Day 419

Everything is back to normal. The mailman finally delivered our mail today. I hung the pictures back on the wall that I was afraid were going to get damaged by the roof leak. I temporarily put away some of the winter coats festooning the coat rack in the hallway and even had some success bleaching away the stains in the sheet rock caused by the roof leak.

It's hard to believe it's February 7 already. This weekend is our big Valentine's Day pet picture event at The Shops at Willow Bend. It looks like we're going to try the new WiFi setup that will let me transmit images directly from the camera to the printing computer. If this works it will save a huge amount of time. If it doesn't work? Well, that's why I'm taking backup equipment so we can still do things the old way if necessary.

When I turned on the TV this morning I learned that Michael Vick had been given the keys to the city by Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway during Superbowl weekend. The keys to the city? Say it's not true. The real mayor, Tom Leppert quickly issued a statement saying that he didn't condone or authorize this honor, but that did little to stem the controversy. Now the city is divided into two camps. One side thinks Vick should still be serving time in prison and the other side thinks football is more important than animals. When I hear people saying that Vick "served his time" or that "it's time to move on," I keep thinking that he's still a multi-millionaire and is still playing with the NFL. Maybe he went to prison, but he sure didn't seem to lose much in the process.

I wonder if it's even worth trying to find where the leak in the roof is again? My success rate at finding this leak is certainly less than stellar.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 418 - Super Bowl Sunday

I felt a lot of sympathy for those guys who were trying to get all the ice off of the Superbowl roof yesterday, because today I was doing exactly the same thing on a much smaller scale. The temperature was in the mid 50's, most of the snow was gone, but I still had three inches of solid ice covering my roof. The fact that I was up on the roof shoveling ice while wearing shorts and a T-shirt is all you need to know about Texas weather. Our weather makes no sense at all. It took most of the day to get all the ice removed. I couldn't break it up by pounding it into little pieces with a shovel like I did with the driveway ice. It would be pretty easy to break through the fragile tar & gravel roof and have an even bigger leak than I started with. I was careful though and now the dripping water in the living room has finally stopped.

With my home maintenance duties out of the way, I went down to the Culwell & Son Superbowl Sale and bought some clothes. I don't need any more clothes, but I go to this unique five hour sale every year because it's hard to resist 75% off the regular price. I got a great deal on a couple of sweaters that I'll probably be wearing pretty soon. The weather forecast says it's going to snow again before the end of the week.

It was a good game tonight. Even though my team didn't win, it looked like they easily could have several times. The game was close enough that it kept my attention until the final minutes. I can't say the same thing for the commercials. This year's batch of ads weren't all that good. The only commercial I saw all evening that deserved to be in the Superbowl hall of fame was the Volkswagen "Darth Vader" spot where the little kid thinks he has used the force to start his Dad's car. This commercial made me smile. Most of the others just left me scratching my head. I guess Chrysler's homage to Motor City was pretty good too, but that's only two out of literally dozens of heavy-handed clunkers. There seemed to be an awful lot of car commercials from recently bankrupt companies this evening. I bet they were paid for with stimulus money.

Here's hoping it doesn't snow again this week. I don't want to spend the day shoveling ice on the roof again for a long time.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 417

What a difference a day makes. Although the temperature was still in the teens when we woke up, it got up over fifty later in the day. Yesterday's ice and snow quickly turned to slush and mud. The roads weren't slippery at all. Apparently, nobody bothered to tell the post office or the sanitation department about the nicer weather. We still didn't get any mail delivery or garbage pickup today.

I drove down to the post office again this afternoon and was finally able to retrieve a small stack of mail. What I took home looked more like one day's worth of mail instead of an entire weeks worth. The postal clerk claimed that this was all they had though. If this is true, it would be the lightest week for mail we've had in many years. Usually, a week's worth of mail would fill a grocery bag. The pitiful little stack with a rubber band around it that I took home this afternoon couldn't possibly be everything.

I was quite pleased about the warmer weather until I started hearing a dripping sound in the living room during dinner. Yup. It was the roof leaking again. It was already dark, so I couldn't get up on the roof to see if I could remove the melting ice. I'll just have to get out some buckets tonight and wait until tomorrow. I even thought about getting the ice off the roof yesterday, but when I had difficulty getting it off the driveway, I thought the roof could wait a while. Ice is even worse on the roof than water, because there is no way of removing it in a hurry. When the ice starts to melt, it becomes a giant water reservoir, continually feeding new water to the leaky area. I need to wait until the ice turns slushy though to clean everything up. Falling off the roof would probably be a little worse than bumping my head on the driveway.

Emmie, one of our new Dalmatians, has already been adopted. Good for her! Now, we've just got to find homes for the rest of them.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 416

No mail again today. I don't think I can remember when we've gone an entire week without mail delivery. It's weird. I can get to the post office, but they can't seem to get to me. Whenever I go to the post office to pick up the mail, they say my mail is out on the truck and I'll have to come back later. Somehow I think I'll never see this week's mail again.

The dogs don't worry about where the mail is. They had a great time frolicking in the snow. There were new smells to investigate and lots of trails in the snow to follow. Dash seems to like the snow better than Dot. She was concerned about keeping her balance like I was, while Dash jumped around and generally tried to knock us all over.

Going out in the park with the dogs was fun. Going out on the roads with all the crazy Texas drivers was another matter entirely.

I think Dallas could win some kind of award for having the worst Winter drivers anywhere. The roads were still real icy today and there were cars in the ditch just about everywhere. Most of the roads were passable if you took your time and didn't put on your brakes too fast. When I went out today, I wasn't worried about the ice ahead of me. I was a lot more worried about the big pick up trucks behind me going 40 miles an hour as I was approaching a stop light. If everybody would have just kept moving slowly, I don't think there would have been many problems at all. Unfortunately, there was always someone who would try to get out of a slippery situation by pressing the accelerator to the floor, spinning sideways and blocking all the other traffic on the road. When this happened, everybody got stuck. When you are forced to stop on an icy hill, it can be pretty hard to get started again.

I'm just glad the furnace is still working and the house is warm. No real damage from the bump on the head yesterday either. I feel sorry for all the restaurants and small businesses around town who have been counting on the Superbowl to make up for what they've been losing in this bad economy. I heard that 300 flights were canceled at DFW airport today. Fans aren't just curtailing their Superbowl shopping and partying, some of them aren't even able to get here at all. They say it's going to be warmer tomorrow. Here's hoping the weatherman is right.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 415

The first thing I did this morning was fall on the ice and hit my head on the concrete driveway. I've had a headache for the rest of the day. This weather is absolutely treacherous. It's not just ice on the roads now. It's ice everywhere. All the remaining snow has turned into thick sheets of ice. It's hard to go ten feet without falling on your butt. I wish I could just train the dogs to use the toilet, but they insist on going on their regular walks. I really need a pair of golf shoes or football cleats. Even my good hiking boots don't have any traction on this ice. I have to look for grassy areas and kick through the ice sheet with every step to avoid falling over. I don't know how the dogs manage to stay upright. They do slip and slide a bit, but they certainly seem to get around a lot better than I do. Their claws must give them the extra traction I'm looking for.

Still no mail delivery today. I drove down to the post office to see what was going on and discovered that the postmaster didn't know much more than I did. He did tell me that Cindy, our regular mail carrier, was sick and that they were using a substitute this week. He also told me that the mail carriers were authorized to come in early without finishing their deliveries if conditions looked bad. I guess conditions looked bad to the new guy all week, since I still haven't received any mail. It'll be a miracle if I ever get all of this week's mail. I wouldn't be surprised if some of it got thrown under the mail truck's tires to get out of a ditch.

Everybody seems to be blaming the city's weather related misfortunes on the Superbowl. The street would be clear, they say, if all the sand trucks hadn't been diverted to clear the streets around the Superbowl. Yesterday's power outages would never have happened if the Superbowl hadn't sucked up all the power. On and on it goes. I've never heard so many things blamed on the Superbowl in my life. I think the real reason for all the slowdowns is that we just don't know how to cope with Winter down here. Hey, if we wanted snow and ice, most of us wouldn't have moved to Texas in the first place.

Nobody seems to know if the garbage trucks are going to pick up the trash on our street tomorrow morning. Somehow, I doubt it.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 414

We woke up this morning to rolling power outages and a temperature of only thirteen degrees. This wasn't a good combination. Our house isn't well insulated and you could feel the temperature drop minute-by-minute. It would have been nice if TXU had warned people that they were going to be shutting the power off periodically throughout the day. I've already had several computers ruined by the surges associated with power outages. Luckily, the first outage occurred before the computers turned themselves on for the day, so I was able to unplug everything that might be damaged. It got pretty cold for a while this morning, but everything seemed to stabilize around noon. At least in the Winter, you don't have to worry about food going bad in the fridge when the power goes out. All's well that ends well though. We're warm as toast now. The furnace repairman even stopped by today to check out my intermittent furnace problems and give the old furnace a clean bill of health.

I took advantage of the lack of electricity this morning to switch out the computers in the office. I am now officially using the new computer for everything. It must have been weeks ago when I told you guys that I got the new computer, but this is the very first blog post I've published using it. One reason I waited so long was Dreamweaver. I use Dreamweaver every day and I knew that once I started using the new version, I'd have to spend a lot of time downloading a whole new batch of Dreamweaver Extensions and getting used to the "improvements" in the application. Sure enough, when I got to work after the power returned, I discovered that some of my favorite Dreamweaver MX extensions don't even work on CS-5. I found what I needed on Adobe Exchange though and I'm off and rolling again.

I haven't seen the park so empty in a long time. When I took the dogs on their evening walk I noticed that my boot prints in the snow from yesterday were still the only footprints around. Absolutely no joggers today. In fact, I didn't see anybody at all. We must have been the only ones foolish enough to go outside. I think Dot ate a little mouse while we were walking today. There was a rustling in the tall grass and she pounced on something and started chewing. Whatever it was, it was gone before I could open her mouth and look inside. It must have been a mouse. All the horse poop in the park is frozen now.

So much for that old "Neither snow nor rain nor dark of night" adage about the postal service. Nobody has delivered our mail for three days now. I've seen postmen delivering mail in other parts of town, but they can't seem to make it to our house. This is probably just like our garbage pickup and this morning's rolling power outages. Somebody probably decided that everybody needed to come down to the post office and pick up their own mail during the bad weather, but forgot to tell the people who were actually receiving the mail. Oh well, tomorrow's another day. I guess I'll go down to the post office and find out for myself what's going on.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 413

The world was a sheet of ice when we woke up this morning. Dot raced out the back door as usual when we let her out before breakfast and she slid halfway across the yard. When I gave the dogs their regular walk a little later, I felt like I was mounting an expedition to the South Pole. They said on the news that this is the coldest that it's been in Dallas in fifteen years and I can certainly believe it. I put on a down ski jacket over two sweaters and I was still cold. One coat wasn't enough for the dogs today. I put two winter coats on each of them. Not surprisingly, we were almost the only ones in the park this morning. I saw one determined jogger, but that was about it. Luckily, I've been able to keep my balky furnace running, because my repair guy wasn't able to get out on the roads today.

The only time I ventured out on the icy roads was for a quick trip to take Dash to the vet. I could have rescheduled for another day, but my vet is only five minutes away and I do have the Defender 90. I thought I'd take the back roads to avoid the other cars sliding around like billiard balls. This was probably a mistake. Absolutely nobody was driving on the back roads and they were all still covered with a thick sheet of ice. It was like driving on an ice rink. I was surprised that anyone was even at the vet when we got there, but some hardy souls told me that they'd been at work since 7 AM.

To ward off cabin fever, I decided to fire up my old Media-100 video editing system and back up some video files before I retired the thing for good. I guess I waited too long. I couldn't even launch the application today. I did a hardware test and discovered that my Media-100 PCI card had gone bad. When did this happen? I have no idea. I haven't used the system to edit anything for almost three years. It's not even worth repairing at this point. The system paid for itself years ago, but it's still hard for me to throw it away. It's the only video editing system I know well enough that I never have to look at the manual. I guess Final Cut Pro and I are going to have to get to know each other a little better in the months ahead.

The temperature has dropped five degrees since I started writing this post. Either I'm a very slow writer or the temperature is dropping pretty fast. It's going to be in the single digits before morning. Every couple of hours I hear a loud thunk as something falls on the roof. I think that some smaller limbs are falling off our trees as they grow heavy from the ice that has accumulated. Sure hope the power doesn't go out tonight. When tree limbs start to fall, power usually goes out somewhere. Here's hoping that everyone stays nice and warm. I'm going to get out the blankets and make sure I have a warm dog right next to me tonight.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 412

All the weather reports say a big storm is headed our way. By tomorrow morning it is supposed to be thirty degrees colder with snow or freezing rain. With this in mind, I ran a bunch of little errands today and filled up my tank with gas. Nobody knows how to drive on ice here in Dallas and the smallest amount of the slippery stuff on the roads can bring the city to a standstill. Anything I can do today means one less reason to get out on the roads tomorrow.

I think I'm ready for whatever nature brings our way. There's just one little fly in the ointment. The furnace isn't working again. I called my furnace repair guys and they said they wouldn't be able to come out until tomorrow morning. That's fine. Wouldn't you know that when I got home from running all my errands this afternoon, there was a note on the door saying that the furnace folks had come by around 4:30 PM anyway. I can never seem to get coordinated with repair people. If I stay home and wait all day, inevitably nobody shows up. If I leave for even ten minutes to go to the post office, that's when they'll always show up.

One of my new clients has written me a check before I even got them set up in my accounting system. I love clients like this. Maybe this will be a good year after all. When I was at the DFW Pet Business Owners meeting yesterday, one of the more successful business owners told me that the secret to her success was contacting at least ten new prospects every day. I probably don't contact ten new people in a year. Maybe I'll try for eleven this year.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 411

We all did a little networking today. The dogs caught up on things with a few of their Dalmatian pals at the dog park, while I did my own networking a few hours later at the first meeting of the DFW Pet Business Owners group. Dot and Dash probably got a lot more accomplished than I did, but even though I didn't pick up any new business, it was still interesting to learn what other small business owners are thinking about these days. I guess I qualify as a pet business, since I photograph dogs and design websites for veterinarians. Most of the other business owners were trainers, pet sitters, groomers and pet store owners. Their problems weren't all that different than mine however. How do you get new clients? How do you keep existing clients happy? How do you avoid wasting the limited amount of money you have set aside for marketing? We are all asking the same questions.

I guess it was inevitable. I'm starting to get Facebook friend requests from dogs. These aren't people that happen to have a dog, they are actual dogs with their own Facebook page. What the hell. Dogs are man's best friend after all. I'm certainly not going to turn down any dog that wants to be my friend. I am a bit surprised by the sheer number of dogs with Facebook pages though. It makes me wonder about those statistics you hear on the news that there are now over half a billion people on Facebook. What if a million of those people are actually dogs? I suspect that there are quite a few cats with their own Facebook page too.

I'm going to have to start watching my bank balance a bit more carefully. I discovered that I was overdrawn today. Oops. It's pretty easy for this to happen when so many bills are directly debited from your account every month. My largest bill each month is for health insurance. This bill always gets debited from my account at the very end of the month and if I'm not careful, it can suck the entire account dry. I liked things better when I wrote a check for everything and could choose who to pay first. My health insurance provider never gave me this choice however. They made it clear from the very beginning that they wanted to be paid first. So what happens when you get overdrawn? At my bank they charge the overage to your credit card and tack on a big transfer fee. This seems a bit like robbing Peter to pay Paul, but I guess the bank likes it this way. If I had remembered, I could have just transfered the money from some other accounts I have at the same bank. That would have been too easy though and the bank wouldn't have made any money. They probably hope I forget my balance every month.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 410

It's hard to believe that people are still shoveling snow in some parts of the country. I could have sworn it was the first day of Spring here in Dallas. The sky was blue. The temperature was 70 degrees. There were sailboats on the water and kites in the air. I saw lots of picnickers as I walked the dogs this afternoon and almost everyone was wearing shorts.

We took advantage of the nice weather and went up to get to know the three new Dalmatian Rescue dogs a little better. Blossom was sick and had to go to the vet, but Emmie and Chloe were eager for a walk. Since several dogs went to their new homes this week, there aren't a whole lot of Dalmatians to look after this month.

When the weather is nice here, the first thing people do is get in their cars and drive. Several roads seemed near gridlock as I tried to navigate the traffic jams to do my regular Saturday errands. I don't know whether traffic has gotten worse, or if I've just grown less tolerant. Now that I do more and more of my shopping online, I just don't seem to have the patience to deal with the inevitable construction delays and races to claim the last space in a busy parking lot. It's much easier to wait for the FedEx man to deliver what you need to the front door.

Dot and Dash got invited on a play date tomorrow. Isn't that what you do with kids? I guess Dot and Dash aren't all that different from kids, except you don't have to put them through college.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 409

If I only wrote about important things, this would have been a good day to skip. Absolutely nothing of any consequence happened. I was busy all day, but by suppertime I was beginning to wonder if I had done anything at all. I went over to Culwell & Son, my favorite clothing store, to see if I could find something at their big end of season sale and left with nothing, feeling that I had a lot more clothes than I needed already. I went to get some groceries at Central Market out of habit, even though the refrigerator was still filled with stuff I got the last time I was at Central Market. I installed the new 100 foot roll of paper in my printer and unclogged the lines, even though I had absolutely nothing to print.

I did manage to get the trash out to the street on time. That was probably my big accomplishment for the day. On the way to the grocery store, I stopped by one of my clients for a short meeting. They've been wanting to install a camera system in their outdoor doggie daycare area, so customers could watch their dogs playing during the day on company website. The project never really got off the ground because of the expense involved in bringing streaming video outdoors. I suggested just giving an iPhone to the pet care attendants who keep an eye on the dogs during the day and let them upload pictures and movies to Facebook. The more I think about it, this is a great idea. It's cheap. It's live. And it's even better than a webcam, since you've got a real person selecting what's interesting during the day.

I need to do a practice run of my new wireless photo system this weekend. In theory this arrangement will be great for events like our upcoming Valentine's Day event at The Shops at Willow Bend. Instead of taking a memory card back to the printing team after every photo session, I'll be able to transmit pictures directly from the camera to the computer by WiFi, as I am shooting. We'll even be able to broadcast the pictures I'm taking to large flat panel screens in the store in real time. That's what the system is supposed to do anyway. We may find out that it doesn't even work. I'm curious whether the WiFi memory card is fast enough to transmit the large image files as I'm taking them without slowing down the entire process. If I'm taking 30 pictures a minute and the card can only transfer one picture a minute, it's just not going to work. Practice makes perfect though, so it's time to get started.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 408

I went to the seminar today about using mobile devices as broadcast production tools and was totally blown away by the array of products that are already available and being used by filmmakers. I started making documentary films using a 16mm camera and a Nagra sound recorder. I'm used to dealing with changing technology in the film industry, but it's still hard to get used to the total transformation that has taken place in the past few years. Today's seminar was mostly about how to turn your iPhone or iPad into a professional teleprompter or electronic slate. These two pieces of equipment used to be so expensive that you almost had to rent them for a production instead of buying them for yourself. There are still lots of companies that make a business of supplying teleprompter services for production crews because it's less expensive to outsource these services.

That's about to change. Now, anyone can download a few inexpensive apps from the Apple iTunes store and instantly turn their iPad into a professional teleprompter or time code slate that has the same features as dedicated equipment costing up to four thousand dollars. Equipment costs and even the cost of raw film stock used to prevent a lot of low budget film projects from getting off the ground. Not anymore. Slowly but surely, equipment costs are becoming negligable. These days, if you've got a great idea, you can make a great film. Understandably, all this is getting me excited about making films again.

I made good, steady progress on my website projects today. By this time next week I may actually be done with one of them. The dogs made even greater progress however. They learned how to go to a cocktail party today. Our friend Vhea was having a happy hour for her business after work and invited people to bring their pets. We thought bringing Dot and Dash to this event would either be a good way to socialize them or an even better way to get us kicked out of the place. There were quite a few dogs at the "Yappy Hour" open house and after some initial barking and counter surfing, our dogs became quite the party animals. I was proud of both of them. We let them off leash and they mixed well with the other dogs. Dash did try to steal some cake balls off a food tray, but that was understandable. The cake balls were quite good and I had a few myself. I think it is important to socialize your dogs. They actually adapt very quickly to new situations and are more flexible than most people I know. I need to remember how well the dogs did tonight. We all need to get out more.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 407

I drove up to The Shops at Willow Bend with the promotional materials for our upcoming Valentine's Day pet photo event at the Foxy Paws store. I'll have to admit that I like high-end shopping malls. I like the way they smell. I like the smartly dressed people wandering around. I like the whole Disneyfication of everyday life that you always see in places like this. If a Walmart in a marginal neighborhood is real life, I definitely prefer this pretty illusion instead.

On the way home I stopped by my printing supply store and picked up another 100 foot roll of proofing paper. This means that I have printed over a thousand feet of various things since I got the printer. That's a lot of printing. I'd hate to even think how much ink I've bought over the years. I've always told people that Epson could still make a tidy profit if they gave these large printers away. They are basically just machines to sell very expensive ink.

Dash apparently forgot that he won a ribbon last week at training class. Tonight he couldn't focus on anything. He barked at the other dogs, kept moving when he was supposed to stay still and refused to lie down at all. Dash knows all the commands perfectly. He's just a moody guy who marches to the beat of his own drummer. That's what I think anyway. Everyone else thinks that I'm just not a very good dog handler.

I'm planning on going to a seminar tomorrow to learn more about using iPads and iPhones as professional broadcast production tools. I already know of several apps that allow you to use the iPad as an electronic slate or a teleprompter. I'm sure there are many more. The iPad has turned out to be one of the most useful tools I've ever bought for my business and I'm eager to learn new ways to use it.

The Dow almost closed above 12,000 today. Maybe tomorrow. It would sure be nice if I could count on my stocks again. It would be nice if I could count on anything.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 406

It was a good day. It's nice to start a new year with new projects that I'm able to work on using brand new tools. I worked on prototyping one of the new websites I'm currently designing and got approval from my client to proceed to the next step. This is always an important step, because it means the job is real now. I've got two new websites in the works and I go back and forth between the pair to keep from getting in a design rut. I'm starting to enjoy the new features I'm finding in Dreamweaver CS-5 and wondering why I waited so l waited so long to upgrade. The application still works basically the same as my trusty old Dreamweaver MX, but there are lots of little refinements that help to speed things up. I have a feeling I'm going to find the same sorts of improvements in Photoshop and Illustrator.

Paypal and ConnectionPoint, the developers of the FundRazr, have decided to use our recent Dalmatian Rescue FundRazr campaign as a case study for how to raise money through social networks. Evidently, Dalmatian Rescue's recent Facebook fundraising effort was a big success and the developers want to do a feature story about us. I think that's fabulous. Paypal is known all around the world. and if even a small percentage of Paypal users learn something about Dalmatian Rescue, it will be a huge plus for our group.

I was so enthusiastic about work today that I'm starting to think about new equipment again. Last year's computer purchases have certainly helped the company and I'm thinking that it might be time to bite the bullet and upgrade my video production capabilities as well. When I heard that Panasonic's new AG-AF100 camera uses the same SDXC memory cards and Olympus lenses as my still cameras, I began to get excited. Lenses are the most expensive part of pro video cameras and I already have the lenses. If I got this camera, I could finally abandon video tape and tape machines forever. It's still hard for me to contemplate walking away from the Beta-SP studio it took me so long to build, but nobody wants it anymore. If I don't upgrade to modern HD equipment soon, I'll probably never get another video production job again.

Somehow, I managed to erase all my sent messages on my old computer today. I meant to just move the folder, but foolishly clicked on "rebuild" instead. Oops. Now, I guess it is a good thing that I've got my e-mail scattered all over the place. I really only lost about a third of my sent messages, because the other two thirds are sitting on other computers. And why am I even worrying about my sent messages anyway. They are the replies I've already answered. It would have been a lot worse if I'd erased my in-box instead.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 405

When we reached the halfway point on our morning walk and turned around to come home, I was surprised to see a huge fire burning off to the north of us. We'd been walking for over a half an hour and I hadn't even noticed. Thinking back, I do remember hearing sirens and even helicopters overhead, but I never gave it a thought. I hear sirens everyday on our walks. It's just part of living in a city. It was strange that I never turned around or looked backwards though. The fire was pretty obvious when I was facing the right direction.

After we got home and I finished my breakfast, I launched the Time Tech website for my watchmaker client. It seemed to take an exceptionally long time to finish this rather simple site, but then everything about watches takes a long time. I've taken some watches in for repairs and not gotten them back again until a year later. Watchmaking is a slow, meticulous craft. The skill is rapidly becoming a lost art in an age where everybody expects everything overnight. I'm seldom in a hurry though, so it doesn't bother me to spend six or eight months having a watch repaired. A year is nothing. I've had one of my cars sitting in my mechanic's garage for over five years now.

Dash had an upset stomach and threw up in the middle of the night again. I wake up immediately at the sound of puking, but Janet and Dot always sleep soundly through these episodes. I cleaned up the mess and in the morning, Dash and I were the only ones who knew what had happened. I envy sound sleepers. I've been a light sleeper as long as I can remember. I do have vivid dreams though.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 404

This is the time of year when you can start to tell if people have a little too much on their plates. One sure sign is that they still have all their Christmas lights up on their house. There are still a few houses in the neighborhood that remain lit up in the evenings like it was Christmas Eve and this afternoon I saw a car driving down our street that still had one of those little Christmas wreaths attached to the front grill. It is comforting for me to see these things, because at least I know there's somebody in the neighborhood more disorganized than I am.

I can't act too superior about all this though. I still have a small pile of Christmas gifts sitting on a chair in the living room right next to where the Christmas tree was about a month ago. I'll get these things put away soon enough though. I am making progress. Today I took one of those items off the chair, got my woodworking tools out of the garage and turned it into something that could actually be used. The item in question was a pretty wood chopping block designed to fit over your sink with a built-in colander. The only problem was that this chopping block was designed to fit over today's huge sinks, instead of the smaller mid-century modern sink in our kitchen. After a little work with a miter saw and a belt sander, I had the thing looking exactly the same, except smaller. Now it fits perfectly! I enjoy woodworking, but since I don't have a proper shop or even a good place to store my tools, I seldom tackle any major projects. It takes me longer to find my tools these days than it does to do the work.

It didn't take Dash long to find a friend at the dog park today. Most of the time he is kind of tentative when another dog approaches him and they quickly move on to a friendlier pooch. Today he found a dog who wouldn't give up on him though. After about five minutes of racing around with his tail between his legs, Dash realized that the other dog just wanted to have fun and he started playing in earnest. This was his best day at the dog park ever. He wasn't just running around today. He was jumping, barking and rolling in the dirt, just like a normal dog.

Today's pretty Dalmatian of the Day is Chloe, one of the three new girls we picked up recently. She isn't quite healthy enough to adopt yet, but she will be soon. I don't think it will take this one long to find a home. She's a wonderful dog.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 403

It was pretty busy for a Saturday. This morning, Janet and I went and photographed the three new Dalmatians that entered the rescue program recently. All three were very shy. We picked up Chloe, the largest of the three, at the vet before taking her to join Emmie and Blossom at the kennel. When photographing shy dogs, I generally just sit on the floor in a room with them and wait until they feel comfortable enough to come closer and investigate. It takes a while, but the dogs usually relax and often end up sitting in my lap. I got some good pictures, but haven't had time to download them all yet. I'm sure you'll see them soon enough.

After we said goodbye to Chloe, Emmie and Blossom, I spent the rest of the day grocery shopping, running errands and doing laundry. While I was working around the house, I decided to try out the new Apple app store and downloaded Aperture on the new office computer. The price was about half of what it would have been at a retail store. I noticed that the app store had a lot more to choose from than it did last week too. The place seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. This is definitely the way I'm going to buy software in the future.

This evening we went to LH Live. This annual battle of the bands is a benefit for the Lake Highlands Exchange Club and we've been going for several years now. Nothing really changes. The bands are the same. The food is the same. And the people attending are the same. It's still fun to go though. This year, I discovered that Gary, an old friend from my ad agency days, was a member of the Pit Pops. I guess that Gary has always been a member of the Pit Pops, but I just didn't notice before. Whenever I listen to one of these aging garage bands, it makes me wish that my own band, The Fabulous Has-Beens was still together. It's great fun to play in a band, although these days I wonder where I ever found the time. I guess life was different then. Back when I was playing bass with the Has-Beens, I was still getting a salary at an ad agency and hadn't discovered Dalmatian Rescue yet. My little company and the dogs take up practically all my time these days. When there's any time left over, it's usually spent on this blog.

Hopefully, it will be a little warmer tomorrow. It's been several weeks since Dot and Dash have been to the Wagging Tail dog park and they're starting to get cabin fever. They still get their daily walks of course, but that's not the same as being able to run free and play with other dogs. Maybe we'll go to the dog park again tomorrow. The mud has probably dried out by now.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 402

I had a new business meeting today. I think everything went well, but I won't really know for sure until I show them a prototype website design sometime next week. All my website clients are different, but they all share one thing in common. Whenever I ask them to show me an example of a website they like and admire, they inevitably take me to some wildly extravagant corporate site that probably took two years to build and had a budget in excess of $100,000. Everyone seems to think that I should be able to duplicate these high-end sites for a few hundred dollars and have everything up and running in less than a week. Today, the example sites I was shown were for Audi and for a major university. Budgets may have declined for retail storefront websites, but expectations are as high as they ever were.

I've been trying to put one of those little favicon icons on my business website today. No matter how much I monkey around with the code, the icon just won't display properly in my browser. For some reason, someone else's favicon shows up, even though my icon file is sitting right where it should be on the web server. It's kind of embarrassing. I've put these things on other people's sites, but I can't seem to get one working on my own. This is why I can never seem to get caught up on everything these days. Trivial little projects like this can eat up hours and hours of time. I'll figure it out though. By this time next week, there will be a favicon on my site. Hopefully it won't be the same strange little cartoon duck I saw up there today.

It was still dark when I took the trash out to the street for pickup this morning. Sometimes I wish I was more of a morning person. The sky was absolutely beautiful. Venus was exceptionally bright and I could see Saturn as well. Did I go get a telescope and do a little predawn observing? Nope. I was cold. I went back inside and got a cup of coffee instead. I've missed a ton of fabulous sunrise pictures over the years because I was still under the covers. That's just the way it is though. I never was a morning person and never will be.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 401

The colder the weather, the geekier I become. Anything to stay inside where it's warm, I guess. Today I looked for lost e-mail. Now that I've got half a dozen devices that can access the Internet, something as simple as checking my e-mail is turning into a real mess. I still use an old fashioned POP mail server and I'm beginning to realize why a lot of people are saying that the newer IMAP protocol is a much more practical solution for the way we live today. Every time I check my mail, it is downloaded to a different device and by the end of the day my messages are as hard to find as the reading glasses I'm constantly losing. Is the message I'm looking for on the iPhone, the iPad, the new computer, or the old computer? Who knows. It sure isn't on the server any more, since the messages are erased as soon as they are downloaded. Maybe I need to ask my ISP if I can switch over to IMAP mail.

Did I mention it was cold today? I put the dogs warmest coats on for their walks, but they still didn't want to go outside. The problem wasn't really the temperature, it was the wind. When you combine freezing temperatures with a thirty mile an hour wind, even your warmest clothes start to feel like an old T-shirt. When I went up to sweep last night's rain off the roof, I discovered I was too late. The standing water had already turned to ice. It will make a nice little ice rink for the possums and squirrels who wander around on the roof at night.

I have my first new business meeting of the year tomorrow. I really need to have a new business meeting every single week this year. Things are so expensive now that I'm really starting to feel poor. My health insurance premiums have gone up over 20% seemingly overnight. Gas is back up over three dollars a gallon. Worst of all, my new Snow Leopard operating system is forcing me to buy my business software all over again. None of my existing software seems to run on Snow Leopard. It's almost as bad as converting a record collection from vinyl to CD and then realizing you still have to turn the whole mess into MP3 files.

I think the dogs have the right idea. While I fret about technology, they just curl up under warm blankets and sleep until it's time to eat again.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 400

It doesn't seem like a year since I got my last safety inspection sticker. It's that time again though. Getting a safety inspection for your car ought to be a piece of cake, but somehow it never ends up that way for me. Half the time when I take my car to a garage, they say they aren't able to inspect it at all because it is a full-time four wheel drive vehicle. The rest of the time the garage says the Defender isn't a full-time four wheel drive vehicle and they try to put it on the dynamometer. This was what happened today. I had to race back into the no customers allowed area and tell the mechanic to stop before he ruined either the car or his garage. It was hard to explain to this mechanic that you simply can't put a full-time four wheel drive vehicle into two wheel drive for the test. I was about to tell the guy to forget the whole thing so I could go somewherer else when the owner of the garage came back and straightened things out.

I got a check in the mail for $100 today and paid a bill for $4000. This pretty much sums up my life lately. It's hard to get ahead this way. Hey, Dash had a good day though. He won another ribbon at obedience class tonight. It was only third place this time, but I'm not complaining. Maybe Dash is back on top of his game again. He's won a total of eight ribbons now. We'll forget the fact that the last one was six or eight months ago.

I hope I'm better organized tomorrow than I was today. I've still got a huge amount of website work to complete before the weekend. Again, I'm not complaining. It's nice to have the work.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day