Day 2420

I've seen the future. When I was at the grocery store today, I noticed that they were promoting a new app that allows you to scan, purchase, and pay for items using your phone. You purchase as you shop and bypass the checkout line entirely. As soon as you scan the last item on your list, you are done. This is what I've been waiting for. I downloaded the app immediately. I used to like the automated checkout aisles, but now that people have overcome their fear of them, they are just as bad as the regular aisles.

I'm always standing in line behind some idiot who keeps inserting expired credit cards into the machine, hoping that one of them will work. This new app will allow me to bypass all these delays. If one store is doing this, pretty soon all stores will have apps that let you scan and go. Restaurants won't be far behind. You'll just sit down at a table, order from your phone, and the food will appear at your table.This is what I don't understand about politicians who promise to bring back jobs. The jobs aren't coming back ever. If there's a robot available that can take the place of an employee, the robot wins.

I got the roof prepared for the roofers today. It's dry now and as clean as I can get it. The standing water was so hot that I was surprised that it hadn't boiled away yet. If someone would invent a way to turn standing water into energy, I'd have free power for life. This roof is such a nuisance. I wonder if Janet and I will ever live in a house with a normal roof again? There was a time when I thought we would have moved to some idyllic location in the mountains by now, but life got in the way. The older we get, the more daunting another move seems. I may be stuck with this stupid roof forever.

Dot had a good day. Some days she seems lucid and other days she seems totally out of it. Today she seemed happy and had enough energy to get up by herself a few times. Aging is definitely not a linear process. It meanders around, trying to catch you by surprise. I saw this with my Dad as well. One day he'd be making plans for the future, and the next day he'd just be staring off into space. I hope I never succumb to dementia. They say a network of friends is vital to older people. I'm not looking good in that department. On the other hand they say that writing keeps the mind agile. I write constantly. Maybe it's a wash.

I accidentally erased my backup drive today. This is why I have two backup drives. I thought I could just reformat the drive and back everything up again. For some reason, the information wouldn't fit. WTF? Everything fit on the drive yesterday. Why won't it fit today? I'm sure there's a logical explanation for this, but I can't figure it out. Maybe dementia is already devouring my brain. I'm trying to convince myself that one backup drive is plenty.

I actually got a decent amount of sleep last night. That was a surprise. Would it be too much to ask for a few extra hours tonight as well?  I guess it's all up to Dot.

Penny is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1101

The world is supposed to end tomorrow. Of course, we all know that Friday will be just another uneventful day, but I couldn't help thinking that things would be easier if the world actually did end tomorrow. I wouldn't have to worry about my health deteriorating anymore. I wouldn't have to pay the big stack of December bills sitting on my desk. I wouldn't have to do any last minute Christmas shopping. I could even start drinking again during the final hours. I can't imagine that a few good martinis would even matter as the world wound to a close.

I'm quite certain that the world will still be here when I wake up tomorrow morning. There will be articles to write, dogs to walk, and maybe even a new breakfast restaurant to explore. I'll probably do some laundry. I'll go to the grocery store in the afternoon, because I always go to the grocery store on Friday. When Janet comes home from work, I'll tell her that it's been a long week and that I'm glad it's Friday.

Although it certainly wasn't the end of the world, we did have a bad storm last night. The rain didn't last long, but we had severe winds for most of the night. When the dogs and I took our morning walk, the park was littered with fallen trees. It's hard to think of trees as fragile, but I guess they are. Every time we have a wind storm, we lose a few trees. Since we had 60 MPH in-line winds at some points during the night, I thought we might lose the roof of our greenhouse. I saw a few roof panels flapping around in the wind just before I went to bed last night, but we got lucky and everything was still intact the next morning.

It just occurred to me that maybe my backup hard drive failed because I kept it running 24/7. I think I'll just turn the new backup drive on once a week to make backup copies. It should last forever then. If I could just turn myself on once a week, I might last forever too.

Lexi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1011

If you want to get a new iPhone on the day it is released, be prepared for an all day experience. You'll spend most of the morning just getting the phone. Then you'll spend most of the afternoon trying to figure out why it doesn't work quite like you expected.

I really didn't spend that much time in line. Instead of going to the big Apple store in the mall, I went to a small AT&T store right in my neighborhood. There were only about 15 people ahead of me in line when I got to the store. Incredibly, five or six of the people ahead of me had camped out overnight. What was the point of that? I got my phone at the same time they did, and I didn't go to the store until after breakfast. The line I was in would have gone really fast if it weren't for the fact that half the people wanted to look at every single case in the store before deciding what color they wanted. The AT&T folks let people in the store one at a time. Every time someone came out with a shopping bag containing a phone, someone else got to go in. I feel sorry for the folks who stood in line all the way to the end, only to discover that they weren't authorized to use the phone they were trying to upgrade. These folks got sent away with nothing. The guy right behind me waited until he was only three people away from the door and then abruptly left, saying that he had to go to a meeting. He didn't get a phone either.

When I got the phone home, I discovered that several apps had simply disappeared. I tried to download them again from the iTunes store, but they were gone there as well. Apparently, not every app is compatible with the new phone. I couldn't find my address book for a while and then realized it had been hidden away inside a utilities folder. Apparently the iCloud backup process doesn't backup passwords, because I had to enter all my passwords again. Some of them I couldn't remember anymore, but that's just the way it goes. All in all, the whole process was a lot less painful than a major system upgrade.

The dogs were mad at me when I got home with my new phone. Their morning walk was several hours late, and they like to stay on schedule. They did get their walk however. I never shortchange the dogs. In retrospect, I wish I'd walked the dogs first and then gone to the store. Our cool Fall weather disappeared overnight and it ended up being pretty hot outside today. It would have been more pleasant to walk early in the morning.

It looks like Entrecard is officially dead. I heard from fellow bloggers Dave Lucas and Mike Golch that service to the once popular site will not be restored. Personally, I'll miss Entrecard. I discovered lots of great blogs and bloggers on this site and since dropping on the Entrecard widget was such a convenient way to blog hop, I'm not sure how to systematically visit this many blogs again. I noticed that my own traffic is down since the Entrecard demise, but I hope you guys will keep visiting.

Rowe is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 627

Well, it was back to the doctor for another muscle relaxer shot this morning. I woke up feeling just about as bad as I did yesterday. I don't think that my head is getting the proper support when I sleep, because these neck spasms always seem to be worse in the morning. This time, I made sure they gave me some Tramadol along with the muscle relaxers and by afternoon, the pain seemed a lot better.

It probably is stress that is causing the problem. I've got a trip coming up and I never travel well. I always wait until the last possible minute to pack and plan and consequently, the final hours before any sort of a trip are usually a madhouse. Janet is exactly the opposite. She's usually packed and ready to go a full week ahead of time. I'm usually still not packed and ready to go when I'm walking through the TSA scanners at the airport. At any rate, I really hope I can get this neck pain issue resolved before I leave. It's not going to be a pleasant trip if I still feel the way I do now.

I hope I'll get to watch Dr. Who this evening. Writing the blog has really cut into my TV watching time. I haven't seen any of the new Dr. Who episodes yet, and I've only seen one full episode of Project Runway this season. I never used to miss Project Runway, but there just doesn't seem to be time anymore. Maybe TV isn't as much fun now that I can't drink. We used to always have martinis while we watched Project Runway and somehow the show doesn't seem quite the same completely sober.

I decided to copy all the important software I use everyday over to my laptop this afternoon. You'd think this would be a routine, easy process, but it didn't turn out that way. Some things wanted to go back into demo mode even though the instructions said that a single license could be used on two computers. Quark Express and Quickbooks seemed the hardest to install. I finally got these two registered as well after a couple of calls to customer service, but it shouldn't have been this hard. I do feel better after doing this however. Now, I don't just have my files backed up, I have the applications I need to make the files backed up as well.

Domino: today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day