Day 2799

I took Janet to see her surgeon today. This was her first post reconstruction visit and I think it was mostly so they could teach her how to change her bandages. The building was very impressive. While I was waiting in the lobby, I looked up her surgeon on Google. Wow. She has one of the best rated plastic surgeons in the entire country. I really need to start going to her doctors. They are in a whole different league than mine. Her primary care physician did an amazing job of making sure she had the best specialists possible for her cancer treatment. I have always been a little skeptical of concierge medicine, but the results seem to speak for themselves. I think you do get better care.

I don't even bother to check my e-mail for work assignments anymore. Work is so slow that I need to find other ways to occupy my time. When my chauffeur and nurse duties were finished, I resumed my efforts to fix the leaking shower. I cleaned out the drain and looked for places where the pipes might have separated. I found one area that might be succeptable to leaks, but I couldn't figure out how to seal it. I need to find some kind of putty that can be applied in permanently wet areas. The corners of the shower seemed nice and dry so I applied a new coat of the silicon caulk. Who knows if any of this will work. I'll have to admit that I don't really know what I'm doing.

Now that I've cleaned all traces of dog poop out of my car, I thought it would be good time to remove the dog hair as well. I got out the vacuum and sucked up an enormous amount of dog hair that has found it's way under the seats. I wish I'd paid more attention to all the dog slobber on the back of the front seats. I tried to clean it off today, but it think it has permanently stained the leather. All things considered, the car does look much better now. I was going to wash the outside as well, but I ran out of energy. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow. I'll certainly have the time. It doesn't look like there's going to be any writing deadlines for the rest of the month.

I watched a documentary about the Voyager spacecraft this evening on PBS. It's hard to believe it's been forty years since Voyager 1 and 2 were launched. Pretty soon it will be fifty years since we landed on the moon. Where did the time go? I wonder if we will ever be this bold again. So many people alive today don't remember these events. They weren't even born yet. I remember when Sputnik 1 was launched in 1957. I was nine years old and was already reading Robert Heinlein novels. I don't think my interest in space has ever wavered.

My interest in everything else has certainly wavered. The future doesn't look nearly as interesting as the past. I have no idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. I'm almost scared to take a shower. Will it leak again? I don't want to see all my handiwork go down the drain. A lot of things are going down the drain. I got a notice from Apple today saying that the new High Sierra operating system will no longer support the legacy versions of Logic and Final Cut Pro. I've used both of these applications for years. Time marches on I guess, but it will be sad to see two of the cornerstones of my business cast aside like yesterday's news. Everything I know and love is becoming obsolete. I saw a show on TV last week about the Citroën SM. This used to be my everyday drive-to-work car when I lived in Seattle. Now it has become an impossible to find relic. My mid-century modern house is becoming a crumbling antique. The JPL project managers they interviewed on that Voyager documentary tonight all seemed so old. Jeez, these guys are just a few years older than I am and the producers of the show seemed amazed that they were still alive. Hey, we're still here. We may be a little perplexed, but we're still here.

Mickey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2782

I was in no hurry to do anything today. We woke up late and took a leisurely walk with Dash. When we got home, I made pancakes while Janet cooked some bacon. Dash's appetite has returned and he is eating all his meals again. It was a relaxing, largely uneventful Sunday morning.

Instead of vacuuming or doing yard work, I went to the gym after breakfast. This week's workout seemed a little easier than last week's, so maybe my body is starting to repair itself. They are doing some remodeling at the gym and they removed the water cooler for some reason. I didn't realize how much water I drink. Every time I finished a routine, I really missed that water cooler. The progress I made today made me seriously think about going to the gym three times a week. I've certainly got the time. I've got the incentive as well. Too many of my friends have already died. The older I get, the more I realize that my top priority needs to be staying healthy. I've had my chance to make money. I think that ship has already sailed.

I noticed that the Apple Store has started selling RED cinema cameras. I don't know why this seemed significant to me, but it certainly says something about the ubiquitous nature of film in our society. When a store in the mall starts selling the same equipment that major Hollywood cinamatographers use, it means that everyone wants to make a movie. Most of my Facebook feed is videos now. To me, this is irritating because it slows my computer down, but I think this is what people want.  I wonder if I'll ever make a movie again? I made some good documentaries back in the 70's, but the desire just isn't there anymore.

This lack of desire puzzles me. I'm still curious about things and like to learn, but there is no desire pushing me forward. I guess I could just listen to TED Talks for the rest of my life, but I'd like to expand my horizons a little more than that. I certainly don't want to sit in a chair and watch college basketball for ten years like my Dad did. Piano lessons are an option. I'd consider joining an astronomy club, but you can't see the stars during the day and I hate driving at night. I've just started thinking about what to do next, so this is a work in progress. Just don't ask me what I'm passionate about. You'd be very disappointed in my answer.

It's supposed to rain all next week. This would be a good opportunity to clean out my office. I don't even know where to start. The Beta-SP editing bay is just a waste of space now. The stuff is too expensive to throw away and too obsolete to ever be used again. I've thought about buying flight cases for the equipment and putting it in the storage warehouse, but that would just be throwing good money after bad. I wonder how long it will take me to realize that the equipment is worthless? Ditto for the large production printer and all the film cameras. They are all worthless. I don't think people even collect this stuff.

To be honest, I probably won't do a lot of downsizing during the rain. Removing thirty years worth of stuff is pretty overwhelming. It's more likely that I'll just worry about the roof leaking while I'm watching Netflix movies.

Margo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2233

It's a good thing I had my movie today. Absolutely nothing happened. It was cold and grey outside. The phone didn't ring. There were no deadlines to meet. It was a perfect day to watch The Martian. It was a long movie so I waited until the dogs took their even longer morning nap after breakfast. Coincidentally, this is also when I tend to get the most work done. Almost like clockwork, both dogs sleep soundly from about 9 AM until 1 PM, when they wake up again for lunch.

I'd already read Andy Wier's book, so I was wondering how a story with very little dialog would work as a film. Drew Goddard leaves out quite a bit in the screenplay, but still managed to transform one of the best books I've read in a long time into a nail biting and compelling script. I'm old enough to remember when Ridley Scott and his brother Tony directed television commercials at RSA. If you were in advertising during the late 1970's and early 1980's, Ridley Scott Associates was the gold standard for commercial production companies. Before he went on to direct groundbreaking movies like Alien and Blade Runner, he created the famous 1984 commercial which ran once during the Super Bowl and launched the Apple Macintosh computer. I loved that commercial. With all this in mind, I was expecting a lot from this movie and I wasn't disappointed. I really should have seen it in a theater, but for me a large, high resolution monitor in a dark room was almost the same thing.

I hope The Martian does something to rekindle interest in space. I remember clearly the excitement that the race to land a man on the moon generated. It was one of the few things in my lifetime that genuinely seemed to unite people around the world. A few years after Apollo 11 landed in the Sea of Tranquility, the real life drama of the the failed Apollo 13 mission seemed to capture the world's attention in much the same manner as Mark Watney did when the world learned he was stranded on Mars. We are explorers. I think we need to direct our energies outward again. We're spent far too many years looking inward.

The only thing I explored today was how to use my old Olympus camera lenses on a new Panasonic camera. Manufacturers have virtually stopped making digital cameras with optical viewfinders. Everyone is migrating to the new smaller mirrorless cameras. Since I like the Panasonic GH4, I've been trying to salvage some of my favorite older lenses and use them with this micro 4/3 format. With the right adapter, you can use just about any lens manually, but I wanted to keep using the auto-focus and image stabilization features of newer lenses. I tested an adapter today that was supposed to let me do this, but I was disappointed. The auto focus of my favorite Olympus lens still worked, but it was so slow. I think it's back to square one with this idea. It's too bad that expensive technology becomes obsolete so quickly. Back in the film era, my Nikon cameras and lenses served me for decades. It doesn't work that way anymore.

Dot seemed kind of shaky today. I always worry a lot when she's having a bad day. There's no way to stop this slow, degenerative process she's going through, but I sure wish there was a way to slow it down a bit more. Dot seems to react to sunlight and warmth the same way I do. I'm hoping that when the weather improves, she'll get her mojo back.

Jazz is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

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 2127

I was industrious today. I found someone in Los Angeles who can repair my broken watch winder and I found someone right in my own neighborhood who can repair my multi-track tape recorders. The broken recorder is housed in a five foot tall 19" equipment rack that served as my recording studio for many years. I thought it would be an easy job to unscrew the recorder and pull it out of the rack, but I was wrong. When I removed the screws from the front panel, the recorder wouldn't budge. I pulled the heavy metal cabinet away from the wall and looked behind it. It was only then that I remembered the countless hours I spent carefully bundling the maze of interconnected wires and cables together and securing them in place with zip ties. The installation looked neat and tidy, but it had been built for permanence, not convenience. I had to carefully cut the plastic zip ties and remove all the wires connected to the recorder before I could extract the machine from the rack. The whole process took two hours.

I looked on Google to see if I could still find instruction manuals for the equipment in the audio rack and was surprised to discover that some of it had acquired vintage status over the years and was quite desirable. This gave me an added incentive to fix the broken stuff, but I still don't know if restoring the studio will be worth the time, effort and money it is going to take. All this equipment represents a moment in time that has passed. I probably wrote and recorded at least a hundred songs using the equipment I was disassembling today. The last tape I worked on was still in the machine. It was dated February 17, 1986. The label on the tape was printed using a dot matrix printer. The Internet, blogging, and almost everything I do today didn't even exist back then. Maybe all I'm trying to save are the memories.

I feel the same way about film. I used to love taking pictures on film. There was an art to getting the exposure just right. You couldn't fix things in Photoshop. The whole process of going into a darkroom and coming out hours later with wonderful images was absolute magic to me. I never felt the same when I made the inevitable transition to the digital world. I use Pro Tools and Avid Media Composer to put commercials and videos together now. I'm a wizard with Photoshop. There is no magic in these digital tools though. Elvis has left the building. I have a few friends who have embraced this brave new world, but it's not for me. Give me an analog tape recorder, a 4x5 Sinar camera, and an IBM Selectric typewriter and I'm a happy camper.

Actually this is a lie. Give me these old things and I'm not happy at all. There's nobody left to fix them. Keeping vintage equipment running and properly maintained is a giant hassle. I used to know lots of camera repairmen, watch repairmen, and tape machine technicians. For the most part, they're all gone. I bet it will take over a month just to find the rubber parts to fix my tape machine. I have friends who used to collect vintage watches who have given up the hobby for these reasons. If it takes two years to get a watch fixed, what's the point in even having it?

Old dogs are hard to fix too, but at least they provide companionship. I was happy to see that Dash was steadier on his feet today. I don't know why today was a good day and yesterday was a bad day, but I'll take any good day I can get. Maybe Dash is learning to pace himself better. He walked slower today and didn't limp nearly as much. I'm doing a better job of keeping him from scratching the ground after he pees too.  Tomorrow we go back to the vet for another evaluation. I have a feeling that we're going to have to see an orthopedic specialist, but we'll see how tomorrow goes.

Kuuipo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2125

Dash woke up limping this morning. I don't know what happened during the night, but he is definitely having more trouble with his leg than he was yesterday. Maybe he landed hard when he jumped off the bed this morning. Maybe his knee went out of joint while he was sleeping. I'll never know. I've discovered that a lot of weird things happen to the dogs while we're asleep. So now we have two dogs with a total of six good legs between them. This is going to make life difficult. I suspect the only thing worse than having one lame Dalmatian is having two lame Dalmatians.

Dash makes things worse by being so stubborn. He won't poop in the yard, so I have to walk him really slow to his regular place in the park. He'd be just fine if he understood the concept of walking slow, but he'd rather hop on three legs really fast. I still hope he doesn't need surgery, but I suspect that there will be a visit to an orthopedic specialist next week.

I happened to turn on one of my old multi-track tape recorders this afternoon and discovered that the transport mechanism was broken. Damn! I suspect that the rubber belts and capstan wheels have gone bad, but I'd have to completely disassemble the complex recorder to know for sure. Since the rubber belts were suspect, I turned on an equally old mastering deck and it didn't work either. I did a quick Google search for old analog tape machines with the same problem I was experiencing and discovered dozens of people around the world with the same dilemma. In almost every case, their rubber tape transport belts had become brittle, gummy, or simply disintegrated. It was a sad story on Google. Replacement parts were hard to find and in many cases were just as old and brittle as the belts that needed replacing. Oh, all the repair shops that worked on these old analog tapes machines had gone out of business too. I'm fucked.

It's a familiar story. Sometimes it's an old camera. Other times it's a piece of electronic equipment, or even an old car. Rubber is always the enemy. Rubber hoses become brittle and break in old cars. Rubber light seals deteriorate in old film cameras. Rubber drive belts always break or disintegrate in old video and audio recorders. I spent a ton of money replacing all the rubber transport belts in my Beta SP camera and then I had to reluctantly conclude that the equipment was obsolete anyway. Will I go to an extraordinary amount of trouble to preserve a piece of equipment that saw its best days in the mid 1980's? Or will I just walk away? I think you know the answer.

Old dogs. Old tape machines. Old memories. I do my best to keep them alive. It's just the way I'm wired. Maybe walking away is better, but I don't see the point. I like my world to be comfortable and familiar. I wrote and recorded many, many songs using my old 4-track studio. Who cares if I can now buy a much more advanced 48-track recorder for half the price. The old equipment served me well and it was all I ever needed.

I watched a new episode of Dr. Who tonight. Maybe the reason I like this show so much is that it is old and familiar as well. The show has been on the air for more than 50 years. The special effects are better now, but the Daleks and the Cybermen are basically just the same as they've always been. Tonight's show attempted to explain the Bootstrap Paradox where a future event is the cause of an earlier event that happens in the past. The past event then becomes the cause of the future event, which is the past event's cause. Cause and effect become so hopelessly tangled that nobody can determine what caused the event to happen in the first place. It was too complicated for me to wrap my head around, but it was still a good episode.

Dash is sleeping now. He's a bit of a paradox as well. He needs to walk to keep his muscles strong, but when he walks, he limps, causing his muscles to get weak. Do I rest him or keep him walking slowly? It's confusing.

Neo 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

Day 1997

It's always something. When Dash and I were returning from our walk this evening, one of the neighbor's dogs came charging through an open gate and started attacking Dash. Sadly, this has happened before. The neighbor always apologizes profusely and sometimes offers to pay for any damages. I can't seem to get them to lock their gate though. This time they said their yard guy must have left the gate open. As the large Shepard mix tried to grab Dash around the neck, I tried to command it to sit and stay while grabbing it firmly around the collar and pulling the dog away from Dash. I held both dogs at arm's length to keep them apart while walking slowly up the hill toward my house. Luckily, I didn't get bitten myself. I get so frustrated by people who can't control their dogs. I see unleashed dogs in the park every week and do my best to avoid them. People may think their dog is friendly, but you never know. I've worked in animal rescue for long enough to understand that dogs can be very unpredictable. In the right circumstances, any dog can bite you. I've been bitten numerous times.

Dot seemed tired at her physical therapy session today. We had to run the treadmill slower and her muscles seemed tight during her acupuncture therapy. The vet said we should curtail her exercise walks for a couple of days and let her rest. It's hard to keep the right balance of exercise and rest. She needs to keep moving to keep her leg muscles from atrophying, but she's an old dog and you don't want to push her too hard. I had Dot tested for exposure to Lyme Disease too while we were at the vet. We still haven't decided whether Dash should start taking doxycycline though. Since this is the drug of last resort for many very serious problems, you definitely don't want your dog to build up a resistance to this antibiotic. Dash shows no symptoms of Lyme Disease whatsoever, so it might be wise to save the doxycycline in case he needs it for something even more serious later. We'll see. We're going to do a few more tests to see if yesterday's results might have been a false positive.

The ice maker on our refrigerator broke recently and I am so frustrated with the high cost of appliance repair that I was determined to see if I could fix things myself. I found a website that sells appliance parts directly to the consumer and also features very detailed YouTube videos showing exactly how to make the necessary repairs. I looked at the video for fixing the ice maker on my refrigerator and quickly realized that this was something I could do. I ordered the part and ended up paying less than a third of what it would have cost to have a repairman come out. I should have done the same thing when the washer and dryer broke earlier this year. The wax motor door latch assembly for the washer only cost $79 on this website and it came with explicit instructions for how to remove and replace the faulty latch assembly. I paid a repairman over $350 to replace exactly the same latch assembly. I won't be doing that again.

The ease of repairing things yourself got me thinking about my own business. I've been losing business for years to template based website solutions that let people quickly and very inexpensively design their own websites with no coding required. I can't really blame people who would rather pay $25 for a template than give me several thousand dollars to create a custom site for them. I'd probably do the same thing myself. The problem is that nobody wants to be poor. Appliance repairmen, watchmakers, website designers, and car mechanics keep charging more and more in hopes of maintaining their lifestyle in a changing economy. Eventually everyone puts themselves out of business because they are too expensive. It's hard to even find a good appliance repairman anymore. In five more years they might all be gone. It's hard to compete with cheap parts on the Internet.

Dot goes for her Ultrasound scan tomorrow morning. These type of high-tech services aren't going to go out of business soon. You can't just go out and get your own MRI machine. Even my vet friends are feeling the squeeze though. They purchase all this expensive diagnostic equipment for their practice and then their customers still want to get all their pet's meds on discount Internet websites like 1800PetMeds. The age of the big retail markup is over. Janet buys all her clothes on the Internet now and I haven't been to a camera store in years. And people wonder why there are no jobs. It's kind of ironic that all these people are clamoring for a higher minimum wage now. They are just going to be replaced by robot kiosks anyway.

Daisy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1933

When I'm not busy enough, I notice things that I'm otherwise oblivious to. Today I noticed that we have carpenter ants in the house again. There were little piles of wood dust at various places that indicated the ants were active. We've had problems with carpenter ants before and they are difficult to get rid of. You cant ignore them though. In many ways they are just as bad as termites. Left unchecked, they will reduce your house to rubble.

I also noticed that our resident squirrels were eating the new St. Augustine grass. We've had problems with this before as well. Squirrels seem to love fresh green grass, and just about every time we've put in more St. Augustine, the squirrels immediately descend from the trees to eat it. In the Spring it's the squirrels who do the damage. In the Fall it's mostly possums and armadillos who are intent on destroying things. The birds do their part as well. The eat the berries off the Holly bushes and then poop them out again on my car.

Since Dot has her physical therapy session tomorrow, I reconfigured that car with her special hammock. This took longer than I thought, but I really don't have any other choices. I guess I'll just leave the hammock in place until Dash needs to go somewhere. I also watered the new lawn with a hose a couple of times. I don't know why a sprinkler wouldn't have worked just as well, but the landscapers said this was better. Although the yard looks great, it doesn't smell so great. I think there must be cow manure mixed in the mulch that was spread over the flower beds and ground cover. I should have been more specific instead of saying "just do what you did last year." Last year we needed mulch. This year we don't.

The dogs were pretty good today. There is always a frenzy of barking around dinner time, but for the most part, things were pretty peaceful today. I've got to watch Dot like a hawk. She can get up on her own now and will start walking drunkenly around the house if I'm not looking. I use to race to grab her harness when this happened, but now I just follow along behind her to provide support if she starts to slip. She needs to learn to keep her balance and walk with confidence. Constantly holding her up might actually hinder her progress. I still worry that she's going to fall, but she keeps getting stronger every day. Several times I have seen her sit normally, but she can't always do this when she's tired. I think the hardest thing for Dot to do on her own is poop. The way dogs typically squat takes a completely different set of muscles and hers aren't strong enough yet.

I read some instruction manuals for old audio gear in the studio this afternoon. I do this several times a month now for different types of equipment. There is so much I have already forgotten and I am determined not to forget it all. Most of my gear is obsolete now, but it certainly got the job done back in the day. I used to use this gear all the time, but now it mostly collects dust. I don't have many production jobs these days anyway and when I do get one, I don't need a rack full of equipment. I just use Pro Tools or Final Cut Pro. I like all this old equipment though. I really wish the world hadn't changed. There's an old multi-track recorder sitting in a corner that still has a mix-tape loaded in it. The tape is dated 1986. Jeez, that's 29 years ago.

I'm curious what the vet will say when she sees Dot tomorrow. I think she's made a lot of progress since her last physical therapy session. I'm waiting for the day when the vet says it's perfectly safe to leave Dot alone in the house again. A month ago I though that this might never happen, but I think Dot has other ideas.

Haley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1876

I don't know what possessed me to start editing video again. I learned to edit many years ago using a Media 100 editing system. This software has been obsolete for so long that no computers I currently use will even run it. I loved Media 100 and used it faithfully during my most prolific years as a producer. The company was bought and sold several times and eventually just disappeared. I was forced to turn to Final Cut Pro and learn a whole new way of editing. Just when I was getting good with Final Cut Pro, Apple abandoned it in favor of a whole new platform called Final Cut Pro X. You wouldn't think that adding an X at the end of the name would change much, but it changed everything. I hate Final Cut Pro X.

I still try to edit using the old version of Final Cut Pro, which hasn't been updated in years. When I'm in a hurry, I often find myself trying to use techniques that only work in Media 100. It's a sad case of old dogs and new tricks. To make matters worse, many of the keyboard shortcuts in Final Cut Pro 7.0 only work with an old style keyboard with a numeric keypad. I haven't used one of those large, wired keyboards in years. Nevertheless, I stumbled through the day, relearning tricks and techniques on the fly. By the end of the day, I had a rough cut put together that seemed to flow reasonably smoothly from beginning to end. Sadly, I could have finished three videos in the same amount of time ten years ago using a slower computer and some rather rudimentary editing software.

This is why I mostly stick to writing these days. As long as you continue to write frequently, your writing skills don't tend to become obsolete. Working with technology is another story entirely. I've got entire shelves in the office filled with perfectly good software that is no longer supported. There's nothing wrong with this software. It just just won't run, mostly because today's modern operating systems won't recognize it. The early versions of Microsoft Word and Photoshop were just fine by me. Ten versions later, they both have become huge bloated monsters that take a long time to load and require huge hard drives. Most of my other business software is the same way. I'm tired of re-learning how to edit video or code websites every three years, but you've really got no choice. Software companies don't want you to continue using the same applications for decades. They want to sell you something new and bigger, with even more features. Now, they don't even sell you the software. You just subscribe to it, so they can keep changing things on a weekly basis.

I had plans to get out today, but they never materialized. There were so many false starts in my editing project that I only had time to walk the dogs and go to the bank. It wasn't a bad day. There were no looming deadlines and nobody was screaming at me. I just sat quietly at my desk wishing I had a time machine. Frustration was definitely the word of the day. Talk to me in a week and I'm sure I'll be up to speed on Final Cut Pro again. Maybe I'll have to buy a numeric keypad, or maybe I already have one in the storage warehouse somewhere. The video will get done though, and it will be nice.

Dash goes back to the cancer center for his regular three month re-check tomorrow. There's a little growth on his tail that I want them to check. I don't think it is anything to worry about, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. After a full year of treatment, I'm not ready for any more surprises.

Casey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day.

Day 1726

We started the day with a gentle breeze and ended with a thunderstorm. In between were all the usual errands and chores you'd normally expect on a Saturday. Even though I'm not a big fan of rainy days, I was glad to see the storm arrive. The yard was starting to look really dry. The dogs and I got lucky on our evening walk and managed to return to the house about five minutes before the deluge started. As soon as the thunder and lightning began, Dot and Dash retreated to their safe haven under my desk. I was sure that all the commotion would make Dot pee, but it didn't. She actually had a very good day with no accidents at all.

We started Dot on the Incurin medication this morning, but it was pure coincidence that her incontinence wasn't much of a problem today. The vet said that it would take up to two week before we would start to see results from the medication. It wouldn't be realistic to see results on the very first day. Dot was just having one of her good days. It could all change tomorrow.

I went to the neighborhood health food store to pick up some more Stevia for my morning coffee. While I was there, I asked when they were going to have another cholesterol screening. As you probably know, I'm addicted to having my blood tested and would never turn down a low cost cholesterol screening. The store owner told me that they weren't doing the screenings anymore because the Phlebotomist who drew your blood during these tests died of a heart attack last month. This was a young, seemingly healthy guy who was well aware of the risk factors for heart disease. I was shocked. No wonder my general practitioner is so concerned about heart attacks. My Dad had a heart attack. Several of my friends in the advertising world have already had heart attacks. Lately, it seems like every few months I learn of another acquaintance who has just had a heart attack. We are all worried about terrorists these days, but we will probably just die of a heart attack.

I got the Epson 4880 working again this afternoon. I don't know why I spend so much time and money keeping this large format printer functional. I'll probably never have a gallery show again. I won't be doing store window posters for local retail clients either. I feel the same way about my video editing equipment. I hate to give up on these things, even though they are rapidly becoming analog artifacts from a distant past. It's kind of sad to me that all you need is a phone these days. I was much happier when it was essential to have 500 pounds of cranky, difficult to use equipment. The printer and the tape decks will eventually wind up in the storage warehouse with the 4x5 Sinar view camera, a relic from the day when I would spend 30 minutes composing a single image in the camera and then another two hours processing the large sheets of film in the darkroom.

It's time to hit the gym again. It feels like my shoulder has recovered enough from last week's torture to go through my workout again. I feel the same way about my dislocated shoulder as I do about Dot's incontinence. I'm not sure if these things will ever really get better. You can't let a little pee or pain stop you though. I think Dot understands better than I do that you've just got to make the best of things and keep moving forward.

April is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1721 - Labor Day

Since it was Labor Day, I thought I'd undertake a laborious task. I got out the the toxic bottle of cleaning fluid, moved the teak lawn furniture to a dog-free zone on the side of the house, and set about making the wood look new again. The job wasn't as bad as I anticipated when I initially read the warning label on the bottle. Nothing caught on fire and the wood didn't boil or bubble as I applied the cleaner with thick rubber gloves. I was surprised that the stuff actually worked, since it had been sitting on a shelf for over ten years. After much scrubbing with an abrasive cloth, I rinsed the chairs off and was delighted to discover that they did look like new. After spending the past year giving Dash his chemotherapy drugs, I've gotten pretty good at handling hazardous materials. Cleaning the teak chairs was a piece of cake.

I discovered today that my iPhone is eligible for Apple's battery replacement program. Evidently, my phone was part of a small batch that received defective batteries when they were manufactured. The battery has never held a charge well, but I always though that I had just installed too many battery draining apps on my phone. I thought I'd investigate how hard it was to actually obtain my free new battery and got nowhere. The Apple stores are completely automated now and it is impossible to talk to a real person on the phone. I hit a dead end with the automated system. I couldn't even find out if the stores were open on Labor Day. I thought about just driving over to Northpark to see for myself, but then I remembered all the Labor Day sales at the mall and decided to wait until a quieter day. If experience is any guide, I will have to make an appointment to see someone at the Genius Bar online and then when I go to my appointment I will be told that I have to make another appointment to actually get the battery replaced. When I go to this second appointment, I will be told that the store ran out of batteries at 10:30 AM and that they will call me as soon they arrive. Then I won't hear from anyone for another month. That's the way it works at the Apple store now.

When we were having dinner last night, Janet asked me if I considered myself retired now. This seemed like a strange question, since I still fire up the computer every day and go to work. Sealander & Company is still open for business. I guess it was a fair question though. Much of the work I do these days pays very little and is largely meaningless. I've been losing the high-end jobs to younger, hipper companies for at least five years now. Maybe I just can't see the forest for the trees.

Since I didn't feel like fighting the holiday crowds at the shopping malls, there was very little to do after I finished cleaning the lawn furniture. After walking the dogs this morning, Janet set up a production line and began sewing dog bandannas for the upcoming Dalmatian Rescue golf tournament. She does a different design each year and this year's seems the best ever. I wasn't so productive and eventually wound up watching old Top Gear episodes on the BBC channel.

In keeping with today's toxic theme, I found another patch of Jimson Weed to photograph. It's amazing to me that these pretty flowers are poison. They look just like Easter Lilies to me.

Spot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1122

I got the Apple Lombard back today. It worked perfectly. Well, actually it didn't work perfectly. I couldn't connect to the Internet anymore. Unbeknownst to me, during the years that the Lombard sat unused in my closet, WiFi standards had changed and the built-in Airport WiFi card didn't work anymore. This was kind of ironic, since it was this computer that practically invented built-in WiFi. I don't even think you could even buy a laptop with built-in WiFi before the Lombard.

I don't want to keep kicking a dead horse, but this is just one more example of how little respect that old electronics get in today's world. Old computers get about the same amount of respect as soured milk or stale bread. It doesn't seem fair to me. Vintage guitars and amplifiers are revered by musicians. Vintage mechanical watches are often worth much more than their contemporary counterparts. Even old vinyl record albums have their fans. When I tell people that I still have a working Osborne-1, all I get are glassy stares. Nobody even cares.

I got a call from a friend today that I hadn't seen in a while.  When I rhetorically asked him what had been happening in his life since we last talked, he told me that he'd had a heart attack, was unable to work for almost a year, sold his house, and was now on permanent disability. Whoa! I wasn't expecting that. This guy was very athletic and I always thought he was healthy as a horse. Apparently, so did he until the heart attack hit him. I think that our health is much more fragile than most of us would like to admit. It was also disconcerting to realize that, unlike my friend, I didn't even have long term disability insurance. I'm not even sure it matters if you're a writer though. Insurance companies are getting pretty tough. Most of them tend to think that if Stephen Hawking can still write, then other writer's disabilities must be trivial.

The weather was much nicer today, and so was my mood. The roof is clear and dry again. The buckets are gone in the living room and the house looks more or less normal if you don't look up at the ceiling. Even the dogs stayed clean today. The only fly in the ointment was my visit to the muffler shop. I was going to get the rattling catalytic converter replaced, but when the technician pounded on both converters with a little hammer and told me he thought it was the left hand converter that had gone bad, it gave me pause. For months I've been driving around thinking that the right hand catalytic converter was the bad one. I'll have to think about this one.

Dolly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1094

Did any of you see that 12/12/12 benefit concert on TV last night? What an amazing group of musicians on the same stage. The concert certainly brought back memories. I hadn't seen Pink Floyd perform in years and they reminded me of a time long ago when dimly lit rooms filled with marihuana smoke were the order of the day. The Who's extended set reminded me of a time in the mid 70's when I saw the group perform live in Seattle. Times were good. Both the Who and I were at the top of our game in those days. The Rolling Stones looked a little worse for wear, but so do I. Ever since I heard "Satisfaction" playing on a local radio station when I was in high school, the Stones have been the sound track to my life. I joined a band and bought a tear drop shaped Vox Mark VI guitar just like the one Brian Jones played. Later, I remember producing an advertising jingle for a sea food restaurant in the same recording studio where Mick Jagger had re-recorded some vocals a few days earlier. Light years separated us, but I still thought it was cool that we used the same studio. Eric Clapton provided the impetus for me to learn to play a musical instrument decently when he was in the Yardbirds. Eric was so good and I was so bad. I simply had to get a little better.

Since I stayed up way too late watching the concert last night, I had a bit of trouble getting up this morning. The dogs made sure I didn't dawdle to long however. Dot and Dash like everything on schedule. After returning from our morning walk, I got a call from the printer repair store, saying that Janet's printer was ready. The repair was quite reasonable. It actually cost less to fix the printer than to fill it with ink. I'm convinced that Epson is really just an ink company that makes various types of gizmos that force you to buy their expensive ink.

I lost another website maintenance client today. Once again, it was a large, industry specific web developer who lured the client away with a sophisticated and very inexpensive template site. People don't seem to care about having something unique these days. They just want all the bells and whistles at the lowest possible price. Increasingly, I feel like the large template shops are Walmart and I'm the little store on the town square that they're forcing out of business.

I wonder what's next for me. I've always been able to roll with the punches and re-invent myself when necessary. This chameleon-like quality has served me well over the years. Things are different now, I suppose. I used to be excited by the future. Now, I find myself repelled by it. Kind of puts me between a rock and a hard place, don't you think?

Cookie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 909

I found myself getting sidetracked today. There was plenty of regular work that needed to be done, but there always seemed to be something that needed to be taken care of first. As part of my continuing efforts to declutter the office, I decided that an old portable multi-track recorder needed to go to the storage room. I used to use this machine to record our band performances, but it has gathered dust for many years. Unfortunately, I discovered today that while it was gathering dust, I had forgotten to remove the batteries. All the old batteries had leaked and made a horrible mess. I have ruined other things by forgetting to take the batteries out, but I was convinced that this recorder was salvageable. I took the recorder apart so I could remove the battery cage and clean out all the battery acid and rust and suddenly the entire morning was gone.

When I got the recorder apart, I was amazed at the huge spaghetti of wires that spilled out. Jeez, if they made my iPhone this way, the thing would be as big as a pizza box. It isn't all that surprising that there were a lot more jobs when this little recorder was made. They must have hired ten people just to solder all the connections together.

Eventually I got the little machine looking like new and put everything back together again. Then I got worried that I may have forgotten to take the batteries out of some of my old film cameras as well. As I opened each camera case, I discovered that I actually had remembered to take the batteries out of the Nikon motor drives and strobes. This wasn't entirely good news though, since I also discovered that the foam inserts in most of the cases had disintegrated and gooey old foam was sticking to the lenses and camera bodies. Again I had a big mess on my hands. I carefully cleaned each lens and then wrapped it in a paper towel before placing it back in the decaying foam insert. Protective foam inserts really don't last very long. I know I have already replaced all the foam in the Nikon case at least once before for exactly the same reason.

I'm fighting a losing battle. Everything around me is getting older, and I'm not getting any younger myself. I'm starting to get gun-shy about even turning on a piece of old equipment. There's always a good chance it will fizzle or fail to function. Even things that are never used will disintegrate eventually. Rubber belts dry and crack. Lubricants evaporate and congeal. Once you take something out of service, you will always lose the wall wart power supply that came with it too. I've got a whole box full of these old wall warts, and I have no idea what they go to.

Like many video editors, I eagerly awaited Apple's product introductions today. I was convinced that it was long past time for them to update their aging Mac Pro tower. I would definitely like a faster, more powerful tower. Once again however, Apple introduced a cool new laptop and did virtually nothing with their aging desktop. The tower is completely out of date and it doesn't appear that a replacement is on the horizon. Oh well, I'm completely out of date as well. I'm still working and so is my old tower. We'll just have to make do with what we have.

Willa is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 592

I was doing some video editing today and discovered, much to my chagrin, that my little laptop is much better suited for this task than my large, and very well equipped desktop machine. I kind of suspected as much when I was editing YouTube videos on the fly in Houston last May, but I never had anything convenient to compare. The desktop is only a few years older than the notebook, but the difference in processor speed apparently makes a huge difference. It's things like this that force me to buy new equipment a lot more often than I'd like. Once you've experienced faster, it's real hard to go back to slower again.

The dogs got their trip to the dog park today, instead of on Sunday as they usually do. Tomorrow, I need to take Janet to the airport and it's just going to be too busy. I don't think the dogs care what day they go to the dog park. They just like the attention. Dash was much better behaved today. We placed a spray bottle filled with water in one of the cup holders in the console between the front seats. We didn't even need to squirt Dash with the water. He just looked at the bottle and kept his mouth shut. I may be wrong, but I think this would tend to indicate that Dash doesn't have any underlying fear of cars. He's just being a bad dog.

I couldn't turn on the television today without landing on a channel that was showing live coverage of the debt ceiling debate in congress. I wonder if these guys have any idea how irritating their actions are to their constituents? The house wastes a lot of time passing a bill that they know in advance will never get though the senate. Then the senate turn around and does exactly the same thing in reverse. Two or three week ago I asked my broker if he had a contingency plan if the country defaulted. He brushed the whole thing off and said nobody would ever be stupid enough to let this happen. I wonder what he's thinking now? I think the odds are about 50/50 now that the country actually will default.

Two weeks ago I had three pair of those little Apple ear buds sitting on my desk. Now, I can't find any of them. I've looked everywhere and they've just disappeared. I think somewhere in my office there's a tiny black hole that just sucks things into it.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 396

I came up with a ridiculously easy solution to my image transfer woes. I simply went to Fry's and bought a brand new external hard drive and backed up all my files again. It wasn't that my files were too huge to transfer, it was that my hard drives were too old to play nice with my new computer. I didn't realize just how unfriendly this new computer was to anything made before the days of Snow Leopard, but that was the problem. When I plugged the new external drive into the computer, all my image and movie files transferred flawlessly in just a few hours. It would have taken me months to transfer these files using the old hard drives.

I guess this means that my "state-of-the-art" disk arrays are ready to join the SyQuest drives, Zip drives, SCSI drives, and other forgotten technology that has been consigned to a dusty shelf in my storage warehouse. It's a shame all this stuff becomes obsolete so quickly. You barely have time to get it all paid for before it's time to move on too something newer and better.

I've got to make an effort to stay currant though. I've got no choice. My client's expectations keep rising. It's just my luck that just when the designers and graphic artists are finally starting to turn sour on Flash, veterinarians are beginning to discover it. I've noticed that my veterinary clients are increasingly starting to ask for those flashy, animated web things that you can only do with Flash. I may even have to take a couple of Flash development classes this year or risk losing business.

I did remember to fast this morning before my cholesterol screening. I thought there were going to be a ton of senior citizens ahead of me in line when I went to the health food store, but there wasn't a line at all. I guess the cold weather kept them all indoors. After I got my blood work done, I stopped by my veterinarian to drop off a few things. When I left the vet a few minutes later, I noticed a huge wreck with several ambulances at a nearby stoplight when my car had been just a few minutes before. If the blood tests had taken a few minutes longer, it would have been my car that got demolished by the idiot who ran the red light at fifty miles an hour. I was lucky today. I hope my luck continues.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day