Day 66

I saw part of Tiger Woods "apology" on TV this morning when I was finishing breakfast. It was stiff and almost robotic. Tiger's premise seemed to be that he had worked hard getting where he was in life and that, as a result, he thought he deserved to be able to do whatever he wanted. Big mistake! If you want to mesh with the rest of society, you can never, ever do whatever you want. Compromise is essential if you want to have friends, work with clients and maintain a relationship. The end result of doing whatever you want is Joseph Stack. You end up flying your airplane into a building just to prove a point.

I'm not even sure what I want anymore. At several points in my life I thought I had found what I was looking for in life, only to discover that it wasn't even close to what I wanted after all.  Now, I just methodically put one foot in front of the other, like a mountain climber ascending a tall summit. I pay bills, I try to figure out what clients want, I walk dogs twice a day, and once or twice a week I enjoy a great meal. Life is easier this way.

This has been a busy week and I'm glad it's Friday. I have two major web site projects in early stages of development that are taking up a lot of my time. It's also time to start putting together promotional materials for Wine on the Roof. This is a major fundraiser for East Lake Pet Orphanage and every year I do a poster and other advertising materials for the event. Everyone loved last year's poster, so it's going to be a challenge to come up with something even better this year. I'm sure that whatever I come up with, there will be a dog in the picture somewhere.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 65

I had to go see my gastroenterologist today. The good news was that none of the tissue he biopsied last month during my Endoscopy was pre-cancerous. The bad news was that my esophagus was still an inflamed mess and I need to continue taking my meds for another three months. I looked up the word gastroenterologist on Google a few minutes ago to make sure I spelled it correctly and discovered that the average salary for a gastroenterologist is $315,000 a year. Jeez, I sure got into the wrong line of work. I have an architecture degree, tons of awards and a lifetime of experience, but still my clients complain if I try to make the same money as an Assistant Manager at McDonalds.

Not surprisingly, although my doctror's appointment was at 3:30 this afternoon, I didn't actually get in to see the doctor until 4:15. Schedules are meaningless these days. Sometimes I'm the one behind schedule. Sometimes other people are behind. I can't really complain about the doctor being late for his appointment today, because only two hours later, I was almost an hour late for an animal rescue group meeting where I'm a board member. I had every intention of being on time for this 6 PM meeting, but just when I was getting ready to take the dogs on their 5 PM evening walk, I got a reply to an important phone call I'd made at 10:30 AM this morning. It must be a new rule in some recent time-management book that people should wait until the end of the day to return their phone calls, because inevitably I get most of my business calls between 5 and 6 PM. Life was so much easier when you could just call someone and they would pick up their own phone right when you called.

Everything eventually worked itself out though. The rescue group's meetings are so long that being late seldom matters. The dogs got their walk. I even got to watch Project Runway when I got home.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 64

I'm continually amazed at how bad Dallas traffic has gotten in recent years. I really don't drive much anymore, since most of my business takes place over the Internet. When I do venture out beyond the tranquil confines of my own neighborhood, it feels like I'm back in L.A. I'm just about always late these days, because as a creature of habit, I usually allot the same amount of time it used to take me to drive from one part of town to another, instead of the amount of time it actually takes now. I tend to forget about new school zones, multi-car accidents that instantly turn six lane freeways into a one lane road, and the ever-present construction crews that turn up where you'd least expect them. As a result, no matter how hard I try, I'm always about ten minutes late to wherever I'm going.

I was actually on time to my meeting this afternoon, but it was somewhat of an accident. I just happened to hit a long string of green lights on Northwest Highway and there were no accidents to slow me down along the way. The car trip was certainly worthwhile. I had a great initial meeting with another new client who wants a website for his veterinary hospital. I enjoy working with veterinarians. It sure would be nice if projects for veterinary hospitals had the same kind of budgets as the oil and gas industry projects I used to do a few years ago. That's not going to happen though. I'm just happy that the company is staying busy this year.

Dash had a big night at obedience class this evening. He finally graduated to the advanced class tonight. There were times when I thought this would never happen. He'd been stuck in the intermediate class for over three years, mostly because he would lose interest about halfway through class and refuse to do anything right. A lot of this was my fault, because many times I would lose interest about halfway through class as well. We've been working hard in recent months thought, and tonight was Dash's night.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 63

Forget about waterboarding. If you really want to torture someone, just give them some esoteric web hosting problem and then put them on the phone with tech support. Calling tech support is almost always an exercise in futility. Today, I wasted hours trying to find someone who could tell me why some of my client's files were apparently disappearing on the server. When I couldn't find an answer to that question, I wasted even more time trying to find our why the same client's .htaccess files were always getting corrupted.

When I grew tired of dealing with these problems, I tried to figure out why the purchase order numbers on the invoices I was sending out in the mail today didn't match up with the same invoices in my accounting program. Not surprisingly, it was my mistake, but it took me forever to figure out what I'd done wrong. I get tired of dealing with continual computer problems. Computers are very unforgiving. I used to envy Marty, my HVAC repairman, until one day he showed me why my furnace wasn't working properly. It was a small computer hidden away inside the furnace that was causing the problem!

Dogs don't have to worry about computers, but apparently they have their own demons. Tuesday is trash pickup day in our neighborhood and Dot fretted all morning, waiting by the living room window for the garbage truck to drive down the alley behind our house. All you have to say is "Dot, it's trash day" and she starts barking. Dash doesn't barks all that much. He prefers to eat bark he finds in the back yard. That's the kind of day it was: Dot barking at garbage trucks, Dash eating bark, and me barking up the wrong tree with tech support.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 62

I had lunch with Tim Werner today. Tim is one of a growing list of old friends and former co-workers that I have re-discovered with the help of LinkedIn. Years ago, when I was an ad agency producer, Tim was my editor of choice. We worked together almost every week putting together TV commercials for over three straight years. Times changed however. I stopped doing commercials. Tim moved on to editing long format video and we eventually lost touch with each other.

Although we hadn't seen each other in many years, we found that we still had experienced some of the same joys and frustrations. I find that whenever I get together with people I used to work with when I was younger, our stories typically share a common theme. We all discovered that in order to stay employable on any level, it was essential to continually reinvent yourself. We found that although we are actually working much harder than we were ten years ago, we aren't making as much money. We all moved on to greener pastures, but somewhere along the way, the grass died. Budgets are tight these days. Memories are short. And nobody is very impressed with all the awards you won in 1978.

It's definitely encouraging to see that so many of my old friends are still hanging in there and actively competing for work with people who are thirty years younger. That's certainly what I'm doing. It's a bit discouraging however, that even when you do win the bid, the work itself isn't nearly as fun as it used to be. I guess some things just can't be duplicated. We were the real life Mad Men of advertising and those days are long gone.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 61 - Valentine's Day

Probably the most romantic thing about Valentine's Day was that it was absolutely normal. Janet took Dot up to the annual Krewe of Barkus parade in McKinney. Dash didn't go this year, because he doesn't travel well in the car. Last year we took both dogs to the parade and Dash had a seizure the next day. We'll never know if the car trip actually caused the seizure, or if it was just a weird coincidence. Unfortunately, he's still taking Phenobarbital a year later. Dash seemed happy enough to stay at home, snoozing on the bed while I went up and walked the rescue Dalmatians at K-9 University. When I returned from the kennel, I must have shoveled 600 pounds of snow off the roof in an attempt to stop the leak, and then went looking for a laundromat with a large enough commercial washing machine to clean the 20 foot square pink muslin backdrop I used in yesterdays photo shoot at Unleashed.

One of the hazards of pet photography is that your subjects often poop and pee on the set. The set actually held up pretty well, considering the number of dogs we photographed yesterday. Nevertheless, there were a few accidents. You learn pretty quickly that when a dog pees on your photo backdrop, you've got to get it really clean. Otherwise, the next time you use it, all the dogs will pee on it.

After I got the huge muslin backdrop cleaned and dried, I picked up some roses and cupcakes on the way home and then tried to tidy up the house a bit by taking some of the props that we used yesterday back to the storage warehouse. Janet and Dot returned from the parade later in the afternoon and when the chores were finally finished, we drank a bottle of Champagne that was left over from one of Janet's office parties, ate the cupcakes and were ready to call it a day by 10 PM. I think our dogs were ready to call it a day by 7:30 PM.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 60

I'm exhausted! I think we photographed twice as many dogs today as we did last Saturday at Unleashed. Maybe it wasn't actually twice as many dogs, but it certainly felt that way. Today's dogs were all over the place. I felt like everyone was happy with their pictures though. When the event was over and we were packing up to go home, the dog park events coordinator said she was delighted how things worked out and told us that Dalmatian Rescue was welcome back anytime we wanted to do another fundraiser. All in all, I think things worked out very well for the two Saturday event.

When I got back to the house around 5 PM, our two dogs were acting like I'd totally abandoned them. I fed them their dinner and we went on our evening walk, even though I would have much rather taken an evening nap instead. Our record snowfall is quickly becoming a memory. About the only thing that remains are the snowmen. I think every child in Dallas made a snowman this weekend. There are thousands of them all over town. I'm pretty sure we passed at least two dozen snowmen on our walk. Dot acted alarmed and barked at the snowmen as we approached. Dash just lifted his leg and peed. It was weird seeing all these snowmen sitting forlornly in grassy fields, but that's Dallas weather for you. I think it got up to 50 degrees this afternoon.

Maybe tomorrow I can get all the photo equipment put away again. Maybe I can get all the water off the roof as well. The melting snow is causing the roof to start leaking again. This is enough for one day though. As soon as I post this blog entry, I'm going to call it a day.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 59

The power went out for about five hours today. I often forget how dependent we've all become on electricity. No power means no heat, no lights, no telephone and no Internet. With floor-to-ceiling glass in almost every room, the house got cold really quickly. We did still have hot water, since there is a gas water heater in the house, but that was about all. Given a choice, I'd much prefer to lose power in the Summer than right in the middle of the biggest snowstorm Dallas has seen in twenty years.

With all my meetings canceled and no real reason to stay in the house, I took the dogs on a long walk in the snow. It was slow going, since the snow came up to the dogs bellies. Snow didn't seem nearly as wondrous to them today as is did yesterday. Within thirty minutes we were all completely cold and wet and I headed home again. Eventually, the power came back on and life returned to normal.

I hope the bad weather doesn't keep people away from Unleashed tomorrow. We're doing the second weekend of our Valentine's Day pet picture benefit for Dalmatian Rescue and it would be a shame if nobody showed up. I'm trying to get all the batteries charged up on my equipment this afternoon, just in case the power goes out again this evening. Batteries are definitely on the shopping list this weekend. When we woke up to no power in the wee hours this morning, I discovered much to my chagrin that most of the flashlights in the house had dead batteries.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 58

I woke up this morning to find a thick blanket of snow on the ground. This wasn't the almost invisible light dusting that Dallas typically gets either. It was the real thing: thick, wet "go out and make a snowman" kind of snow like I used to remember growing up in Alaska. I don't know if the dogs have ever seen snow before. Dot tiptoed daintily through the drifts that had accumulated in the backyard, while Dash raced around like a maniac. Dash would still be out in the yard making snow angels if he knew how.

The snow continued to fall throughout the day. Several meetings I had planned for this afternoon ended up getting canceled, so I drove around for an hour or so, taking pictures of the neighborhood instead. You've got to take pictures when it snows in Dallas, because nobody will believe you later.

It looks like about eight inches of snow have accumulated on the roof already. This means I'm going to have to go up there with a push broom tomorrow and sweep it all off. Otherwise, once the snow starts to melt, my roof will start leaking all over again. I had been hoping to get the roof repaired weeks ago, but it has never gotten dry enough. This has been one of the wettest Winters I can remember. I wish our house had a fireplace. This would be a perfect evening to be drinking a glass of wine in front of a roaring fire. Fireplace or not, it's still a good evening to watch Project Runway though.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 57

It's probably not a great idea to write the blog after Martini Night. Today's accomplishments were a bit fuzzy to begin with. Now, with a few drinks under my belt, the entire day just seems like nothing more than a long preparation for tomorrow. Truthfully, a lot of days are like this. Many of projects I work on last for weeks or even months. Usually, there's a lot of nuts-and-bolts research that's got to take place before your ideas can even start to take shape.

Today, I started to experiment with different color palettes for a new website project and later this afternoon, tried to figure out how to turn a bad Powerpoint presentation into a good web video. I didn't reach any conclusions, but at least I got the ball rolling. I wonder sometimes where the ideas come from. Maybe they come from careful reasearch like I've been doing today. On the other hand, I think that I've actually gotten some of my best ideas while walking the dogs.

Spot, our first Dalmatian, was a great idea starter. He was calm and well trained and I would often find myself daydreaming while I walked. Ideas just popped into my head. Dot and Dash are a bit less inspirational. Dot is such an avid squirrel chaser that she'll pull the leash right out of my hand if I'm not continually on my toes. Dash just likes to eat crap he finds on the ground. I've got to watch him like a hawk as well. With this wild pair you can forget about inspirational daydreaming. It's not that bad though. We do get a lot of heart-healthy exercise. Without our daily walks, I'm sure I'd be at least ten pounds heavier.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 56

We got another new customer today. That's always a good thing. The company seems to be developing a niche working with veterinarians. I've been quite pleased to see this develop, since I've always liked animals better than people anyway. It's still strange to me however, to see how word-of-mouth recommendations can make you an expert in areas you never would have expected. At previous points in my career, I've had short periods where I was considered an expert in oil and gas marketing, fashion photography and even German translation. Truthfully, I've never come close to being an expert in anything.

I think the only reason I've even been moderately successful is that I have an extremely short attention span. I can do the same thing over and over again and still approach a new project completely fresh, mostly because I have completely forgotten about all the other virtually identical projects I have already completed. At any rate, I'm delighted to have new problems to solve and a brand new website to develop.

It's amazing how a little nice weather can change things. One nice day with blue skies and suddenly I've got a new client, the Dow is up 150 points and I've even got a new follower on the blog. Let's pray for blue skies again tomorrow.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 55

It certainly wasn't the best way to get the week started. More rain! When you're soaking wet, standing in four inches of standing water on top of your own roof, trying in vain to find the source of a roof leak, you have to drop all pretenses of being an advertising mogul. You're just another wet idiot who bought a mid-century modern house. Water leaks have become the bane of my existence. They're hard to find, almost impossible to repair and they return year after year just like the Swallows of Capistrano. I have two leaks now and I'll probably have more, since the rain just doesn't seem to want to quit.

The dogs drive me nuts on rainy days. Neither one of them likes to get wet and they both seem convinced that, since I can open doors and turn on light switches, I can also stop the rain.  I take them outside to do their business and they won't even go off the porch. They just give me this "make it stop" look and go back inside. After a while they get frantic, because they really do need to go. I put totally useless dog raincoats on each dog and we go take our regular walk. After everyone is totally soaked, the dogs poop and pee and we go home again to spent half an hour getting dry. We've been doing this over and over again ever since Christmas. I wish I could just train them to use the toilet.

One of my clients wants a virtual tour of their facility that they can play on their website. I received twenty-five e-mails with attached source material for the project this afternoon and not one of them was readable. There's got to be an easier way to make a living.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 54 - Super Bowl Sunday

I was disappointed in this year's crop of Super Bowl ads. The game itself was pretty good though. As an advertising person, I always look forward to the ads just about as much as the game. It seemed like this year, most advertisers just wasted their money. I'm glad there was still one classic Budweiser Clydesdale ad with inspiring animals and a Dalmatian sitting on top of the beer wagon. It wouldn't be a proper Super Bowl without these Clydesdale ads. The Letterman show ad featuring Dave, Oprah and Jay watching the game together managed to catch my attention. CareerBuilder.com's "Casual Friday" commercial was actually pretty funny too. Denny's should have quit while they were ahead with their "Free Grand Slam" commercials. The first ad featuring the horrified chicken was funny, but after seeing three or four more ads build around the same theme, I quickly grew tired of them. Ditto for the eTrade 'baby" ads. Enough already.

I stopped by to take a look at the Culwell & Son Super Bowl Sunday Sale after Janet and I finished walking the rescue Dalmatians at K-9 University. The once-a-year sale only lasts from 1PM to 5 PM in the afternoon, but it's well worth waiting for. You can save up to 75% on almost everything in the store. Not surprisingly, I walked away with another brown leather jacket. Lord knows how many almost identical brown leather jackets I already have, but I find these things hard to resist.

I finally got most of the equipment we used at yesterday's photo shoot returned to its proper place. I don't know why I even bothered to unpack everything because I'll be packing it all up again next Friday. Between now and then, it looks like it's going to be a very busy week.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 53

The Valentine's Day photo shoot at Unleashed went really well today. The turnout was much better than I expected, and it felt like I was taking pictures of dogs non-stop from the moment we took our first appointment at 11AM to the last picture was finished around 3:30 PM. Every one of our customers was very happy with their pictures and Unleashed said we were welcome back any time we wanted to do this again. Hopefully, everyone who had their dog's picture taken today will tell their friends and next Saturday's turnout will be even better.

Pet photography is pretty grueling, especially if you've got bad knees like I do. Dog don't stand still very long and I was continually kneeling and standing up again all day long to get the shot.  After about five hours of this you just want someone to carry you away in a stretcher. It was a good day though. The Great Danes and Rottweiler's didn't destroy the set and nobody peed on the backdrop.

I wish I could just leave all the gear in the car until the next time we do this for Dalmatian Rescue, but that will never work. I need to move the lights and backdrops back to the studio this weekend, so I can use them for work again. Our own dogs will be riding in the car tomorrow anyway. I'm too tired to put all the equipment away tonight though, so it's sitting in a big pile in the entryway.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 52

I was pleasantly surprised this morning to discover that D Magazine had published a nice feature story about our upcoming Valentine's Day pet pictures in their new Sweet Charity blog. Hopefully things will go well tomorrow. I'm still charging camera batteries and getting all the equipment packed up for the shoot. It will probably take a couple of hours to build the set and get everything ready so, we plan to be at Unleashed by 9 AM. I've been doing location photography for a long time now, but with each passing year, the equipment seems to keep getting heavier. The photography itself is a piece of cake. It's packing the entire studio in the Land Rover that wears me out.

I'm glad it's Friday. Even though the weekends are busy, it's a different kind of busy. At least on the weekends I know what I'm doing. I had my last client meeting at 4 PM this afternoon and I'm still a bit confused. I learned a long time ago that my clients don't always know what they want. I typically have to make an educated guess about what I think they probably want and then hope the finished product is close enough that I won't have to do the job over. Maybe I'm wrong, but this project already has all the earmarks of a "do over" written all over it.

I swung by Central Market on the way home from my meeting and picked up some things for dinner at their Chef’s Case. There's always something delicious at Central Market whether you feel like cooking or not. I think I'd eat this way every night if it weren't so expensive.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 51

Some days are just a lost cause. The Dow briefly dipped below 10,000 again. Two more potential tenants rejected my rent property because it didn't have a laundry room. And, when I arrived for an afternoon client meeting, I discovered my client had completely forgotten about it and was at the dentist instead.

Dot went back to the vet today for massage therapy. She's usually so nervous about vet visits that I thought this might not end well. Surprisingly, after some initial trepidation, she relaxed and actually seemed to enjoy the whole procedure. It's been hard to identify the source of her pain. It doesn't appear that there's anything fundamentally wrong with her spine or hips. Who knows? Maybe the symptoms are being caused entirely by tense muscles.

I'm still making new LinkedIn connections.  Just an observation, but it seems to me that there are two types of people using LinkedIn. The first type understands social networking and just wants to make as many connections as they can possible make. These people will accept your invitation in seconds, whether they remember you very well or not. The second type of people will agonize for weeks over whether you are actually a genuine friend before they accept your invitation. Needless to say, most of these folks have much smaller connection lists. I'm probably in the first camp. If I recognize someone's name, I'll invite them to join my network. The whole point is to just get your name out there, so lots of people will see it. Almost half of the clients I work with today got to know me first as a co-worker.  I know there's a few more out there I haven't discovered yet.

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Day 50

After 50 days of blogging, it's probably about time for a "what have I learned so far" post. Truthfully, I wasn't expecting much when I started this experiment. I've always been a little skeptical of the social Internet and thought I could just ignore the phenomenal success of Facebook, Twitter and Digg. After all, I've had some sort of website on the Internet for over eleven years now. Wasn't that enough? Apparently not. I've been digging through my Google Analytics data lately and have been amazed to discover that this humble blog already gets about the same amount of traffic as the business domain I've had for over a decade.

Maybe writing something every day makes a difference. It certainly gives the search engines a lot of chances to find you. Maybe there are just more readers in the blogosphere now. Whatever the reasons, the figures don't lie. It's become apparent that the time has come for me to start taking social networking seriously.

I'm still not sure if we'll have dog class this evening. It's been raining off and on all day. Since obedient dogs and rainy weather don't seems to mix very well, I'll have to check the ABOTC website pretty soon to see if class has been canceled. Isn't it strange how quickly the world has adapted to the Internet as the source of all knowledge? I never use the Yellow Pages anymore. I'm not even using the telephone much either. I can't even remember the last time I went to the public library. Just about everything I need to know is just a quick Google search away. At any rate, if we do have class tonight, I'm going to see if Dash can move on to the advanced group. I think he's ready.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 49

I went to an interesting seminar on Digital Asset Management this morning. I can already see the writing on the wall. It's not pretty. I'm not going to be able to edit on video tape for very much longer. The next time I upgrade equipment, it's all going to be tapeless. You'd think this would be a good thing, but like most advances in technology designed to make my life easier, it's really quite the opposite. Video files are huge. That's why when a project is finished, it's nice to be able to put the original camera tapes in a cardboard box and take them down to the storage warehouse for safekeeping. It's simple. It's safe. And I understand the concept.

In the brave new world of tapeless video, you save all these files to a hard drive...a very, very large hard drive! Instead of keeping your footage safely tucked away on a shelf somewhere, it's sitting on a hard drive that can crash, get corrupted or simply wear out. Several companies have elaborate digital asset management solutions that can alleviate all these worries, but not surprisingly, they are very expensive.  Here's the dilemma. Video production budgets keep getting lower and lower while the cost of just staying in the game keeps getting higher. Now that I've finally got a nice, reliable Beta-SP edit bay...it's obsolete.

Going tapeless is a worry for another day. Today, I've got to take Dot to the vet again. The methocarbamol she was taking last week seems to have worked. No more back pain. I hate depending on meds, however. With most drugs, the side effects eventually outweigh the benefits. The vet says she's going to teach me how to give Dot a deep tissue massage that will relax her and release the lactic acid buildup in her lower back muscles. That sounds like a much better solution than a life on muscle relaxers.

I had to walk the dogs really early this morning so I could get to the seminar on time. When we reached the halfway point in our walk, we saw a pack of coyotes on a small hill right in front of us. The dogs went nuts. Why they were trying to attract the attention of a pack of coyotes, I'll never know. I told Dot to shut up or we were all going to get eaten. Luckily the coyotes weren't all that impressed and disappeared into the bushes after a few minutes.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 48

I had to drive up to Imaging Spectrum this afternoon to buy some more ink for the studio printer. Epson ought to just give these wide format printers away. All of them are just sophisticated machines designed for the sole purpose of selling ink. Every year I spend more money filling my printer up with ink than it cost me to buy it in the first place. I'm hooked on big, beautiful photos however, so I just grit my teeth and continue to buy more ink.

It's hard to believe that February is here already. January just flew by. I'm glad I didn't make many New Year's resolutions this year, or I'd be even further behind than I already am. Unfortunately, I did resolve to post something new on this blog every day. Piece of cake. Good thing I didn't resolve to post something worthwhile everyday. If that were the case, I'd have nothing yet.

I'm still a bit amazed at how many former co-workers I've been able to re-connect with using LinkedIn. I've been getting a lot of "I've been wondering what you've been up to" e-mail today. Apparently nobody that I used to work with has taken the plunge and retired yet. Maybe, like me, they entertained the idea of retiring early until sometime last November or December when the stock market collapsed. Or then again, maybe they all just love advertising and want to keep on working forever.

It's probably a good thing that I'm destined to keep working till I drop. When I'm working, I'm usually thinking. Thinking is good! When I'm not thinking, I'm inevitably on eBay, buying all sorts of crap I don't need. As frustrating as advertising can be, it's not nearly as frustrating as looking at a storage warehouse packed to the ceiling with stuff and wondering what it all is and why you bought it in the first place. They say alcohol and drugs have the potential to become addictive, but these vices are not nearly as dangerous as becoming a collector. Collecting will definitely be my downfall.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 47

I think I'm finally starting to get it. Even though I was an early adopter of all things involving cyberspace, I've had a hard time understanding why Internet 2.0, or the Social Internet, as many people call it, was so important. Now I understand. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn...all these social networking sites; they're really just an extension of the Kevin Bacon Game. Let's say you have 24 connections on one of these sites. If you count "friends of friends" you immediately have 1800 connections. Start counting "friends of friends of friends" and all of the sudden you have over 200,000 connections. This is the whole "Six Degrees of Separation" theory. Everyone in the world is just six people away from knowing everyone else in the world.

It's all pretty intoxicating at first. Then you start to realize that even with all your fabulous Facebook friends, most of the telephone calls you receive are still from telemarketers. I wonder sometimes if living in an interconnected world makes any difference at all? It doesn't seem to make that much difference to me. I know I'm connected to something, but it doesn't seem real. I get e-mail every day asking me to do things. I do a little typing, upload a few files, scan a few pictures and send a reply e-mail that usually just says "Done!" I periodically get a check in the mail from these people, but I never see them anymore. They're all too busy answering their own e-mail.

We took our dogs to Unleashed again this afternoon like we do every Sunday. Dogs are more honest about everything. They have a much easier time staying connected. All they do is sniff butts.

Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 46

At my age, whenever I tell someone I'm on my way to a party, it inevitably means I'm on my way to some sort of charity fundraiser. This evening, Janet and I listened to The Pit Pops and The Lupners play at Lake Highlands Live #4: a charity "battle of the bands" featuring local "Dad Bands." I think this benefit was to raise money for a scholarship fund at Lake Highlands High School. The bands were actually pretty good, considering that in real life all the musicians were aging accountants, real estate agents and small business owners. I used to play in a rock band that was similar in many ways to The Pit Pops. We called ourselves The Fabulous Has-Beens. The band stayed together for over five years and we all had a great time playing old Motown hits we loved in college. I guess when you get down to it, everyone would really rather be a rock star.

I'm tired of Winter already. It never got above freezing today. I'm never really happy with Texas weather. In the Winter I want to live someplace warmer. In the Summer I want to live someplace cooler. There are two weeks every Fall however, when everything is perfect. At least the rain quit this morning and I didn't have to spent half the day cleaning mud off the dogs.

I don't know why I didn't set up a LinkedIn account earlier. I've only had the account one day now and already I'm accumulating quite a few contacts. LinkedIn is actually a brilliant idea. My regular contact list is perpetually out of date. People move around so much now that I've always got the wrong phone number or address for friends and customers. With LinkedIn, if you take the time to locate someone once, you'll never have to do it again. I think I'm going to transfer all my contacts to LinkedIn and throw my Rolodex away. Oops...that won't work. A lot of my veterinarian clients don't even use e-mail.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 45

Don't ever try to carry an umbrella when you're walking two Dalmatians in the rain. I foolishly thought I could avoid doing an extra load of laundry and save thirty minutes clean-up time by putting raincoats on the dogs and carrying a big yellow umbrella when I took the dogs on their morning walk. Bad move. The  dogs shook their raincoats off within two minutes and they were scared of the umbrella, so I had to ditch that as well. By the time we arrived home we were all soaking wet, just like we always are when we take rainy day walks. I wish these dogs would learn to do their business in the yard when the weather is bad, but they insist on their regular walk, rain or shine.

By the time I got everyone clean and dry again it was almost time for lunch. It didn't really matter that I wasted hours dealing with wet dogs though. Fridays are always slow. I think most of my clients leave early for the weekend. I finished all my regular website updates in an hour or so and spent the rest of the day setting up my new LinkedIn account. Younger people I work with are convinced that things like a Facebook page or a Twitter Tweet really matter. I'm, not so sure. I'm really pretty easy to find on the Internet, but I don't think that my online presence or any attempts at social networking have ever brought me any significant business.

If you want new business, just go have lunch with a friend. My company has done pretty well over the years and just just about all the business we've ever gotten has come from referrals I've received from friends. When I need to hire suppliers, I'll always ask a friend for their opinion on who would be good for the job. The Internet can connect you to the entire world in an instant, but only friends can tell you who is reliable.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day