Day 4933

I got a new phone today. I'm already wishing I had the old phone back. In theory transfering everything from the old phone to the new phone was supposed to be a no brainer. In practice it was a little more difficult. Most things downloaded smoothly from my iCloud account. Everything connected using Bluetooth became unpaired though. The new phone wouldn't recognize my Apple Watch at all and I had to erase it and start over. I'm still trying to reconnect Bluetooth devices like my Fitbit and the petcam monitor. I'm sure I'll have to reconnect the new phone to my car as well. Was this worth it? Time will tell I guess. At least I'll be able to run a current operating system on my phone and Apple Watch again.

I should have just let the Apple Store people configure the phone for me. I had to learn the hard way that you have to unpair things from the old phone before you can pair them again with the new phone. There are no warning messages saying "still connected to your old phone" You just get a failure notice and a button that asks you to try again. I hit that try again button quite a few times before I realized that it wasn't going to work. I hope the iCloud saved all my passwords. This is going to get really tedious if I have to manually reenter passwords for all my apps.

I did do a few other things today. We took Dawn on a nice early morning walk and then I made the bed and ate my breakfast. It was even hotter today than yesterday. Usually the sun comes up on the final leg of our sunrise walk and you can instantly feel the temperature start to rise. It's still very humid outside too. Until this heat wave ends, I'm going to try my best to avoid outdoor chores and activities.

Heat wave or not, I'm still determined to get my steps. This probably means a daily trip to the gym. Today I walked three miles on the indoor track and shot free throws on the basketball court. I probably had the energy to do more, but I got a late start today and still needed to go purchase the new phone before I headed home again. I need to quit worrying about Fitbit steps so much and concentrate on rebuilding my upper body strength. All the tools are there. I just need to use them. Maybe I can force myself to be a little more organized tomorrow. Unless a miracle happens with the weather, I'm sure I'll be back at the gym every day this week.

There are so many things I need to do around the house, but it's just too hot outside to deal with most of them. I'm sure I could repaint the trim around the edge of the roof myself, but I don't want to attempt this in triple digit temperatures. I don't wand to put a new screen on the screen door either. Lets face it, I don't really want to go outside again until Fall. Our sunrise walks with Dawn are still enjoyable, but we're probably going to have to start a little earlier on those as well. 

I'm not sure what I'm going to do tomorrow. With my luck I'll probably still be trying to reconnect apps on the new phone. When I eventually complete updating my phone and watch, the main computer is going to seem even slower. I don't even want to think about getting a new desktop computer though. Enough is enough. I can't afford any more big purchases anyway.

I'm hoping for an uneventful day tomorrow. It would be nice if it was a little cooler as well, but that's probably too much to hope for.

Rascal is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 916

It was a slow day. I did what I normally do on slow days. I tried to tidy up loose ends. In retrospect, I should have just left well enough alone. Today's loose ends were a bunch of marginal, small jobs that had somehow slipped through the cracks. I wasn't particularly interested in any of these jobs. They didn't pay much and some were just favors that didn't pay anything. After I finished contacting clients, I realized that all I succeeded in doing was reviving a few jobs that the clients weren't interested in either. If I had just kept my mouth shut, these jobs probably would have just gone away on their own accord. Now, I've got to do them.

I'm beginning to see the wisdom of the cloud. I needed to reprint a large banner I'd done for Dalmatian Rescue about three years ago. I couldn't find the file anywhere on my computer. This wasn't that surprising, since I am working on a different computer now. When I called the printer however, they instantly knew what I was talking about. They had archived the file when I initially uploaded it long ago. It is already prepared and ready for printing. I like it when other people already have my files. Maybe someday, I won't need to save anything.

I've noticed that people have been leaving birthday greetings on my Facebook page and it isn't even my birthday yet. Some of these people have known me long enough to know perfectly well when the real day is, but they tend to believe Facebook anyway. Even when it's wrong. What is this all about?  Information is so easy to obtain on the Internet that we all want to believe it. It's much easier this way. I'll admit that I'm guilty myself. Whenever I casually look something up on Wikipedia, I am inclined to believe it is true. It's just so much easier to believe everything I see on Wikipedia than to do careful research and find out the real story.

I've noticed that squirrels are eating the new grass we just planted. The nerve of those cheeky squirrels! I thought that squirrels liked nuts anyway. They apparently like fresh grass too. I see them nibbling away every day. They grab a single blade of grass in their paws and nibble it down from the tip to the root. You'd think that a blade of grass wouldn't even matter, but we've got lots and lots of squirrels. I'm beginning to think that this is one of the reasons why our grass didn't last long last Summer.

Rugby is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 819

I went to the AT&T store today to find out a little more about U-verse. I've been getting these flyers in the mail for the past several months with what look like incredibly good deals and I wanted to find out if they were really true. The $79 a month bundle price they quoted was indeed correct, but the more I learned about it, the more I wondered if anyone would really sign up for this rather limited service. You got a phone, but you were limited to a certain number of minutes a month. You got internet, but it was slower than what I have now. You got TV as well, but not very many channels. When I asked how much it would cost to get what I really needed, the price suddenly got a lot higher. Despite the bait and switch tactics, I'm still thinking of switching from Time Warner to U-verse anyway.

Why do competing companies make it so difficult to compare services these days? You always end up comparing apples to oranges and at the end of the day, you're just guessing which company is actually better. I'm convinced this is why telephone, internet, and electricity providers try so hard to get you to sign a two year contract. Without a contract, there would be nothing preventing you from just leaving when the disappointment sets in. Somehow phone companies always seem to deliver less than they promise. They never mention all the city and state taxes that are going to be added to your bill either.

I got a bid on putting in a new furnace as well today. Although the price was more reasonable than I expected, it was still pretty high and confirmed my decision to just wait until next Fall to do anything major. There are far to many expenses on the horizon these days anyway. Taxes are due in less than a month. The rent house is empty and not contributing anything to the monthly cash flow. The Defender 90 is almost due for another major service. The list never ends.

Enough complaining though. The weather seems to get a little nicer every day. I'm not wild about daylight savings time starting so early this year, but it's nice to be able to put the heavy Winter coats away for another season. Walking the dogs is a lot more enjoyable in warmer weather too. Although Dot and Dash haven't officially become photo assistants, they are both becoming better about letting me take pictures during our walks. I never really thought of myself as a nature photographer, but I'm actually starting to get some good shots.

The iCloud has turned out to be a good thing as well. I was a bit apprehensive about upgrading everything to take advantage of the Cloud, but it's certainly making my life easier. I don't have to synchronize calendars and contact lists anymore and I just noticed that my iPhone upgraded itself to the latest IOS all by itself. Now, if I could just train these devices to do my web and writing work for me.

Wyatt is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 770

I spent the day straightening up loose ends. There were a lot more loose ends than I thought. I canceled the credit card, because after a day and a half of thinking about what I could have possible bought from Luxembourg, I came up with nothing. I even checked all of the domains I own to make sure that none of them had accidentally auto renewed. Auto renewal is an increasing problem with online purchases, because it seems to be the default setting for any recurring purchase made with a credit card. It doesn't matter if it's the cable company or Network Solutions, once they've got your credit card number, they want to keep charging you forever.

Later, I called the furnace people to have them come out again, even though it means another morning of non-stop barking. I kept hoping that the furnace would just fix itself, but it's become apparent that this isn't going to happen. This time I asked the HVAC folks to send Marty out to look at the problem. He got promoted to commercial installations, but since he's been the only person who's been able to fix the problem in the past, it makes sense that he would be my best bet to fix it again.

When I was checking on my computer to see if the iCloud synchronization worked, I discovered that I'd written down a doctors appointment on a different day on my phone than I had on the computer. After calling the clinic to see which day was correct, I looked at the calendar again and sure enough I had double booked myself. You'd think conflicting schedules wouldn't be a problem, since I leave the house so seldom, but I double book myself again and again. It's probably because I only like to do things out of the office between 2 and 3 PM.

Dash kept us awake most of the night last night. For some odd reason this dog refuses to poop in the yard under any circumstances. He kept waking us up by barking and slapping his paw at the back door. I'd go let him out and he would just stand around and do nothing. This happened over and over again. He wanted to go down into the park on a walk to do his business. No thank you! I'm not going down into the park at 3 AM. This is Dallas. Somehow Dash made it till morning without pooping in the house, but he didn't do us any favors in the sleep department.

It's pouring rain again. When I went to the bank this afternoon, the people standing in line with me were all commenting about how much we needed rain. Maybe they need the rain, but I sure don't. I can tell by how hard the rain is beating on the roof that there's a 50/50 chance I'll have a leak in the ceiling by morning.

Holly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 538

I had my interview with the FBI today for my friend's background check. I thought the agent would ask me a lot of tricky or probing questions, but the whole experience was more like going through an airport line with the TSA folks. The questions were very general and largely unnecessary. "Is your friend a member of a subversive group that is trying to overthrow the United States government?" That sort of stuff. Jeez, guys...what kind of friends do you think I have? I will say one thing though. Our government pays our federal agents well. As I was finishing up my Starbucks coffee after the interview, I noticed the agent driving away in a big black Mercedes.

For several weeks I've been wondering what happened to a missing check from one of my clients. They said they cut the check back in May, but I never received it. Today the mystery was solved. Somehow the check got stuck to the back of another check and both checks were mailed to someone else. Does the other vendor return the check addressed to me? Nope. They cash it. This doesn't give me a whole lot of faith in the banking system. You wouldn't think this vendor's bank would deposit a check that was written to a completely different company, but they did. At any rate, I'm going to get my money. I don't think I'm going to trust the post office this time though. I'll just drive up tomorrow and pick it up.

I noticed that Apple introduced iCloud today. So far, I haven't been a big fan of cloud-based computing. For the most part, having your documents in the cloud is slower and a bit buggier than just having them all on a big hard drive on your desk. I imagine I'll end up using iCloud whether I want to or not, however. Knowing Apple, this thing will be so completely integrated into the operating system that I won't even know I'm using it. It will just start syncing things whenever I charge the battery or something.

I called a bee removal company today and left a message, but they never returned my call. I guess they were just too busy buzzing around town.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day