Day 612 - Janet's Birthday

Our birthday celebrations have much gotten simpler as the years go by. We used to make reservations weeks in advance at a fancy restaurant. Now, we're pared things back to the basics: cake and alcohol. Yeah, I know that I can't drink anymore, but I cut myself some slack on birthdays and holidays. I don't think its good to be too rigid about anything. At any rate, we had a nice dinner at home with the dogs and Janet was happy with everything except being a year older.

Tomorrow evening we're having another Dalmatian Rescue Casino Party, so we need to get up early to go set up the gaming tables. For this benefit, we've teamed up with a local restaurant, and are hoping for a good turnout. The restaurant is promoting the party too, but we still don't know whether we'll have a huge crowd tomorrow or an empty room. A huge crowd would be nice.

You would think it would be getting a little cooler by now. The days are definitely getting shorter again, but the temperature was still 108 today. I got stuck in traffic while I was running errands this afternoon and I noticed that my car was starting to overheat. One more month and the worst will be over. The cooler weather couldn't come fast enough for me. I'm tired of worrying about overheating cars and air conditioner failures. In the winter, all I've got to worry about are roof leaks.

Today's writing assignment was coming up with a branding story for a new product with absolutely no history. I asked the client how they wanted me to write this story and they basically told me to just make it up. Sure. I can do that. This is actually branding in its most elemental form: total fabrication.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 611

I was out and about quite a bit today. I had meetings to go to, shopping to do, and things to retrieve from the storage warehouse. I've gotten so used to doing virtually everything online that doing things in the real world seems almost impossibly slow and antiquated. Parking is never a problem when I'm buying something on Amazon. Hot cars aren't a problem online either. I need to remember to always make a trip to the grocery store the last thing on my list, so the food won't spoil while I'm shopping somewhere else. Today, I had to make the trip to the storage warehouse the last thing on the agenda, because I was picking up some dry mounted prints and I didn't want the foam core mounting board to warp in the hot car. I had to visit the Apple Store. I'm always amazed at how crowded Apple Stores are. As I passed by the Northpark store today, it seemed like half the people in the entire mall were crowded into this one store. The two adjacent stores were virtually empty.

I wonder if anyone is looking at my Instagram pictures? There doesn't seem to be any way to label these pictures. When they arrive on Facebook or Twitter, it just says that I have uploaded a picture and then you have to click on the link to see what it is. Maybe there actually is a way to add Instagram titles. Like most of my iPhone apps, I've never bothered to read the instructions.

Yay! Project Runway is back for another season. I thought tonight's show would be the season opener, but obviously I was off by a few weeks. I'm glad I caught tonight's show anyway. Each contestant had to make an outfit for Nina Garcia to wear and Nina definitely isn't the easiest person in the world to please. One segment made me laugh when Nina told one of the contestant's that her sketch looked a bit "too Dynasty." The girl had this totally blank look on her face. She didn't have any idea what Nina was talking about and probably wasn't even born yet when Dynasty was on the air.

Just in case you're wondering, I did remember to take the trash out tonight.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 610

I think the most exciting thing I did all day was a load of laundry. Don't get me wrong. I was as busy as usual doing my website revisions and writing assignments. It just wasn't very exciting. It's ironic to me that once I get proficient enough at something for people to feel comfortable paying me, I've usually lost interest. My office cubicle friends don't have much sympathy for my situation though. They usually just mumble something like "welcome to the work world" and wander off. It would be nice if you could get paid for learning new things. I'd love a job where my job description was "test pilot of ideas" or something equally fanciful. Not very likely though. People are much more comfortable paying you when you're safe and predictable.

My Instagram picture today is Erykah-Badu's house. On hot days, this is usually where the dogs and I turn around on our walks and start heading home again. In cooler weather, we walk a bit further to a place called The Stone Tables. Today was pretty hot, so we turned around here.

Ten hours later, when it was time for obedience class, I don't think the temperature had cooled down a bit. None of the dogs seemed the least bit interested in the proceedings tonight. I wouldn't be surprised if Dash felt exactly the same way about obedience class as I often feel about website design. The recall exercises, the heeling and even the jumps have all become very predictable. I'm sure that Dash would get a lot more excited if we would take him up to this same field and just let him chase rabbits.

Tomorrow's going to be a busy day. I've got an animal rescue meeting where people are sure to tell me that I'm already late with their promotional materials. I've got to get some large prints ready to go to the frame shop that I promised last month. I'd better go do some shopping too. Janet's got a birthday coming up soon.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 609

I really like Instagram. If I can ever remember to put my phone in my pocket, I'm going to start documenting my daily routine. There's something nice about these little square photos that seems to complement the blog and foursquare and everything else. The thing I like most about these photos is that there is no option to upload from an album. You have to actually take a picture on the spot with your phone for the application to work. As a result, photographers aren't uploading carefully edited portfolios. They're just taking spontaneous pictures. Very cool!

I keep reading all these serious sounding discussions on Google+ about privacy vs public sharing. I can see both sides to this argument, but there's a hidden benefit to public posting that nobody seems to be talking about. When Alzheimer's and dementia start to set in, I can go back to my blog and foursquare and Instagram and reconstruct every place I've ever been, everything I've ever seen and every thought that's crossed my mind. Maybe memory isn't all that important if your experiences are all out in the cloud somewhere. When my parents were getting old, I noticed a lot of people going around with tape recorders making aural histories, so the past wouldn't slip away. Probably there aren't as many untold stories anymore. Increasingly, our collective stories are just a few clicks away on Google.

Dash had his biweekly antigen shot today. I was skeptical at first, but the medicine appears to be working. Dash's coat looks almost as good as Dot's these days. He'll probably have to continue taking the injections for the rest of his life, but since there are few, if any, side effects to the drug, I think his quality of life will be a lot better. As I was getting Dash ready for the ride over to the vet, I got a call about Dot. Her thyroid levels are a bit low. It is nothing serious. My vet just wanted to let us know. If my own medical care was half as good as these dogs get, I'd probably live ten years longer.

I got a message from Germany the other day asking if I'd be interested in flying to Houston to interview someone from Brazil. This is what the world has come to. I sit in my little room with the dogs, but I'm just as much of a global company as Coca Cola or McDonald's. It doesn't matter if you're making pottery or selling dog collars on eBay, if you don't currently think of yourself as global, you're probably missing the one chance you've got left to make some decent money.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 608

Do you ever feel that you're spending too much time re-learning things you already know? I do. I wanted to make a few high quality Giclée prints on my new printer this afternoon and discovered that even though the Epson 4880 looked exactly like my old Epson 4000 printer, it was a different beast entirely. The ink was different. The ICC profiles were different. Even the paper path seemed slightly different. Consequently, I wasted some expensive watercolor paper trying to duplicate something I used to be able to do in my sleep. Like it or not, I'm going to have to go back to square one and recalibrate everything. I had the same problem when I switched from Photoshop 7.0 to CS5. Even though CS5 was a big improvement, it was also a big irritation, since a lot of the techniques I had perfected over the years simply didn't work anymore. Sometimes I wish people would simply stop improving things. It's going to take me the rest of my life to master all the features of stuff I already have.

As irritating as new things can be, I still can't resist something new. Today I joined Instagram. I have no idea who actually follows you on Instagram or why, but I do like the little square images the app produces. I took a few Instagram pictures today with my iPhone and was instantly transported back to the days when I shot a lot of stuff using Hasselblad and Bronica cameras. I've always liked the 2 1/4” x 2 1/4” square image format. Somehow I find it easier to compose things inside a square frame. This is probably just one more indication of how rigid and inflexible I've become. Just to prove that I'm really an easy going, flexible guy, I cropped one of my first Instagram pictures back into a rectangle for the blog.

It's time to give Dash another antigen shot. His skin is starting to look really good again, but maybe I ought to start giving the injections myself. These injections are supposed to be given subcutaneously, but the past several times the techs have given the injection in muscle and caused a nasty welt. I wish staying healthy wasn't so complicated. Dash appears to be getting better, but I seem to be getting worse. I'm increasingly convinced that I've got a pretty bad case of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. The last time I went to the doctor, I had them X-Ray my hands, since I thought that I might have sprained or broken my wrist. The X-Rays looked fine though and the only other thing I can think of that would cause this kind of pain is Carpal Tunnel. I really don't want the surgery if I can avoid it. I had a friend who had the surgery and his hands are worse now than they were before. I saw some special far infrared therapy gloves on the Internet that are supposed to help. Maybe I'll buy a pair. Gloves certainly sound easier than surgery.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 607

I wonder if there is a twelve step program for people addicted to online stats. For me, it all started innocently enough with Google Analytics. Then I discovered that Anayltics wasn't the only game in town. There were literally dozens of sites dedicated to analyzing and ranking your online efforts. There were places like Klout, Peerindex, Crowdbooster and many more. Then there was foursquare and Instagram. There was even a place called Photorank.me dedicated to measuring the quantity and quality of your online photo uploads. You just wonder where all this measurement is going to end? It's probably only a matter of time before someone comes out with a WiFi One Touch Meter and people start competing to see who has the highest blood sugar levels. Lord help us if anyone ever starts manufacturing a WiFi toilet.

I did check in on foursquare at the Waggin Tail Dog Park today, but it wasn't much of a competition. We were almost the only ones there. We got off to a late start today and by the time we arrived, most of the people who come early to avoid the heat had already left. Dash had a good time though. There were only three other dogs in the park and all of them seemed to like him. Dash is getting better in the car as well. The trip to the park has become routine enough that he no longer has panic attacks. He still whines, but that's normal.

I mowed the grass, vacuumed the house, and finished the charity website I started working on yesterday. All in all, it was a pretty productive day. Actually, I probably got a lot more done today than I will tomorrow. I can never reach anyone on Monday's. I call and they're always in a status meeting. I leave a message and they eventually call me back on Wednesday. Does everybody have Monday status meetings? It certainly appears that way. I never have status meetings. I already know my status: I'm a dog walker who just happens to write and take pictures.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 606

Janet had to make some airline reservations last night and when she printed out the receipt, she discovered that American Airlines had added a $50 surcharge for talking to a reservations agent on the phone. I couldn't believe it. I knew that airlines were pushing people to do everything online these days, but this seemed pretty extreme. These guys really didn't want you to call them on the phone. It's probably a sign of things to come. I find it harder and harder to get a real person on the phone for any situation. Automated phone systems are almost impenetrable. There is usually a secret word that will let you bypass the automated messages and talk to a real person, but nobody wants to tell you the secret. Once, when I was stuck in automated message hell for fifteen minutes with Paypal, I finally got someone to tell me that if you said the word agent very quickly three times in a row, you could bypass the robots and get a real agent. Virtual agents on websites are even worse. Why spend ten minutes typing back and forth when a short conversation would resolve everything. Somehow, we have taken a wonderful invention like the telephone and ruined it.

It finally rained today. Well, technically it rained last night, but it was still sprinkling a little early this morning. Even though I didn't get the roof patched in time, I was still happy to see the cooler weather. The temperature must have been twenty degrees lower today. It was actually quite pleasant. The only one who didn't like the rain was Dot. Dot hates rain and even this gentle shower stressed her out. She got so worked up, she threw up right after breakfast. Once the rain stopped, she was right back to normal though.

I have to design a new website this weekend. I don't have any information to put on the pages, but that's never stopped me before. I'll just insert some plausible placeholder information until the real information eventually materializes. I'm always amazed at how often the real information never appears and my placeholder text gradually becomes the real text by default.

When I was running errands today, I noticed that the left rear tire on the Defender was quite low. One good thing about off-road tires is that they'll run with almost no air in them. I continued my shopping and when I eventually got home with the groceries, I dug the air compressor out from under a pile of Dalmatian Rescue event paraphernalia and pumped all the tires up again. Seems like I did something like this three or four months ago. I must have a slow leak.

I made good progress on my website design this afternoon and with any luck at all, I'll finish things up tomorrow with plenty of time left over to vacuum the house and take the dogs to the dog park.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 605

I look at this blog as a public service. If you read it long enough, you'll come to realize that your own life is far more interesting than mine and feel better about yourself. Janet laughs at me for being Mayor of the Post Office on foursquare. "Can't you find something more interesting to be Mayor of," she says. Well, not really.

There was certainly nothing earth shattering happening today. I paid a few bills, brought some spreadsheet records up to date and finished writing a couple of ad assignments. And yes, I did go to the Post Office. It was hot again today and I had trouble getting the dogs back inside after lunch. Maybe they're suffering from light deprivation, because they love to spend time outside even on the hottest days. I've got to watch how long they're out in the sun though, since Dalmatians sunburn easily.

I never did get the Henry 209 roof patch cement at Home Depot that I promised myself I would take care of today. The writing job this afternoon took longer than I though and there were a couple of emergency web updates as well. I'd better get this chore done tomorrow, because I keep hearing that it might rain this weekend. When the mail arrived, there was another late registration notice from the city for Dot. This happens every year right after she gets her new city tags at her annual exam. Somehow, we're permanently out of sync with the city. I'll need to call them on Monday and explain that the pooch is completely legal and up to date on everything.

I got momentarily excited when UPS delivered a large mystery package addressed to me toward the end of the day. I didn't remember ordering anything. I initially though Paypal might be sending me a free logo jacket or tote bag for being an advertising spokesperson, but the package just turned out to be a spare paper tray for my printer. I must have ordered the thing, but my mind still draws a blank.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 604

We finally broke our relentless string to 100 degree days. I think it only got up to 88 degrees today. Oddly, some people in town were disappointed by the cooler weather, since we were only two days away from setting an all time record for 100 degree days. I was certainly happy enough to forgo the record for another year. It was actually pleasant to walk the dogs today. There was even a nice breeze this afternoon. Admitedly, it's not quite jacket weather yet, but it's a start.

One of my clients wanted to change the bios of all 35 employees on their website today. When I read the new bios, they all seemed virtually the same as the old bios, but the changes certainly mattered to somebody. You can tell a lot about a company by how they deal with employees on their website. Some people want to change things around every time an employee gets a new cat. Other folks don't even bother to remove employees who have died.

It's hard to figure this market out. Another big up day today, but I still don't know if it's time to start buying again. The people who bought during the huge sell-off a few days ago will make a very nice profit if they guessed right about a bottom being established. If we continue bouncing around however, they will make nothing. Personally, I don't see enough good news on the horizon to keep this ship afloat forever. I'm going to wait a while.

I am going to go out and buy some more roof patch tomorrow. I might not be able to tell when the economy will improve, but I do know that there will be water on the roof again. There were enough clouds in the sky today to make me think that it actually might rain in the foreseeable future. After all this dry weather, if it rains again before I re-seal all the cracked areas on the roof, I only have myself to blame.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 603

The heat is really starting to get to people. The talk at dog training class tonight centered around broken air conditioners, shifting foundations, and hot water coming out of the cold water tap. We're close to setting an all time record for longest number of days above 100 degrees. I'm amazed our own air conditioner hasn't had any problems. It's been running 24x7 for weeks now. I just hope it will just hang in there for another month. By mid-September, things should start cooling down again.

I think my broker is getting sick of all my questions. He is encouraging me to use the company's real time site, so I can see what is happening as it happens, instead of calling him all the time. I need to explain that this would probably only make things worse. If I could always see what was happening to my portfolio in real time, I'd probably have twice as many questions. Something must be working though. All the major indexes dropped between 4 and 5 percent today and I held my losses to less than one percent.

I had to take a stool sample to the vet today to complete Dot's yearly exam. I took a plastic bag with me on our walk this morning so I could gather a sample. Unfortunately after I put the bag in my back pocket, I forgot it was there and ended up sitting down on it as soon as I got back in the house. Yuk. At least the bag didn't break.

I bought Adobe Lightroom yesterday when I discovered there was a special one day only sale on the Adobe website offering the software for 50% off. I was real pleased with myself until I downloaded the software and discovered it was almost exactly the same as Apple's Aperture 3.0 which I already had. With all these powerful ways to organize my pictures, I'm going to go out and start taking some new pictures. I've taken very few personal pictures this summer. My favorite time to go shoot is on cloudy bright days with no shadows. Right after a rain is perfect. We haven't had many of these days recently.

I fixed a couple of Janet's watches this afternoon. Somehow, this slow delicate work seems peaceful compared to my usual fare of racing to complete a 1200 word article to meet an end of day deadline. It's amazing how much faster my writing has become, now that budgets are lower.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 602

Today was a day of questions and answers. I tried to explain to a client why a 72 DPI image that was only 300x200 pixels in size wouldn't look very good when printed in their upcoming calendar. I tried to explain to another client why I couldn't keep making modification to their website indefinitely without charging them for the changes. I tried to get the folks at Epson to explain to me why my warranty had already "expired" on a printer that I just purchased last month. Nothing seems to be easy or obvious these days.

The biggest mystery of the day was why the stock market dropped 200 points right after the Fed report was released, only to bounce back almost 700 points just an hour or so later. It just doesn't make any sense. Nothing fundamentally had changed. The news from the Federal Reserve that people apparently hated right after lunch is still exactly the same as it was when the news was released. The only thing that I can think of is that the steep drop in prices triggered computerized buy programs designed to snap up bargains, and when the program trading kicked in, everyone else feared they were going to be left behind and started buying as well. The market just doesn't act rational anymore. To me, it's starting to act more like a flash mob.

Dot had her annual exam today. For a dog that's ten years old, she's really very healthy. The vet wanted to change her food, because she has too much protein in her diet for a senior dog. She's going to need her teeth cleaned as well, since she's starting to show some redness around her gum line. Older dogs are prone to gingivitis and we're going to have to work at keeping her teeth clean as she get older. Dash keeps his teeth cleaner looking because he likes to chew bones. Dot refuses to chew bones or chew toys however.

I've been watching all the mindless rioting in England on television and wondering if the same thing could happen here. Sadly, I think it could. I don't think this sort of thing would happen in Singapore though. It probably wouldn't happen in China either. Something has gone terribly wrong with Western values. These riots in England weren't the "Arab Spring" riots we witnessed earlier this year. There was no oppressive regime that needed to be removed. These rioters are just spoiled thugs. I have a friend who is a well known author of parenting books. He tells me that when you bring up several generations of children who think that the entire world revolves around them, society starts to crumble. I think he's right.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 601

What a dismal day. I got my August invoices out this morning and was forced to acknowledge that everything I billed out for the entire month didn't even come close to offsetting what I lost in the market in a single day. I'm utilizing a complex strategy involving gold, managed futures and inverse ETF's to minimize the carnage as best I can, but there's no way to avoid losing money on a day like this.

On the business shows, I keep hearing about contagion. The pundits keep wondering if the contagion will spread. I've got news for you guys. It's a bit late to worry about contagion when the patient already has the disease. When you look at all the mindless riots in London, the ineffectiveness of our congress here in the United States, the endless unrest in the Middle East, and the fact that the entire world is drowning in debt, it's no surprise that the markets were in turmoil today. We've managed to make a big mess of things and I wonder if we've got what it takes to clean everything up. What did that nursery rhyme say? All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.

On a brighter note, I'm now the mayor of the Post Office on foursquare. Pretty soon I'll be the mayor of everything in my tiny, self-contained world. Foursquare has made me realize that I really don't do all that much away from the computer. If Dalmatians could design websites, I think my life would be more or less identical to what my dogs currently experience. Eat. Work. Sleep. Repeat. That's about it.

For months now, I've kept thinking that one of the wooden mileage markers on a trail where I walk the dogs was out of place. There was a marker that said "1/2" that was placed after the one mile marker. I was convinced this marker should have been placed before the one mile marker, until I realized today that it was exactly midway between the one mile and two mile markers. Duh. It's been saying one and a half miles all along. What a dummy I am.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 600

Our Casino Party last night was held at a restaurant called Seňor Jalapeño. I'd never heard of this restaurant before and probably won't be back again, but it certainly caught my attention. The place was located in a nondescript strip center in a marginal neighborhood. It wasn't what you'd expect though. When you went inside, the place was spotlessly clean and was exceptionally well designed for a hole-in-the-wall cafe. The decor was all clean lines and Mediterranean colors. There was definitely an architect involved somewhere. On the walls were a series of framed drawings of various architectural projects. They kind of looked like student projects but I wasn't sure. I liked the designs. Before I got a change to ask questions, the party started and I spent the rest of the evening spinning the roulette wheel. I still wonder who built this restaurant and why? The food wasn't particularly good, but the place looked wonderful.

I couldn't really figure out who was at the party either. I knew it was a political action committee that hired Dalmatian Rescue for the event, but the people attending certainly didn't seem like political operatives. Each table was sponsored by a different local judge or state representative, but none of the sponsors seemed to be in attendance. The people who were at the party did like to gamble though and everyone appeared to have a good time. Who knows. Maybe these folks will hire us again and I'll be able to learn who is behind the mysterious Seňor Jalapeño.

There was nothing mysterious about today. It was just another hot August Sunday. We took the dogs to the dog park early to avoid as much of the heat as we could and then went about our Sunday chores. Dot and Dash got a bath today, which they hate, but it was definitely time. Dogs get dirty quickly in the Summer. I gave the shrubs in the back yard a bath too. It's probably hopeless keeping the yard looking green. The water coming out of the garden hose this afternoon was actually hot.

I was still in a cleaning mood when I finished the yard chores, so I took some more stuff down to the storage warehouse. Even though I've given myself an entire year to get my office cleaned up, I still don't know whether I'll be able to meet my self-imposed deadline. It's August already and at best, I'm only about halfway to the finish line. It's discouraging to spend time at the storage room too. The place is a museum of failed projects and unrealized dreams. Other people build relationships. I buy tools. I've got a tool to start just about any project imaginable, but only about 10% of these projects ever get finished.

All is not lost however. It's Day 600 today. This humble blog appears to be a project I haven't given up on yet. Writing for 600 straight days without missing a single post has got to be an achievement of sorts. If I can make it to Day 1000, I'll either get a book deal or carpel tunnel.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 599

Early this morning, we went and set up the gaming tables for this evening's Dalmatian Rescue Casino Party. A political action committee is hiring us to do the party this time. I wish more PAC's would hire us. Politicians have a lot more money for these type of things than people planning a 40th birthday party for their husband. We don't turn many people down, however. The dogs waiting for homes still need food and medical care, even when adoptions are slow.

I saw an ad on television saying that new episodes of Dr. Who are coming back later this month. That's good news. With an endless string of 100 degree days and an economic meltdown on the horizon, a little escape is probably good medicine. I could watch Dr. Who, Top Gear, MI-5 and Fawlty Towers over and over again. I probably already have watched some of these shows over and over again. British television is just better. I think the last American show I really liked was Frasier, but I continue to enjoy newer offerings from the UK, like Outnumbered and After You've Gone.

No TV tonight though. I'll be spinning the roulette wheel, like I normally do at Dalmatian Rescue parties. I've watched dealers in Vegas and this seems like it would be a very stressful job. Being a dealer for charity parties is much more relaxed. Most of our players seem to be little kids who have no idea what they are doing. A little pretend gambling with Monopoly money still seems pretty exotic to them.

I wonder how far the dogs are going to want to walk this evening. Probably not far at all. Both dogs are getting pretty smart about dealing with the heat. They used to keep walking until they got too hot and then just sat down and refused to go further. Now, they are learning to drink from water fountains and are turning around to head home again before the heat gets to them. Our walks are shorter, but the return journey is much less traumatic.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 598

I got my electric bill today. We've had hot Summers before in Texas, but I can't recall ever seeing an electric bill this high. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. The air conditioner has been running 24x7 for three weeks solid. It doesn't even cool down enough at night anymore to bring the inside temperature down to a comfortable 75 degrees. I guess I could just set the thermostat higher so the compressor would eventually shut off, but I hate to sweat while I work. Impossible deadlines are bad enough, but sweaty impossible deadlines are simply unacceptable.

After watching the DOW bounce around like a billiard ball all day, I can't say I feel any better than I did yesterday. Sure, the market closed up 60 points, but a 60 point gain after a 500 point drop can hardly be called a rally. I can't imagine what's going to happen Monday morning. As Janet and I were eating dinner, a message scrolled across the screen on the TV saying that Standard & Poors had just lowered the nation's credit rating. Hey, another first for the country. Hardly as glamorous as that first step on the moon though. We should have seen this coming twenty years ago when everybody and their uncle started buying houses with a zero down payment. I had a well paying ad agency job at the time and remember driving through neighborhood after neighborhood thinking "Jeez, I can't afford these houses, I wonder how all these other people can?" The truth was, they couldn't either. You simply can't spend more than you make indefinitely, either as an individual or as a country.

Dalmatian Rescue is feeling the money crunch too. We've had a lot of sick dogs this year, so we're having another casino party fundraiser tomorrow night to help pay the vet bills. The plan is to go set up all the tables tomorrow morning, before it gets too hot. I think we could set everything up in the middle of the night and it would still be too hot.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 597

The big news of the day has to be the 500 point drop in the market. I sold some things; held on to some other things; and bought an inverse fund that goes up whenever the DOW goes down. Will these strategies help to stem the carnage? Lord only knows. I've just about given up on predicting the stock market. The market seems to be totally driven by current events these days. It's all amazingly fickle. If anything good happens tomorrow, the world will breathe a collective sigh of relief and the market might go up 400 points. Who knows? Of course, if tomorrow's jobs report is dismal, as many expect, the market will inevitably drop even further. Whatever happens, there's a good chance that we will all be selling our stuff on eBay and picking up aluminum cans on the side of the road in another ten years.

The dream of substantial passive income seems as illusive as ever. I think I made three cents from Google Adsense today. I seem to have thousands of Twitter followers writing YA vampire novels, but I wonder if many of these aspiring authors are actually making money? My favorite Borders Books closed recently because the company went bankrupt. Half the Kindle books I see are given away for free. I have one author friend whose last book sold over a million copies and even he isn't rich. I keep hearing all these Field of Dreams people say that if you are doing what you truly love, the money will come. Maybe. In my own little world, the evidence says otherwise. The people I know personally who are doing really well all have jobs they hate.

It's hard to decide what car to take to the airport to pick up Janet later this evening. An old, brittle rubber hose could easily crack in the old Land Rover and leave me stranded on the side of the road. On the other hand, the heat might fry a computerized sub-system in the new Land Rover and leave me stranded on the side of the road. I'm really ready for this extended heat wave to be over. Even the simplest things seem twice as hard when it's 110 degrees outside.

At least it's Friday tomorrow. I've got the trash hauled out to the street already and I'm ready for anything.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 596

Now that I'm writing a lot about watches, I've started noticing that there are other watch writers out there. Some of these folks seem to routinely get invited to polo matches in Argentina and are given expensive watches by manufacturers to "evaluate." Jeez, I must be one of the most unglamorous watch writers on the planet. None of these things has ever happened to me. I do occasionally write as if I'm at a glamorous red carpet event, but I'm really just sitting here at the computer with a dog under my desk. Although I keep waiting for a small package in the mail , nobody has sent me a watch yet either. Come on, Omega and Rolex. Send me a nice timepiece and I'll get a beautiful Dalmatian to wear it for you. See if you other watch writers can top that.

A word to the wise. If it's 110 degrees outside, don't even try to go out and mow the grass. I got the mower out this morning and almost keeled over from the heat. It is unbelievably hot this Summer. I think we have gone way beyond the "fry an egg on the sidewalk" stage. We take our morning walks earlier now, because every hour we wait means an increase in temperature. If we walk right around sunrise, it is only 88 degrees. If we wait until a few hours later, the temperature is already over 100 degrees. I really ought to get up on the roof while it's hot and dry like this and do some serious patching, but I'm afraid I would stick to the melting tar.

I watched the old 2007 Top Gear episode where Richard and James make a futile attempt to launch a space shuttle made out of an old Reliant Robin for probably the third time while I was eating dinner this evening. I love this show. I always tell people that if women really want to know what men are like, all they need to do is watch a full season of Top Gear.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 595

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

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

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

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

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 594

I heard that it got up to 108 degrees outside today. I wouldn't doubt it. When I took the dogs on their evening walk, it felt like we were inside a furnace. Needless to say, we didn't stay outside long. Dot and Dash have actually adapted pretty well to the Summer heat wave. They do their business right away now and then turn around immediately to indicate they are ready to go home. We spend most of the day indoors, hoping that the air conditioner doesn't break.

I worked on a few writing jobs today and paid some bills. It really wasn't a very productive day. I always think I should be out marketing the company on days like this, but I don't even know how to connect with people in the real world anymore. You certainly can't just call them on the phone and ask if you could pop over in 30 minutes and show them your portfolio. People are too busy for that. I don't even answer the phone myself unless it is someone I already know. Probably a lot of other people do the same. On the bright side of things, I am starting to get work from online connections, but the budgets aren't the same. More work for less money is the name of the game. Brave new world, I guess.

I made some calls today trying to figure out whether Avid Media Composer will work on my existing computer hardware. Nobody seemed to know. They were certainly willing to sell me the software anyway though. I'm going to need to replace Final Cut Pro soon, but I'd hate to buy something that isn't going to work. I guess that's what these 30-day free download trials are all about. Nobody has customer service gurus anymore who can answer all your questions over the phone. You just download the trial software along with the 100 page PDF file manual and figure it out for yourself.

While I'm on the subject of technology, I might as well tell you that my brand new large format printer is already starting to clog. There's nothing wrong with the printer. I just don't make enough large format prints to keep the lines clean. Somehow, this has become a general theme with me. I don't take enough pictures to remember everything my digital cameras can do. I don't do enough video editing to remember all the keyboard shortcuts. I don't even design enough websites to remember how to properly insert PHP code into my HTML.

I do a lot of writing though. I'm actually writing a lot more that I was ten years ago. I think my writing has improved a bit and I've certainly gotten faster. Unfortunately, I'm not content to just be a writer. I feel compelled to try anything and everything. In a way I envy those people who are content with their chosen specialty. If I could have ever focused my attention on just one thing, I'd probably be really good at it by now.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 593

I needed to take Janet to the airport a lot earlier than we anticipated because the online reservation system wouldn't assign her a seat. This has happened to me as well, and it is always frustrating. You have to arrive early and wait and wait until they finally release your seat at the last possible moment. I always think I have been reclassified as a stand-by passenger and won't get a seat at all. Actually, I've gotten so used to printing out a boarding pass online and going straight to the gate that anything else seems unacceptable.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I rewrote a watch article that needed revision. I drove over to Fry's Electronics and wandered aimlessly around the camera section for a while. I went to Lowes and picked up a timer for the sprinklers. The dogs didn't want to go outside at all, but I took them on their evening walk anyway. I learned a long time ago that a walk in the heat is a lot more desirable than having the dogs wake you up in the middle of the night so you can take them outside to do their business.

I wonder if Google+ would be any good as a blogging platform? You can write as much as you want. It's easy to comment. It's friendly with pictures and video. Sure sounds like a blog to me. The whole experience is much more bloglike than Facebook, since only your own posts appear on your profile page. So many different things can appear on your Facebook wall that it doesn't even feel like your own page after a while. I'm going to stick with the blog, but it sure would be easy to just start blogging on Google+. Personally, I hope that this is the last new social network I encounter for quite a while. Checking in on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ everyday is all the activity I need. Please don't invent any more of these things.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 592

I was doing some video editing today and discovered, much to my chagrin, that my little laptop is much better suited for this task than my large, and very well equipped desktop machine. I kind of suspected as much when I was editing YouTube videos on the fly in Houston last May, but I never had anything convenient to compare. The desktop is only a few years older than the notebook, but the difference in processor speed apparently makes a huge difference. It's things like this that force me to buy new equipment a lot more often than I'd like. Once you've experienced faster, it's real hard to go back to slower again.

The dogs got their trip to the dog park today, instead of on Sunday as they usually do. Tomorrow, I need to take Janet to the airport and it's just going to be too busy. I don't think the dogs care what day they go to the dog park. They just like the attention. Dash was much better behaved today. We placed a spray bottle filled with water in one of the cup holders in the console between the front seats. We didn't even need to squirt Dash with the water. He just looked at the bottle and kept his mouth shut. I may be wrong, but I think this would tend to indicate that Dash doesn't have any underlying fear of cars. He's just being a bad dog.

I couldn't turn on the television today without landing on a channel that was showing live coverage of the debt ceiling debate in congress. I wonder if these guys have any idea how irritating their actions are to their constituents? The house wastes a lot of time passing a bill that they know in advance will never get though the senate. Then the senate turn around and does exactly the same thing in reverse. Two or three week ago I asked my broker if he had a contingency plan if the country defaulted. He brushed the whole thing off and said nobody would ever be stupid enough to let this happen. I wonder what he's thinking now? I think the odds are about 50/50 now that the country actually will default.

Two weeks ago I had three pair of those little Apple ear buds sitting on my desk. Now, I can't find any of them. I've looked everywhere and they've just disappeared. I think somewhere in my office there's a tiny black hole that just sucks things into it.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day