

It doesn't look like this blog is coming back to Facebook any time soon. They have never responded to my inquiries.  It remains a mystery why I have been banished from their platform. How can a blog about rescuing dogs and attending rocket launches be considered offensive by anyone? And why did it take them ten years to decide I was violating their community standards? What are these community standards anyway? I see absolute crap on Facebook every day. I'm kind of the Mr. Rogers of the blog world. Why pick on me? Not that is really matters. I survived the collapse of Klout, Google+, and MySpace. People are still reading the blog. Surprisingly, blog traffic hasn't diminished all that much. A year from now, I'll still be writing and probably won't be thinking about Facebook at all.

When I went up on the roof this afternoon to clear away the water, everything looked pretty good. My patches were solid and so far there have been no leaks, even though we got a lot of rain. It's too early to do a victory lap, but I'm feeling pretty good. Hopefully, the repairs I've made will prevent further leaks until the weather gets warmer and I can power wash the roof and apply the rest of the silicon coating.

The April issue of Spaceflight magazine is out and my article looks good. This is a good reminder that I don't really need Facebook. There are lots of places to share my story. The important thing is just to keep writing.

Rory is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3723

Talk about irony. The last sentence of last night's blog post read "Life is full of surprises." Two minutes after I added that post to my Facebook timeline, all my Facebook posts disappeared. This was a huge surprise. Facebook had nuked my entire blog, telling me that it was violating their community standards. WTF? I was stunned. With all the crap on Facebook, they picked my simple little blog about rescuing dogs and repairing my roof to ban.

The blog still exists and I still make a new entry every single day. Facebook readers may have to try a little harder to find it though. Some readers have always had the blog sent to their e-mail account every evening. Others find it on Twitter. I'm going to try to get Facebook to reinstate the blog because banning me has got to be a mistake. There is nothing offensive about this blog. I miss the old days when tons of people used to follow the blog directly on Blogger. Blog hopping has fallen out of fashion though. Today you've got to have a podcast.

Losing my Facebook blog readers wasn't the only disaster I had to deal with today. The furnace broke too. The furnace repair guys were out at the house less than a month ago, so the furnace should be working fine. Obviously these guys missed something. I called them to come out again. Hopefully they can quickly find what's wrong with the furnace  quickly. We've still got some cold nights ahead. I didn't even try to fix things myself tonight. I'm tired.

The security light in the back yard has quit working too. I've decide to quit trying to repair this thing and just buy a new fixture. I wanted to buy a sodium vapor lamp like I used to have, but all the stores have quit selling them. Is it against the law to sell incandescent lights anymore? You don't see any in Lowes or Home Depot these days. I ended up up buying another LED light because that was all that was available. These LED fixtures aren't as bright as sodium vapor or metal halide bulbs, but what are you going to do? You can't buy if nobody is selling.

About the only good thing that happened today was that I finally figured out how to enable WiFi Calling on my phone. The reason the feature wasn't working was that the phone company still thought I had an iPhone 5. Older iPhones aren't cmpatible with WiFi calling. As soon as they reconfigured my service for an iPhone SE, everything worked as it should. I wonder why nobody at the AT&T retail stores knew about this? I've spent hours following false leads and blind alleys.

I tried to fill out the accountant's tax questionnaire so I could get my materials to him. I ended up with more questions than answers. I couldn't even figure out my return from last year. I guess I'll do what I always do: dump everything in a big manilla envelope and hand it to the accountant.

I hope my Facebook readers are able to find this post. If you do wind up reading this somehow, leave a comment on the blog and let me know you're still here. The blog isn't going away. I hope you aren't either.

Orion is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3372

I finished getting my tax files organized today and took them over to my accountant. For the past several years this has been a somewhat depressing experience. I've known the accountant for decades. We are about the same age. His business is still very successful and mine is practically nonexistent. It's embarrassing to show him how little money I've made. The accountant just laughs and says that old accountants are in more demand than old creative people. While this is probably true, it is not reassuring.

There's a shoe store I like near the accountant's office. I usually stop and buy a pair of shoes after I finish my meeting. I didn't stop today. After moving my storage warehouse last November, it finally dawned on me that I don't need anything. Pick almost any category and I have enough. I certainly have enough shoes. Buying things was like comfort food for me for a long. long time. Not anymore. When I look around the office, I just see lots of obsolete stuff I no longer need.

My waist and shoe size haven't changed, so I'll eventually wear all the clothes. I might be out of fashion, but who cares. When you dress like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, fashion is irrelevant. T-shirts, jeans, and comfortable shoes are timeless.

Cleaning up Dash's poop at night usually goes like clockwork, but last night something went wrong. I always slide out the soiled puppy pad, roll it up and seal it in a plastic bag. I was unfolding a fresh puppy pad to slide under Dash's butt when he decided to poop again. No protection always equals a big mess. We had to wake Dash up, get him of the bed without stepping in the mess, and then replace the soiled blankets. By the time I re-made the bed, took the blankets outside to clean with a hose, and then placed them in the washing machine on the sanitize cycle, I was wide awake.

I hate reading articles about how sleep deprivation can take years off your life. There's not much I can do about the situation right now. I think parents with small children go through something similar, but most of them are quite a bit younger than me. At any rate, if you're changing diapers or trying to get your kid back to sleep in the middle of the night, I can relate.

All this week Dash has seemed exhausted after his walks. We walk really slowly, but he doesn't have as much energy anymore. I've tried to get him to take shorter walks, but Dash is very stubborn. I can't get him to turn around. It is only after we return home that he realizes that we went too far. Hopefully, the long naps Dash takes during the day are beneficial. I'd hate to have to discontinue the walks. They're one of the few things he still looks forward to.

Now that my taxes are out of the way, there are a tons of things around the house than need my attention. My toilet repair didn't work very good.  I'll have to repeat the process. There's a new pothole in the driveway that I need to fill with river rocks. The little refrigerator needs to be defrosted as well. The little refrigerator was only meant to be temporary, but like most things around here, it has become permanent.

Maybe I'll get some sleep tonight. It's all up to Dash at this point.

Pringles is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2308

I discovered today that one of my best friends from college was just diagnosed with lung cancer. The guy didn't even smoke. Life can be very unfair sometimes. I've reached the age where people post good news about their grandchildren and bad news about themselves. Sadly, almost everybody I know is falling apart. That's why I go to the gym on Sunday and feel vaguely guilty that I don't go everyday. Even in the best of circumstances, it is an uphill battle to stay healthy. Some things we have control over, but a lot of things we don't. If there was anybody I thought could have avoided cancer, it would have been my clean living college friend. It just wasn't in the cards.

My accountant called this afternoon to tell me that he'd finished my taxes. In the course of our conversation, he asked me if I was happy with my broker. I asked why and he said that the management fees on my account seemed pretty high when you looked at the rather dismal performance of my portfolio. He said I'd probably do better if I just put everything in a boring index fund that mirrored the S&P and forget about it. I've thought the same thing for quite a while, but have never been sure what to do next. I've asked friends if they liked their broker or financial advisor and most of them were just as disgusted as I am. Nobody seems to want to recommend anybody. Very few small investors are doing well these days. Increasingly, I think the whole system is rigged to benefit the rich and powerful. In the not too distant past, you used to be able to go to your bank and get a 5 year Certificate of Deposit that provided a nice monthly return with no risk at all. US Treasury Bonds also provided a very nice return with little to no risk. Now, anything with any promise of a decent return comes with quite a bit of risk. Investing has become synonymous with gambling. In this kind of environment I can see why Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have become popular. I don't think either of these men can reverse the tide of globalism and corporate greed that created this mess, but at least they have identified the problem.

I tried to fix the odd French made toilet in one of the bathrooms today with little success. They stopped selling these things quite some time ago when plumbers refused to repair them. Parts are impossible to find and plumbers just tell me to buy a new toilet. Instead of a simple fill valve and float that you could buy at Home Depot, this toilet uses a proprietary French fill mechanism that looks like it was designed by Rube Goldberg. I've been using super glue and epoxy to patch the thing back together for years, but it's leaking again. One more frustration in a very frustrating month.

I had another website to update this afternoon, so I barely had time to go to the gym. I did have a good workout, but vacuuming the house and cleaning the rugs will have to wait. While I was at the gym I noticed that I was the only one holding on to the handrails while I was using the treadmill. I must have a terrible sense of balance. Everyone else seemed to be walking just fine without using the rails. It's been a busy day and I'm glad it's over. It's weird to have most of your work on the weekend. I bet there will be nothing for me to do tomorrow. Monday's are like that. Don't get me wrong. There's always something to do if you count doing laundry and cleaning up poop. I just wish there was something exciting to do.

Apollo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2295

I took my tax information over to the accountant this morning. I used to bring a heavy pile of three-ring binders, file folders, and envelopes full of receipts. Now, I basically just bring a single CD with my Quickbooks Pro files. You'd think this would make it easier for the accountant and he'd give me a discount, but he actually charges me more. Times have changed. Oh, well. I've become very fatalistic about taxes. I just pay what I'm told to pay and try not to think about it.

On the way home I stopped at the REI store and got a pair of hiking pants for walking the dogs. It's only a matter of time before I have an entire wardrobe full of REI clothes. They aren't particularly stylish, but they seem extremely durable and well made. The pants I bought today reminded me of my old Defender 90. I don't know why I like indestructible things so much. Maybe it's because I feel we are living in an increasingly apocalyptic world.

With my taxes out of the way, I thought I'd catch up on a few other things as well. I called an audio repair shop to ask about a tape recorder I'd left with them ages ago. They said they were still waiting on a part that was on back order. Jeez, are they getting this part from Pluto? I brought the recorder in for service last October. I'm a very patient person, but this is getting ridiculous.

I had better luck when I called the landscapers. They said they'd be out to take a look at the yard tomorrow. These guys are good, but they always want to charge me too much. I have to explain that I'm not asking them to do nearly as much as they did three years ago. They seem to like the price they got three years ago. Eventually, we come to a mutual agreement, but it shouldn't have to be this hard. I also called the roofer, but he didn't even return my call. That's pretty typical for a roofer. I'll probably have to bug this guy for a month to get him to come over and patch the current crop of bare spots.

I was so efficient about taking care of unfinished business today that I don't what I'm going to do tomorrow. If the weather stays nice, maybe I'll mow the grass. The first step is to see if the big 24 volt battery will hold a charge. The second step is to take the battery to be re-celled when it dies unexpectedly after five minutes of use. The third step it to actually mow the grass and then complain about how the weeds have taken over again. That ought to take most of the day.

Hopefully, I'll get a good night's sleep tonight. That's a lot more important than what I'm going to do tomorrow. I take a a short nap before I start writing the blog in the evenings now. I know I'm going to be up several times during the night with Dot. Naps are good and interrupted sleep is a lot better than no sleep at all.

Doc is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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