Day 2466

This was one of those days where I wondered whether I did the right thing by taking Dot to physical therapy. She was tired this morning and seemed very slow when we took our morning walk around the block. She rested well for the remainder of the morning, so I thought she'd be OK at her therapy session. Unfortunately, Dot seemed even slower when she got into the underwater treadmill. The water kept her buoyant, so she didn't fall down, but you could tell her legs were tired. She's resting again now. We couldn't have taken an evening walk even if she wanted to. It started raining while I was eating dinner and curtailed any plans to go outside again.

Maybe Dot was tired this morning because she didn't sleep well. When Dot doesn't sleep well, I don't sleep well either. The slightest noise wakes me up and Dot woke me up three times last night. It probably would have been a better plan if we both just took a long nap today.

I was really hoping that the roofers would come out and take a look at things before it started raining again, but that didn't happen. The roofers can't make repairs until the roof is really dry, so I'm probably out of luck for a while. If memory serves me, the Fall rainy season starts in late October, so hopefully I can get my problems resolved before then.

It's really difficult for me to get anything accomplished anymore. Dot is restless, but can't move around on her own. I'm constantly moving her around from room to room or taking her outdoors. Dash has gotten moody and refuses to walk early in the morning lately. He prefers to walk about 10 AM after I've finished my breakfast. That's fine, but it takes more time. Today, when I finished with the dogs lengthy morning routine, it was time to start getting Dot ready for her trip downtown for physical therapy. When we returned, I needed to go to a different vet to pick up some pills for Dot. Then it was time to take Dash for his evening walk and eat dinner. That was my entire day.

I installed the correct ink cartridges in my printer today and of course since the printer had been idle for so long, it was clogged. I don't know how much of my new expensive ink I used up getting the printer unclogged again but it was quite a bit. I think Epson makes this ink clog on purpose. These printers are just a way to sell ink. Keeping all these cranky machines working makes me feel a bit like Sisyphus pushing the stone up the hill. There are multiple battery chargers in the office, keeping batteries charged for cameras I haven't used in years. I hear the soft whir of several watch winders behind my desk, keeping half a dozen mechanical watches wound and ready to go, even though I never wear them anymore. It's all kind of pointless.

When Dot was having her acupuncture today, the vet and I talked about how the world was spinning out of control and that it would be nice if we could turn back the clock ten or fifteen years. Personally, I'd rather turn back the clock 100 years. So many things have changed. Privacy has become an antiquated concept. If you think anything is private anymore, you are being very foolish. I think the next thing to fall by the wayside is the notion of truth. Truth is becoming antiquated as well. There is no objective truth anymore. There are just competing narratives. When writers and reporters talk about how the narrative has changed on the news, it as if we are just living inside a story or a movie. Maybe we are.

Nicholas is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2463 - 9/11

It's hard to believe that it's been fifteen years since the twin towers fell. It seems like yesterday. It's even harder to believe that after all these years, we still aren't any safer than we were then. Two wars and thousands of lost lives haven't made much of a difference. World War II was much shorter from beginning to end than this weird war we're fighting now. Part of the problem is that this has never been a war between nations. It is a clash of civilizations.

You've got part of the world living in the Twenty First Century and another part of the world living in the Fourteenth Century. The Western world should have never allowed itself to become dependent on oil from the Middle East. Middle Eastern countries have been fighting among themselves for thousands of years, but if we didn't need their oil, we would never have needed to get involved. To me, this whole notion that we are one world with a common purpose has been disastrous. I've never been a big fan of globalization. A lot of little countries, each independently moving along at their own pace and living according to their own agenda would be better for everybody.

I met my sleep goal for the first time since I started wearing fitness trackers. I was amazed that I got over eight hours of sleep last night. I woke up once during the night, because Dot had to go outside and pee, but after that, she was relaxed and slept until well after 8 AM. It will probably be a long time before this happens again. Tomorrow, Janet gets up at 5 AM to get ready for work and the dogs wake up shortly after because they know she fixes their breakfast. We've usually completed our first morning walk before 6:30 AM. Getting up early would be fine if it weren't for the fact that I always go to bed late.

Maybe the extra sleep helped my coordination. I shot baskets at the gym better than I have for a long time. I'm not very good, so getting five free throws in a row is a big deal. This success made the rest of my workout seem bearable and I briefly contemplated going to the gym more than once a week. There are often a lot of nice cars in the parking lot when I go to the gym on Sunday. Today I parked between a Bentley and a Porsche Panamera. I tried to guess who the rich guys were while I was walking on the treadmill, but nobody looked particularly successful. There were just a bunch of tired, out of shape old men doing the same things I was.

The world has certainly changed in fifteen years. I didn't think I needed to go to the gym fifteen years ago. I wasn't as healthy as I thought though. I had Hepatitis C and didn't even know it yet. The world wasn't as healthy as I thought either. My business was still pretty successful in 2001 and I remember flying to Germany for a business meeting about a week after 9/11. The airport was filled with soldiers and everybody on the plane seemed nervous. I knew that the world had changed, but I had no idea that the repercussions of that day would continue year after year, seemingly forever. If you had told me than that in 2016 the European Union would be on the verge of collapse, that tribalism had replaced nationalism, that it was next to impossible to find a good job, and that the United States would have two candidates running for president that the voters generally hated, I wouldn't have believed you. Lord knows what will happen next year.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2135

I lost another website management account today. There isn't much left to lose at this point. Janet tells me that I just need to go out and get more business. I tell her that she ought to feel very lucky that she still has a skill that isn't easily replaced by a 99 cent iPhone app.

I probably could go out and build up my writing business if I wanted. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has come up with an app that will automatically write good original content for you. Website design is another kettle of fish. There are already so many sophisticated WordPress templates and pre-built solutions available for almost nothing, that very few people see any benefit to starting from scratch anymore. When I lose a website account, it is not because someone is doing better work than I am. It it almost always because someone has offered their services far cheaper than I ever could. There just aren't many economies of scale when there is only one of you. I'm learning the hard way that it's hard to compete with dirt cheap. As my once loyal client told me this morning, "Thanks for understanding. This was such a fantastic deal, I just couldn't pass it up."

The world has fundamentally changed. I miss the days when my clients started every other sentence with "I'm not very creative, but.."  Now, everyone thinks they actually are creative. Truthfully, there is probably an abundance of creativity out there, but life was better when I had a monopoly on this activity. It's no fun being the Wizard of Oz when the whole world is behind the curtain with you. People are so pleased with their Instagram filters and slow motion iPhone videos, that I don't see a huge demand for my services in the future.

Dash's vet had an emergency when we arrived for our appointment this morning. We had to wait a while in the lobby and I noticed that there were a lot of new faces at the clinic. This is another way the world has fundamentally changed. Nobody stays at a job very long anymore. Everywhere I go, there are always lots of new faces. Luckily, Dash's vet is still a familiar face. Dash has been seeing her for years. I asked about the emergency and evidently a dog had come in with symptoms of a seizure and kept falling over. After ruling out epilepsy and vestibular disorders, the vet thought the dog had ruptured a disc in it's neck. They would need to do an MRI to make sure however. If it was a ruptured disc, the dog would need surgery. The dog's owner apparently didn't want to spend the money and was thinking about putting the dog down. This happens a lot and it always makes me sad. Personally, I don't think you should even have a dog, or a kid for that matter, if you can't afford to take care of it properly. A dog is a big responsibility. So far, we've been able to provide everything that Dot and Dash need, but there could easily come a day when the piggy bank is completely empty. It happens.

It would be nice if someone called tomorrow and wanted me to do a video project that would keep me busy till Christmas. It would be nice if Dot woke up and started walking on her own again too. Some things just aren't going to happen. I wish Dot would tell me her secret. Maybe she doesn't know what lies ahead, or maybe she doesn't care. She just seems happy.

Emily is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1668

We were out of oatmeal this morning, so instead of going to the store and getting a new box, I just went out for breakfast instead. I hadn't been to this place for a while, so I was curious if it was still the same. The menu looked the same, but when I ordered my familiar omelet, something looked different. Yup. There was less of everything. Another restaurant had discovered portion control. Everyone seems to be doing this these days. They'll put a little less in the box, or a little less on the plate and hope you won't notice. Retailers and manufacturers seem to know that their customers hate price increases, but will readily accept getting a little less for the same amount of money. Personally, I'd rather pay a little more and get a decent sized portion, but that's just me. As I continue to grow poorer, maybe my attitude will change.

I spent most of the day working on my new website project and getting my July invoices out. There were short trips to the post office and pharmacy to pay bills and pick up prescriptions, but that was about it. It's hard to get very excited about doing websites these days. It seems like every new project I get is less profitable than the previous one. I know I need to stay competitive to stay busy, but pretty soon these things won't even pay the electric bill.

It's not just traditional website design that's in decline. I saw an article the other day that said the average annual income for published authors showed the sharpest decline ever recorded during the past five years. There are well respected authors all over the world who are making less than the receptionist at an average law office. I think it's pathetic. Indie music, self-publishing, ready-made Wordpress themes, high resolution phone cameras, and a host of other innovations have created a tidal wave that is washing away folks like me. I think my financial adviser is tired of hearing me complaining about money. "Why don't you just switch to designing apps for the iPhone," he asked me the other day. It was hard to explain that creating apps was a completely different business model than being a graphic designer. Even if I was able to master the coding issues, I think my head would explode if my role in life was to come up with the next Angry Birds or Candy Crush Saga. 

I remember one year while I was going to college, I has a Summer job working on an auto assembly line. The pay was pretty darn good. I think now that the era Henry Ford ushered in with the birth of the assembly line might have been the best of times. There was a genuine need for lots and lots of people to put things together for people to buy. People bought tons of the newly affordable refrigerators, cars and light bulbs that were flooding the market, creating more jobs and more assembly lines. Wages gradually went up, since there were no robots to replace the people. The people and the jobs were actually necessary. This is what created the middle class.

Now everything is different. I've been inside huge factories where I hardly saw a person at all. Robots did everything. Automation systems are replacing people at every level. Your job is next. Sometimes I think the only thing people actually make these days are more people. We're still having babies, but what are they going to do when they grow up? They can't all be artists selling handmade jewelry on Etsy.

I'm not sure what my answer to living in an automated world will be. It's easier to think about tomorrow. I'll definitely be going back to my favorite restaurant, where I'm fairly sure that the quality and portion sizes haven't declined. I'll pick up some tasty food for the weekend at Central Market. I might even do some work.

Today's Dalmatian of the Day was one of ours. She went to the Rainbow Bridge on this day in 2004. Rest in peace Greta. You were one of a kind.

Greta is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1302

Times have certainly changed. I can remember when an oil change meant thumbing through dog-eared car magazines in the the threadbare lobby of an old garage, waiting while a grease stained mechanic did his best to leave your car smelling like motor oil for the rest of the day. Not anymore. The Land Rover dealer serves you snacks and beverages in air conditioned comfort while they work, and then they wash and detail your car before they return it to you. Of course the oil change itself costs four times more than it should.

I used to scoff at the notion that the middle class in America was being systematically eliminated, but I'm beginning to believe that this is actually the case. As a member of the vanishing middle class, I find this discouraging. I don't need tasty snacks and a car wash when I get my oil changed, but I don't want to change it myself in the parking lot of an Autozone store like the Walmart people either. The gap between the rich and the poor is definitely widening and the territory in the middle is nothing but quicksand.

Another sign that times are changing is that my website clients increasingly ask me to do things that they think are trivial no-brainers, not realizing that these things are actually quite difficult for me. People see things that they like on Facebook or Pinterest and then they ask me to put the same sort of thing on their own websites. I've given up trying to explain that sites like Amazon and Facebook have huge development teams to do all the fancy stuff. I've already learned the hard way that if I protest too much, the client will just take their business to GoDaddy or some other template site and get what they want for free. So guess what I did today? I did some difficult stuff and pretended like it was easy.

I also pretended that it didn't really matter when Dash didn't get his regular nurse at the vet today. I'm equally frustrated when I go to my own doctors and don't get the lab tech or nurse I want. It is often difficult to tell whether a doctor is any good, but at the lower levels of medicine, it is quite easy. Some technicians can draw blood painlessly and others can't. Once I even had an absent minded tech inject me with the wrong shot. Dash had to have his anal glands expressed today and memories of my own colonoscopies made me wish he had the best nurse in the building. Of course like the song says, you can't always get what you want.

I've got to get my July invoices out tomorrow so I'll have some money coming my way in August. Among other things, there's a ritzy oil change that needs to be paid for. Just so you know, today's Dalmatian is a special one. She was one of ours. Greta went to the Rainbow Bridge nine years ago tomorrow.

Greta is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1172

I was writing an article about business reorganization today and it got me thinking about how difficult it is to actually transform a company. I've tried to transform my own company several times, but I always ended up with something that looked exactly the same as the original company I started over twenty years ago. Maybe it would be easier to change if I had no real convictions about what I did in the first place. The problem is that there are certain things I like to do and other things I don't. Don't get me wrong. I'm no prima donna. I do plenty of things I don't particularly like. I just don't go out of my way to find them. Why should I go out of my way to adapt to the needs of a changing market in a world where Duck Dynasty and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo are two of the most popular shows on television. I feel sorry for that guy who is trying desperately to transform J.C. Penny into another kind of Apple store. It just isn't going to work. People who shop at J.C. Penny watch Duck Dynasty and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

I've noticed that maple syrup, whipping cream, Mallo Cups, and other sweet treats are lasting a lot longer around the house. I've really cut down on my sugar consumption. I didn't always have a sweet tooth, but one of my doctors told me that when I quit drinking my body was determined to get the sugar that it used to quickly convert from alcohol any way it could. I'm sure that this battle isn't over yet, but for the time being, I think I'm winning.

My German client liked the wastewater treatment article I sent them the other day. Too bad they don't fly me to Germany to write these things anymore. I'm still trying to get them to take me to a big conference in Rio with them this Fall, but chances of that happening are pretty slim. I'm just an e-mail attachment to most people these days.

I got a new set of antique plates for the old Maserati in the mail today. These plates last for five years and this is the third set I've gotten since the car initially became eligible for antique plates. Doing a few rough calculations, I realized that the car has been sitting in the shop for almost ten years now.  Since my mechanic isn't getting any younger either, I have my doubts that I'll ever drive the thing again. I'm not even sure that I even want to drive the car again. If the repairs ever get finished, I'll have to pay for them. On the other hand, if the car never runs again, I'm going to have a hard time selling it. I can't believe that my 1995 Defender 90 is actually my new car. Both of these cars are newer than my Nikon film cameras though. I could start my own dinosaur museum.

Lucky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1100

The dogs and I pass by Erykah Badu's house almost every morning on our walks. For some reason when she initially built the house, Erykah wrote the words LOVE, FORGIVE, EVOLVE on her garage door with colored chalk. I've noticed recently that the word EVOLVE has faded away to near invisibility. Has the singer already evolved, or did she just give up on the matter?  In my limited experience, it is a lot easier to love and forgive than it is to evolve. Most people I know, including myself, are just the same as they've always been. It's easy to pay lip service to the idea of change, but it's incredibly hard to make fundamental changes. With all the talk about needing to change our violent society, I wonder if we have the collective will to do what's necessary. Any student of history will tell you that our country has been a pretty violent place almost since the day it was founded.

I was trying to tell a client that the the work I do for them is boring while simultaneously expressing gratitude for the dull assignments. I hope I threaded this needle properly. I certainly need the work. In truth, most of my work is boring. That's the nature of work. I guess I don't believe the people who tell me their jobs are fun. If working was fun, you'd think I'd have experienced the sensation by now.

When I was at the vet yesterday, Dash sneezed in the exam room. "Does Dash have a cold?" the vet asked me. It certainly was a valid question, since we were trying to determine why Dash was throwing up every night. "Haven't you ever seen this before?" I asked the vet. "All Dalmatians do this when they think they're being ignored or you aren't doing something fast enough." "This isn't a cold," I told the vet, "it's an indignant sneeze." I was right, of course, and every Dalmatian owner would recognize that sneeze as a sign that Dash was tired of being examined and was ready to go home. I only mention this because Dot and Dash both gave me simultaneous indignant sneezes tonight when I was late fixing their dinner.

The temperature is supposed to drop over 40 degrees overnight. A cold front is moving through town as I write this and the weather forecasters say it will be close to freezing in the morning. We saw the front approaching in the distance at dog training class this evening. I thought class would be called off the moment we saw lightning on the Northern horizon. Not a chance. Everyone except Janet and I seemed determined to ignore the approaching storm. I guess they don't have dogs who are terrified of thunder and cars that have been demolished by hailstones. Luckily, we made it home before the deluge started.

Ranger is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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