Day 1884

Today was busy. I finished two new articles and sent them off to their destination. I removed some out-of-date items from a client's website. I ordered some more ink for my insatiable large format printer. I even figured out how to optimize my computer using a bootable external drive. OK, so one of these tasks was just a phone call and another took place while I was walking the dogs. The writing and the website revisions still took a lot of time.

I'm worried that Dot's slow decline might be accelerating. She moves so slowly on her evening walk now that it's becoming a bit alarming. Dot still wants to walk, but we just inch along in slow motion. I don't want to push her too hard, but I also don't want her to just lie around and let her muscles atrophy. It's hard to get the activity level just right. Dot still does fine on her early morning walk and then sleeps for much of the day. Even with long naps, she doesn't have much energy left by the end of the day. Maybe one walk a day is plenty now.

We got back from our evening walk just in time for me to watch the launch of the Space X Falcon 9 rocket in Florida. I continue to be impressed by the sheer audacity of Elon Musk. One day he's showing off a Tesla that will go from 0 to 60 in three seconds and the next day he's sending a weather satellite into orbit a million miles from the earth. Just a few days ago a Space X Dragon capsule returned to earth with cargo from the International Space Station and pretty soon these capsules will be carrying astronauts. In many ways Elon Musk has already put Steve Jobs to shame. The guy is everywhere.

I probably should have saved some of today's workload for tomorrow. So far, it doesn't look like there's much cued up in the pipeline. This is typical of me. My goal is always to rid myself of work as quickly as I can, rather than pace myself and space it out evenly. I did enough today to easily fill two days, but now it's all done. Nothing for tomorrow. Dot does have her physical therapy session tomorrow though. That usually takes up most of the afternoon. I probably need to get some more groceries as well. The refrigerator is looking pretty empty.

It's a little early, but I'm already looking for the first signs of Spring. The weather has been so warm this week that you almost expect to see the trees starting to bud and the first of the Spring wildflowers coming into bloom. This unseasonal weather is actually pretty typical for Texas. Over and over again I have seen everything come into bloom in early March, only to be frozen by one last blast of Winter.

Until then, I'll continue to enjoy wearing shorts in February.

Lady Gogh is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1883

Today was an exercise in futility. I wanted to boot my computer from an external drive so I could use a defragmentation application to clean up the desktop computer. There was an external drive sitting on a nearby shelf, but I couldn't find the wall wart power supply so I could plug it in. I got a box out of the closet that contained about forty of these wall warts and started looking for one with an odd, non-standard four pin connection that matched connection on the external drive. I hate these wall warts. Why can't manufacturers include a decent internal power supply with their gadgets like they used to? Now, I've got all these various wall warts and I have no idea what they go to anymore. Each one has a different capacity and outputs a different voltage. I don't know how I acquired so many of these things. Old routers, synthesizers, battery chargers, hard drives, sequencers, and mixers all seem to use them.

Eventually, I found the correct power supply, plugged in the external drive enclosure and discovered that the drive itself had gone bad. All it made was a clicking sound and wouldn't even spin up. Luckily, I found another old Seagate drive in a drawer and took the enclosure apart so I could substitute drives. The second drive wouldn't spin up either. Evidently, if you leave a hard drive sitting around for five or ten years without using it, there is no guarantee that it will ever work again. I thought both of these hard drives were still good the last time I used them. I just can't remember when that was. If old hard drives just die of their own accord after they sit idle for years, I need to seriously rethink my storage warehouse strategy. There are a ton of old computers sitting in there that I might want to fire up someday. What if none of them work anymore?

Today's experience reaffirmed my belief that there are two fundamental operating principals in the universe. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and use it or lose it. Since I still needed an external drive I could boot up from, I drove to Fry's and bought one. This is probably how I have acquired so much electronic garbage over the years. I should have added the two broken hard drives to the pile of junk I was going to take out to the curb for big trash day, but I couldn't bring myself to throw them away. Maybe they weren't broken after all and I was just doing something wrong.

The weather was wonderful for a second day in a row. I continued my efforts to clean up the yard a bit while the dogs lounged in the sun. I felt like leaving the back door open, so the dogs could come an go as they pleased. I can't do this for too long though, because neighborhood feral cats and even racoons will wander inside.

My experience with the hard drives got me to thinking about the generator I got a few months ago. I took it outside and started it up, just to make sure it still worked. The instructions said I should start it at least once a week, but that was way too much trouble. I haven't started the thing since I bought it. I didn't even use the generator during our last power outage. I still think the best way to deal with a power outage is just go to a nice, pet friendly hotel and wait for the power company to fix things. Luckily the generator still works just fine. Maybe someday, I'll actually need it.

The Space X launch in Florida got scrubbed again. I'm glad I didn't fly down to watch the launch. I would have had to come back empty handed again. You have to have a lot of patience and a very flexible schedule to actually see one of these rockets get off the ground.

Today was kind of dead, but there are already two writing jobs cued up for tomorrow. Two writing jobs and two long dog walks ought to fill up the day rather nicely.

Cooper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 396

I came up with a ridiculously easy solution to my image transfer woes. I simply went to Fry's and bought a brand new external hard drive and backed up all my files again. It wasn't that my files were too huge to transfer, it was that my hard drives were too old to play nice with my new computer. I didn't realize just how unfriendly this new computer was to anything made before the days of Snow Leopard, but that was the problem. When I plugged the new external drive into the computer, all my image and movie files transferred flawlessly in just a few hours. It would have taken me months to transfer these files using the old hard drives.

I guess this means that my "state-of-the-art" disk arrays are ready to join the SyQuest drives, Zip drives, SCSI drives, and other forgotten technology that has been consigned to a dusty shelf in my storage warehouse. It's a shame all this stuff becomes obsolete so quickly. You barely have time to get it all paid for before it's time to move on too something newer and better.

I've got to make an effort to stay currant though. I've got no choice. My client's expectations keep rising. It's just my luck that just when the designers and graphic artists are finally starting to turn sour on Flash, veterinarians are beginning to discover it. I've noticed that my veterinary clients are increasingly starting to ask for those flashy, animated web things that you can only do with Flash. I may even have to take a couple of Flash development classes this year or risk losing business.

I did remember to fast this morning before my cholesterol screening. I thought there were going to be a ton of senior citizens ahead of me in line when I went to the health food store, but there wasn't a line at all. I guess the cold weather kept them all indoors. After I got my blood work done, I stopped by my veterinarian to drop off a few things. When I left the vet a few minutes later, I noticed a huge wreck with several ambulances at a nearby stoplight when my car had been just a few minutes before. If the blood tests had taken a few minutes longer, it would have been my car that got demolished by the idiot who ran the red light at fifty miles an hour. I was lucky today. I hope my luck continues.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day