Day 935

There's one guaranteed way of making it rain. All I have to to is go to Home Depot and buy a bunch of things that would be handy in a drought. Since it has been pretty dry for the past several weeks, I picked up some soaker hoses to water the Photinia bushes. I got another sprinkler for a hard to reach spot in the back of the yard. I even got some more Henry 209 Roof Patch. The rain started before I even got home.

I've got mixed emotions about rain in the Summer. I still have roof problems whenever it rains, but the yard really needs the water. You really can't have a dry roof without the worry of a dead yard. Today's rain was brief, but it packed a wallop. High winds knocked over a large construction crane, and then blew a man off a paddle board on the lake behind out house.

Since I was stuck in the house waiting for the rain to stop, I thought I'd try hooking up a MIDI keyboard to my computer. The keyboard had been hooked up to an older computer for years, but I had kind of lost interest in it. When I plugged it into my current computer, the keyboard didn't work at all. This initiated a long Google search to see what the problem was. I finally got the thing to work after a fashion, but the real problem is that Apple has no interest in staying compatible with older equipment anymore. This keyboard was just one of many things that worked perfectly on my older Macs, but has compatibility problems now.

I had a hard time getting the dogs to go on their evening walk. Dot kept hearing thunder off in the distance and didn't want to go outside. It didn't matter to her that the storm was over and the thunder was headed away from us. She was having no part of it. Eventually, the skies returned to normal and I took the dogs on their walk. They both refused to poop though, so it was kind of a wasted effort.

Maybe the weather will be better tomorrow. Then again, it might rain. That's the way it is during the Summer in Texas. You just never know.

Dalaney is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 934

Today was a somewhat social day for a solitary soul like myself. I went back to the cool restaurant for breakfast this morning and ran into a photographer friend who lives in the neighborhood. He and I could easily have talked about the declining revenues of commercial photographers, or what to do with old film cameras, but we found something far more interesting to chat about: the behavior of our dogs.

I find these little neighborhood restaurants fascinating. They are all located with a few miles of my house. They all have a basically similar menu. But each restaurant seems to attract a completely different group of people. The cool restaurant seems to attract advertising people, which isn't surprising, since advertising people are drawn to trendy things like moths to a flame. The restaurant with the good bacon seems to attract school teachers. I never dreamed that school teachers had so much time on their hands until I started going to this place. Surprisingly, the restaurant with the best food doesn't attract anybody at all. The place does a good dinner business, but nobody seems to come for breakfast. In another surprise, the restaurant with the unhealthiest menu seems to attract the very people who need healthy food the most. I actually like all these places, but still think my own cooking is the best.

I was starting to look like Don Imus on a bad hair day, so I went and got a haircut this afternoon. Morning and afternoon conversation is kind of a rarity for me. My hair stylist likes to talk about vacations and family problems. I don't like to talk about either of these things, but do my best to keep up my end of the conversation. I often think I could save a fortune by just going to a regular barber, but a good haircut is one of those little luxuries you really hate to give up. Betty is expensive, but she never fails to make me look younger, so I guess it's worth it.

I wish they had iPads when I was first learning to play the guitar. I've installed GarageBand on my iPad and am using it to practice playing my new guitar. It's fabulous. The iPad is small and unobtrusive and yet the GarageBand software faithfully emulates half a dozen well known guitar amps. If I play through earphones, I don't bother Janet either. So far, I'm having a lot of fun relearning things I forgot twenty years ago. The best thing is that playing doesn't bother my hand as much as I though it would. I'm beginning to think the exercise might actually be good for my Carpal Tunnel.

So, for those of you who think I'm too negative, I've had a good day. I had breakfast with a friend, got a haircut that made me look younger, and took a trip down memory lane with my Stratocaster. Not bad for a Friday.

Cisco is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 933

Life is unpredictable to say the least. I think of myself as a rock 'n roll, art gallery kind of guy. Imagine my surprise when I learned that a nature magazine wanted to interview me for an article. That's what happened though. You can read the resulting interview in today's edition of Nature Center Magazine. I guess it all makes sense in an odd sort of way. I don't go to concerts anymore and I rarely visit art galleries. How do I spend my days? I walk my dogs through the woods.

Maybe my daily walks with the Dalmatians make me more of a nature buff than I might have thought. I've certainly learned a bit about plants and animals during our walks. I'll be the first to tell you that photographing squirrels isn't quite as exciting as photographing fashion models, but the same principles apply. I try my best to make the squirrels look pretty. I also try to avoid snakes and poison ivy. I just like the pretty parts of nature.

I thought I might be able to escape work entirely this week, but no such luck. My clients seem to be slowly but surely returning to their offices. I got several new assignments today and actually managed to finish one of them. I'm still slaving away on my big website makeover project as well. Remind me never to do a site with over 400 pages again. It's simply too big. Even though I created the original site that I am now in the process of updating, I can't even remember half the stuff I added over the years. As I struggle to simplify things, I wonder if any of these obscure pages were ever really important.

While I was feeding the dogs lunch today, I heard a loud crash up on the roof. It sounded like a big, dead tree limb had fallen right over the bedroom. I climbed up to take a look and what did I see? Nothing! There were no fallen tree limbs, no debris, nothing at all. I even looked over the edge of the roof to see if the limb had bounced off the roof and landed on the ground below.  Nothing on the ground either. Now, I'm wondering if I was just imaging things. I know I heard a loud noise though. I'll probably wonder about this for weeks.

Isabella is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 932 - Independence Day

It kind of felt like a work day this morning. Janet left the house early to serve as a judge in a neighborhood Fourth of July parade. I tried to get the dogs out on their morning walk before it got too hot outside. When we returned, I fixed myself French Toast for breakfast. After doing the breakfast dishes, I worked on my website chores, just like I usually do. When Janet returned from the parade around noon, we all decided it was a holiday after all.

The dogs got a treat and got to go to the dog park twice in a single week. We got a treat as well, since the weather was cooler and being outside was actually pleasant. I'm a little nervous about being outside though after seeing something on TV last night about a new case of West Nile Virus being discovered in our own zip code.

The city is supposed to be spraying for mosquitoes, but I haven't seen them spray in our neighborhood yet. There is still an abundance of mosquitoes outside. They're everywhere this year. People might have actually outnumbered mosquitoes in the park today however. As is usually the case on holidays like this, the place was packed. There was a 10K race through the park this morning. There were sailboat races down on the lake and there were impromptu picnics everywhere. I saw large swarms of dragonflies for the first time this Summer as well. I'd like to get some good photos of these interesting insects, but they never stay still. It's hard for me to even get the camera focused on them before they fly away.

We had barbecued ribs, potato salad and broccoli slaw for dinner tonight. It was good holiday fare. I even had a beer this evening. I remember similar holiday dinners when I was a kid. The only difference then was that while the parents were eating, the kids went around setting off all manner of fireworks. There were no regulations about fireworks that I can remember. My friends and I bought cherrybombs and M-80's by the dozens. We would put the M-80's inside rolls of toilet paper, throw them up in the air, and watch them explode. It was all a lot of fun, but it's a miracle that I still have all ten fingers.

Matao is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 931

For several days, I've been receiving e-mail from other bloggers warning me that Google Chrome browsers were restricting access to this blog, saying that it contained malware. What? There have never been any malicious widgets on the blog, and I hope there never will be. Since I usually use Firefox instead of Chrome, I wasn't even aware there was a problem until I received so many messages that I figured there must be something to the warning. I fired up Chrome to take a look, and sure enough, I was locked out as well. When I looked at the code for the blog, I discovered the words blogarama.com, which Google doesn't like. Like many bloggers, I used to display a button that linked to this site in hopes of getting more traffic. I removed the button over six months ago though, so I was still puzzled about why Google blocked me.

Well, it turns out that they blocked me just because I was lazy. Typically, I remove widgets, pictures and a wide assortment of other things from websites by just putting HTML comment tags around the material that I want to disappear. It only takes a few seconds to do this, and it's easy to reinstate the content if I change my mind later. I do this on my commercial websites all the time because my clients change their minds so often. Apparently, turning a link into a comment wasn't good enough for Google. They wanted everything scrubbed clean.  OK. You win. It was certainly easy enough to remove the comment too.

All this does leave me wondering about a society that is dead set on protecting everybody from themselves. Shouldn't we be able to decide for ourselves whether we want to visit a particular website? Shouldn't be be able to decide for ourselves whether to wear a bicycle helmet, smoke a cigarette, or drink a big gulp soda at a convenience store? It's all gotten pretty crazy. Most of the people riding bicycles in the park wear helmets, even though many of them are riding very slowly. On the other hand, I see people almost every day riding their Harleys down the freeway at 70 miles an hour with no helmet at all. Who is right? The Harley riders or the bicyclists? I'm probably on the side of the helmetless Harley riders, even though half of them will eventually get themselves killed. You really should be able to decide about motorcycle helmets, bacon, and websites on your own.

Today was even slower than yesterday. I think half of Texas is on vacation now. Other than searching for malicious code on my own blog and writing a little new code for for the website project I'm currently working on, I didn't get all that much accomplished today. I did make eggs and sausages for breakfast though, so it was a better day than yesterday.

Bob Hope is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 930

I didn't think much would be happening this week, and I was right. There were no phone calls today. With the exception of the usual spam, there were no e-mail messages either. It was a very quiet day. 

Days like this are dangerous, because I get bored and inevitably buy something online. Sure enough, about ten-thirty this morning I found myself wandering over to the Sweetwater site and looking at gear. I didn't want to spend much money. I just wanted to kill time. After wasting way too much time daydreaming, I ordered a nifty little interface that lets me use my iPad as a guitar amp.

With no deadlines to meet, I got started on my new website project. It turns out that the goal of distilling a complex site into something simple is a bit harder than I thought. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of pages on the existing site, and they all have been online forever. Since the old site does very well in Google search, I really hate to scrap it. I decided that I will just leave the old site on the server for Google to find while building a parallel new site on the same server. In the end, only the index page will be overwritten. This means I can never build a new page with the same name as one of the old pages. If there is a page called staff.html, the new page that replaces it has to be called employees.html, or something that won't overwrite the old page. Eventually, when all the newly designed pages get popular with the search engines, I can scrap the old pages. This all sounds like a good plan to me, but somewhere along the way, my client will probably throw me a curve ball that will render the whole strategy useless.

I'm such a predictable person. If you could see what I fixed for breakfast, you'd know how my entire day was going to go. When I eat cold cereal with a little fruit on top, I'd usually just rather go back to bed. If I fix eggs and sausages, it's going to be a productive but largely uninteresting day. If I fix French Toast, I probably woke up with a glimmer of an idea and may even appear to be inspired. Days when I eat out are the best of all, but this is only because it's Friday. If French Toast inspires me, you may ask why I just don't eat the stuff every day. I guess the short answer is that my favorite French Toast, sprinkled with powdered sugar and drenched in real maple syrup is the equivalent of a giant neon sign that says "Welcome Diabetes."

I fundamentally don't understand all the earnest looking cyclists who whiz by me every morning while I'm walking the dogs. I don't understand people who can't wait to get back to the gym. Yeah, I've heard all about endorphins and all that. I still prefer butter. Did you guess that I had cold cereal for breakfast this morning?

Bud is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 929

When we woke up this morning, it was at least twenty degrees cooler than the day before. There was a nice breeze and it was actually pleasant outside. We decided to go to the dog park right after breakfast, just in case the weather decided to turn hot and muggy again later in the day. Apparently, other Dalmatians had the same idea. When we got to the park, there were already several other Dalmatians there. We had never met the other dogs owners before, but all the Dalmatians, including our own, got their start with Dalmatian Rescue. The nice weather was so unexpected for the 1st. of July that everyone in the park was having a great time. We even got a low altitude flyover by a rare World War bomber that was arriving in town for a Fourth of July airshow. The early dog park visit was a great start to a good day. It's amazing how a little nice weather can improve your mood.

After lunch, I added Dakota and Ollie, the dogs I photographed yesterday, to the Dalmatian Rescue website. These two are both so friendly that I imagine they'll both get homes very quickly. After I finished my website work, I decided to take advantage of the cooler weather and I mowed the grass as well. It certainly wasn't a very strenuous day, but it was a good day.

I have a feeling that next week isn't going to be very strenuous either. The Fourth of July holiday is right in the middle of the week. With a Wednesday holiday, it gives many people a good excuse to either take Monday and Tuesday off, or alternately Thursday and Friday off as well. I doubt that much will get done. I'll be working though. Next week is probably a good time to get some of the heavy lifting done on my new website project. I do a lot better in the initial stages of design when there aren't a lot of distractions.

Janet got a new iPad this weekend. With a faster processor, a camera on board, and the fantastic new retina display, it's making me wish I had a new one as well. No new iPad for me though. I got a big car repair bill instead this month.

Bentley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 928

Summer has its own set of rules. The other day, someone was asking me why I wear black t-shirts almost exclusively during the Summer. I guess they were expecting to hear that I admired Steve Jobs, or that I thought it looked stylish or something. The truth is that black is just about the only color you can wear outside during Texas Summers that doesn't show huge ugly sweat stains under your armpits after about five minutes. You still sweat of course, but it doesn't look like it.

We tried to get up and photograph the new Dalmatians at the Velvet Snout early this morning, but beating the heat was a futile effort. It was hot in the middle of the night last night and it's still hot right now. I took the pictures quickly today, so the dogs could get back inside again.

Do people tag you on Facebook a lot?  I hate to be tagged, because usually someone has dredged up an old picture that is so dismal it makes me look like warmed over death. Nobody needs to see my high school pictures again. Imagine my surprise when I looked at my wall this morning and saw an old picture that I actually liked. Someone had posted a picture of me playing in a band long, long ago. I couldn't remember where the picture was taken, or even the name of the band I was playing in. It was definitely me though. I recognized the Vox Mark VII guitar that I bought from the earnings of a high school summer job. I wish I had taken better care of that guitar. It would be worth quite a bit now if it hadn't gotten ruined by moisture when I stored it away in a damp closet for ten years. This was before I even moved to Dallas, mind you. Water damage problems have followed me around for a long time.

It's amazing how quickly things go from one extreme to the other here in Texas. At the beginning of June, we were drenched with rain. The grass and the shrubs were growing like wildfire and I thought we were finally going to have a decent Summer. Now, just a few weeks later, everything is bone dry. I need to remember to deep water the Photinia Bushes in the backyard and the Wax Myrtle out front. I got behind on things last Summer and a few trees died as a result. Not this year. We'll just have a humongous water bill instead.

Tucker is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 927

I got my car back today. It's always nice to be able to return the loaner car before I inadvertently wreck it. This time I was a bit reluctant to give up the loaner though. It was so nice to be driving a brand new Land Rover with sat-nav, a performance handling package, and nice smelling leather seats. I knew it was going to be a low blow to return to the old Defender. Land Rover repairs are so expensive that I almost didn't notice there was a discrepancy in my bill. As my service advisor handed me the keys and I was preparing to drive off, I asked him if they had done anything extra, since my bill seemed a bit higher than the price I remembered on the estimate. The service guy said he'd take a look at the bill and discovered  he'd charged me for the power steering pump twice. Oops. They refunded me $822 and off I went.

As often happens when I take my car in for repairs, I hadn't driven ten miles before I discovered that the overhead lights no longer worked and the clock stopped when I opened the driver's side door. I went back to the dealership again and they fixed this problem as well, while I sipped a Dr. Pepper in the showroom and fantasized about a nearby Range Rover I could never afford. I never get upset about little service glitches. I think they are a car dealer's equivalent of the spelling errors I sometimes make when I am updating websites. If you get distracted, you are going to make a mistake, and Lord knows there are plenty of distractions these days.

I started on a new website project today. Amazingly, these guys want to simplify their current site, instead of making it more complicated. Yay! I'm a big fan of keeping things simple. Hopefully, I'll have this new site finished in about three weeks. When I have a lot of writing jobs, I wish I had more website work like this. Of course, when I have a lot of website jobs, I wish I had more writing jobs instead. I'm never really happy.

I am happy that it's the weekend again. I'm happy that the market went up today as well. Especially since I bought some shares yesterday when everything was down. It's rare that I actually guess an entry point correctly. The dogs are certainly happy it's the weekend. It's all about dogs during the weekend at our house.

Sparky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 926

I was surprised at the Supreme Court's decision this morning. It wasn't what I was expecting. This just goes to show that what I was telling you yesterday is true. Nobody, including myself, can predict the future. I've got a lot of mixed feelings about health care. Health insurance is my biggest single expense. I would love to have a high quality, affordable health care system. Somehow, I don't think what we got today is the solution though. Human nature says otherwise.

I'm convinced that health care is so expensive because hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, doctors, and everyone in the entire flying circus we call the healthcare system knows that people are scared of dying and charge accordingly for their services.  They could charge less, but they don't, because we will pay exorbitantly to live.

How do I know this? Well, for starters I take very good care of our dogs. They get CAT scans, MRI's, complex orthopedic surgery and more. They get whatever they need, no questions asked. Since I have had some of the same procedures myself, I know what things cost. The difference in cost for an MRI for your dog and an MRI for yourself can be staggering. The imaging equipment is exactly the same. The technicians have exactly the same training. Some vets even have more extensive training than their physician counterparts, because they have to deal with a multitude of different species. The difference in the cost of care is almost entirely due to the fact that hospitals and doctors know they can get away with charging more to people.

If there were no insurance and everybody knew that the money was coming out of their own pocket when they went to the doctor, most medical procedures would cost a lot less. If people didn't sue their doctors at the drop of a hat, things would be even less expensive. I trust my vet more than I trust my own doctors. My vet provides top quality care at a reasonable price. Isn't that what we all want?

Vets aren't free though, and health care shouldn't be free either. I've worked hard all my life and I don't mind paying a fair price for health care. I don't like footing the bill for totally irresponsible people who don't even try to do the right thing though. This drags us all down. Remember that old Seinfeld episode about the Soup Nazi? I feel that way sometimes. Everyone should have access to quality health care, regardless of their income or circumstance. This doesn't mean that health care should be free however. I've got only one thing to say to those people who think they are entitled to completely free health care: "no soup for you."

Patch is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 925

I met with my financial advisor today. I know that I gripe and complain about this guy occasionally, but basically I still think he's pretty sharp. The market has just become so completely irrational in recent years that it is almost impossible for even the best of analysts to be a consistent winner. Especially in the short term. Almost every day, something unpredictable happens that throws the market into a turmoil. Hopefully, over the long term, the laws of sanity still apply.

Today, we were evaluating some new positions and my advisor showed me some advanced software he was using that he said could help predict future performance based on a huge array of past historic data. I think he called the program Backtrack or something. I told him there was a basic flaw in this type of strategy. He needed a different program called Forwardtrack, that could actually look into the future. That's the trouble with all these predictive models. Nobody really has any idea what is going to happen in the future. Nobody even knows what is going to happen tomorrow.

The best thing my advisor has been able to do for me is convince me that it's a fool's game to chase the evening news. Day traders try to do this, and most of them just can't react fast enough to emerge as consistent winners. I try to take a more disciplined long-term approach, following some basic investing principles year in and year out. Occasionally, there is a year like this one where nothing seems to work. It can be very frustrating.

The dogs were frustrated by something a lot more basic than stock market gyrations tonight. It was the heat. Even at 8 PM, it was over 100 degrees. Everyone brought water for their dog and we had frequent water breaks in the training routine. The dogs weren't really into the training exercises though and I can't blame them. It was just too hot.

If anyone knows of a completely pet safe way of treating white grubs, please let me know. I really hate to see the pretty St. Augustine turf I installed just a month or two ago start to deteriorate already. I've been told that beneficial nematodes are a safe and effective way of controlling grubs, but it's already too late in the season to apply the nematodes. Nematodes don't like the Texas heat either.

Rascal is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 924

Around this time of year, I start to daydream about nicer places to live. Officially, it was 106 degrees today. Unofficially, the thermometer in my car said 113. There's got to be somewhere better than this. Maybe Montana would be nice. I vaguely remember idyllic Summers at Flathead Lake when I was young. Colorado would be nice. When I graduated from College, I lived in Aspen for a while and I remember the Summers there were fabulous. Oops, I forgot. I can't afford to live in Aspen anymore. I can't even afford to live in Seattle, where I got my start in advertising. Nice places are so expensive now. Nice places even have problems now. There are huge forest fires in Colorado this Summer. I spent almost a decade living in Colorado, Idaho, and Washington State. I don't remember a single major forest fire. Maybe Texas isn't so bad.

I don't blame Dot for not wanting to go outside. I don't want to go outside either. It's very hot and it's muggy. Texas heat isn't like the dry desert heat you find in Las Vegas. It's a sticky, wet heat that makes you want to change your clothes every time you come inside. The cicadas must enjoy this heat. As the day grows warmer, they start to sing in early afternoon and the chirping goes on until long after I've gone to sleep. Cicadas seem particularly loud this year. Wasps seem to enjoy the heat as well. The mud daubers are active again, building their ugly mud nests all over the exterior of our house. Although I don't like stinging insects of any kind, I cut these guys a lot of slack, because they feed on Black Widow spiders. I'd much rather have wasps buzzing around the house than Black Widow spiders.

It was time for Dash's bi-weekly antigen shot today. While we were waiting in the lobby at the vet, all the nurses greeted him by name as they walked by. Dash seems to be quite well known at the vet. I'm not sure if this is because he is a very good dog, or a very bad dog when I leave him there. It could go either way. He was certainly good today. I was proud of the boy.

I have one of my periodic reviews with my financial advisor tomorrow. Whenever I see my advisor, he's got something he wants me to buy. I'm going to try my best to avoid buying anything at all. Wednesday just isn't a good time. I think the Supreme Court is supposed to announce their decision on the health care law this Thursday. Depending on what the justices say, the market could go way up, or way down. Seems like a good idea to just lay low for a while. I have no idea what the justices are going to say.

Derrick is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 923

I wish I were more of a morning person. Summer has arrived with a vengeance and the only decent time to be out and about is right after sunrise. I try to get the dogs out on their morning walk by 7:30 AM, but since the sun rises more than an hour earlier these days, I'm really not doing all that well. The temperature rises amazingly quickly. If it's 85 degrees at sunrise, it will be 105 degrees by lunch. The trouble is that the dogs aren't early risers either. By the time we all drag ourselves out of bed, it's usually already too late.

No matter what the temperature is, mornings are delightful compared to afternoons. Afternoons are beastly. Dot is getting older now, and she can't take the heat. In the afternoon, we usually just walk until both dogs have done their business and then beat a hasty retreat to the air conditioned confines of the house.

Now that I've had time to get used to the quirks and peculiarities of U-verse service, I've come to the conclusion that it's really no better than cable. The picture freezes on the TV periodically. I'll lose my connection to the Internet for short periods almost every day. Occasionally, even the phones go out.  Usually, these outages are brief and service returns while I'm still  sitting on hold, waiting to talk to tech support. Nevertheless, the whole situation is irritating. Cable and U-verse certainly cost enough to warrant good service. Maybe the only solution is to switch back and forth between cable and U-verse once a year to keep them from taking me for granted.

My broker called the other day and suggested that I buy Microsoft. Microsoft? Keep in mind that this was the same guy who convinced me to sell Apple just before it went up another 200 points. I told the broker that selling Apple and buying Microsoft just seemed all wrong and I wasn't having any part of it. I've been somewhat gratified to see Microsoft continue to slide in the days following this errant recommendation, but I'm a bit irritated by this as well.  Just like with Time Warner Cable and U-verse, it would be nice to get a little more for my money. At the prices most financial advisors charge, they should be right 90% of the time, instead of just 65% of the time.

I called Land Rover today to see if my repairs are finished yet. Nope. They're still working on the Defender. While I was talking to my service representative, I remembered that I had forgotten to tell him about the problems I was having shifting from first to second gear. I asked him if repairing or replacing the gear synchronizers in the transmission was expensive. What do you think? Of course it is.

Oh, and I got a guitar today.  More on that later.

Shiner is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 922

The dreaded white grubs have returned to our yard. Later in the Summer they will become June Bugs. Right now they are still in the larval stage, feasting on the roots of our new St. Augustine grass. These little beasties are hard to get rid of without harsh chemicals. Janet found something on the Internet today that was supposed to be effective at controlling the grubs while being completely harmless to dogs and other animals. My mission this afternoon was to go to garden stores and get some of this stuff. It didn't take me long to discover that Milky Spore, the grub eradicating bacteria that Janet found, wasn't effective on our kind of grub. Milky Spore was meant for controlling the grubs that turn into Japanese beetles. Since we don't have many Japanese beetles in Texas, the garden stores didn't carry any of the stuff.

I did discover that beneficial nematodes were the safest, most effective way to control grubs in Texas. Unfortunately, you are supposed to introduce the nematodes to your environment in February. It's too late in the season for them to do any good now. As so often happens, I acquired the right knowledge at the wrong time.

I've been trying to acquire the right knowledge at the right time before I buy a guitar. I've been learning all sorts of fascinating things about Fender Stratocasters and Telecasters. When you go into a music store, you will see a huge variety of Stratocasters at prices ranging from under $300 to well over $3,000 dollars. All of these guitars look identical. At first this odd pricing structure mystified me, but apparently Fender is determined to make something for everybody. The $300 Stratocaster Squire may look pretty much the same as the $3,000 Custom Shop Stratocaster, but there are a myriad of subtle differences.

If Land Rover followed this kind of marketing strategy, you could buy a very inexpensive Range Rover that had vinyl covered seats, a Honda Civic engine, and no four wheel drive at all. For a little more you could get a car that looked the same, but had a better engine and leather seats. Pay yet a bit more and you could get the normal Range Rover you buy today. At the top of the scale would be a Range Rover that was hand assembled using titanium screws by technicians with a minimum of thirty years experience. I can't decide whether Fender's pricing strategy is brilliant or idiotic. It does allow a kid just learning to play to have a guitar that looks essentially the same as the customized rarity that some rich collector just paid $10,000 for.

It's getting hotter at the dog park. This means that there are a lot of clean, well groomed dogs that head straight for the nearest mud puddle to cool off. Labs and Goldens seem to be the first to occupy these mud puddles that appear near all the park water fountains. Luckily, Dot and Dash won't get anywhere near these muddy areas. They won't even drink out of the doggie water fountains. We have to take their own water bowl along with us and fill it up for them before they will drink anything. You may think the Dalmatians are spoiled, but I suspect they are just trying to avoid all the dog spit left behind in the common bowls by the messy Labs.

Rio is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 921

I finished this month's assignment for my writer's group this morning and turned it in. I've written some good things, as well as some not so good things, for this group, but I don't think I would have written anything at all without the discipline of an assignment and a deadline. Sometimes I wonder if there's anything I still do for the sheer pleasure of it. There certainly isn't much. In the early 1980's I loved to write songs. I wrote and recorded tons of original songs during this period. There were some who said I had a promising career ahead of me in Nashville. I signed several publishing contracts with obscure record labels, but never made a dime from my music. There was one fatal flaw in my plan to become a famous songwriter. I couldn't sing. Labels were looking for promising singer/songwriters, not the next Bernie Taupin.

Several years later I became very excited about becoming a fashion photographer. I left the advertising world and spent two years putting together a portfolio. My work was good enough to land me a job at a leading photo studio. I didn't become the next Richard Avedon however. I shot catalogs. Catalogs were boring and mundane. I quickly returned to advertising where there was at least a thin patina of glamor.

The last time I was really excited about something was during the mid-1990's, when I convinced myself that I wanted to make another documentary film. I started going to film festivals and was even asked to be a speaker at SXSW in 1997. The film never got made. I had already made several extremely low budget documentaries in the 1970's, but by 1990 I had grown too practical. Documentaries don't make money and I wasn't willing to risk my life savings on a project that didn't even matter anyway.

When I hear people on television self-help shows tell their audience that the key to success is to follow your passion, I just don't buy it. Anything that I was even mildly passionate about ended up costing me a fortune. I never made a dime by following my heart. Fortunately, I've done extremely well doing things I hate. I've done so well doing things I hate that it's made the world topsy-turvy for me. When I meet someone who tells me that they love what they do, I generally don't believe them.

Why am I telling you this?  Well, I visited another guitar store today. I actually took a couple of guitars off the wall and started playing them. I can't play well anymore. If you heard me this afternoon, you'd probably agree that I suck. Holding the guitar in my hands brought back memories though. There was a time when my chops were pretty good. I miss those days. When I was a good guitar player, I never thought about the staggering cost of health care. I never worried about whether I'd have enough money to retire comfortably. I didn't really worry about anything. I just played.

Boo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 920

I could write a book about the breakfast choices in my neighborhood. Every Friday morning for the past three months, I've been sampling the menus of all the restaurants within a three mile radius of my house. OK, so I've only been to four different restaurants. There aren't a lot of restaurants close to where I live. Nevertheless, a full breakfast menu times four still gives you a wide variety of choices. After all this frivolous experimentation, I still haven't decided on a favorite breakfast destination. One restaurant has the best service. Another has the best ambiance. A third has the best food. And the fourth has the best coffee. None of them are very consistent. 

One thing I have learned is that restaurant quality can vary dramatically, depending on who shows up for work that day. In some restaurants, I've ordered the same thing over and over again, but it never comes out the same way twice. One restaurant never puts salt and pepper on the table because they think their food is seasoned just right. It isn't. Another restaurant is so stingy with the coffee that they make you pay a dollar every time they refill your cup. All of them use too much salt when they cook. All in all, the food is delicious though, and I've picked up some great ideas if I ever decide to cook on Friday again. I've kind of gotten addicted to eating out on Friday morning. It's a simple pleasure, but a very genuine one.

I had to run a bunch of errands today, and on the way back from the grocery store, I decided to stop in the local Guitar Center and look at guitars. I am baffled by the huge variety of absolutely identical looking Fender and Gibson guitars at totally different price points. You could buy a Fender Stratocaster for $300 or $3000. There is almost a mythology built up around why the more expensive versions are worth more. Was the guitar manufactured in Mexico, Japan, or the USA?  Was the wood aged and seasoned before it was shaped into a guitar body? Are the pickups hand wound? Did the electronics come from China? The list goes on and on. To the untrained eye though, the cheap Fender Stratocasters look exactly the same as their expensive cousins. If cameras were marketed this way, it would drive photographers crazy.

I'm amused at all the New York news anchors and talk show hosts going on and on about the awful heat wave they're having. They ought to come to Texas. The temperatures that New Yorkers are experiencing now aren't just a two day event in Dallas. We have to deal with 100 degree days for months at a time.  In addition to the heat, I also have to deal with mushrooms. Mushrooms are starting to appear everywhere in the new grass we just planted. Mushrooms normally grow in the dark. This isn't very auspicious. If I needed a sign that the St. Augustine grass isn't getting enough sunlight, this is probably it.

Kirby is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 919

Like many of you, I missed the Summer Solstice this year. It was yesterday. How did that happen? I thought the longest day of the year was always on June 21. Today still seemed pretty long and very hot anyway. I'm afraid that Summer has arrived in earnest.

During breakfast, I watched the "Girl in the Fireplace" episode of Dr. Who for probably the fourth time. This is one of my favorite episodes, surpassed only by "Vincent and the Doctor." What's the connecting link? Maybe it's just that both of these episodes take place in France. Paris is my favorite city. For many years a Citroën was my automobile of choice. I drove a Citroën in Seattle, and against all logic, I drove a Citroën when I first moved to Dallas. In a world of Ford F-150 pickups, this car definitely didn't blend in.

I don't know what it is about France. I'm drawn to Philippe Stark furniture, even though it is wildly impractical. I even have a French Porcher toilet. I wouldn't recommend French plumbing products however. When they start to leak, it is almost impossible to find replacement parts. It's pretty hard to find parts for Citroën automobiles in Texas as well. That's why I switched to Land Rovers.

I found myself thinking about guitars again today. I've got a birthday gift card that's burning a hole in my pocket. Maybe I can find myself a nice used Les Paul. A real Les Paul is probably too expensive. I'd likely have to settle for the less expensive Epiphone version. I'm getting way ahead of myself though. I need to go to a guitar store, sit down with a guitar, and see if I can still play. My carpel tunnel is getting pretty bad in my left hand. If it hurts to squeeze a tennis ball, I have a feeling that playing a guitar might not feel so good either. We'll see.

Barley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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