Day 4879

I got started on my SpaceFlight Magazine article today. I'm not really happy with it yet, but at least I'm making progress. As usual I lost a paragraph and had to start over when Microsoft Word froze on me and I had to restart the computer. I really need to remember to save my work more often. No harm done though. I didn't like that paragraph anyway.

It was another slow and largely uneventful day. We got up and walked Dawn earlier than usual because Janet had an early appointment. Dawn continues to seem strong and no longer shows any signs of weakness in her front legs. She hasn't fallen in quite a while now. I haven't fallen either, but I do show signs of weakness from time to time. There's nothing wrong. I'm just getting older.

After my usual breakfast I checked my messages and got ready for my long walk. Most of my messages are spam these days. There doesn't seem to be any way to avoid these unsolicited messages. I get them on my land line, my cell phone, and on my computer. I've gotten where I never answer the phone unless caller ID shows a number that I clearly recognize. Most of the e-mail spam is painfully obvious. How stupid do these guys thing I am? Spam and telemarketers are still irritating though. I uses every spam blocker in creation and still a lot gets through.

I made pretty good time on my walk today, but my feet are hurting again. These walks are starting to seem like Ground Hog Day. The same things happen over and over again. I pass the same people, see the same animals, and end up complaining about the same aches and pains. Long walks are still the best way to kill time that I can think of. If I didn't take these walks I would just stay at home and eat snacks. A two hour walk adds structure to an otherwise amorphous day. I'd consider walking three hours a day, but I don't think I could make it. Two hours is pretty tiring as it is.

Much of my work on the article today was just doing research. I returned from Kennedy Space Center last Friday, but I forget things quickly. I don't know what I'd do without Google. You can quickly find the answer to virtually anything on Google these days. Doing research use to involve a trip to the central library and hours of searching through books, magazines, and newspapers. The whole process is so easy now.

I didn't finish my article, but I did finish my long walk. I need to start walking on the other side of the lake just to break the monotony. I could always go to the gym instead, but it's more enjoyable to walk outside instead of around the gym's small indoor track. I'd probably accomplish more by just going to the weight room at the gym, but I've become totally hooked on getting my Fitbit steps every day.

I've taken this weeks trash out to the curb and am waiting for the rain that has been predicted all day to finally start. Tomorrow I'll finish my article and send it off to the magazine. I'm ready for another launch trip. There is very little that interests me here in Dallas.

Crosby is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4851

It felt like Winter again today. How is this even possible? A week ago it was 90 degrees outside and now I'm wearing my down jacket and gloves again. This month every day brings something new. You never know what to expect. I'll take the cold over rain any day though. I've got plenty of warm coats.

The launch I applied for yesterday has already been postponed. Something mechanically is wrong with the rocket and a new launch date has not been announced yet. This is why it is so hard to plan these trips to Kennedy Space Center. Even when I do manage to secure press credentials, the launch itself is never certain. I've made several trips where the launch was canceled after I arrived and I ended up seeing nothing. Much more common is a one day delay. I've experienced a lot of those. You've got to stay flexible and hope you can extend all your reservations.

Dawn enjoyed her early walk this morning, but I can't says the same for my long walk later in the day. I waited a while to leave the house, hoping it would get warmer, but it never did. I guess today wasn't any colder than your average day in early January, but this is April. Winter is supposed to be over by mid April. I really doubt that we will get another hard freeze, but forty-five degrees with a brisk wind still feels like Winter.

After I returned from my chilly long walk, I basically did nothing for the rest of the day. Janet likes to watch movies, but I rarely do. I haven't picked up a book in a while either. Sometimes I test cameras and other equipment. Other times I do a load of laundry. Mostly I just waste time on the Internet. I catch up on the day's news on Google and check my Facebook feed. Neither of these activities gives me a lot of faith in the direction the world is headed. It's probably not surprising that I've spent a lot of time messing with the Polaris star tracker. It has been challenging to master this device since there is no instruction manual and it is still potentially useful in the future. It keeps me busy. The star tracker seems to have replaced the interest I once had for mechanical watches.

I wonder how much longer I can keep using this computer. It's a Mid 2010 27-inch iMac and can't be updated anymore. Almost every day I discover something new that isn't working the way it used to. The hardware seems to work fine, but the Apple operating system, browsers, and even mail have changed a lot. Website developers have changed the way they code things and I frequently find that windows won't open or pages won't scroll properly. Sometimes my WiFi connection disappears completely and I have to reboot the computer to restore it. Oddly I still have no desire to replace the computer. I liked the way the Internet and computers were in 2010. The bulky old Mac desktops I used before 2010 were even better. I had one with four hard drives, two Apple superdrives, and a modded CPU that was great. I think I detect a theme here. I just don't like change.

I think Dawn has a hard time with change as well. She spent so many years as a breeding dog in a puppy mill run by two old men that I'm probably always going to seem like a kennel attendant to her. In her mind Janet will always be the person who rescued her and I am Janet's assistant. I'm good for walks and fixing dinner, but she will never completely trust me. It's a shame that she doesn't trust me since we spend most of the day together in the house. Dawn has her room in the bedroom and I have mine in the office. She will follow me out to the back yard when she needs to pee and she always eats the meals I fix, but I can see a huge difference as soon as Janet comes home. She instantly becomes a happy dog again.

Sam is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3169

I've stopped going to the library, but I certainly haven't stopped reading. I think one reason my head is filled with useless information is that on slow days like this, I can spend hours reading odd little articles I find on Google. When I click on the Google Discover tab, I'm always amazed that there seems to be an endless supply of things I've never heard about before. I'll read almost anything about astronomy and space. I like reading articles about how the human race is doomed and headed toward extinction. Most articles about Elon Musk catch my attention. I always read articles about the best diet to feed your dog. Sometimes I'll read articles about the pills I'm taking or the stocks my broker recommends. I like articles about exotic cars and vintage guitars. I'm not interested in politics at all, so I skip over a lot of stuff. Apparently, a lot of people are only interested in politics.

Today I read articles about what might have existed in the universe before the big bang, learned about a new mass extinction theory that says the dinosaurs all died in a single day, read about a Ferrari prototype that uses a "virtual" windshield made out of air, and did some research on several stocks my broker wants me to buy.

My broker and I don't agree on much. I like to contemplate large scale trends like young people preferring pets to children and ordering meal kits from Hello Fresh rather than going to the grocery store. I'm bored by technical analysis and usually could care less when a stock dips below its two hundred day moving average. My broker thinks Gilead Sciences is a good buy right now. What? I hate that company. They're the ones who charged me $1000 a pill for Sovaldi. OK. It is a revolutionary drug that cured my Hepatitis C, but $1000 a pill still seems a bit steep. I wish I'd just kept the first three stocks I'd ever bought: Apple, Boeing, and Southwest Airlines. If I'd kept adding to those positions over the years, I'd have done a lot better than decades of hit and miss trading.

Forget about stocks. What I should be researching is what's causing Dash's loose stools. According to everything we've read, what we're feeding Dash now should be very easy to digest and contribute to firm stools. It's just not happening. It's hard to get a definitive answer from the vets either. The older your dog gets, the more "old age" seems to be the cause of everything. I doubt that I'm going to find a cure for Dash's incontinence, but it does get tiring having a world centered around poop.

I've stopped carrying a camera on our walks because I really need to concentrate on keeping Dash upright. It's kind of a shame. This morning I missed a spectacular shot of a Great Egret. Yesterday evening the setting sun reflecting off the downtown skyscrapers was equally spectacular. I still carry my phone in my pocket, but I would have needed a telephoto lens to capture these images. It probably doesn't even matter. Everything I see in the park, I've already photographed dozens of times before. Just to prove my point, I took another picture of Jimson Weed flowers with my phone this morning.

Dash had a good day, but he still hasn't pooped yet. I'm nervous. I still can't decide whether to apply to join the Jet Propulsion Lab team for the InSight landing either. I guess I'm nervous about that too.

Mandy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2086

I started reading The Martian today. I could have easily finished it if I didn't have the dogs to tend to and this blog to write. There certainly wasn't anything else going on today. I'd forgotten what a good way to kill time that reading is. As an added bonus, I could do my reading sitting next to Dot, who always likes having me nearby. Dot likes to lounge in the sun on nice days, so after lunch I took her out in the back yard and sat next to her reading my book for about 45 minutes. This worked out well for everyone. Dot had a companion and the bright sunlight narrowed my pupils, giving my eyes better depth of field, so I didn't need my reading glasses.

I could relate to the character of Mark Watney in the book. I'm not stranded on Mars, but I am alone a lot and spend a good deal of my time fixing things that break. Like Watney, I also spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about poop. I'm not in a desperate race to save my life, but I do feel like I'm trying to save my sanity at times. This book should be an inspiration to any aspiring writer. Andy Weir couldn't find a publisher, so he put the book on his website for free, one chapter at a time. Fans encouraged him to create a Kindle edition and sell it on Amazon. The e-book quickly rose to the top of Amazon's science fiction charts where it eventually caught the eye of traditional publishers. Five years after Andy started writing the book, it made its debut on the New York Times Best Seller List.

So, maybe there's hope for my dog stories yet. Not very likely. They'll probably be available free on my website forever. That's OK though. I never made any effort to get published. I kind of prefer doing things this way. There's a lot to read on my website if you're so inclined, but if you're not, that's OK too. At least you're reading the blog.

One of my clients asked me today if I'd be interested in taking over the SEO duties from another company they are currently using. Maybe. I asked the client what the current SEO experts were doing for them. He didn't know. "What do you mean you don't know," I said? "What are you actually paying for?" He really didn't know. "Have sales picked up since you hired this company," I asked? Nope. I'd say this was a pretty good sign that my client is wasting his money. I guess the question now is whether I could do any better. I'm not sure. A lot of SEO campaigns are totally worthless.

I'll probably finish reading my book tomorrow morning. I could have read the entire book in one sitting if I wasn't interrupted so often. I'm slow at a lot of things, but I'm a fast reader. I'll have to pick up some more books this weekend. They are a remarkably good way to kill time. I'm not even sure what interests me at this point in time, but I'm sure there's more to life than the trade journals and B&H photography catalogs that are my current reading matter.

I tried and failed to take pictures of dragonflies today. At this time of year, there are hundreds of them hovering over the meadows in the park in the afternoons. I've seem cool looking pictures of dragonflies in flight before, but the little critters are devilishly fast, fly in erratic patterns, and are almost impossible to keep in focus when you're using a zoom lens. Maybe I'll do better tomorrow.

Spot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day