Day 3596

Every year it is the same. During the summer, I can't wait for winter to arrive. Then as soon as it turns cold, I'm wishing it was summer again. Fall is nice. It is unfortunate that it only lasts two weeks in Texas. Today was one of those cold, damp days that makes you regret getting out of bed. I should have just stayed under the covers this morning.

I had the park to myself today. It wasn't raining during my walk, but I kept expecting to get wet anyway. Maybe sweating isn't so bad. I wore a light down ski jacket, my wool hat, and some heavy hiking boots and by the time I returned home I was wishing I'd worn something warmer. Other walkers must have similar thoughts. I usually see lots of people in the park on hot days but very few on cold days. In other parts of the country, today's weather wouldn't even qualify as winter, but we're not used to the cold here in Texas. I was happy enough to stay inside with the furnace running for the rest of the day.

I tried my new retainer last night. It felt way too tight. At first I thought that the dentist had given me someone else's retainer by mistake. Then the thing clicked into place and I couldn't get it off again. I kind of panicked when the retainer appeared to be stuck and I was afraid I'd lose a tooth trying to remove it. Was the original retainer ever this tight? It's hard to remember. All I know is that my old broken retainer is very easy to remove. Sure, it's worn out and probably doesn't even work anymore, but I never worry about losing a tooth when I wear it at night. Janet said I should soak the retainer in warm water before using it at night to make it more flexible. I'll try that this evening. If this doesn't help, I'll have to go back to the dentist.

A former client wanted me to locate a picture I'd taken back in the early 1990's. Lots of luck with that. I spent several hours looking through files this afternoon and couldn't find the image she wanted.  I wish my memory was better. I found lots of similar images, but nothing that matched the low-resolution thumbnail I was given as a reference. The more I think about this, I have a feeling that another photographer took this picture. It was used in a website and I used lots of other photographer's pictures during this period of time. I'll keep looking, but I have a feeling that this is a lost cause.

The roof isn't leaking, but I have no idea whether my recent repairs worked. The roof is under water now and I won't be able to inspect things until the roof dries out again. Lord knows when that is going to happen. At this time of year we seem to get an endless series of cold fronts preceded by a line of storms. I know it is supposed to continue raining through tomorrow. Hopefully, the pumps will keep working. The pumps don't remove all the water on the roof, but they help keep the standing water from becoming too deep. I'll place buckets under suspicious areas before I go to bed and hope for the best.

We're going up to the kennel again tomorrow to meet with the family who will be adopting Darn. One by one, these dogs are finding good homes.

Dakota is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2124

Sometimes you can't win. If you're a photographer, you've probably heard of ImageBrief. It's actually a pretty cool idea. Members get an e-mail every day with a list of images that buyers are looking for. If you happen to already have an image that meets the description and like what the client is willing to pay, you can submit the image in your files for approval. Usually, I have nothing to submit, because I don't happen to have pictures of Norwegian children playing on a beach in Vietnam, or small green frogs sitting on top of a mushroom. Art directors can be quite specific. Today, I saw that someone was looking for multiple images taken inside an aircraft maintenance facility. Perfect! As luck would have it, I was once asked to take hundreds of pictures of a large aircraft maintenance facility. This was kind of an odd subject, so I thought I wouldn't have much competition. I looked on the shelf where I used to keep my outtakes, all neatly arranged in ring binders. Of course they weren't there. The pictures hadn't been there for years. All the clear plastic pages filled with Kodachrome slides were in the storage warehouse somewhere. You'd think it would be an easy task to run down to my storage space and get these images. Nope. There are tons of ring binders, filled with old ad copy, financial records, letters, photos, and assorted other stuff, all boxed away in unmarked banker's boxes. I have absolutely no idea where the photos from the aircraft maintenance assignment are.

Even if I managed to find the photos, what would I do then? Also somewhere in the storage warehouse is a very nice old 4000 DPI Canon film scanner that hooked up to your computer using a SCSI cable. SCSI was great back in the 1990's, but Apple hasn't supported this outdated interface in decades. Maybe Kinkos could convert the images, but I didn't have time anyway. The submission deadline was seven hours away. Oh, well. This was definitely a missed opportunity. The pay was good and I had some great pictures. I just couldn't find them. So far, the only pictures I've actually submitted to ImageBrief were when someone was looking for pictures of dogs in costumes. I guess they didn't like the costumes Dot and Dash were wearing.

My breakfast restaurant has hired a new server and for the second week in a row the guy has tried to clear my plate away while I was up at the coffee bar getting my second cup of coffee. Each time I said "Hey, don't clear my plate away. I'm not finished yet." You'd think the guy would know by now that I always go over and ask the barista for a second cup of coffee midway through my meal and then get a third refill in a to-go cup just before I leave. The guy apologized profusely, but he's not very observant.

The software I currently use to create mobile friendly websites just announced a major upgrade that will allow developers like me to create sophisticated content management systems. This new CMS capability is of course a lot more expensive than what I'm currently using. If I were creating complex blogs, online catalogs, or an online version of The New York Times, this fancy new product would be very valuable. Most of the websites I create are pretty simple though and I'm afraid that the software I'm just starting to become comfortable with will soon be discontinued. Nothing is permanent these days and almost all cool new software products are subscription based. I hate the Creative Cloud and all these subscriptions, which explains why I'm still using a very old version of Photoshop.

For some unexplained reason, Dot pooped all over the house around 1:30 PM. I wasn't expecting this, because she had done her business normally on her morning walk. When she does this, I'm usually safe until at least 4 in the afternoon. Life is full of surprises. I cleaned up the mess and did a load of laundry while I was updating a website the old fashioned way using an ancient version of Dreamweaver. I'll admit it. I'm a dinosaur, but at least I was a T-Rex back in the day.

Maverick is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day