Day 2183

We're making progress. Our broadband service was finally restored today and the humidity in the house is down to 38%. When the technician called to tell me that everything had been fixed, I asked him what the problem was. "We found four separate faults in the fiber line to your house," he told me. "That sounds pretty major," I said. "Was service out for the entire neighborhood?" "No, it was just you," the guy said. It figures. Our house just seems to attract problems.

I stretched the soiled photo backdrop out on a long clothesline this morning and sprayed it with the Nature's Miracle enzyme. It was a nice day, so it didn't take long for the muslin cloth to air out and dry. I think it looks and smells much better, but Dot and Dash beg to differ. They are still real interested in the cloth backdrop when I take them outside. I'll see what Janet thinks. You can't dry clean or wash these hand painted backdrops, because all the paint will come off. I'll clean the backdrop again tomorrow and hopefully by next Saturday it will just be another large, somewhat dirty piece of canvas. I'm hoping for the best. The last thing you want is the smell of pee when you're shooting a long sequence of pet pictures. If one dog has marked the canvas, all the other dogs will want to pee on top of the same spot to claim it. That's just the way dogs are.

Even though our U-Verse service is working again, I'm still tempted to switch to Time Warner. I checked prices today and their top of the line bundle is about 40% less than what we are currently paying right for U-Verse. Cable providers are tricky though. They are masters of bait and switch tactics. You sign up for something and then you notice a few months later that you are paying quite a bit more. None of the cable providers include taxes in their pricing either. It's amazing how many weird and often expensive local and state taxes they can get away with adding to your bill. No wonder so many people are just watching Netflix and Hulu on the Internet. So far, the Internet has managed to escape most of the ridiculous taxes the utilities and telecom providers tack on to your bill.

The evil bird that poops on my car has returned to spend another Winter taunting me. I know it's the same bird every year. I wonder how long birds live? I think that parrots can live 50 years or more, but what about Blue Jays and Cardinals? This bird always poops on my car and never on Janet's. It drives me nuts. I've tried everything to scare the bird away, but nothing seems to work. I really thought rubber snakes would do the trick, but this bird has no fear of snakes. It even pooped on one of the rubber snakes yesterday.

I thought I might be able to see Comet Catalina this morning, since it is currently located very near the Moon and Venus in the pre-dawn sky. It turns out that the comet was fainter than expected though, and I wasn't able to find it with binoculars. I'll try again tomorrow morning, but I suspect that the glare from cars and streetlights will pretty well mask the faint sixth magnitude object.

Work continues to be slow this month. Maybe this is the new normal. I certainly hope not.

Humphrey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2182

For the first time in a very long time, Blogger appears to be down. When I logged on to write my post tonight, I couldn't view my blog at all and kept getting a message saying "Whoops, that's an error. We apologize for the inconvenience." Somehow this seemed like a lot more than a minor inconvenience when I was faced with the prospect of missing my first daily post since I started the blog 2182 days ago. I did a quick Google search and discovered that other people all around the world were having the same problem. Somehow this was comforting. My blog didn't just disappear. Google is working on the problem and if I write slowly, there's always a chance that they will get everything fixed before I finish telling you about today's activities.

There were certainly plenty going on today. We completed our second Santa Paws photo shoot and for the most part, everything went well. Everyone was tired. Some volunteers wore the same clothes that they did yesterday. I didn't even have time to take a shower. It was a long drive to today's location, so I had to get up even earlier than I did yesterday. We got Dot and Dash walked and fed, packed the cars with equipment, and off we went. I wish I had time to diagnose what was wrong with my camera yesterday, but that will have to wait. I just took a different camera with me today and all was well. Camera problems are mine and mine alone. The rest of the crew has their own problems to deal with. Sometimes the printer refuses to cooperate. Other times our credit card reader won't work. Frequently, people are late for their appointments and we get off schedule. We're a good team though. At the end of the day, everyone has their pictures and goes home happy.

Our luck ran out with the backdrop today. Several dogs peed on it and one dog pooped. I need to remember to pack a bottle of Nature's Miracle enzyme cleaner with the rest of my gear. It's the only thing that works with these types of stains. Our host had some disinfectant cleaners, but the backdrop still smelled like pee when I got home. I hung it outside to dry and will see if I can salvage it after I deal with the U-Verse people tomorrow.

I'm being optimistic and assuming that the U-Verse repair folks will actually show up tomorrow. Sometimes they don't. This has been the longest service outage I've had in a long time and it's starting to get on my nerves. As a web developer, I really depend on having a good internet connection. The Internet should be as reliable at your water and electricity. Oops. Now that I think about it, the Internet is actually more reliable than our electricity and water. After living without water for a week in a home that has power outages after every thunderstorm, I realize now that nothing is all that reliable anymore.

I hope the U-Verse technician can quickly and quietly fix our broadband without upsetting Dot and causing her to poop all over the house. I hope I can salvage the pee stained muslin photo backdrop so I don't have to buy another. I hope I can convince the client who was ready to dump me on Friday that I can provide the same quality of service at the new ad agency he's considering. I hope I can keep a smile on my face for the rest of the Christmas party season. Nobody needs to know how I really feel.

After spending most of this weekend eating fast food, I realize why so many people are overweight and have diabetes. Junk food tastes so good that it's hard to resist. Too much sugar and salt is always pretty tasty. It's too bad I couldn't lose weight on a steady diet of pizza and burgers. I always enjoy the pizzas I eat while I'm working on location, but it's back to healthy food tomorrow. I have tremendous will power, but I often wonder what's the point of it all. The people eating junk food seem to be having more fun.

Emma is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 994

I'm finished with my WWD Magic assignment. All my articles have been submitted. The videos have been edited and shipped off to their final destinations. I'm sure I was the oldest blogger at this prestigious show. The halls were filled with young girls who had their own fashion blog. Out of curiosity, I visited a few of these blogs and they all had a much larger audience than a certain blogger who writes about Dalmatians all the time. These kids were the new media you hear people talking about all the time. I was impressed. They each had a large, attentive audience. They had good connections within their industry. They were re-writing the rules of journalism. Every time I hear people whining about high unemployment and lack of opportunities for young people I just shake my head and wonder. There are literally tons of opportunities for young people, and these ambitious, very successful fashion bloggers were living proof.

I was a dinosaur by comparison. While I was at the show, I wandered through Avril Lavigne’s Abbey Dawn booth and didn't even recognize Avril Lavigne. I didn't even know that Avril Lavigne had a clothing line until later when I saw something on Joan River's Fashion Police show about how trashy Avril looked at WWD Magic. In my defense, I did recognize Betsy Johnson though. As Dr. Who would probably have said, Besty Johnson is cool.

I took Dash to the vet today for his regular antigen shot. His nurse was all excited about her upcoming wedding later this month. She and her husband to be are going to Tahiti for their honeymoon. They started saving for the trip over a year ago and are paying for the whole thing themselves. Is this a great country or what? Teenage fashion bloggers are rewriting the rules of journalism and young vet techs are vacationing in Tahiti. I don't care what people say. This is still the land of opportunity. The fact that I'm still making a decent living is practically an economic miracle in itself.

The dogs and I will have another opportunity to deal with a repairman in the house tomorrow. The U-verse technician is coming over to see if he can get our broadband service working properly again. I guess there's no three strikes and you're out rule in the telecom business. All of these companies continue to sign up new customers as fast as they can, while simultaneously doing their best to drive their existing customers crazy. Probably people like me are part of the problem. I used to be happy with a simple 300 baud modem. Now, I'm pissed if I can't upload a 10 MB file in two seconds.

Domino is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 485

I went to the AT&T store today to see if they had practical a way I could upload really large video files straight from my laptop while I'm in Houston next month. They did have a nifty little 4G dongle that would provide me with the speed I require, but the only way they would sell it was with a two year contract. They had another broadband dongle that featured a pay as you go 3G plan, but it was too slow. When I was complaining to the salesperson that I already received three AT&T bills every month and didn't really want to add a fourth, he seized on the opportunity to try and sell me on scrapping everything and having the house wired for fiber. Usually I hate these hard sell pitches, but the price for switching everything from a combination of copper wire landlines and cable to a single fiber optic system looked pretty good. If the system worked, I would save a considerable amount of money. That's the problem. I wouldn't really know whether it worked until I had it installed. We have friends who have these U-verse fiber optic systems who tell me they only work reliably about half the time.

Everything is complicated these days. I've been having some problems with side effects from one of the new medications my doctor put me on recently. My solution would be to just stop taking the medicine. I felt fine before I started taking it, and now I wake up every morning feeling like shit. My doctor didn't agree though. He wants me to cut the pills in half and just take half as much of the medicine. He said my body just wasn't used to the medicine yet. Maybe. I have a feeling though that I'll still wake up half the time feeling like shit.

My taxes are finally done and ready to mail. Oops, I forgot. You can't mail your taxes anymore. Everything is e-filed now. Even the refund, if you get one, is deposited directly in your bank account. This is probably the last year that I'll take my big ring binders full of records and receipts over to my accountant. Next year, he told me to just e-mail him my Quickbooks files.

Everyone really liked the finished poster at the animal rescue meeting tonight, although one person was a bit worried that Peta was going to get after us for putting lipstick on a cat.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day