Day 4951

Janet returned home this evening and Dawn is beyond happy. I think a week alone with me is about her limit. For the most part she's been very good, but this morning I was worried enough about her that I almost took her to the vet. She seemed very agitated and tore up her dog bed in the kitchen. Then she tried to hide in all the wrong places, like inside closets and behind the television. I took her outside and she was panting heavily. I don't know whether she had a mild seizure or was just having a panic attack. At any rate after about fifteen minutes she was completely back to normal and there were no problems for the rest of the day. It will be nice to finally go on a walk with her again tomorrow. She has refused to take a walk all week.

The last time Janet went on vacation Dawn seemed to relax as the week wore on. This time she seemed to become a little more stressed with each passing day. She is a very fearful dog and it doesn't take much to get her shivering and shaking. I think today she might have just given up hope that Janet was ever returning and thought she might be stuck with me forever. All is well now though. I hope she remembers that these vacations don't last forever the next time Janet goes someplace. 

Once I was convinced that Dawn was fine I went to the gym. Walking around the indoor track is the only way I'm going to get my steps this summer. It's way too hot to go walking in the park. When I took Dawn out to pee this morning it was already 90 degrees. It didn't take long for the temperature to climb over 100. I didn't stay long at the gym today. I was still a little worried about Dawn and came home as soon as I finished my three miles around the indoor track. I picked up a few groceries on the way home but I'll probably have to go to the store again tomorrow. 

My call to tech support yesterday accomplished nothing. I'm still getting the spoofed e-mail spam that appears to come from me. The person I talked with yesterday sounded pretty convincing and I actually thought the problem was solved. I should have known better. These guys have never really helped me before. Why should they start now. 

I hope Janet has some ideas about how to get rid of the pile of stuff in the living room that used to reside in the utility room. I have no idea where to put these things now that we no longer have a shelf. Our closets are full and the storage warehouse is getting pretty full as well. Some of the things could be thrown away, but at least half the stuff are things we use all the time. All these problems could have been avoided if the building inspector didn't have to inspect new water heaters. The way the shelf in the utility room was attached before worked well for over fifty years. It's a shame that the rules had to change at a time when I've lost all patience with bureaucracies. Getting a new drivers license was a pain. So was getting approved for TSA Pre. I never dreamed that getting a water heater would be a hassle too.

I guess I'm just getting old and grumpy. Dawn and I should get along great because she's old and grumpy as well. Neither of us like dealing with change. All in all, I think we did pretty well this week. We're both glad Janet is back though. It takes a team to keep this house running.

Lizzy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4950

A plumber came by this morning to add a circular flashing around the hole where the vent from the water heater went through the ceiling. He said this would be necessary when the building inspector arrived later in the day. About two hours later the inspector arrived, spent about a minute looking at the installation with a flashlight, and said everything was up to code. He handed me a little receipt saying that everything was OK and told me to keep it in a safe place. It was unclear why all this was necessary until the inspector told me what he sees sometimes. "You wouldn't believe it," he told me. "I found a guy two weeks ago storing gasoline for his lawn mower right next to the gas water heater." I thanked the guy for coming out and kind of wished he would inspect my new roof too.

This week has gone quickly. I follow a list every day to make sure I don't forget anything with Dawn. I think she appreciates it that I do everything in exactly the same order as Janet does. The only real difference in our schedule is that we sleep in later now. I can see no reason to get up early. The day is long enough as it is.

It's still a mystery to me why Dawn won't come out to the kitchen and eat her breakfast. It's really hard to get her off the bed in the morning. She would eagerly follow Janet around in the mornings, but I guess this is different. The only time she acts normal now is when I'm doing something that was always part of her daily routine. When I fix her dinner at 5:15, she runs right out to her bowl in the kitchen and eats normally.   She does the same thing for her bedtime snack. Breakfast is a tough one though. I had to feed her breakfast in bed again this morning and then stay out of sight while she ate.

It was way too hot for a walk in the park this morning, so I went to the gym again after I finished with the building inspector. I like going to the gym around lunchtime because there are fewer people at this time of day and I have a better chance of finding a parking place in the covered parking garage. My routine has been exactly the same for several weeks now, but that's fine by me. I walked three miles on the indoor track and shot baskets for about fifteen minutes before I headed home again. My pace on the track was good today. I like seeing progress. My elapsed time on a good day is often four minutes faster than on a bad day.

I always try to get Dawn to eat lunch with me, but so far she just stays in the bedroom. She will go outside and pee though. I guess this seems normal to her, because I'm often the one who takes her outside when Janet is home. It's clear that Dawn doesn't want anything new in her life. She trusts Janet, but when I'm here by myself she reverts to kennel mode. Sadly, I will probably always be a kennel attendant to her.

I called my Internet Service Provider this afternoon and asked if they could help me stop the people who were spoofing my e-mail address. The tech support person I talked to knew exactly what I was talking about. Evidently spoofing is a common way to send spam. Tech support said they made several changes on my mail server that should prevent unauthorized people from spoofing my account. We'll see if this works. With any e-mail changes it can take up to 24 hours before the change propagates through the Internet. Hopefully tomorrow the spoofing deluge will stop.

I still don't know what I'm going to do with all the stuff that used to be on the long shelf in the utility room. Now that the shelf is gone, it's all sitting in a pile on the living room floor. Janet likes to declutter and throw things away, so  hopefully she can make this pile a lot smaller when she returns home. Maybe I'll still think about building a new smaller shelf, but it would be a lot easier to just get rid of most of this stuff.

Dolly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4829

It was a busy day. Dawn is getting her sunrise walks again and appears to be back to normal. Now that we're on Daylight Savings Time we're actually seeing the sunrise again. Dawn continues to seem steadier on her feet than I am. I think she's made a remarkable recovery. She finished her pain medication today, so hopefully she'll feel just as good tomorrow.

My e-mail is working again. Yay. The guy I talked to last night accomplished nothing, but I got lucky this morning and ended up talking with a different tech support person who actually knew what he was doing. This guy was a software engineer and not some call center flunky. He diagnosed my problem and had everything working again in less than five minutes. Sadly, I'll probably never talk to this guy again. One of the worst things about modern tech support is that you never end up talking to the same person twice. You are just randomly assigned to the next available agent. Some of these people know what they're doing, but the majority don't. I can't believe how many hours I spent talking to the first two tech support representatives yesterday and neither of them accomplished anything.

I made surprisingly good time on my long walk today. I managed to get over 21,000 steps and doubled my normal Apple watch move goal. It's a mystery how I had so much energy since I woke up tired. I'll have to admit that it was a nice day for walking. It felt brisk outside but it wasn't too cold. I just wore a light jacket and felt fine. I noticed that another of the resident geese was missing today. Where are these geese going? There were ten about three months ago and now there are only four. Is someone capturing these geese and taking them home to eat? Are they dying of natural causes? Or are visitors killing them by feeding them unhealthy food? The are signs all over the park explicitly telling people not to feed the ducks and geese bread. Nobody listens. Almost every day I see people feeding the ducks bread. Sometimes they are feeding them right next to a sign telling them not to. Bread is one of the worst things you can feed waterfowl. If you insist on feeding ducks and geese, feed them cracked corn or frozen peas. Ducks will eagerly eat the bread but it is very bad for them.

It's tax season again and Janet and I both have to print out a lot of forms. Janet uses an iPad for almost everything and our existing printers are all to old to print from phones and iPads. I went out this afternoon and bought her a modern printer that supports Apple Airprint. Printers are amazingly cheap these days. This printer was very nice and cost less than what I typically pay for printer ink. The printer was a lot harder to configure than I thought, but it's working now and has made both our lives easier. Janet can print anything she wants directly from her iPad and phone. I continue to print the old fashioned way, with an Ethernet cable attached to my printer.

I got a lot done today, but the one thing I didn't have time for was searching for the remaining leaking spots on the roof. That's a shame because it's supposed to start raining again tomorrow morning. I really can't catch a break with this roof. There's been so much rain this Spring that it's rare for the roof to get dry enough for me to apply the remaining Armor Flex coating. I'm almost certain that the roof will start leaking again, but I hope the area in the living room that I cleaned up the other day stays dry. Cleaning that area was a lot of work.

The friend who has my train collection sold a few more trains today. At this rate I may be able to liquidate the collection in another ten years. This buyer lives in India. Go figure. I'm surprised at how many buyers are outside the country. Some of my guitars went to a band in the UK. Several trains have gone to Europeans. The auction house never disclosed who bought my art, but I suspect that most of them were European too.

I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow. Dawn is really enjoying her walks now and I'm enjoying having a dry ceiling again. Oh, well. Eventually the rainy season will be over and we'll have a new roof. Until then, I've got the buckets ready.

Carmine is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3791

It was nice to get back to visiting the rescue Dalmatians. There was only a skeleton crew at the kennel and very few boarding dogs, but our dogs have been well cared for during the pandemic. We photographed Cinder, a new girl who entered the program recently, and played ball with Hank and Charlie. The dogs were glad to see us. It's been very quiet at the kennel lately.

We started our day with another long walk before breakfast. I wish this Spring weather would last a little longer. It's been absolutely beautiful lately. We didn't encounter many people this morning. Maybe it was just early, but I have a feeling that a lot of people were returning to work this morning. Something was happening, because traffic was certainly heavier.

Even though I made the switch to online banking recently, I still have to go to the post office occasionally. I mailed a letter to my luddite sister who refuses to use the Internet and then returned home. If all I do is get groceries on Saturday and make an occasional trip to the post office, I may never have to fill my tank again.

My task for the day was getting Microsoft Office running again on my laptop. I finally found a technical support department at Microsoft that specialized in Macintosh problems. I gave them a call this afternoon and explained what happened when I backed up my computer to a new hard drive using Time Machine. The guy I talked to sounded like he'd heard this problem many times before. He asked if I would consent to letting him operate my computer remotely. Sure. Why not. For the next fifteen minutes I watched as an unseen hand moved things around on my screen. When he was finished, Microsoft Office was activated again and everything worked perfectly. The tech support guy was very nice and didn't even ask me why I was using a ten year old product.

It was kind of amazing to me that all this could be done remotely. From the sound of the guy's voice, it didn't even seem like he was located in the United States. Back in the day, you would have had to have someone come out to your location to make these type of repairs. It actually took me longer to find the special phone number than it took the tech guy to get my software working again. I wish Apple did this sort of thing. Having someone take control of my computer and diagnose the problem remotely is so much easier than making an appointment to visit the Genius Bar at an Apple Store and lugging your computer down to a shopping mall. I've never been a huge fan of Microsoft, but my respect for them went up a few notches today.

Now that I have two super fast computers, I don't know what kind of project to tackle next. Even though it was stressful at times, I kind of enjoyed upgrading the computers. Too bad I don't feel the same way about the office where the computers reside. Truthfully, the office needs an upgrade much more than the computers did.

I got a notice from my gym and the place that cuts my hair that even though Texas is opening, they were going to wait a while longer before they opened for business themselves. Seems reasonable to me. I wouldn't want to be the first to open when nobody seems to understand how this virus works yet. I have a feeling that this is going to be a very long Summer, especially if you like to go to concerts and sporting events. Since all I really want to do is go back to a lonely mountain and look through large telescopes, I think I'll be fine.

Dodger is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3668

I thought I'd do what the tech-support guy told me to do yesterday, so I took my phone to an AT&T store and asked them to change the SIM card. The guy at the store said the SIM card had absolutely nothing to do with WiFi calling and tried his own solution instead. It didn't work, so he put a new SIM card in the phone. This didn't work either. He told me to call tech support and I told him that I already did and they told me to come here. We both gave up. When I got back home, I looked on the Internet and found out that hundreds of people were having the same problem. Some blamed AT&T. Some blamed Apple. And some blamed their network router. Nobody appeared to have a solution, although many claimed that this feature used to work. I have a feeling that in some future IOS upgrade the 'WiFi Calling' feature will just go away.

I wasn't really surprised that I wasn't able to solve this problem today. It was one of those gray, dismal days where nothing wants to go right. Even though the weather app on my phone said there would be no rain for the next hour, I knew I was going to get wet. I went on my walk anyway because you don't get many steps sitting at your desk and staring at a screen. At least it wasn't cold today and the rain was only a light mist. I think the really bad weather isn't supposed to start until tomorrow.

I wasn't feeling very productive today, so I wrote a letter to my sister and took it to the post office. I think the world would be a better place if we all wrote letters on paper, took pictures with film that had to be sent off to be developed, and went to a movie theater when we wanted to see a movie. Instant gratification is ruining everything. Nobody has any patience anymore. I may be wrong, but slowing the world down a bit seems like a good idea to me.

I practice what I preach and do almost everything slowly. It takes me most of the morning just to eat breakfast. Usually there is time for only one new activity each day. The one thing I can usually do quickly is go to sleep. Not last night unfortunately. Maybe I was worrying about my upcoming trip to the observatory. Maybe I was worried about catching the flu. Whatever it was, by brain wouldn't slow down. It was irritating. Eventually, I got to sleep, but I've been tired all day.

I hope the weather forecast improves overnight. Right now, everyone is predicting severe weather in the afternoon with straight line winds, large hail, and even the possibility of tornados. It doesn't sound good to me. Luckily, these forecasts are often wrong. Even if it doesn't rain, I doubt that I'll go out for breakfast in the morning. That ship has sailed.

Mack is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2904

I can't resist taking a picture of Dash next to a fire truck. I have no idea who was being carried out on a stretcher, but it happens a lot in our neighborhood. We're all getting older.

We had our own medical emergency last night. Dash experienced a severe vestibular event and we were up half the night with him. In the past we have taken him to the emergency room when he has one of these episodes, but there is little if anything the vets can do. Now that we recognize the symptoms, we just try to keep him calm and ride it out. The vestibular episodes almost always start the same way. Dash will wake up during the night after sleeping calmly. Usually we will immediately notice that he is drooling. Since drooling is sometimes a precursor to throwing up, I'll take him outside. If he doesn't throw up and seems disoriented and unsteady on his feet, it is often the start of a vestibular seizure. Dash drooled a river last night and was very agitated for about an hour. When he started to calm down, we got him to lay down on a rug in the living room and I curled up next to him. I could tell his breathing was becoming more regular and in about fifteen minutes he fell asleep. I stayed with him until the drooling completely stopped and he seemed normal again. Then I eventually went back to bed. Later that night, Dash woke up and came back to bed with us. He was fine. I was tired the next morning though. I didn't get much sleep.

Vestibular disease is scary, because there is so little you can do. We keep a supply of anti-nausea pills on hand in case he shows signs of vertigo, but the pills don't take effect immediately. The main benefit of the Cerenia pills is if the vestibular events last for several days. The last time we experienced an event this bad was during the summer. Today Dash was completely normal. He ate well and took both of his regular walks. The vestibular disease never really goes away, but episodes like Dash experienced last night are infrequent. We've got enough to worry about with his heart problems. I hope he doesn't have another seizure for many months.

The weather was chilly again today, but there was no rain. I didn't go anywhere because I wasn't completely sure if Dash was back to normal yet. I'd hate for him to have a seizure when I wasn't there. There was plenty to do around the house. I returned to work on my website project and made a lot of progress. I think last night really tired Dash out because he slept a lot today. I always let sleeping dogs lie. It's the only way I get anything done. The website is looking pretty good now. I'm just about ready to turn it over to the client.

I had to renew a domain today and had a real problem turning off the auto-renew feature on my account dashboard. I hate auto-renew because very often I don't want to renew something again. At any rate, when I renewed the domain, my credit card information got captured by the website and all of the sudden I was a perpetual customer again. Damn. It took sitting on hold with tech support for almost an hour before I was able to talk with someone and get the problem resolved. A word of warning. If you sign up for Sirius XM radio, don't ever check the box that lets them auto-renew your subscription. They make it so difficult to leave that you're practically a customer for life.

I'm hoping I can finish the website tomorrow. I'm also hoping that Dash is back to normal. Sometimes the vertigo can last for several days. We gave him another Cerenia pill to help him sleep calmly tonight. I won't need a pill to get to sleep. I'm so tired that I'm falling asleep right now.

Emma is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2433

Nothing went smoothly today. The dogs were tired from their morning walk and sleeping peacefully when I left the house to get my car safety inspected. I had an appointment, but the Land Rover dealer was busy and the inspection took longer than I thought. By the time I returned home, Dot was awake again and had pooped in her bed. This was a messy accident. I had to clean Dot, three blankets, two rugs, and my shoes. I really wasn't gone that long. It's a shame that I can't even leave the house for two hours without risking this sort of calamity. It's not Dot's fault. She's just very old and her incontinence is a way of life.

Apparently, I've been messing with the router too much in my quest to get the pet cam working. I wanted to experiment with some other settings today, but discovered that the router had frozen and wouldn't let me login to the control panel anymore. I called tech support and they told me that I would have to restore the router to it's factory settings in order to gain access again. Damn. This means that I will have to reconnect everything in the house to the WiFi network all over again. It took forever the first time I did this, so I was hoping that I'd never have to repeat the process. While I was on the phone with the technician, Dot decided to poop in her bed and I was forced to blurt out "Hold on a minute, my dog is pooping and I've got to clean it up before she eats it." Tech support offered no advice on this matter. I thanked the tech support person for speaking English well enough for me to understand and decided to postpone resetting the router for another day when I would hopefully have more patience.

The only productive thing I did today was get my August invoices in the mail. I didn't have time to go to the grocery store, so I decided to pick up some take out on my way back from the post office. Unfortunately, this was when it started to rain. The rain completely surprised me, since it has been bone dry all month. The unexpected thunderstorm frightened the dogs and when I returned to the house with dinner, I wasn't all that surprised to discover that Dot had pooped a third time.

By the time I cleaned Dot up and fed the dogs their dinner, I was ready to consider the day a total loss. I tried to give Dash his evening walk, but he was still nervous about the weather and didn't want to go outside. Eventually the rain stopped, the laundry got done, the dogs got walked, and life returned to some semblance of normality. Today was tiring though. It takes a lot of patience to live this way.

I need to remember to renew my vehicle registration this weekend. The vehicle registration goes hand-in-hand with the safety inspection and you need both to stay legal. I have no plans for the weekend. I just hope that tomorrow isn't a repeat of today.

Ellis is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2357

I'm convinced that calling tech support is a modern form of torture. I called AT&T today to ask then how to return the new router they sent me. I don't think I need it now, because everything has been working great for the past three days. "You can't send the new router back because we have already reconfigured your account to use it," the tech guy said. "When did you do this," I asked? "About three days ago," said the technician. "I think you solved my problem, I said. "I don't need the new router." "But aren't you already using it," the guy said. "No, I haven't even taken it out of the box yet," I replied. There was a moment of silence. The technician seemed confused and said he needed to run some tests. I knew what was going on. When they had reconfigured my service, they had inadvertently cleared my routing path, which is all I wanted them to do in the first place.

The tech guy still seemed confused that the old router was still running fine with the new settings that were designed for the replacement equipment. "I want you to reboot the router and I'll see if it still shows up in my system with the same serial number." What? Why would I want to do that? I would have thought that the serial number was permanently linked to the equipment. "Oh, no," said the technician, "we can change that." "But if the serial number changes, nothing on my network will recognize it anymore and I'll have to reconnect everything," I said. "There's a 50/50 chance of that," said the technician. Then he added, "You'll have to reboot the router sooner or later anyway, so why not just do it now." I hate these guys.

The conversation continued for quite a while and it was eventually determined that I could keep the old router if I wanted, since it was still working for some unexplained reason. I could also keep the new router as a spare, if I paid AT&T a $150 penalty fee. I think they should have been paying me $150 since I had to spend my entire morning dealing with this ridiculous problem.

I think I've found a dog walker to help with Dot while Janet is away on vacation. This is a relief, since I had no idea how I was going to get Dot out of the house. Walking Dot is a team effort now. She will only walk if she is following Dash, but one person can't walk Dot and Dash together anymore, since he wants to walk so much faster than she does. Typically, I walk Dash, stopping every twenty or thirty feet so Dot can catch up. Janet follows behind with Dot, holding up her rear legs with the Help 'Em Up Harness. It's a slow process, but it works. The walks are an essential part of Dot's therapy. Without them, she would probably be bedridden by now.

It didn't rain today, even though the humidity hovered near 100%. There was a mist in the air when we walked the dogs before breakfast, but by afternoon the mist had turned to steam. It's still incredibly muggy. I've emptied the bucket in the dehumidifier two times already today. Dot can't handle the heat anymore, so we have to cut her walks even shorter on hot, humid days like today. I'm not looking forward to dealing with this situation in July. It may have seemed hot today, but this was nothing. Texas Summers can be brutal.

I'm not sure if I accomplished anything today or not. The Internet is up and running, but I'm not sure why. The refrigerator and pantry are full again, but the house is still dirty and there is lots of water on the roof. I'm glad I found somebody to help with Dot next month. Maybe everything will be OK.

Sam is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2355

Sometimes on a completely normal day I'll suddenly find myself feeling incredibly sad. I don't know why, but I suspect this is because a number of important things in my life are reaching their logical conclusion at the same time. Even on the best of days, I have to acknowledge that Dot is on a glide path, headed directly towards the Rainbow Bridge. It's amazing that she's made it this far. When I watch video tributes to dogs who have left this world, they make me cry. When I watch Dot take painfully slow steps from the bedroom to the kitchen, I remember days when she and Dash could run like the wind. I wish I could turn back time.

As Dot begins the final chapters of her journey, so does my business. It's hard to believe that twenty five years ago I started a company that would soon be making national Pepsi commercials and providing me with opportunities to work around the world. Like Dot's incredible life, I'm amazed that we've managed to make it this far. If only the clock turned a bit slower. When I pull my aching bones out of bed in the morning and survey my crumbling kingdom, it seems like everything happened way too fast.

There was a life before loving Dalmatians and running a small business, but I barely remember it. Did I really play bass in a rock band? Did I used to stay out late and laugh uproariously with friends? Was I really an architect? It all seems like dream memories now. Why did I ever move to Dallas? It's a mystery. All I know is that life is a jumble of memories and after a while you can't even put them in the proper order.

After a while I'll never remember that the plumber came today. He was very nice and tightened all the fittings to eliminate a leak that was so small that I probably should have just ignored it. I was hoping that Dot would ignore the plumber, but the part of her brain that guards the house is still working and she barked the entire time he was here. The plumber was gone in fifteen minutes, but Dot continued to pant and act agitated for the next two hours. She is so weak and tired now that it takes her a while to bounce back from anything.

Eventually Dot fell asleep and started breathing normally again. I started up the computer was was amazed to see that everything worked normally today. The UPS man delivered the new router sometime this afternoon, but I'm reluctant to install it. I think I'll just leave it in the box until things start acting up again. It crossed my mind that since tech support calls are usually monitored, maybe the supervisor of the idiot I talked to yesterday listened to my irate call and actually made the minor configuration changes I was requesting. If things aren't working tomorrow morning, I'll chalk today's smooth sailing up to pure coincidence.

Dot has her monthly recheck at the cancer center tomorrow, but since both ultrasound technicians are out sick, I wonder if there is any point in going. Dot won't mind if I have to reschedule, but I'd like to know what's going on. I worry too much already and knowing exactly why Dot has been so tired this week might help me keep things in perspective.

Chief is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2354

I wish Steve Jobs were still alive. I never used to have problems with operating system updates, but lately the new Apple OS and IOS updates are so buggy that they seem like Beta versions. I'm almost scared to update my phone anymore, because each new IOS update seems worse than the previous one. The combination of buggy system software, spotty U-verse service, and a brand new hosting company has created a perfect storm of bad news. Just about every morning when I boot up my computer, I'm greeted with a new problem. Was my phone causing the problem? Does the WiFi router need to be re-booted again? Have I configured my webserver wrong? It's hard to even know where to begin.

I was in tech support hell for hours this morning, trying to track down why my e-mail wasn't working and I couldn't even access my own website. I finally ended up talking to a very knowledgeable IP guy who told me to call my ISP and tell them to check the routing path and clear it if necessary. This sounded easy enough, so I called AT&T and made the request. "This is beyond the scope of my capabilities," said a voice that sounded like he was talking to me from Pakistan. "I can give you the number of our paid subscription support if you'd like." "You mean that after all I pay you guys every month for U-verse service, you want to charge me extra to unscramble my flaky internet connection?" "I'm sorry," said the hard to understand voice from Pakistan. "Would you like me to send you a brand new router at no charge?" This was crazy. "You mean you guys would rather send me a new router than reset my connection." I said. I hate dealing with tech support. I've still got the problem I started out with this morning. There a new router on it's way to me that I probably won't be able to install correctly. To add to my problems, I can't decide whether to upgrade my phone to IOS 9.3.2 because I read an article that said it could turn your phone into a brick.

Since it didn't appear that my connection problems were going to be resolved quickly, I went to the battery store and special ordered a new battery for my little WiFi hotspot. T-Mobile said these batteries weren't made anymore and tried to see me a new hotspot. They were just being lazy.  I knew this battery was available somewhere because I've been replacing weird batteries for years. The new battery will arrive next Wednesday. The little WiFi hotspot is slow, but it is very reliable. Without it, I would have missed quite a few blog posts over the years.

The weather has been horrible this week. It's so humid and muggy outside that it feels like you could cut the air with a knife. My dehumidifier is working overtime to keep the air comfortable inside. Dot doesn't like the heat and humidity. I've been having a hard time getting her outside anyway now that she's become weaker, and hot, humid weather just adds to the problem. She did poop outside today, which was a small blessing. I just got lucky. When I had her outside after lunch, a big truck drove down the alley behind our house and got her so excited that she immediately started to poop. I wish I could schedule someone to drive down the alley every time I had Dot outside.

The plumber is coming back tomorrow to fix the leaking sink. This should only take a few minutes since the problem is just a compression fitting that wasn't tightened enough. The plumber better not try to charge me for this additional service call. He should have checked his work the first time he was here. After unnecessary car repair charges and a ridiculous attempt to charge me for resetting my router this morning, I'm not in the mood for unwarranted extra charges.

Maybe tomorrow will go smoothly. I'm not counting on a trouble free day, but it would be nice.

Ranger is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2353

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news," Janet told me this morning, "but the sink is still leaking." I looked under the sink, and sure enough, she was right. The leak was small, but it shouldn't have been there at all. When two plumbers spend the entire day at your house, you'd think they'd check for leaks before they leave. I'm beginning to think it is totally impossible to get something done right the first time. I called the plumbing company and made another appointment. I tried to get some type of assurance that there would be no charge for this visit, since it was the brand new hardware the plumbers had installed just a few day ago that was leaking. "We can't promise anything," the dispatcher told me.

My service guy at the Land Rover dealership called this afternoon to tell me my car was ready. He seemed pleased that he and the service manager had been able to shave almost $800 off my bill. I thanked him for looking out for me and then asked what I still had to pay. "Oh, you'll only owe $2,100 now," he said. Jeez, give me a break. This car is still under warranty. I hate to think what's going to happen when the warranty runs out.

I'm still having problems with my Internet connection, so I called AT&T tech support again. I talked to somebody who was quite knowledgeable the other day, but I wasn't so lucky this time. Why do these big companies have to outsource their tech support to countries where English is a second language. I couldn't understand this guy at all. The conversation became so frustrating that I told the guy that I'd just call back and try again later with a different agent. He persisted in asking me a bunch of questions that had nothing to do with my problem, so eventually I just hung up on him. Two minutes later, the guy calls me back and continued to read from his script. I couldn't believe it. I had to hang up on the guy twice.

I canceled Dot's physical therapy appointment because I didn't think I was going to have a car tomorrow. Now that I have the car back, I debated whether to try to reschedule the appointment. I decide to leave things alone, because Dot has to go back to the cancer center for another ultrasound scan on Friday anyway. One car trip this week is probably enough. Dot seems to be enjoying her lighter schedule, but I don't want her to get any weaker than she already is. We'll go back to therapy next week and have her vet reevaluate her to see if she's still strong enough to continue the water therapy at all.

It wouldn't be a normal day if I didn't have battery problems. Since I've been having issues with my U-verse service, I've been using my little T-Mobile WiFi hotspot a lot. Last week the battery died and I have to use the unit plugged into an AC outlet. The hotspot is only about four years old, but the battery has already become almost impossible to find. I finally located a supplier who said they could special order me a replacement cell. I felt good that something had finally gone right today, but even this small success shouldn't have been so difficult.

Work has become so slow that I'm beginning to wonder whether my clients are reading the blog and have collectively decided that they want a happier person to work on their accounts. Truthfully, I'm too tired to care. All I want right now is a good night's sleep and a poop free day tomorrow. I'll probably get neither.

Ziggy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2311

It's amazing how much time can be wasted trying to get electronic devices to play nice with each other. Everything is connected these days, but the connections don't always work. Sometimes Bluetooth is the problem. Other times it is the WiFi network. Occasionally the electricity goes out and everything goes down. Today I couldn't access one of my clients websites. I was about to call the hosting company when I decided to try an alternate WiFi connection and discovered that everything was fine. Why was T-Mobile working and AT&T U-Verse wasn't? It was weird that most websites appeared to be functioning normally, but a few appeared to be blocked on U-Verse. I unplugged the router, re-booted everything and five minutes later, I was up and running again. I never did figure out what the problem was.

Later in the day, my weather radar app quit working and I had problems syncing my new activity tracker. Life was much simpler when the most complicated machines I had were an IBM Selectric typewriter and a Leica rangefinder camera. Mechanical things used to break too, but the failures were much more predictable. Now, the problem could be anywhere. Is there something wrong in the cloud where your data is being stored? Is there something wrong with your security settings? Is the pet cam causing interference with the WiFi router? Usually I can fix things myself while I am waiting on hold for thirty minutes to talk with someone from tech support. Life in the digital age is still frustrating though. I make my living online, but I was happier before the Internet existed.

For the third week in a row Dot pooped in the car on the way to her physical therapy appointment. I walked her around in the yard forever before we left, trying to avoid another accident, but to no avail. She wasn't ready to go. Two things seem to make Dot poop; excitement and stress. A ride in the car can cause both. It wouldn't do much good to give her a sedative before we left the house, because it's not a good idea to be sleepy when you are walking in the underwater treadmill. I really don't know what to do. Chemotherapy, acupuncture and exercise help, but you can't fix old age.

I usually know the names of the flowers I photograph, but I'm drawing a blank on the clusters of tiny white blooms that pop up in the grass seemingly overnight when it rains. It's been a rainy week, so these things are everywhere. I'll figure out what they are eventually. By June they'll all be gone. Until then, I hope it stays cool. Dot is enjoying her morning walks again now that the weather has cooled down a bit. She walks very slowly now, stopping every few feet to smell things along the way. It takes Janet and I forever to make our one mile circuit through the park each morning, but I think Dot still enjoys being outside.

One problem with moving Dot's therapy appointment to Wednesday is that I don't know what to do on Thursdays now. When I wake up on Thursday lately, I initially think it is Friday. It's disappointing to realize that I've got to wait another day to go out to breakfast.  I supposed I could go out to eat two days a week, but there are still bananas and strawberries in the kitchen to use up before they go bad. I'm so structured that a single banana can keep me from doing something spontaneous.

Valli is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2290

I lost my web hosting and e-mail today. Damn. I knew this was going to happen but I didn't think I would have to deal with moving everything so soon. I've been with the same hosting company since the dawn of the Internet, so migrating all my websites and e-mail accounts is not a trivial matter. Even though I spent most of the day in tech support hell, I'm still not done. Every time you move a large website, a lot of things don't work anymore. It's going to take weeks before everything is back to normal again.

It would have been tempting to just abandon my personal websites, but there were some animal rescue websites on the server that people still depend on, so I decided to move everything. My company website has become a relic. I haven't kept up with the times. The sites I design for clients are much nicer than my own these days. My sealander.com site has become an anachronism. Lets face it, I just don't care about the Internet as much as I did ten years ago.

I do care about Dot, so I broke away from configuring the new mail server to take her to her physical therapy appointment. When I returned, I had to start all over again, because my session timed out and nothing got saved. Dot actually did better than I did today.  She had a good morning walk and kept up a brisk pace on the treadmill during her therapy session. Dot didn't poop in the car this week either. In sharp contrast, my own day was a mess. I still haven't gotten my new e-mail account working properly and there are big chunks of my company website that don't work at all. Hey, it's a start. I'll have everything up and running by this weekend.

Trying to find a new online home consumed most of my day, so I made no progress on preparing my taxes whatsoever and didn't get around to calling the landscaping guys or the roofers either. At least Dash was more or less back to normal today. These dogs are wearing me out. I'm going to try to finish migrating my websites to the new server tomorrow. I've got a little time before they pull the plug on my old server, but at the glacial slow pace I move these days, there isn't much time to waste. Dot's vet was telling me about the difficulties of running her business while moving to a new home today. This reminded me that Janet and I have one more move left if we are ever going to leave Dallas. I'm not looking forward to moving. I'm not looking foreword to growing old in a big city either, so I guess I've got no choice. I have a feeling that moving to a whole new city is going to be a lot more trouble than moving my website.

There's still plenty of time to think about moving. The big move may never even happen, since Janet is in no hurry to retire. In the mean time, I've got poop to clean up, bacon filled breakfasts to fantasize about, and a yard full of grass to mow. I wonder why I selected the fancy unlimited package on the new web server? I can add as many websites, domains, and e-mail accounts as I want. This would have been really useful ten years ago when my business was thriving. Now, most of this capacity will go unused. It will be a miracle if I can manage to add five rather simple websites to the server. So far, I'm having a lot of trouble configuring the first one.

Ariel is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2275

As expected, we got lots of rain today. It was a good day to spend on the phone with tech support. For the second time in as many months, I found myself locked out of some of the websites I manage. In cases like this, the problem is usually the password. I didn't change the password. The client couldn't remember the password. And tech support wouldn't talk to me unless I had the password. I finally had to ask the client to ask for a password reset, so I could access the server. This didn't work either. After lots of back and forth, we finally discovered that the hosting company had changed the user ID for the site. Everything is fine now, but it won't be long before there is another password issue on another server. It's frustrating. I wish people would just quit trying to hack into things. Hacking forces hosting companies to continually keep changing their security protocols and it forces people like me to have to remember way too many complicated passwords.

The rain was pretty steady for most of the day. I had the pump on the roof running, the dehumidifier running, and the dryer all running at the same time. My clothes always get wet on rainy days, so I just throw them in the dryer as soon as I get back inside. With all three of these noisy machines running at the same time it felt like I was in the engine room of a ship. The rain eventually stopped, but it looks like tomorrow is going to be more of the same. People who like gardening love these Spring rains, but people with dogs usually don't. Dash is a magnet for mud on rainy days and Dot is difficult to dry off once she gets wet. Needless to say, even though work has slowed down, I still have plenty to do.

I'm enjoying the chaotic political primary season. The leadership of the Democratic party can't seem to put Bernie away and the Republican leadership is doing even worse with Donald Trump. I was pleased to see how well Bernie is doing in Michigan and equally pleased to see that the Republican leadership's efforts to destroy Donald Trump have seemingly backfired. I wonder if many people have noticed that these two very different outsiders have several important things in common. Both think that disastrous trade deals have decimated American manufacturing and destroyed millions of good jobs. Both also think it was a huge mistake to get involved in pointless wars in the middle east. As somewhat of an isolationist who has never been a big fan of globalization, I find it refreshing that so many people seem to agree with me. I think this is an important election. We will see once and for all just how much influence that the lobbyists and giant corporations have over our lives.

I think my efforts to eliminate wheat and sugar from my diet have failed. I did so well for almost three years eating Kale salads and avoiding bread. Now the kitchen is filled with all kinds of crackers again and I'm having ice cream for dessert. Why does unhealthy food taste so good? I still avoid fast food restaurants and try to always include a green vegetable with my dinner, but I'm slipping. I love cheeseburgers, pork ribs, and French toast. Broccoli and Kale, not so much.

Hopefully Dot's Wednesday therapy session will go better than it did last week. Last week she pooped in the car and got very tired in the underwater treadmill. Maybe we'll have better luck tomorrow.

Bacardi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2077

I thought I'd fix an old aluminum colander today. This colander was so old that it must have belonged to my Mom. Or maybe it belonged to Janet's Mom. One of the legs had fallen off and Janet was going to throw the thing away. "I can fix that," I said. This was about a month ago actually. Men aren't generally that quick about fixing things. I thought it would be easy to rivet the leg back on the bowl of the colander using my rivet gun. I hadn't used the rivet gun in years, so the first problem was finding it. After searching in all the logical places, I finally found the tool in an illogical place. It made sense that I would store the rivets with the tool, but of course I didn't. It took me another thirty minutes to find a supply of aluminum rivets. I got ready to attach the leg and realized that the broken old rivets were still attached. I would have to drill them out. The batteries on my electric drill were dead, but I managed to find an old AC powered drill of my Dad's. The drill didn't have a chuck though, so I couldn't attach a drill bit. I finally managed to pull the old rivet out of the hole with a pair of pliers. The first time I tried to rivet the leg to the bowl, I forgot to place a washer on the back side of the rivet and it fell out of the hole. Finally, I got things right. Two hours after I started, I had a successful repair. I wonder why I thought that fixing the colander would only take me ten minutes?

Fixing things around the house always takes me a long time. The whole process is kind of like household archaeology. I have to sift through layers and layers of stuff to find the tools I need. We ran out of space so long ago that stuff is just piled on top of other stuff. If a tool is buried under too many layers, it is often easier to just drive to Home Depot and buy another one. The rivet gun was buried under layers of painting supplies, which were in turn covered up by three folding tables that Janet and I used to use at Dalmatian Rescue events. Long before I found the rivet gun, a bunch of wasps found me. They has been building a nest a few feet over my head. I didn't get stung, but the wasps did make me work faster. I often wonder why I embark on projects like this. I could have gone to Bed Bath and Beyond and picked up a brand new colander for just a few bucks. The old aluminum utensil didn't even have much sentimental value. I guess I feel compelled to fix things.

I hope going to the gym on Sunday is beneficial because I could certainly think of better things to do with my time. I've been pretty faithful about my weekend workouts, but I still don't see the fascination with exercise that many people have. Every morning when we walk the dogs, we pass dozens of cyclists and joggers who are up just as early as we are. I'm up because I know that Dot and Dash really need these walks. I wonder why these other guys are up so early?  If I had a choice, I would just sleep in an extra hour. I did go to the gym today though. And then I ate cake when I got home.

The TV went out again this evening, and since I couldn't get things to work on my own, I called U-Verse tech support for help. After answering the usual laundry last of questions, the technician suggested that I disconnect the HDMI cable from the TV and plug it back in back to front. "Why would this make a difference," I thought? I dutifully took the TV end of the cable and plugged it into the U-Verse receiver and took the receiver end and plugged it into the TV. It worked! Since nothing was wrong with the cable in the first place, I wondered why flipping it back to front brought the picture back. The technician didn't know. "Sometimes this just gets the signal flowing again," he said.

The calendar looks pretty empty next week. Dot does have a birthday on Thursday though. We'll have to do something special.

Mickey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1983

It's been a long day. It was raining again when we woke up this morning, so I had to wait until later in the day to walk the dogs. As usual, they refused to go outside and do their business while it was still raining. They acted agitated and upset until I got the bananas out, and then they both completely forgot that they wanted a walk. The rain was already diminishing by the time I finished breakfast, so I only had to wait an additional thirty minutes before the morning showers stopped and I could take Dot and Dash to the park.

When I finally got the dogs taken care of, I turned on the computer and discovered that the Internet was down. Actually, the entire U-verse service was down, because the land line phones and televisions weren't working either. I tried re-booting the router several times and when that didn't work, I called tech support. After spending forever in automated call center hell, I finally got to talk with a real person. AT&T couldn't get things working from The Philippines, or Malaysia, or wherever their call center is these days, so a technician is going to come out tomorrow. I hate it when the network goes down. Usually the problem turns out to be a defective router and when they replace it, I have to reconfigure every WiFi device in the house so all the devices can join the network again using the new router's password. Even the thermostat and several of my cameras are on WiFi now. It's going to be a lot of trouble to reconnect everything.

Luckily, I have access to an alternate WiFi network, so I could still get my work done today. Having U-verse down definitely slowed me down though. Just calling tech support took forever. In today's world, having a network outage is just about as bad as a power outage. This is why I always have a backup network. You can't really be a web developer without access to the Internet.

Dot did great today during her physical therapy session, but she hated riding to the vet in the loaner car. It's too small and the rear seats don't fold completely flat like they do in my car. I had to pull over to the side of the road several times to reposition Dot, because the slight incline of the folded rear seatback made her slide backwards and get stuck every time I went up a hill. I would never buy a small car. Large dogs and small cars just aren't a good mix. The old Defender 90 was the perfect vehicle for hauling dogs around in. The entire back of the car was completely flat and there was tons of headroom. Dot and Dash enjoyed riding around in that car. Too bad I couldn't keep it running forever.

I had been planning to do some additional work on my mobile friendly test site today, but several real jobs got in the way. I was surprised that I got as much done as I did, since I was uploading files using the much slower backup WiFi hotspot. Where there's a will, there's a way, I guess. I'm just glad it's Friday tomorrow. A week of relentless rain, car problems, dental problems, and a bad case of cabin fever have taken their toll on me. I'm looking forward to the long Memorial Day weekend, even though I have no plans whatsoever.

Casey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1584

I feel like I'm locked in my own personal Ground Hog Day. I've been trying to resolve a website problem for almost two weeks now. I call technical support every morning and talk a cheerful person who seems to understand my problem. He, or she, always says the problem seems easy enough to resolve, but that it will need to be escalated to the next level of support, because they don't have access to the information I need. The next day I get an e-mail saying that my problem has been solved and my ticket has been closed. I then go to the website in question and discover that nothing has changed at all. The problem has definitely not been resolved. I then call tech support again and explain the situation to another friendly person. They apologize for the mix up, telling me that they have reopened my service ticket and that the problem will be resolved properly this time. The next day I get another e-mail saying that my problem has been solved and my ticket has been closed again. Once again, nothing has changed. This has been going on for weeks.

I'm trying to solve a different type of problem with another client and have contacted a developer who supposedly knows all the answers. Today, he sent me detailed instruction, telling me exactly what to do to make the changes my client requested. So far, so good. At the very bottom of the letter was a final paragraph telling me not to do anything to the website during business hours and to be sure to back everything up before I attempt to make any changes. The developer concludes by telling me that if I follow his instructions exactly, I still might crash the entire site. WTF? I was hoping that thy guy would give me an answer, not a roulette wheel.

I went to my hepatologist for another blood test this afternoon. From now on out, these periodic tests are somewhat of a formality. By all indications, the treatment has already worked. These guys are just playing it safe. I will continue to get bi-weekly blood tests until June, and then probably once a year thereafter. One thing I have learned during Dash's cancer treatment and my own Hepatitis-C treatment is that doctors tend to take the amount of medication necessary to resolve a serious problem and then double it, just to make sure. This is especially true with cancer, since there is no definitive way to prove that the cancer will never return.

Maybe I'll have time to get the lawn mower battery replaced tomorrow. I can't put this off too much longer, since the grass is still growing. Dash has another radiation treatment in the morning and I have an appointment with an egg at my favorite restaurant. I hope I can get some of these ongoing website problems resolved soon. It's way too late in the year for Ground Hog Day.

Bella is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day