Day 807

I forget how long some of my clients have been around until they start asking for really old files. I've usually totally forgotten about these old jobs, but apparently clients never forget. Periodically, I'm asked to bring one of these old projects back to life. I'm sure my clients think that these resurrections are a trivial matter, but usually they are a nightmare. It's a miracle if you can even find one of these ten or fifteen year old files. Once you've found it, getting it to open is another matter entirely. Today, I was asked to revise a flyer that was created on an OS 8.0 computer, using completely different software than I use now, and then print the thing for them again using a different printer than I had back then. Needless to say, this was hard to do, and even harder to explain exactly why it was to hard to do.

That's what people pay me for though. To solve problems. Eventually, I just recreated the file from scratch, but it took so long that it put me behind on everything else. At least it's Friday tomorrow. February was a very busy month and it looks like March is going to be the same.

Everything is blooming already. Almost every day I see a new variety of wildflower in full bloom in the park. If I knew this weather was going to continue, I'd go ahead and start planting the new St. Augustine sod in the back yard. The sooner the sod gets established, the sooner we'll have grass again. I think I'd better wait a little while though. I'm not very good at predicting the weather. I have a feeling that if I put the sod in now, it would almost definitely snow or freeze a few days later. Anyway, what's the hurry? Installing a new turf is fairly labor intensive and I always like to put off manual labor as long as I can.

I'm finally starting to remember to take the trash out to the street every Thursday evening after dinner. I hope this doesn't become the Thursday diversion I've been asking for. I need something more interesting than this.

Lucky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 595

When I was out and about today, I passed a large city truck with the words "flood control" and the city of Dallas logo on the door. Where was this truck going? I don't really think that flood control is a problem right now. We haven't had any rain in over a month. What do I know though? Maybe the guy was going to see a rainmaker.

Every once in a while a client calls and wants to make a simple change to a document I originally created eight years ago. You'd think these requests would be easy, but they typically turn into huge problems. I either no longer have the computer I used to make the file, stopped using the software I created the file with years ago, or I just erased the file completely because it was so old. I got one of these requests to go back in time again today. Amazingly, I still happened to have a very old Quark Express file that actually opened. Of course, none of the fonts used in the original document were installed on my current computer and half of the picture files had simply disappeared. As a result, a simple request to change a price list became a three hour job to recreate the entire flyer from scratch.

So, they finally passed the debt ceiling deal in Congress today and the country is no longer on the brink of going into default. Is the market happy? Apparently not. The DOW dropped 265 points. Is tomorrow going to be a good buying opportunity, or will the market drop even further? I honestly don't know anymore. I don't think anyone else does either.

I visited two different vets this afternoon. One, so Dash could get his bi-weekly antigen shot, and the other to deliver some marketing materials. My back-to-back foursquare check-ins must have alarmed some people however, because several Twitter followers wrote asking if Dot and Dash were OK. Everything's fine guys. It's just a little hot here in Dallas.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day