Day 4025

Today was a fitting end to 2020. The weather was absolutely miserable. There was a heavy all day rain and the temparature was in the mid thirties. It felt even colder with a wind chill in the twenties. Needless to say, Dawn didn't get a walk today. She wouldn't have wanted one anyway. It was hard enought to get her to go out in the back yard and pee. Yesterday and today have broken my Fitbit streak. The only steps I got today were walking back and forth between the office and the kitchen to get more snacks.

It's too bad I don't like watching television. Today was tailor-made for watching movies on Netflix or binge watching a new series on Amazon Prime. Without our long morning walk, the day seemed impossibly long. I looked at Facebook for a while, watched some astronomy videos on YouTube, and kept checking on the pumps to make sure that they weren't clogged. I can turn on the pumps from indoors now, but unfortunately I can't see if water is coming out the hoses. To do that I have to go out in the back yard and look around the side of the house. It still beats climbing up on the roof though.

Eventually I got bored enough to start building the new company website I've been postponing forever.  I deconstructed a few websites I like and examined their code to see how they accomplished all their fancy tricks. Once I figured out how these things worked, I started building something similar myself. I didn't really think I'd make much progress, but I had all day. By dinnertime, I had the outline of a pretty nice site. I'm pretty sure I can finish this over the weekend. I don't really expect the new site to bring me any business.  It's just a way to keep my hand in the game.

I'm not really sure who visits my existing website anymore. There was a time when it was considered somewhat innovative and I remember that it used to bring me business. That's ancient history now. It's literally been decades since one of my sites was nominated for Website of the Year and even longer since another site I designed was included in a Ryder Publications book called The World Wide Web Top 1000. I was a very early adopter and did pretty well designing very simple static sites. When Google decided that websites needed to be mobile friendly to be included in their search results, it was time for me to pack it in and pass the torch to a younger generation. To this day I have never looked at a website on my phone.

New Year's Eve is one more thing that never changed for us during the pandemic. Many years ago my band used to routinely play New Year's Eve parties, but it has been a long, long time since Janet and I have left the house to celebrate. We struggle to stay awake until midnight. We'll have a glass of champagne and eat some cheese and crackers as we watch the ball drop on TV. That's what we'll do tonight if we don't fall asleep watching Perry Mason. 

I hope that 2021 ushers in a return to normalcy, but I have my doubts. Realistically, things will probably get worse for a while. Many people are starting to say that Covid will become like the flu and never really go away. Society has already changed so dramatically that there isn't going to be a return to normal. Whatever was normal a few years ago is gone. Have you seen that Boston Dynamics video with the dancing robots? When robots can dance better than you can, you can probably kiss your jobs goodbye. Companies have already learned to operate with a lot fewer people during the Covid lockdowns. I'm convinced that this trend will continue. All things considered, this is a good time to be retired.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3659

Another decade is drawing to a close. This is my seventh decade on this planet and I'm still having trouble with these arbitrary measurements. We use these ten year blocks of time to neatly classify pop music and identify trends, but if we didn't use the decimal system, the whole concept of a decade would be meaningless. There isn't even a compelling reason to start the year on January 1st. Wouldn't it make more sense to start the year on the shortest or longest day of the year? Nope. We start the year on January 1st because in 46 B.C. Julius Caesar decided it was time to reform the Roman lunar calendar and go back to the way the Egyptians measured time. He chose to start his new Julian solar calendar on January 1st. to honor Janus, the god of new beginnings. The day stuck, despite the fact that the Chinese still start the year between January 21 and February 21 and the Hebrew calendar begins in the Fall. March 1, March 25 and Dec. 25 were all considered New Year’s Day at various points in history. Go figure.

I got waitlisted again for an upcoming launch at Kennedy Space Center. This is the second time I've been waitlisted in recent months. There is kind of a community of folks who obsess about these NASA invitations. It doesn't take long to learn who got accepted and who didn't make the cut. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the selection process. Sometimes you can get selected several times in a row. And then there are long dry spells where your application seems to be ignored. It is easy to be disappointed when your applications isn't selected. After you've been to one launch, you want to go to all of them.

There's still a chance that I may get press credentials to attend the Solar Orbiter launch, but that remains to be seen. I'm still a little unsure how the press accreditation process works and my contacts at the magazine that would be sponsoring me are out of the office on Christmas vacation. This will all be resolved in due time, but it's hard to be patient when nothing else is going on.

I added all the new dogs to the Dalmatian Rescue website today. Considering that none of the dogs would stay still, I think the pictures came out pretty good. This is the only website I maintain anymore. I don't even update my own site these days. I used to maintain dozens of different websites and was busy making additions and changes every single day. Those days are long gone. Most of my old clients retired even before I did.

Janet and I found a forgotten bottle of champagne in the back of a kitchen cabinet, so we will toast in the New Year if we can manage to stay awake for a few more hours. Other than a very sad day last April, 2019 wasn't a bad year. You can always hope the new year will be better though. Hope keeps you moving forward. Here's hoping that all of you find yourselves happy and fulfilled in the year ahead.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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