Day 2509

It took a lot longer than I thought to get the new iPad ready to use. There ought to be a red big button at the start of the configuration process that says skip all this stuff. I'll do it later. Since no such button exists, I spent a long time answering dumb questions, trying to remember various passwords, and learning how to make a readable fingerprint scan. I should have selected the option to configure a new iPad rather than restore an old one, because I ended up transferring a lot of old apps that I don't even use anymore. Eventually, I got the all clear to use the freshly configured tablet, but I wasn't done yet. I had to take the iPad down to the AT&T store and add it to my wireless plan.

AT&T marketing materials always make everything they offer seem easy and affordable, but I learned a long time ago that this isn't always the case. There's always a surprise that makes your plan much more expensive than you thought it would be. I have no idea why they felt justified in charging me an exorbitant activation fee when I was just adding the tablet to an existing plan. There was no need to try to pressure me into buying more data either. "But you'll need more data now that you're using two devices," said the pushy sales representative. "No I won't," I said. "I'm only using one at a time." We went back and forth for a while and ultimately she failed to sell me anything extra.

The roofers are coming out tomorrow. Well, they promised to come out tomorrow anyway. We'll see what happens. Since the roofers typically get started early, I won't be able to go out for breakfast in the morning. I definitely want to be here while they are working. This time I want to make sure that all the bad areas get repaired, instead of just some of them. I've already eaten this week's supply of fresh fruit, so I won't be able to make my regular smoothie tomorrow. Hopefully, there's still a package of toaster waffles in the freezer. If that doesn't work out, there's always oatmeal.

I've gotten really superstitious about taking out the trash. Since the trash ultimately did get picked up last week, I tried to place my rolling cart in exactly the same spot this evening. Maybe I need to mark the spot with chalk or something. I had a hard time remembering where I put my can last week. If you're looking for a lucky spot, a foot or two in the wrong direction could make all the difference.

Maybe I'll write the blog on the iPad tomorrow. Since I rarely do serous video editing anymore, I could probably use this high octane tablet for most things I do. I like the idea of a slim, powerful tablet replacing my computers, but I'm also a creature of habit. I've spent so many years sitting in front of this giant monitor that it might be too late to change.

My SiriusXM free trial ends in a few days. I need to decide whether to subscribe or not. I like listening to NPR in the car, but I really don't drive much anymore. I don't really need satellite radio, but then I don't really need Hulu or Netflix either. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between wants and needs. I do need a leak free roof and reliable trash pick up. If I can get those two things taken care of tomorrow, I'll be a happy camper.

Dash is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1585 - Good Friday

Good Friday seems to be an optional holiday. The stock market was closed today, but the post office was still delivering mail. The Interstate Battery store, where I was going to replace my lawn mower battery, was closed, but Dash's cancer center was still open. Janet's office was officially closed, but most people went in to work anyway because they were busy. All over town, some businesses were closed and others were open in a random sort of way. This is probably just what happens to religious holidays in an increasingly secular world.

I surprised the staff at my favorite breakfast restaurant this morning by ordering something different. I must have been really bored this morning, because I always order the same thing at this restaurant. Maybe I should take a chance more often, because my alternate choice was really pretty tasty.

I wonder if there is an effective way to get telemarketers and scammers to leave you alone? I've been feeling inundated with scams lately. Phishing scams are growing increasingly sophisticated. I get dozens of these each day. It's gotten so bad that I almost don't trust any e-mail  receive these days. Today I got a realistic looking confirmation of a hotel reservation I never made. Two hours later, I got an unsolicited credit card in the mail, with a letter urging me to activate it immediately to avoid fraud. Nope! Not going to do that. Many of these phishing scams try to alarm you enough to call a fake help line were telephone operators try to grab even more of your personal information. It's such a shame that our society has come to this. If spammers and scammers put as much energy into starting a legitimate business as they did trying to cheat people, our economy would probably be booming.

I got an e-mail today telling me that my company had been recognized as a 2013 Texas Excellence Award recipient by the US Trade & Commerce Institute. I looked on the web and there really is a US Trade & Commerce Institute. Sadly, I suspect this is a scam too. There are quite a few companies in the business of selling pretty looking, but entirely bogus professional awards to excessively vain people. The pretty crystal award, which recognizes my company for "Excellence in Marketing" would certainly look good on my desk, but I'm a bit suspicious. I don't pay any attention to marketing whatsoever. What a joke! Hey, the only award I want would be to get in the Guinness Book of Records for "Most Consecutive Blog Posts."

Today wasn't very productive, but I need to start looking at the glass as half full rather than half empty. I didn't resolve any of yesterday's vexing website issues, but I did discover something new and very tasty to eat for breakfast and Dash continues to do well at his radiation treatments. He only has two more weeks to go!

Mattie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1200

Since it was a nice day, I thought I'd try to refurbish the gravel pathways in the back yard. What the hell. Since the grass and vegetation look so nice now, it seems a shame not to go the whole nine yards and get everything looking nice. I needed some small white rocks, so I strapped a big black bucket to the back of the Defender and headed for the rock store. It's a bit intimidating going to the rock store, since there aren't many people like me there. The place is a huge field with giant piles of every kind of rock imaginable. There aren't many small cars there. Most of the people getting rocks have huge 18-wheelers that are constantly loading and unloading tons of rocks at a time. I'm always nervous that one of these vehicles will dump a big load of rocks on top of my car and bury me.

To buy rocks, you first weigh your car on a giant scale, fill it with rocks, and then weigh it again. By subtracting the second weight from the first, they determine how many rocks you've bought. I bought 500 pounds of small white pebbles that looked like a good match for the pebbles that I'd already used to make the existing paths in the back yard. My 500 pounds of rocks was probably the rock store's smallest sale of the day.

When I got back to the house, I discovered that my white rocks didn't cover nearly as many bare spots along the path as I had hoped. In fact, my 500 pounds of rocks didn't go very far at all. Judging from the length of pathway my rocks covered, I must have bought 3000 pounds of rocks the first time I tried this. I was younger then of course, and I think rocks must have been lighter too.

I think the waiters at my breakfast restaurant have discovered marketing. I noticed this morning that whenever someone, including myself, ordered anything vaguely healthy, a waiter would say "Would you like to substitute freshly cut fruit for the potatoes?" Most of the people, including myself, said yes. What you didn't realize until they brought the check at the end of your meal is that the freshly cut fruit added three dollars to your bill. Pretty sneaky. Of course, car dealers do the same thing. "Would you like to substitute a Sat-Nav package for that radio," they say. "Wouldn't you like to substitute some nice 21 inch rims for those 19 inch stock wheels?" Happens all the time. It was just a bit unnerving to see a waiter get you to upgrade your breakfast with such ease.

I ended up talking to one of the roofers today. I asked him why roofing prices had gone up so dramatically. He told me that in the late 90's, refiners discovered how to extract more gasoline from crude oil, resulting in fewer petroleum by-products like asphalt. This supposedly cause the prices of roofing materials to double in a single year. Of course, the guy didn't explain why my own roof bid was so high, especially when the company wasn't planning on using any asphalt materials in my new roof at all.

Elliott is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1034

Today was such a beautiful day that my grumpy side didn't stand a chance. I was in an uncharacteristically good mood all day long. The dogs had a great time at the dog park. There was a nice breeze and temperatures were in the seventies. When Dot and Dash were finished with their off leash outing, I got busy on a few things I'd been putting off for months. I washed the car for the first time since my birthday and even used some rubbing compound to polish out a few scratches on the door. I cleaned the toilets, put a fresh bag in the vacuum cleaner, and got all the water from yesterday's rain off the roof. Since the roof has survived two major rain storms without leaking, I also started preparing the damaged areas on the ceiling to tape and bed and paint again. It was a day of making things look nice.

It wasn't all work today, however. I also watched Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic parachute jump from 128,000 feet over Roswell, New Mexico live on the Internet. If you ask me, this is the future of marketing. Why even bother with broadcasting something on television if you can get eight million live viewers on YouTube. There weren't any commercials, or maybe the whole thing was just one big commercial for Red Bull. At any rate, it was a whole new way to look at advertising. If Red Bull can underwrite a supersonic parachute jump, and Virgin America can build the world's first commercial spaceport, maybe Apple can take us back to the moon. Apple's probably got enough money to finance the entire journey themselves.

The presidential race is starting to look a lot like the Texas senate races. Everyone is apparently a big fat liar. Both sides make reasonably convincing cases that the other side is lying. Then the "fact checkers" come along a few days later and people accuse them of lying too. It's probably a good thing that everybody's made up their mind about this election anyway. You certainly couldn't learn much from all the dueling "liar, liar" claims. I'm disgusted by the whole circus. I don't want to throw my vote away, but apparently it doesn't matter anyway. According to all the pundits, the whole election will be decided by the swing voters of Ohio.

We haven't used the new furnace since it was installed. The air conditioner certainly seems to be working well though. I think this is what they call an Indian Summer. I'm enjoying these unseasonably warm Fall days. I do hope we have a hard freeze this Winter though. Another warm Winter like we had last year and the bugs will overrun us.

Abby is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 961

Someone asked me recently what I did for a living and I told them that I basically say "blah, blah, blah," using fancier words. I'm sorry that I don't have a more exalted opinion of marketing, but does it really even matter? I don't think so. I'm good at blathering though, so I'll probably continue to make a decent living.

I continually hear people say that the secret to happiness is to follow your dreams. If I took these people literally, I'd never get out of bed. Hey, I have great dreams. It's just dealing with being awake that's the problem. I continue to forge ahead though. My role models are the Energizer Bunny and George Mallory. When George was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, he famously replied "because it is there." Life is like that. It is simply there.

The weather report said it was going to be 110 today. The temperature actually only got up to 106, so I guess we got lucky. It's hard to believe at this point, but last Summer was even hotter than this. I think we set an all time record high at this time last year.  I can always tell that temperatures are reaching extremes when I see tractors mowing down the native prairie grasses in the park. Emotions run high about the small patches of native prairie that still remain in Texas, so the city is very reluctant to mow. When it's this hot and dry however, the danger of brush fires are high, so the grass has to go. We saw the mowers today. Oddly I also saw several egrets following closely behind the tractors. It's amazing how adaptable animals are. I think these egrets had discovered that when the prairie grass was disturbed by the mowers, bugs and other food were much easier to catch.

I picked up a nifty little carbon fiber tripod today for my upcoming job in Las Vegas. The whole thing weighs less than two pounds and folds down to just 13.4 inches. It still holds my heavy camera steady though. Amazing!  I just love technology. I also love bacon, so I'm trying to decide where to go to breakfast tomorrow.

Scout is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 753

I took the Christmas tree down today. When I was putting Christmas stuff back in the carport closet, one of the large sliding doors fell off its track and got stuck. What a mess. These are heavy doors and the inside surface is fitted with a rack holding everything from antifreeze to roof repair cement. I had to empty this rack and move half the stuff crammed in the little storage room out to the driveway to make enough space for a ladder so I could fix the track for the door. The whole process took several hours and put me way behind on Saturday errands.

Luckily, there was still time to go up to The Velvet Snout and photograph Misty, our newest addition to the Dalmatian Rescue program. Misty is ten years old. Her former owners decided she was too old to bother with and took her to an animal shelter. Jeez. this dog is younger than our Dot. She's healthy, well trained, and full of life. Misty was just dumped and abandoned like an old sofa. I don't know what is wrong with people sometimes. At any rate, I'm confident that Misty will find a better home next time. She's a wonderful dog and she's today's Dalmatian of the Day.

I wish I had a personal assistant. I know I have enough new photos to have another nice gallery show, but I don't have time to go around to galleries and try to get them interested. It would be nice to have someone to go around and show the work I've been doing in the energy industry to other oil and gas companies too. There's so much stuff I could be doing if I wasn't doing too much already. Maybe it's just a matter of priorities. Somehow, I still have time to walk the dogs four miles a day and fix myself French Toast and sausages in the morning. I guess the truth is that I really don't like marketing at all. I don't mind actually doing the work, but I can't seem to be bothered with the dog and pony show you have to go through to attract new clients, or new gallery owners, or new anything for that matter.

The weather has been great all week. It's a pretty safe bet that the dog park will be open tomorrow. I've been surprised at how many people we've seen from our training class at this particular dog park. These people don't live nearby, but they always take the time to search out the best dog park, even if it's thirty miles away. I guess it's not surprising that we see the same people and their dogs again and again. It's a big city, but the number of people who choose dogs over watching football on Sunday afternoon is apparently still pretty small.

Misty is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 594

I heard that it got up to 108 degrees outside today. I wouldn't doubt it. When I took the dogs on their evening walk, it felt like we were inside a furnace. Needless to say, we didn't stay outside long. Dot and Dash have actually adapted pretty well to the Summer heat wave. They do their business right away now and then turn around immediately to indicate they are ready to go home. We spend most of the day indoors, hoping that the air conditioner doesn't break.

I worked on a few writing jobs today and paid some bills. It really wasn't a very productive day. I always think I should be out marketing the company on days like this, but I don't even know how to connect with people in the real world anymore. You certainly can't just call them on the phone and ask if you could pop over in 30 minutes and show them your portfolio. People are too busy for that. I don't even answer the phone myself unless it is someone I already know. Probably a lot of other people do the same. On the bright side of things, I am starting to get work from online connections, but the budgets aren't the same. More work for less money is the name of the game. Brave new world, I guess.

I made some calls today trying to figure out whether Avid Media Composer will work on my existing computer hardware. Nobody seemed to know. They were certainly willing to sell me the software anyway though. I'm going to need to replace Final Cut Pro soon, but I'd hate to buy something that isn't going to work. I guess that's what these 30-day free download trials are all about. Nobody has customer service gurus anymore who can answer all your questions over the phone. You just download the trial software along with the 100 page PDF file manual and figure it out for yourself.

While I'm on the subject of technology, I might as well tell you that my brand new large format printer is already starting to clog. There's nothing wrong with the printer. I just don't make enough large format prints to keep the lines clean. Somehow, this has become a general theme with me. I don't take enough pictures to remember everything my digital cameras can do. I don't do enough video editing to remember all the keyboard shortcuts. I don't even design enough websites to remember how to properly insert PHP code into my HTML.

I do a lot of writing though. I'm actually writing a lot more that I was ten years ago. I think my writing has improved a bit and I've certainly gotten faster. Unfortunately, I'm not content to just be a writer. I feel compelled to try anything and everything. In a way I envy those people who are content with their chosen specialty. If I could have ever focused my attention on just one thing, I'd probably be really good at it by now.

Dalmatian of the Day

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