Day 286

I got this call today from a guy at Paypal saying that I was on the short list to be featured in an upcoming Paypal advertising campaign. At first, I had no idea what he was talking about and thought this was some weird telemarketing call. Then, I remembered that about a month ago, I had filled out something on the Paypal website called "Casting Call" where you could cast yourself in a Paypal commercial. "Would you be interested in being featured in Paypal advertising?" the guy asked. Sure, why not. "Can you fly out to San Francisco this week for a photo shoot?" I must have paused a little too long, because the guy continued "We'll pay for everything..." Hey, you convinced me!

The guy said he would have his assistant call me with travel arrangements later today, but I haven't heard anything yet. I still don't know if this whole thing is even real or not. The same thing is happening with my German client. They told me last week that they were going to have the schedule worked out for my trip to Alberta by Friday afternoon. It's Monday evening now and I haven't heard anything further from anybody.

I'm either going to be doing a whole lot of traveling pretty soon or doing absolutely nothing. It could go either way in both cases. I think I'd enjoy doing the Paypal commercials. It would probably be good for my business and it would certainly help Dalmatian Rescue. They already told me on the phone that they want to feature how the rescue group uses Paypal as part of their story.

I don't think I did a very good job of getting rid of the bees the other day. I started seeing new bees buzzing around the Eastern side of the house this afternoon. They're building nests or hives or whatever they build right where the old ones used to be. I guess I'm going to have to try something stronger than Raid Ant and Roach spray next time.

It's a shame that Fall weather and Fall allergies always seem to coincide. The temperature was perfect today. The sky was clear and blue. And my eyes itched and watered like crazy each time I walked the dogs. I've been sneezing and rubbing my eyes all day. If those Paypal guys could see my red nose and puffy face right now, they would cross me off their short list immediately.

I almost had an allergy disaster today too. I reached for the bottle of Visine while I was eating dinner and came up with a bottle of Super Glue instead. Yikes! That would have been a mess. When I found the Visine bottle, I noticed that the eye drops and the glue were almost in exactly the same type of bottle. Guess I'll have to stop putting the Super Glue in the pill drawer.

I filmed another short section of the National Geographic story this afternoon. The goat and Great Dane were initially found outside a wedding chapel in Garland, so the producers wanted me to go film the place so they would have an opening for the show. Since the goat was found eating flowers in front of the chapel, I wanted to open on a tight shot of the flowers and then zoom out to a reveal the front of the chapel. When I got up close to the flowers, guess what I saw. More bees.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 285

What a busy day! We had to leave the house by nine this morning in order to get out to the Castle Hills Golf Club in time to register all the players for today's Dalmatian Rescue golf tournament. The car was filled with large banners, multi-media equipment and silent auction items. No golf clubs though. I don't even play golf. This event always seems to require a huge amount of preparation and I'm always tired when it's over. It's usually our most successful fund raiser though and this year the event will help pay for expensive orthopedic surgery that two of our rescue dogs needed so they could walk normally again.

Every year, I drive around the course in a cart and take pictures of each team for an instant multi-media show that we play for the golfers during the awards dinner. I've gotten a lot better at shooting sports pictures after five years of doing this. When I first started, I was always too early or too late when I tried to capture a golfer's tee off shot. By the time I snapped the shutter, the ball was already thirty yards away. Now, I can usually get a shot that shows the ball only about a foot away from the club just after it has been struck. I've finally seen enough golf swings through the viewfinder that I know to snap the shutter just a fraction of a second before I see the club connect with the ball.

I certainly felt connected today. I sent a Tweet from my iPad while I was sitting in a golf cart on the ninth hole of the Castle Hills course waiting for the next team to arrive. I think there was even a GPS tag attached. Not that anyone cared what I was doing at that particular moment in time, but it's still kind of neat that things like this can be done with such ease. I still enjoy checking on the dogs with the iPhone petCam too, although the application is kind of buggy and crashes my computer more times than it works.

The tournament was a success, although I noticed that we didn't have as many golfers or sponsors as we did the year before. Slowly but surely, the faltering economy is taking its toll on rescue organizations like ours. People still donate, but not as much or as often. The dogs don't know that times are tough though. Most of the Dalmatians that come into the rescue program still have heartworms and some like Kobe and Humphrey have required very expensive surgery as well. It's a never ending struggle to rehabilitate theses dogs, but events like today's golf tournament certainly help.

Now that I've committed to writing something new each and every day, I feel a bit like Cinderella when midnight approaches and I still haven't published my blog post. My coach hasn't turned into a pumpkin yet, but I've come pretty close. It's kind of weird that I've actually changed my plans several times already to avoid missing a day. It's not like climbing Mount Everest or anything, but I'd still like to make it through an entire year without missing a day. Tonight could have been a problem. Last year it took a long time to get things packed up after the tournament and we didn't get home till after midnight. This year, a lot of people stayed to help and everything went smoothly. It looks like I've got almost an hour to spare.

It was a good day. We helped some dogs. The weather was great. Even the dinner was pretty good.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 284

I didn't sleep well last night. Dot woke me up at 3 AM and later at 4 AM when she heard thunder in the distance. By morning, the rain she was anticipating had arrived and it was wet and messy for the rest of the day. The first thing the dogs do every morning is race out to the back yard, do a lot of barking to wake up the neighbors, and go pee. On rainy days however, they won't even set foot outside the house. They just poke their heads out the door and look back at us as if we could magically stop the rain. They were going to have a long wait this morning, because the weather radar showed the storms extending halfway across the state.

While I was waiting for the rain to stop, I noticed that all the bees that have taken over the Eastern side of our house were quiet. They apparently didn't like the rain any more than the dogs did. It actually looked like they were all sleeping. This was the first time in weeks that the critters weren't buzzing around in a threatening manner like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I took advantage of the relative quiet and quickly knocked all the hornet's nests off the eaves of the house with a rake and sprayed them with roach and ant spray. It probably wasn't the proper way to get rid of bees and wasps, but it was all I could think of. I didn't get stung either. So far, the plan appears to have worked. None of the wasps have returned. It's been over 12 hours and all is quiet on the Eastern front.

Since everyone who usually walks the Dalmatian Rescue dogs on Sunday morning will be at the Golf Tournament tomorrow, we went and took care of the dogs today. They were wild. It had been raining most of the morning and I don't think the dogs had been outside of their kennels all day until we got there. I walked a new dog named Hobbs. He was a young male who apparently had never been on a leash before. He just about dislocated my shoulder when I first started to walk him, but after about twenty minutes he had calmed down a bit and was walking more or less normally with the other dogs. Dalmatians are strong dogs. I have a lot more aches and pains than I did before I started working with rescue animals. It's worth it though. It's kind of amazing how much progress you can make in socializing some of these strays in just a few months.

Our of our veterinarian friends invited Janet and I to go to the SPCA "Fur Ball" with her this evening. It would have been fun, since this is the big social event of the year in the rescue community. Unfortunately, we're still working on last minute preparations for the Golf Tournament tomorrow. I hope the weather clears up. This is our big fund raiser for the entire year and we need a good turnout to pay all the vet bills the dogs have run up this year.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 283

Bees have taken over the Eastern side of our house. There must be thousands of them. I guess the bees have been there a while, but I only started noticing them a few days ago. This side of the house just looks out at the neighbor's fence, so I seldom look out the windows. I really don't know how to get rid of these bees. If I get up on a ladder to get close enough to the hives to spray, I'm sure I'll get stung. They aren't honeybees either. I think they're hornets.

Sometimes I wish I lived on the 27th. floor of a downtown high rise instead of at the edge of a nature preserve. I love animals, but I get tired of finding lizards in the shower with me and I don't ever want to see a live rat jump out of the toilet again. After that happened I had to put heavy wire mesh over all the standpipes on the roof. Some of our neighbors have found entire families of raccoons living in their attics. Personally, I'd much rather see wild animals through a pair of binoculars than having to chase them around the house.

I wish I wasn't so busy. I used to love going to gallery openings on Friday evenings, but I just can't seem to get organized anymore. I kinda wanted to go to the iShow opening at PDNB Gallery this evening, but by the time I got my work wrapped up and the dogs walked, the opening was over. The show runs through October 9, so maybe I'll go see it later. It sounds interesting. A bunch of well known commercial photographers display pictures they took with their iPhones.

On the way to Central Market today, I zoned out and forgot where I was going. I was halfway to a client's office before I remembered that I had actually set out to get groceries. I hate when I do that. I'm fairly absent minded and daydream a lot, so this has definitely happened before. Not that long ago, I set out for a client meeting and wound up in my doctor's parking lot instead.

The annual Dalmatian Rescue golf tournament is this Sunday. It's going to be a very busy weekend!

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 282

Well, now I can add Tweeting to my list of time wasting activities. When I discovered that my completely blank Twitter page actually had followers, I was finally shamed into learning how to use it. I can't remember how long my Twitter account has sat there lonely and unused, but it's been a long time. It was long enough for me to forget the login password anyway. I'll have to admit that Twitter does have it's appeal. It's intuitive, very easy to navigate and writing a single sentence is certainly easier than making a new blog entry every day, complete with new photography. I'm still not sure what to actually use Twitter for, but I guess I'll Tweet again. It's just too easy. I can see why network news anchors and advertising people become addicted to this thing. Twitter may just be the perfect communication tool for a shallow person like myself.

Actually, I wish I had the time and energy to do more things online. I'm always impressed by those people who manage to keep a dozen different blogs running at the same time. Maybe I should start some other blogs. I could start a blog called Overheard Bicycle Conversations. Every day while I'm walking the dogs in the park, groups of cyclists whiz by us on their bikes and I hear a single sentence of their conversations before they disappear in the distance. Today I heard a guy say "My mother didn't even come to my first wedding" as he passed us on the bike trail. Yesterday I heard someone say "Well, you know he has cancer, but he hasn't told her yet." That's all I hear. A single sentence and then they're gone.

It looks like the writing assignment in Alberta is going to happen. The Germans haven't decided on a date for the interviews yet, but they're writing me now about how they plan to pay me. That's always a good sign when people start talking about money. Back when I used to write a lot of annual reports, I could do a 1,500 word article in my sleep. Now it seems kind of long. It's certainly longer than the 140 characters you're alloted in a Tweet. I like that little countdown thingie on Twitter that shows you how many characters you have left to write. Maybe I could add something like that to Microsoft Word so I would know how many characters I had left in my writing assignments.  Counting down from 180,000 characters might be depressing though.

I can't believe that Mondo has won the challenge on Project Runway for two weeks in a row. I really didn't like the look he created tonight at all. By the way things looked coming down the runway, I thought Andy should have won. What do I know though.

Damn! The upload pictures button on Blogger isn't working again. Now, I've got to load the Dalmatian and watch of the day pictures on my web server and link back to them. Come on Google. I've got Twittering to do.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 281

Everything I'm working on is in limbo. I can't take the final group portrait of the "Three Amigos" or finish the National Geographic project about the goat and dog friendship because Judy, the Great Dane, has picked up a nasty staph infection and is being quarantined at the vet until she gets better. I can't make any travel arrangements for my upcoming trip to Alberta because my German client still hasn't decided when they want to go yet. Several other projects have ground to a halt because I simply can't find my clients. I think one has gone to San Antonio for a while and the other doesn't seem to be answering e-mail anymore.

Somehow I managed to lose all my reviews on Entrecard today. They just disappeared. Customer support had no explanation. They just said the disappearance was an "isolated incident" and didn't effect other users. So, you people who took the time to write some very nice things about the blog, I'm sorry about what happened. It wasn't my fault. Maybe you could write another review sometime. That would be nice.

I've got to put something on my Twitter page. I discovered that I have several followers and I've never even written a single Tweet. The page is empty. That seems weird to me. Why would anyone follow an empty page? Several people I know think Twitter is fabulous, but I still can't seem to get the hang of it. One of my old advertising buddies is writing a novel on Twitter - one sentence at a time. I guess that's kind of cool, but I could think of easier ways to write a novel.

Our Wednesday dog training class was nice tonight. The moon was almost full and there was a very bright looking Jupiter hanging just below. I think this is the closest that Jupiter is supposed to come to Earth for the next thirty years, so I'm glad the weather cooperated and let the planet put on a show. The dogs weren't very interested in astronomy, but they certainly enjoyed the cool, clear weather. It's just too bad it's starting to get dark during class again. That was one nice thing about Summer classes. It's a lot easier to do the exercises when you can see your dog.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 280

I don't check Technorati stats very often, but for some reason I did today and discovered that the blog has made it into the Technorati Top 100 in the Pets category. Cool! I didn't even know I was in the Pets category, but I guess that means my Dalmatians are right up there with Sparkle the blogging cat.

I'll admit to having an unhealthy fascination with rankings, but there are simply too many to have any real meaning anymore. You could spend your entire day checking on Alexa and Google rankings and wondering what your Technorati Authority was. Even the advertising sites like Entrecard and Adgitize have their own ranking systems. Its gotten out of hand. A long time ago, a site I created called The Book of Bitterness was included in a book called The World Wide Web Top 1000. I was real impressed at the time, since this was supposed to be the top 1000 sites on the entire Internet. It didn't mean anything though. 98% of the sites included in that book don't even exist anymore, although oddly you can still buy the book on Amazon.com.

I had to take Dash to the vet again this afternoon because his skin problems are getting worse. He's got a condition called Dalmatian Bronzing which makes his coat look like it was dipped in rusty water. Some vets think the bronzing is linked to kidney stones and treat the condition with Allopurinol. Other vets think the bronzing is an allergic reaction and uses a variety of antigens designed to stimulate the immune system. We've tried antibiotics, changes in diet, and countless special shampoos, but nothing seems to work for very long. The problem is that the condition only occurs in Dalmatians, so not a lot of vets are familiar with it. This time, my vet thinks the bronzing is caused by a staph infection in the hair follicles and wants to give Dash a series of injections that will eventually make him resistant to the bacteria. I hope it works. The poor guy has got to be uncomfortable.

I sold my short positions today. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the market just refuses to drop despite an abundance of bad news. Unfortunately, the market refuses to rise either. It just goes sideways, taking the money of both bulls and bears. I really can't blame my broker for the bad luck I've been having with my short positions. It's just a difficult time for investors. Even if you abandon the stock market entirely, where do you go? The real estate market totally sucks and putting your money in a CD is about as effective as putting it under a mattress. It looks like I'm going to have to keep working for a long time.

I'm supposed to take a portrait of the goat and the two dogs that have become best friends before they leave the pet orphanage and go to their permanent home. I'm a little nervous about letting the goat get anywhere near my photo equipment again. The last time I filmed this goat, he ate my microphone.  He's a friendly guy, but he eats everything. I stopped by and saw him today while I was at the vet with Dash. He was happily lying down on one end of a large blanket in his pen while he was eating the other end of the same blanket.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 279

Do you ever feel like your life has become a slightly less interesting version of that movie Groundhog Day? Every day I get up and do essentially the same things as I did the day before. Sure, it's not exactly the same, but it certainly feels familiar. I can't blame anyone for the predictable routines I follow. Most of them I have chosen freely. Nevertheless, there are still days when I wake up wishing I was walking down a completely different path.

I don't hate this "Groundhog Day" existence, but maybe a different kind of repetition might have been more fun. A "new client" Groundhog Day would be nice. Every day I would get a brand new client and we would have lunch and make grand plans for the future. We would never have to discover each other's shortcomings though, because the next day would bring another brand new client to impress. A "first date" Groundhog Day wouldn't be bad either, where you could tell your lame stories over and over again and people would continue to tell you how interesting it all sounded.

This isn't the way life works though. In real life, your friends get tired of hearing things they've heard 100 times already. Real work is seldom as grand and glorious as you'd thought it would be. You start out on a big adventure and one day you wake up and realize it has become a marathon race.

I'm a Gemini. At heart I'm a flaky sprinter, but out of necessity I've become a determined marathon runner. I get up every day, make the bed with military precision and pick up where I left off on long and complicated projects. Sometimes when I walk the dogs I daydream about making documentary films or writing hit songs, but that doesn't pay the bills. I've already tried that. 

What pays the bills is doing something over and over and over again until you get so good at it you could do it in your sleep. That's the problem. By the time you've gotten really good at anything, you're usually bored with it. Today, I'm busy, I'm bored and I'm tired. All at the same time.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 278

I discovered that the petCam has a built-in motion detector that saves JPEG images to your hard drive every time the camera detects something moving. It was interesting seeing what the dogs did after we left for K-9 University this morning to walk the Dalmatian Rescue dogs. Dot just sleeps unless she hears a noise, but Dash is a pacer. About every 45 minutes, he gets off the bed and makes a circuit from the bedroom to the office to Janet's bathroom and back to bed again. He seems to leave guarding the house to Dot, because when she gets up to bark at something, he doesn't even bother to get off the bed. I guess this shouldn't be all that surprising. This is exactly the same thing the dogs do when we are home.

The weather is getting cooler now, but all that means on a typical Fall Sunday is that the chores move back outside again. I mowed the grass again this afternoon and tried to get the Summer's accumulation of spiderwebs off the living room windows. I don't know where all the spiders come from, but I wish the lizards would start eating them. If we've got to live with lizards all over the house, they ought to do something useful. At least we don't have to worry about rats anymore. There are so many feral cats in the neighborhood these days that they eat them all.

It's hard to believe that the Dalmatian Rescue Golf Tournament is next weekend. It doesn't seem like it's been a year since the last tournament. I usually go around the course in a golf cart during the tournament and take pictures of the golfers while they are playing. Then when the teams return to the clubhouse for dinner, we show them a little slide show of the afternoon's activities. When I started doing this, we showed the pictures on a small iMac computer sitting on a card table in the lobby. Now there are video projectors and big flat panel displays. Expectations have risen too. Nobody is happy with just seeing the pictures while they are eating dinner anymore. They keep asking me when I am going to have everything uploaded to Photobucket, so they can order prints. Actually, I don't know why I even bother to take golf pictures anymore. The whole world travels around with a camera in their pocket these days. Last year, just about every time I stopped at a hole to take pictures of a team, they were already taking their own pictures with an assortment of cell phones and pocket cameras. This year, somebody will probably have golf pictures on their Facebook page before I even get back to the clubhouse.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 277

It's become kind of a tradition in Dallas that on the last day of the season, the water parks in the area welcome dogs for the day. We've never taken Dot and Dash to one of these events before, since they don't seem to like water, but we thought we'd give it a try this year. The Hawaiian Falls park in Garland isn't that far from us and today's event was a benefit for local rescue groups. When we arrived, there were several hundred happy wet dogs splashing around in the water. Much to our surprise, it only took a few minutes for our own dogs to joint them. Dash seemed to like the wave pool the best and exuberantly jumped through the waves to chase tennis balls. It was hard to believe that this was the same dog who makes such a fuss every time we try to give him a bath. Dot was a little more sedate than Dash, but even she was bold enough to get out in the deeper water and swim. What Dot liked best was floating down the lazy river in a tube. Live and learn, I guess. I didn't think that either dog would even put their paws in the water, but they were having just as much fun as the Labs and Golden Retrievers. It's too bad the water parks only do this once a year.

It was also a bit surprising that in a city of over a million people, we always seem to run into someone who already knows Dot and Dash. Today, six different people recognized the dogs and came over to say hello. I'm almost certain that if we didn't have the dogs with us nobody would have recognized Janet and I. I'll have to admit that the dog do get around. They have their friends from the neighborhood, friends that they met at the Unleashed indoor dog park and even more friends from the Wednesday training class. Dot was a little shy when we first got her, but now she's quite the diva. She seems disappointed if people don't gather around to pet her and say how pretty she is.

Once we got the dogs back home and the car dried out, the weekend quickly reverted to the normal routine of household chores and shopping errands. I don't think we'll have to give the dogs a bath tomorrow. After two hours in the water, they both look pretty clean.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 276

I had to go out to Bexel again today to pick up some equipment for an upcoming video shoot and on the way home I found myself caught in rush hour traffic with a beautiful white Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder in front of me and a rusty old beater behind me that had plastic bags duct taped to the door to cover a broken window. This stark contrast pretty well sums up Dallas these days. Even though Northpark has transformed itself into a Texas version of Rodeo Drive, there are still plenty of nearby Wall Marts filled with people buying groceries with their Lone Star Cards.

I kind of straddle both worlds. On a slow month, I could easily qualify for public assistance myself, but I would never consider it in my wildest dreams. I think everyone needs to earn their own way in this world. I'm convinced that absolutely anyone can be successful. There isn't really any secret to success. It's mostly just hard work. I remember one of my first supervisors telling me that it was important that I always acted professional in everything I did. I asked him what "professional" meant and he said "it's the ability to do good work when you're having a bad day." It's really that simple. I never forgot that.

I don't know whether the woman driving the Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder in front of me got the car through hard work or not. There's probably an interesting story though. There aren't very many of these cars in the entire country. I do know that Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer was the first person in America to buy one. I think Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson has one too. Hard worker or not, I'm sure the woman in the Lamborghini had a valid driver's license, which is a lot more than I could say for the driver in the beater behind me.

When I got home I still had work to do. Somehow all my Thursday website work has gradually slipped to Friday. I was busy today. Initially, these recurring website updates started coming to me on Tuesday, so maybe if I wait long enough they will continue to slip all the way back to Tuesday again. I used to be bothered by all these delays, but I'm slowly learning to love them. I've always though of myself as fairly slow, but if the rest of the world is even slower, it makes me look good.

I've almost had the iPhone a month now. I take it everywhere. I use the GPS maps to find client meetings quickly when I'm running late. I use the weather radar to find little dry pockets to walk the dogs on rainy days. I even used the petCam today to check on Dot and Dash while I was out at the Bexel offices. There's only one thing I haven't done with the phone yet. I haven't called anyone. I guess I'm not a typical cell phone user.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 275

Yay! I finally got the petCam to work. You might wonder why I even need a petCam. I rarely go anywhere and the dogs are seldom more than two feet away. Some people call Dalmatians the Velcro dogs because they always seem to be glued to your side. There's a much bigger chance of me stepping on them while they're under my desk than needing to watch them from across town on my iPhone. Nevertheless, I had to have the petCam.

This is so typical of me. I'll spend untold hours fiddling with things that are absolutely useless in my daily life and then run out of time to do the essentials. I did manage to learn a few things about wireless networks and port forwarding during my struggle to master streaming video, but if history is any guide, I'll be quick to forget everything again. If the petCam ever quits working, I'm sure it will take me just as long to figure it out a second time as it did the first.

Project Runway was interesting tonight. The challenge for the contestants was to create a sportswear look inspired by Jackie Kennedy. Nobody seemed to have a clue about Jackie Kennedy or fashion in the 60's. Even Mondo's winning look somehow missed the mark. I can't imagine Jackie wearing anything I saw tonight. I know the whole idea was to use Jackie as a muse and then update the look to make it "fashion forward." How can you update something you don't even understand though? The 60's could just as well been medieval England to these guys. The judges weren't very kind this evening, but they were kinder than I would have been. I would have sent several people home.

David, the neighborhood jeweler, called this afternoon and said he'd managed to repair the little Russian pendant watch I gave him last month. I probably shouldn't have even bothered to have the watch fixed since it isn't worth much, but I like to see things working. The watch is just another version of the petCam story. I'm fascinated with watches, but I don't even care what time it is. I'm late everywhere I go.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 274

Today was uneventful. Generally, I like uneventful. I paid my quarterly estimated income taxes. I updated several websites. I corresponded with clients about upcoming jobs and ongoing problems. Days like this are peaceful. I keep myself busy, but I seldom talk to anyone. When there are no emergencies or fires to put out, I usually have time to fix myself pancakes for breakfast, do a load or two of laundry and play with the dogs for a while in between my webmaster chores.

One odd thing happened today. When I was walking the dogs this morning, I started seeing swirling abstract colored shapes in my field of vision. I would close my eyes and the colors would still be there. I could see the dogs walking ahead of me, but it felt like someone had overlaid a second layer of stuff over what I was looking at. The sensation went away in about fifteen minutes, but it was a little unsettling. I hope I don't start having eye problems. There's certainly enough wrong with me already. My Dad had macular degeneration when he got older and that is certainly not anything to look forward to. Maybe it's nothing. I think my eyes were probably just tired. I used to have perfect vision, but years of staring at computer monitors have taken their toll.

Since we've missed our dog training class for two weeks in a row due to bad weather, I didn't think that Dot and Dash would do well tonight. Dot actually had a good night, but Dash wasn't all that obedient. He seldom is. Dash was too excited seeing all the other dogs again tonight to concentrate on anything. You'd think that both dogs would be perfectly trained after all these Wednesday classes, but Dash still doesn't even come when he's called half the time.

Maybe I can actually get caught up tomorrow. I'm getting closer and closer to catching up on all the unfinished jobs I'm working on. Who knows. I might have time to clean up the office a bit. I doubt that I'll have time to read a book, but that would be nice too. It seems like ages since I've found time to read a book.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 273

I'm angry. I talked to three different doctors today and none of them would agree to give me the Peginterferon injections in their offices. I've been a patient of all of these doctors. They have large clinics with well trained nurses and proper refrigeration to store the anti-viral drugs. I've received shots for everything from dog bites to poison ivy from these doctors, but for some reason none of them want to give me these particular shots. When I ask them why, they just say that it isn't done that way. Something is very fishy about all this. Why would a clinic that gives all manner of shots day in and day out, refuse to give this particular shot? Even the doctor who prescribed the treatment wants me to give myself the injections.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I suspect it has something to do with money. It always comes down to money in the end. Either the drug is dangerous and the doctors don't want to assume the liability if something goes wrong, or the manufacturer is charging them just as much for the drug as they are trying to charge me. I'm sure everybody would rather have me pick up the tab. Either way, it doesn't seem fair. I hate these Catch-22 situations. My health insurance company says that if I can get my doctors to give me the treatment in their offices, all I will have to pay is a normal co-pay. The doctors say that if I had better insurance, the prescription drug charges wouldn't be a big deal anyway. It is a big deal though. It's $1400 per month vs. $75 a month for treatment that could last up to a year.

Janet, as always, takes a more pragmatic view of the whole situation. I asked her what she thought and she said "What's the point of trying so hard to hang on to your money if your only alternative is being dead?" She makes a good point, but I still think I'm being ripped off.

I told the Germans that I'd like to accept the writing assignment in Alberta. Hopefully, we can get the travel itinerary worked out quickly, so I won't be fretting about money for the rest of the month. I never used to care about airfares and hotel bills when my clients routinely picked up the tab. Now that I am expected to build travel charges into my bid, all these additional costs can be confusing. I've occasionally lost money on jobs by not keeping a good handle on travel costs. To add to the complications, I will be spending US dollars and Canadian dollars for travel expenses, but I will get paid in Euros. I'm not even sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Hey, it's a job though. In this economy, just about any job is a good job.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 272

I think I put my plumber's kid through college today. My plumbing problems were worse than I anticipated, but at the end of a rather long day, just about everything is fixed. I thought I was going to have to replace the garbage disposal, but it turned out that nothing was wrong with it. The basic problem was that all the plumbing lines in the entire house were filled with years and years of gunk. After snaking out all the plumbing lines, I had the plumber take a look at my ailing Moen faucet. Three plumbers in a row have refused to touch the thing, since parts are no longer available. This guy was good though. He managed to put together a working faucet from parts I had saved from various broken faucets I've accumulated over the years from my rent property. Since both houses are the same mid-century modern architecture, they share a lot of the same hardware. I was delighted to have the vintage faucet working again, so I went from room to room, asking the plumber to fix everything that had water running through it. I learned a long time ago that when you find a good plumber, you've got to take advantage of it.

I actually enjoy having plumbers over to the house. I usually learn something from them and often I can help them out as well because we often discover that I have a better selection of tools than they do. Today's plumber even liked dogs, which was definitely a good thing since Dot barked almost the entire time he was at the house.

Plumbers, electricians and HVAC repairmen seem to take pride in their work and are usually very knowledgeable. The fact that they have to be certified and pass certain tests in order to work in the state of Texas automatically puts them several levels above roofing contractors and tile guys. I've generally had good experiences with plumbers and feel comfortable recommending them to friends. Roofers are an entirely different kettle of fish. Maybe there's a good roofer out there somewhere, but I've never met one. As far as I'm concerned, they're all worthless. It's really too bad that plumbers don't fix roof leaks. I'm sure they'd do a much better job than all the roofing contractors I've tried.

I got an e-mail today from one of my German clients asking if I'd like to fly to Alberta and interview some people for an article they'd like me to write about a large gas pipeline project they're involved with. Sure, why not? It's only a seven hour flight, plus another four hours of driving even further north from the Edmonton airport. Actually the project sounds fun. I hate to have to front the travel costs for a project like this, but my client is pretty good about paying expenses quickly. If I get my invoices in in a hurry, they might even pay before my travel bills arrive. I'm going to tell them I'd like to take the assignment. I really need to start writing for the corporate folks again. I used to make a real good living doing this sort of thing. I can tell you from experience that writing pays much better than designing websites.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 271

I was fretting about a weird router problem that was preventing video streams from getting out to the Internet until the garbage disposal broke and flooded the kitchen with gallons of water. Plumbing problems are a good reality check. A clogged drain or a broken toilet can quickly make just about any computer problem seem trivial. Calling a plumber has quickly risen to the top of tomorrow's "to do" list. Even though I have a tendency to postpone things like going to the dentist, I'm always quick to call a plumber. There's nothing like having a lot of water in the wrong places for ruining your day.

Plumbing problems notwithstanding, today was actually pretty hard to ruin. For the most part, it was a very pleasant day. The current  batch of Dalmatian Rescue dogs are coming along nicely. Each time we see them, they seem healthier and better socialized. Dash seems to be getting used to riding in the car too. When we took our own dogs up to the Wagging Tail dog park this afternoon, Dash didn't whine much at all. Actually, the only time there was a problem was when he lost his tennis ball under the driver's seat and started barking incessantly to get it back. He does this at home too, but it's a lot easier to retrieve a ball from under the bed than from an inaccessible part of the car when you're on a freeway.

Eventually we made it to the park and the dogs had a lot of fun racing around and sniffing other dogs. Now that the weather is finally starting to get a bit cooler, the outdoor dog parks are becoming more enjoyable. I still miss Unleashed, but it's safe to say that there's probably not going to be another indoor dog park in Dallas for a long time. After someone loses a lot of money on a new idea, there are very few people who want to try the same thing again.

I wish I could find a plumber who could repair all the water related problems in the house, but that would be a lot to ask. There's the persistent roof leak, the shower pan that needs to be re-tiled, an old Moen faucet that needs a new and totally non-existent cartridge, a trap on a bathroom sink that is close to rusting through, a toilet float that gets stuck, and an ice maker inside the refrigerator that doesn't make much ice anymore. If this is starting to sound suspiciously like one of those "everything but the kitchen sink" lists, that isn't what I had in mind. The kitchen sink is actually the biggest problem right now. We need someone to fix everything and the kitchen sink.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 270 - 9/11

It's hard to believe that it's been nine years since the towers fell. It still seems like yesterday. This is one of those days that will be etched in my memory forever. I'll always remember a day when another teacher came into my high school English class in Fairbanks, Alaska and told us that president Kennedy had just been shot. I'll always remember a day watching a small television screen in the student union at the University of Arkansas as Neil Armstrong set foot on the surface of the moon. And I'll always remember eating breakfast in my own home and looking up at the television in the kitchen to see smoke billowing from the South tower of the World Trade center. I was watching the Today Show on NBC. At first nobody know what was happening, but it wasn't that long before a second plane flew into the North tower on live television and the world changed forever.

It was difficult to believe that what I was seeing was real. I'd been inside these buildings. I'd ridden the elevators to the roof and looked out over the New York skyline. Just a year or two before the towers fell, I remember taking a picture of them from my hotel room at the UN Plaza. It was just after sunset and the buildings were lit up and full of activity. In an instant, all that was gone.

One week after September 11, I flew to Germany on a business trip. There were lots of people with guns in all the airports and most of the passengers on the Lufthansa flight with me seemed nervous. I could tell that something had fundamentally changed, but I didn't realize just how much had changed until a long time later. Before the towers fell, I used to travel frequently on business. Now, I sit in a small room and conduct virtually all my activities over the Internet. I used to think that my career was important, but I got involved with Dalmatian Rescue shortly after September 11 and now my live is centered around dogs.

I don't really trust people anymore. I certainly don't trust politicians. I don't trust "humanists" either. Politicians are full of promises, but I don't think they really have the capacity to bring us world peace, or fix the economy. Politicians and humanists who think mankind can do anything it wants need to do some basic reading about probability theory and stochastic processes. The universe is a lot more complex and random than they'd like to believe. On days like today, I often think those people who put "Shit Happens" bumper stickers on their cars have a better grasp of how the world really works than our leaders do.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 269

Do you ever feel like you're just treading water? It happens to me a lot. The day isn't a disaster or anything, but it's hard not to feel like Davy Crockett at the Alamo. At the end of the day, all you've done is postpone the inevitable for one more day. Today I fought the clogging production printer again. I just about gave up and hauled the ailing machine out to the curb for the trash truck to pick up, but it finally stopped giving me error messages and printed the large poster I needed. I wonder how long I can keep nursing this thing along? The printer is kind of like my Beta-SP camera. It produces beautiful results when I eventually get it working, but it's old, parts are expensive and nobody wants to support it anymore. Until I can afford a new printer, all I can do is keep on trying to keep the cranky thing working.

I guess I've got to keep trying to get my medical problems resolved as well. I made an appointment to see my regular doctor today and hopefully, he'll be able to help me get my insurance problems with the Peginterferon ironed out. I need to make an appointment with Dash's vet as well to see if we can finally resolve his skin problems. Everyone thought the bronzing condition was caused by a bacterial infection in his hair follicles, but maybe it's allergies instead. The problem does seem to be seasonal. Dalmatians frequently have bad allergy problems and that's about the only thing I still haven't tested him for.

One good thing did happen today. I managed to launch the medical clinic website a week ahead of schedule. This leaves me with only one more website still in the development stages. Probably in two or three weeks, I'll be finished with everything. It's been nice to have a full plate this Summer, but the busy days are winding to a close. It's probably time for me to start pounding the pavement again and drum up some new business.

This weekend, it's time for me to spin the roulette wheel again. Dalmatian Rescue is having another Casino Party fundraiser. I've done these things so often now that I could almost be a casino dealer in my sleep. As long as I don't fall asleep at the wheel, I'll be OK.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 268

I don't understand health insurance. Did you know that the same treatment can end up having wildly different costs, just depending on whether your medicine is administered to you in a doctor's office or if you take it yourself at home. Which is more expensive? Not what you might think. My insurance usually pays 90% of in-plan medical expenses after I meet my deductible. It only pays 50% of my prescription drug cost, however. Why does this even matter?  Well, if I get the Peginterferon I need at my neighborhood pharmacy, I pay a small fortune for it. If I go to the doctor and get them to give me the shot instead, I just pay a regular co-pay. This seems totally crazy to me. Why should the exactly same medicine have one price if it is coded for health insurance as "necessary medical procedure" and a much higher price if it is coded as "prescription drugs?" I'm still trying to get my doctor to just order the medicine and give me the shots in his office. It's an uphill battle though. Everyone seems to want me to take the more expensive route. Even if the drug wasn't so expensive, I wouldn't want to give myself these shots at home anyway. I hate the sight of needles.

Peginterferon prices weren't the only thing that didn't make sense today. I bought some new Anton Bauer batteries last week for my Beta-SP camera. They look just like my old batteries and work just fine in my camera. There is only one tiny little problem. I can't recharge them! The manufacturer has changed the design of the battery so that it can only be recharged using their newest digital battery chargers. Why? I already have a perfectly good Anton Bauer quad charger.  Why should I have to pay $500 to get another one?

I guess it doesn't make sense either that if I was classified as an "existing customer," I could get in to see my dentist in three days, but now that I'm classified as a "new customer," I need to wait three weeks. This doesn't bother me nearly as much as the impossible to charge batteries though, because I need the batteries now and I'd just as soon wait to see the dentist.

I can't even figure out why Dash's coat is turning brown again. I thought we'd solved his skin problems, since his coat was looking so good earlier this Summer. We haven't changed his food. He's still using the same medicated shampoo. Nothing has changed at all, but the bronzing has reappeared again.

Oh, and one more thing that doesn't make any sense. Apple has made a big deal recently out of telling everyone that all the apps available for the iPhone will automatically work on the iPad. Why is this just a one way street?  iPad apps definitely don't automatically work on the iPhone. Life is just too complicated sometimes.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 267

It rained hard all night. Much to my amazement, there were no puddles of water on the floor when I got up this morning. Finally, my roof repairs seem to have worked. My luck didn't last long however. While I was eating breakfast, the power went out. There were so many power outages due to the weather that we were without electricity for most of the day. Needless to say, this slowed everything down a bit.

When we lose power, the computers are down, the Internet is down, the answering machine doesn't work and the dogs are restless. You can still take a shower and wash the dishes because we've got a gas water heater, but that's about it. The house is so dark without electricity that I went out several years ago and bought several fluorescent camping lanterns. These lanterns are surprisingly bright and usually allow me to read or get a little work done with a pad and paper. Not this year. We store the lights outside on the porch in a big hamper with the leaf blowers and other garden tools. When I went to get the lanterns, I discovered that rain had gotten into the box and the lanterns were sitting in several inches of water. This wasn't water from today's rain either. It was brownish standing water from a long time ago. The batteries were a rusty, gooey mess and none of the lamps worked. Since there wasn't much else I could do anyway, I spent the next several hours trying to remove the rust and battery acid from the lanterns and get them working again. When I finally got the lights functioning, the power came back on.

It's a good thing we have electricity again too, because I think I used up all the clean bath towels drying off wet dogs today. Before I went to Northpark to get my hair cut, I took advantage of a brief break in the stormy weather to walk the dogs. Both Dot and Dash absolutely refuse to do their business in the yard when it rains and grow increasingly frantic when it becomes apparent that I can't make the rain stop. I'm sure they think I control the rain, just like I can open doors and turn on light switches. I've learned to check the weather radar frequently on days like this to find little windows of time when I can get the dogs out to their favorite places to pee. Since there was no electricity today, I ran the battery down on my iPad checking the weather radar. I didn't have enough power left to check my e-mail,  but the dogs did get to do their business.

I thought we sere home free on the way home from our walk, because I saw the sun starting to peek through the clouds a bit. That certainly didn't last long. As soon as we got back to the house, I started hearing the emergency sirens going off all over the neighborhood. I turned on the radio and discovered there was a tornado headed our way. I gathered the dogs together and we waited out the storm in the one little hallway that might have a chance of surviving a tornado. Glass houses and storms aren't usually a good mix. The tornado actually did touch down in several parts of town, but luckily the wall cloud veered off and headed north before it got to our house.

Everything is back to normal now. We've got electricity. The rain has stopped. I'm a little behind on my website work, but I do have two working storm lanterns.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 266

It sure would have been nice if the Labor Day weekend was a four day holiday. Nothing went very smoothly today. It was a very rainy day for starters. The remnants of hurricane Hermine have finally arrived in Dallas and although it is no longer much of a storm, it is certainly wet. A lot of time was eaten up this morning cleaning wet dogs and sweeping water off the roof. When I finally was able to get down to business, I discovered that my client's missing website still hasn't reappeared. The DNS is pointed at the correct servers now but the site is still missing in action. Everyone seemed missing in action today. Several people left urgent messages on my voicemail while I was walking the dogs, but when I returned their calls, I kept getting those irritating automated systems that won't let you talk to anyone.

I finally got tired of listening to the endless "if you want to talk to someone in human resources press 3, if you want to talk to someone in billing, press 4" messages, so I just got in my car and drove over to the clients offices. Surprisingly, this is often the fastest way to handle something. Isn't technology wonderful?  It's actually easier to drive across town and go see someone in person than it is to get them on the phone.

This plan worked pretty well, so on the way home from my client's office I stopped by one of my doctors to try and resolve an insurance problem the same way. I should have known better. Insurance problems can never be resolved with a simple conversation. You have to send at least twelve letters back and forth and get a third party involved before anything even starts to happen.

I was real proud of myself for finally making an appointment to see the dentist today.  I guess the dogs shamed me into making the call. Their teeth look better than mine do now. Unfortunately, my dental appointment isn't until October. My dentist asked if I was in pain and then proceeded to tell me that it had been so long since my last visit that I was going to have to be treated as a new patient again. The first available appointment for new patients was October 4. I guess it's a good thing I wasn't in pain. Actually, I wasn't all that upset about the long delay because I didn't really want to see the dentist in the first place.

I had a lot easier time making a hair appointment for tomorrow. That's probably because I see Betty every month for a haircut and it's been ten years since I've been to see the dentist.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 265 - Labor Day

In honor of Labor Day, I spent most of the day laboring to make the yard, the house and even the cars look a little nicer. I used to get a certain degree of satisfaction from doing these sort of cleaning and straightening tasks, but now most of them seem like a lost cause. I'm never going to get the yard looking great. I've put in new Bermuda grass four times already and within a single season the Johnson Grass and Chickweed seeds blow in from the park and establish themselves all over again. The only way to get rid of the weeds is either to spend an enormous amount of time working in the yard, or to use strong chemicals to kill them. I won't use chemicals because of the dogs and I don't have all that much time to spare, so I end up just mowing the weeds.

I finally repaired the broken door to the greenhouse even though it involved yet another trip to Home Depot to buy the fasteners I needed. I've bought these fasteners three times already, but I always lose them before I get around to making the repairs. This time, I repaired the door immediately after I got home from Home Depot, so the parts wouldn't have time to disappear again. Fixing the greenhouse is another lost cause. Every time I try to grow something, critters from the park will get inside and eat the plants. What the rats don't eat, the squirrels will. I don't know how the animals manage to get inside the building, but they always find a way.

I also got some Meguiar's Fine Cut Cleaner and polished out all the little dings and paint scrapes on our cars. This is just about as futile as trying to get rid of weeds in the yard. The cars look great now, but the next time either of us goes to the mall, someone is sure to roll a shopping cart into the car or scrape something with their door in a tight parking spot. It's just part of living in a city. Look at the cars all around you the next time you go grocery shopping. Every single one of them is full of little dings.

When the cars were clean and polished, we drove up to K-9 University to walk the Dalmatian Rescue dogs again. The kennel is closed on holidays, so if we don't go up there, the dogs just sit in their cages all day. Not surprisingly, the Dalmatians were glad to see us. "Wild" might be a better word to describe them. We gave them each a nice long walk and headed home again.

On the way back, Janet needed to pick something up at one of those humongous mega Wall Mart stores. I hate to even go inside those stores. They're always crowded, and when you're ready to check out, there's inevitably someone ahead of you in line who is trying to pay for their stuff with an expired credit card. Today it was someone who dumped an entire purse full of coupons on the counter and expected the cashier to give her credit for every single one of them. It took forever. I'd much rather pay a little more somewhere else in exchange for keeping my sanity.

Even though nothing much happened, the three day holiday zipped by way too fast. Tomorrow, it's back to solving website problems and paying bills again. I have a feeling that work is just as much of a lost cause as keeping weeds out of the yard.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 264

The park was filled with holiday picnickers today. I've spent so many years walking through this park with my dogs that I know every inch of it. Sometimes I feel like telling people "Hey, you're eating your lunch where all the snakes are." or "Your kids are going to have a real bad case of poison ivy in two or three days if they keep playing over there." I usually just mind my own business though and walk on by. Nobody would listen to me anyway. Everyone has their own ideas about the perfect place for a picnic. I guess if you spread your blanket right over the top of a fire ant mound, you'll learn to try somewhere else the next time.

Janet and I thought we'd try something else when we washed the dogs this week. We switched dogs. The theory was that maybe Dash would be better behaved with Janet. Nope. Same old bad Dash. He just hates a bath and it doesn't seem to matter who is bathing him. It is nice to have clean dogs though. Especially when they insist on sleeping on the bed with you.

I was tired all day. Probably I just didn't get enough sleep. I should learn to turn off the TV when I'm ready to go to bed. All too frequently, I'll start absentmindedly channel surfing instead and end up staying up even later. Last night I happened to find a Dr. Who marathon around midnight. I ended up watching three shows in a row. I'd seen these shows before, but they were good ones and I enjoyed watched them again. Sadly, I'm the same way with books. I'd probably do just fine with ten or twelve books. By the time I finished the tenth book, the first one would seem fresh and new again. My mind is kind of like a continuous tape loop that goes round-and-round recording something and then erasing it a little later. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though. My poor memory and short attention span have probably actually helped me in advertising. Even though clients come to me over and over again with essentially the same problem, it always seems new to me. You'll never become stale if you have to keep reinventing the wheel every time you do something.

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