Day 2432

Today was quiet. I spent most of the day finishing my remaining writing assignments. In theory, I could make a good living this way, but the assignments aren't consistent enough. I miss the days when reading was considered mandatory. Back in the day, I used to write lots of annual reports for large corporations. These jobs always paid well and weren't much harder than the lower paying online work I do today. Everything is visual these days. I was curious when I heard about Instagram Stories recently. Finally, an Instagram feature designed for people like me. Not really. I was very disappointed when I discovered that these "stories" were just meant to be collections of short videos. In a world where people increasingly communicate using emojis, I'm lucky to have any writing jobs at all.

Since Dot keeps me housebound most of the time, I watch way more TV than I should. I never actually watch entire shows, but the TV in the kitchen is always on and I'll glance at it as I'm doing my daily chores. Donald Trump is increasingly portrayed as an unbalanced Dr. Strangelove. Hillary Clinton is portrayed as an evil mafia boss who is above the law. Since there is a basis for both of these portrayals, why are we being asked to vote for either of these people? The main message of both campaigns is that the other guy is even worse than they are. It's pathetic. You'd think the third party candidates would get a little more traction in this toxic environment, but nobody even bothers to interview Gary Johnson. The media treats him like someone who was born with six toes. He's just a curiosity. I'm pretty burned out on political news, but it's still more interesting than cooking shows or The View. Why do the networks even bother with daytime programming? I think the only people watching are me and a bunch of people sitting in doctor's waiting rooms.

I'm still trying to figure out how to reconfigure my network router so I can use my pet cam again. I guess I could just go buy a different pet cam, but I am determined to get the existing one working. I've given up on AT&T and have started talking with the people who make the software that the camera uses. So far, they're just asking me a lot of questions, but the questions are very specific, so I think we might be getting somewhere.

Janet and I found a lost dog while we were walking Dot and Dash this evening. The little dog was friendly, but was hard to catch since we couldn't move very fast with Dot. Luckily, a neighbor driving down the street saw us and stopped to help. We found a phone number on the dog's collar and he said he would try to reunite the dog with its owner. Hopefully, they are back together now.

Tomorrow I have an appointment for my annual safety inspection. I've tried to schedule this excursion so that Dot will be asleep while I'm gone, but I have little control over what Dot actually does. Just because she's usually asleep at 10 AM, doesn't mean that she's going to be sleeping tomorrow. Whenever I go out these days, I tend to come home to find a dog who has pooped all over the place.

At least it's Friday tomorrow. This has been a long, very hot week. The trash has been taken out to the curb and I'm almost ready for bed. I'm hoping that the safety inspection doesn't take very long, so I still have time to go out for breakfast. I'd definitely like to end the week with a good breakfast.

Hannah 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 793

Why do software updates come so frequently now? I just installed Lion on my computer a few weeks ago and I'm already getting e-mails about the impending release of the next Apple OS, strangely named Mountain Lion. I'm assuming that this breed of Lion is different than the Lion I already have and will cause me just as many problems when I eventually decide to upgrade. I'm having the same problem with the Avid Media Composer software I recently started using. I literally just finished installing version 6.0 of Media Composer when I get an e-mail saying that version 6.01 is here and that it is an essential upgrade. Avid never makes it easy to upgrade either. You usually have to completely uninstall the previous version of the software and start over from scratch. Sometimes you even have to re-register the upgrade.

I just don't get the necessity for all these upgrades. Most people, including myself, don't even fully learn the old software before it's time to trade up to something new. Personally, I was happy enough with Photoshop 6.0 and would still be using it if my clients hadn't shamed me into upgrading to CS5. I'm sure it's better, but after years of use, I still hadn't learned all the secrets of Photoshop 6 and 7.

As recently as five years ago, I would have been knee deep in annual report writing by mid February. New annual report jobs awarded so far this year? Zero. That's not good. Writing annual reports used to be a good source of income for me. It was a good source of income for a lot of photographers and designers I know as well. Somehow it has totally fallen out of fashion for companies to produce elaborate annual reports these days. I guess they don't want shareholders to think they are being wasteful. The old style reports were a bit expensive, often having a unit cost as high as $5 each, but they kept a lot of small businesses like mine alive during the Winter and early Spring. Jeez! What's a boy to do when companies of all sizes just staple a cover to their 10-K Form and call it an annual report? There's nothing to write anymore.

I think I'll go out for breakfast again tomorrow. It's a sign of just how boring and predictible my life has become when I start looking forward to a waffle in a restaurant once a week.

Joshua is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 479

My little two dog office had a busy day. I spent most of the day working on my new oil and gas annual report. When I wasn't puzzling over strange phrases like "our strategy is to capitalize on this growing trend for independent upstream companies to monetize their conventional assets by deploying capital to unconventional resources," I was on the phone. I made a rare international call to one of my clients in Germany this morning. This was the first time I'd used my iPhone to make an international call, and I was amazed by how easy it was. I am totally flummoxed by international calls. I never remember the correct country codes and seldom remember whether I'm supposed to dial 1 or not in front of the long string of numbers. With the iPhone, I didn't have to mess with any of this. All I did was touch my finger to my client's name in my address book and the call went through.

My reluctant plunge into the social media ocean is finally starting to pay off. I got a call this afternoon from an old client of mine who I recently reconnected with on Facebook. Would I be interested in working on some new product launch literature for a major wireless provider? You bet! Towards the end of the day, a blogger friend called and asked if I'd be interested in doing some professional blogging for his company. Things are looking up.

I wish my memory was a little better. As I was packing for the employee photo assignment I mentioned in an earlier post, a little voice in the back of my head told me to call my client and make sure I had the right day. Nope. Wrong again. The photo shoot is actually next Friday afternoon. Even though a had wasted some time packing up cameras, this mistake was really a blessing in disguise. I didn't have enough time to do the photos today anyway. As soon as I hung up the phone, I went straight back to working on the annual report.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 478

I can always tell when my accountant actually starts working on my taxes, because I get a flurry of calls asking for various missing documents. One of the documents they were asking for today actually was missing. The rest, the accountant already had. I must have just put them in the wrong pocket of the accordion folder with all my receipts. It's getting pretty close to April 15, but I certainly can't fault my accountant for waiting this long to get started. This is the busiest month of the year for accounting firms. If I had this much business during the months of March and April, I would probably just take the rest of the year off.

I did get some legitimate new business today. The annual report job finally came through. Part of my input material was a competitors annual report. "Our business is exactly like theirs," I was told. "We just don't want it to sound like we went out and copied them." I've gotten this kind of direction before. "Make it just the same....but different." Yup, I can do that. I've done it many times before.

I'm glad it's Friday tomorrow. I don't know why, since Saturdays aren't usually that exciting. It's been a long, busy week though, and I'd like to forget about keeping my head above water for a couple of days. Maybe we'll go look at new televisions this weekend. Given the choice between making an annual report sound "just the same...but different" or watching old episodes of Top Gear and Dr. Who, I think being a couch potato for a while doesn't sound half bad.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 441

I got a phone call today asking if I'd be interested in writing an annual report. Definitely! Before spending a lot of money on the company annual report became a corporate faux pas, I used to get a lot of this sort of work. Now, most companies just stick a cover on their 10-K report and claim that they are saving the shareholders money. I'm actually kind of surprised that anyone still does a full blown annual report with an editorial section anymore, but I'm certainly happy to get the job.

I also decided to run an advertisement for my own company, which is something I do even less frequently these days than write annual reports. You'd think, since I'm in the advertising business myself, that I'd be a little more enthusiastic about self promotion. Unfortunately, most of the money I've spent on my own advertising has just disappeared down a black hole. Since the very beginning, most of my business has come from referrals. It's time to give advertising a try again though. I'd like to expand the veterinary specialty side of my business and I've just about run out of veterinarians that I know personally.

Dash certainly knows plenty of vets personally. I've been taking him to the vet every other week lately. After yesterday's false start, I was determined not to forget his appointment again. I put a post-it note reminder on my computer and we arrived right on time. I have this elaborate appointment calendar on my computer that I can update via e-mail or even using my cell phone, but I seldom remember to look at it. Old fashioned yellow sticky notes seem much more effective. The computer calendar just seems to remind me of what I've already forgotten when I finally get around to looking at it.

I need a Twitter strategy. Google Analytics is telling me that almost 10% of my web traffic is already coming from Twitter. Maybe it's time that I started taking Twitter seriously.

Dalmatian of the Day

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