Day 1592

My breakfast restaurant is a great place for people watching. Every large city seems to have a little hole-in-the-wall place like this where the aroma of suburb simple meals seems to lure the wealthy and the working poor in almost equal numbers to the same humble tables. This is the only place in Dallas where I routinely see Ferrari 458 Spiders and McLaren MP4's parked right next to beat up white work vans filled with plumbing tools. Of course, since the place is still considered cool in some circles, there are an inordinate number of hipster bicycles as well.

When a diverse group of people start to gather in a small room, you begin to notice things. I've noticed that thin bald men of a certain age aren't really Olympic swimmers or in training for a triathlon. They are just making a fashion statement. I've noticed that it is remarkably easy to identify who is still working for a large organization. They are all wearing those laminated plastic badges around their neck with a bar code  that lets them enter and exit their permanently locked place of work. I guess it has come to this. We are all in lock-down mode now.

I have a certain amount of admiration for the young entrepreneurs. They arrive with a backpack full of electronic devices that all have to be turned on simultaneously. Many of these people seem to be trying to crowdsource their latest project on Kickstarter, or find an elusive venture capitalist who will watch the Powerpoint presentation on the iPad in their packpack. Most of these people will fail, but at least they are trying.

Dash's doctors are trying their best to keep his incision site from getting infected. The effects of radiation treatments are cumulative and after 17 visits to the cancer center, the area that is receiving most of the radiation is really starting to itch. Since Dash is a dog, it is hard to keep him from scratching something that itches. We've tried the cone of shame, a cloth scarf held in place with Velcro, and even leaving his special harness on during the day, but nothing seems to work. When Dash was attacked by another dog years ago, Janet sewed a special t-shirt that Dash wore permanently while his wounds healed. That seemed to work. Maybe she can make another this weekend.

Every Friday afternoon I hand my credit card to the receptionist at the cancer center and settle Dash's bills for the week. This is when I wish that all my client's paid me in 30 days like they are supposed to. Yes, you know who you are. What is the point of hanging on to the money for as long as you can when you are going to have to part with it eventually? I just don't get it. When I made most of my income producing commercials and corporate videos, I always paid my crews immediately. Life is just simpler that way.

Pogo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1591

I managed to compound the problems I was facing with an already busy day by making small mistakes in virtually everything I touched. Maybe I just had too much on my plate today. I suspect it might have been my tendency to ignore the details however. The details I forget are inevitably the first thing my clients always notice. All's well that ends well though. I think I managed to get everything fixed.

Dot did great at her physical therapy session today. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that she was actually getting younger. Her rear legs seem stronger now and she doesn't stumble as often. More importantly, she hasn't had a seizure since  we started to do acupuncture on a regular basis. I asked the vet if there might be a connection between the acupuncture and the seizures, and she said that although there was no way to prove things conclusively, at least two other patients of hers quit having seizures when they started having acupuncture. There is some anecdotal evidence that acupuncture can help prevent seizures in certain situations. Maybe Dot is one of the lucky ones where acupuncture really makes a difference.

I went back to eating oatmeal this morning, but the whole time I was fixing my breakfast, I kept thinking that tomorrow was Friday and I would finally get to go out for a real breakfast. I need to come up with a better solution for feeding myself. I'm actually a pretty good cook, but my OCD tendencies make cooking excruciatingly slow. I often find that I've wasted half the day fixing myself a simple meal. When I'm chopping vegetables, I have to cut everything into precise little squares. The meat has to be browned just so, and heaven forbid that I substitute another spice for the missing one in the spice rack. None of my compulsions make the food taste any better, but they sure do waste a lot of time. I've also noticed that I tend to wash all the dishes by hand before I put them in the dishwasher.  I don't know why I do this, but I suspect it has something to do with trying to make things easier on the machines. By some twisted logic, I think that the dishwasher will last longer if it doesn't need to deal with excessive amounts of dirt.

One of my clients mentioned that she had an idea for a TV series that she would like to pitch. There was a time when I would have jumped at this obvious opportunity to help her put together a pilot episode. I have the experience and I have the equipment. I just don't have the energy anymore. Production is a lot of work. Fifteen years ago I was going to SXSW every Spring, hoping to make connections and find funding for video projects I wanted to do. Now, I'm wondering if I'll ever get behind the camera again. Years ago, I was totally perplexed at all the changes my Dad went through as he got older. Now, I think I'm starting to understand.

Sadie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1590

I woke up exhausted this morning. Dash got up in the middle of the night and seemed convinced that it was morning. He wanted his breakfast. He wanted a walk. He wanted everybody else to be completely miserable until he got what he wanted. He was acting so weird that I started wondering if the cancer center folks might have accidentally pointed the radiation machine at his brain instead of his surgery scar on Monday. Usually, in situations like these, I can bribe the dogs with a treat, but Dash was already fasting for today's radiation treatment, so he couldn't eat anything. Janet took him outside twice. I took him outside twice. We traded places in the bed, but nothing seemed to work. Eventually, he wore himself out and went back to bed. Dot was the only one who got a good night's sleep. Her hearing is so bad now, that she slept through the entire commotion.

I got an e-mail from Network Solutions today asking me to confirm all my personal information. The letter said that if I didn't comply, my domains would be deactivated. This letter seemed like a textbook example of a phishing scam, so I didn't reply to the e-mail. I called Network Solutions technical support instead and after waiting on hold for fifteen minutes, talked to a friendly technician who informed me "Yes, the letter I received was genuine." "I bet you've received a lot of calls like mine this morning," I told the lady. "Yes, we  have." she said. "Why on earth would you format a letter to your customers so it would appear exactly like a phishing scam," I asked? The tech support lady didn't have an answer to this obvious questions, and blamed everything on ICANN instead. I made a mental note to move the rest of my domains to GoDaddy.

I think I solved the second of my three vexing website problems today. Only one more to go. I don't feel much joy as I continue to wade through this labyrinth of broken code and unrealistic expectations though. Times have changed and all I'm really doing is bailing water out of a leaky boat. Some people spend so much of their lives online these days that they start to think of their website as a member of the family. To me, a website today is not that different from what a Yellow Pages ad was to people in the 1950's. The difference is that back then, people wouldn't compulsively stare at the phone book all day.

It's getting harder and harder for me to eat oatmeal for breakfast every day. I made myself a sausage omelet this morning instead. The Kale salads in the evening aren't as tasty as they used to be either. The dilemma I'm facing is that I now know exactly what to do keep diabetes at bay, avoid a heart attack, and ensure that my liver stays healthy. There is no question that a good diet is the unequivocal secret to staying healthy. Just about anybody could lose weight, lower their blood sugar, and clear their clogged arteries just by eliminating all packaged and processed foods from their diet. No sugar, no salt, and no alcohol is a perfect recipe for no fun though. I have a lot of willpower, so I imagine I'll stick with this healthy way of eating, even though I'd rather subsist on cheeseburgers, pizza, and beer. Where's the fun going to come from though? In my younger years, most of my fun came from indulgent, self-destructive behavior. I'm not sure I've been passionate about anything healthy in my life.

Wyatt is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1589

I stopped to get some tickets to a neighborhood tour of homes when I was driving home from the post office today. Unfortunately, they wouldn't take credit cards, so I'll have to make another trip later. Sometimes these local home tours are fun. I know where most of the houses are and and am often curious what they look like on the inside. Our house could easily be on one of these home tours if we had picked designer decor instead of Dalmatians many years ago. I'm glad we picked Dalmatians though, even though they've made a mess of the doors and the furniture.

If you know where to look, you can still see impressions in the woodwork left by Spot's puppy teeth when he was teething.  There is still a giant hole that Petey tore in the carpet while he was trying to dig a hole to China during a thunderstorm. I've conveniently covered up the hole by placing the large format printer on top of it. Greta was the most destructive. She chewed holes in most of the decorative throw pillows in the living room and completely destroyed a beautiful set of Palazzetti Tomasa dinning room chairs. Despite all this, there is no doubt that the dogs have made me a better person. I don't care about all the dents and scratches. It wasn't always this way. If you think I'm OCD now, you should have seen me back in the days when I arranged all the furniture with zen-like precision and didn't even want anyone to sit in it.

We watched a news crew from the local NBC affiliate set up for a live segment on the evening news while we were taking our evening walk. It looked like a big deal because they even had a news helicopter overhead. There's a big controversy right now about building a restaurant in the park. The city wants the restaurant. The neighbors don't. I have a feeling that the neighbors will ultimately lose this battle, but who knows. The city has already turned an arboretum on the other side of the park into a hugely profitable venture. They'd probably like to do the same thing with our section of the park. I'm sure the park department would monetize every square inch of the park if they could get away with it. Personally, I don't mind the idea of a restaurant. I don't like to drive and it would give me a place to eat that I could easily walk to. I do hate the city's efforts to turn the park into an urban entertainment center though. When I first moved to the neighborhood, the park wasn't even on the city's radar. It was largely abandoned and seemed authentically wild and natural. Now it's just becoming a park department version of Disneyland.

Dash sailed though his annual physical with flying colors today. This is usually when he gets his rabies shot and any other necessary vaccinations, but we decided to wait on these until his cancer treatment is finished. Dash has more than enough to deal with right now, without the addition of even more meds that might cause an adverse reaction or additional stress. We'll catch up on the vaccinations later.

Work has been unusually slow this month. Since I had the time, I decided to gather up all the twigs and dead limbs I could find and take them out to the street for bulky trash day. I was surprised that there was still so much brush around the yard to gather up. Wasn't this what I hired the landscape guys to do last month?  At any rate, for the first time in about six months, I managed to get this chore completed before big trash day. I think the trucks are coming to pick things up tomorrow.

Mindy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1588

I realized this morning that I've got an appointment for the dogs at the vet every single day this week. Today Dash had his fifteenth radiation treatment. Tomorrow he gets his annual physical and vaccinations. Wednesday it's more radiation therapy. Thursday Dot gets her weekly acupuncture and water therapy. Friday we finish things out with Dash's next to last radiation treatment. It's a good thing that I've got a flexible schedule.

I was expecting terrible weather today, but most of the bad storms went to the North of us. We still got a little thunder and lightning, but now that Dot's hearing isn't so good, the storms don't tend to bother her as much. The loud severe weather alerts that take over the TV from time to time during storm season bother Dot more these days than the thunder itself. I guess we're in the middle of tornado season, but it hasn't been so bad this year. Like I've said many times, you can never figure out Texas weather.

One by one, my laundry list of website problems is starting to get resolved. Today, the recalcitrant forms on one site finally started working again. Maybe one of the dozens of calls I made to technical support eventually resonated with someone. Hopefully, I can now check this problem off my list and move on to other things. Maybe this problem got solved first because it was basically a coding issue. Broken code is always easier to fix than finding the answer to vexing questions like "why isn't my site popular?"

I've been watching this show about FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals, Alabama on PBS this evening. I'd forgotten how many amazing songs had been recorded there. The show seemed like the sound track to my life. Everything from Percy Sledge's When a Man Loves a Woman, to the Rolling Stones Brown Sugar, and Paul Simon's Kodachrome were recorded at FAME Studios. Lynyrd Skynyr's Sweet Home Alabama was actually about Muscle Shoals. I only mention all this because this particular music is one of the few things that still manages to break through my somewhat stony indifference. I loved playing these songs when I was a bass player in an obscure rock band. When I wrote jingles for commercials, I would occasionally daydream about quitting my job as an advertising copywriter and moving to Nashville. It never happened though.

I guess everything works out as it should though. I've got no complaints. I understand Dalmatians better than most men and take some damn nice pictures of local wildflowers. All that being said, I still might dust off the guitar tomorrow and play a few tunes to make the day go faster.

Joe is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1587 - Easter

I hope everyone had a pleasant Passover, Easter, or just a nice day. I certainly did. I knew it was going to rain sometime today, so I thought I'd get up early and get a lot done while the sun was still shining. As luck would have it, the skies were clear and sunny for most of the day. I got the lawn mower running and got the front yard looking decent again. I think the cause of my battery problems is my battery charger. It no longer shuts itself off when it reaches a full charge. I'll have to remember to manually unplug the thing this Summer after it charges for about three hours. Otherwise, I'll burn up the new battery fairly quickly.

After I got the yard looking nice, I weeded a few flower beds. I encountered quite a few honeybees while I was working. Hopefully, they were just passing through gathering pollen. I certainly hope they aren't planning on building another huge hive in my house. Once you've been stung by a bunch of angry bees, you don't tend to forget.

I took some more stuff to the storage warehouse this afternoon. If I lived in a rural area and had a bigger yard, I'd buy one of those metal warehouse buildings that all farmers seem to have. I'd fill it with industrial metal shelving and alphabetize each aisle from A to Z. I'd take great pleasure in categorizing and archiving all my stuff, until the zombie apocalypse came and I realized that all my treasured tools were hopelessly rusty with completely dead batteries. Janet thinks I'm dangerously close to becoming a hoarder, but I think my pack-rat tendencies are no worse than her own tendencies to always buy in bulk to take advantage of sales. I may still have every Macintosh I've ever owned, but at least I'm not responsible for the year's supply of soup in the kitchen pantry.

Today is a huge day for family picnics in the park. Typically, one family member arrives early in the morning to stake out a picnic table and the rest of the family arrives later. Some people erect elaborate tents and put up volleyball nets. By ten-thirty AM, the air is thick with the smell of barbecue and smoked meats. I try to walk the dogs in secluded areas on days like this. Dash loves an audience when he poops and never fails to embarrass me by pooping right in front of a large table of people eating their holiday dinner. There's way too much candy littering the ground too, since the kids seems to only find 50% of what their parents hide for the egg hunt. Easter candy is the last thing the dogs should be eating. Chocolate is poisonous to dogs.

The rain did eventually arrive late in the day, but we were all safely back inside by then, eating our Easter dinner. A great dinner is always a nice way to end a good day. Tomorrow, Dash goes in for his fifteenth radiation treatment. I'm on the home stretch of my own Hepatitis-C treatments as well. I usually don't look forward to birthdays, but this year might be different. By June, most of this Spring's long medical journey should be in the past.

Wilson is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1586

I got lucky today. When I went to the Interstate battery store to get my lawn mower battery repaired, the technician noticed that the defective cells he was removing from the case were still under warranty. The one year warranty on the two battery cells was going to expire in four days. I had forgotten that the old battery even had a warranty. I've just gotten used to replacing these batteries every year. At any rate, the technician refurbished my battery for free. If I had waited until next week to take care of this chore, it would have cost me $90.

I finally made it back to the gym this afternoon. I really need to figure out how to do these workouts on a more regular basis. It was starting to seem easy when I went three times a week. Now that I can only make it to the gym sporadically, these workouts are killing me. It took me about three months to build up a good rhythm and now it appears I'll have to start all over again. No rest for the weary, I guess. I don't even like going to the gym, but I do like the results. I'd hate to start gaining weight again.

While I was at the gym, Janet called and said she'd lost her car keys at the grocery store. I drove home and found a spare pair of keys to take over to her. While I was home looking for the spare keys, the dogs were very indignant that I wasn't feeding them their dinner. Both of them started barking loudly when I left the house again about five minutes later. You'd think having their dinner thirty minutes late was the end of the world.

I got another letter from the city today saying that Dash's animal registration had expired. This happens every single year. I always get new city tags for the dogs when they have their annual physical exam. My vet sends the updated information to the city immediately, but somehow the city is permanently three weeks out of sync. If they would just wait a few weeks before they send out this noncompliance letter, they might realize that Dot and Dash always have current city tags.

The park is going to be a disaster area tomorrow. Every Easter, throngs of people descend on the park to have family Easter egg hunts. Nobody hides real eggs anymore though. They all just hide candy for the kids. For weeks after Easter, I have to be especially vigilant when walking the dogs. There are are tons of candy left in the grass that the kids failed to find, along with assorted chicken bones, beer cans, and dirty baby diapers. I liked this park a lot better before the city discovered it. It's still nice on weekdays after everybody has gone to work, but weekends and holidays are a madhouse.

I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow. If the weather's nice, there are still a ton of chores with my name on them. Mowing the grass will probably be at the top of the list. If it rains tomorrow, I'll probably just take a long nap  with the dogs.
 

Marley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1585 - Good Friday

Good Friday seems to be an optional holiday. The stock market was closed today, but the post office was still delivering mail. The Interstate Battery store, where I was going to replace my lawn mower battery, was closed, but Dash's cancer center was still open. Janet's office was officially closed, but most people went in to work anyway because they were busy. All over town, some businesses were closed and others were open in a random sort of way. This is probably just what happens to religious holidays in an increasingly secular world.

I surprised the staff at my favorite breakfast restaurant this morning by ordering something different. I must have been really bored this morning, because I always order the same thing at this restaurant. Maybe I should take a chance more often, because my alternate choice was really pretty tasty.

I wonder if there is an effective way to get telemarketers and scammers to leave you alone? I've been feeling inundated with scams lately. Phishing scams are growing increasingly sophisticated. I get dozens of these each day. It's gotten so bad that I almost don't trust any e-mail  receive these days. Today I got a realistic looking confirmation of a hotel reservation I never made. Two hours later, I got an unsolicited credit card in the mail, with a letter urging me to activate it immediately to avoid fraud. Nope! Not going to do that. Many of these phishing scams try to alarm you enough to call a fake help line were telephone operators try to grab even more of your personal information. It's such a shame that our society has come to this. If spammers and scammers put as much energy into starting a legitimate business as they did trying to cheat people, our economy would probably be booming.

I got an e-mail today telling me that my company had been recognized as a 2013 Texas Excellence Award recipient by the US Trade & Commerce Institute. I looked on the web and there really is a US Trade & Commerce Institute. Sadly, I suspect this is a scam too. There are quite a few companies in the business of selling pretty looking, but entirely bogus professional awards to excessively vain people. The pretty crystal award, which recognizes my company for "Excellence in Marketing" would certainly look good on my desk, but I'm a bit suspicious. I don't pay any attention to marketing whatsoever. What a joke! Hey, the only award I want would be to get in the Guinness Book of Records for "Most Consecutive Blog Posts."

Today wasn't very productive, but I need to start looking at the glass as half full rather than half empty. I didn't resolve any of yesterday's vexing website issues, but I did discover something new and very tasty to eat for breakfast and Dash continues to do well at his radiation treatments. He only has two more weeks to go!

Mattie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1584

I feel like I'm locked in my own personal Ground Hog Day. I've been trying to resolve a website problem for almost two weeks now. I call technical support every morning and talk a cheerful person who seems to understand my problem. He, or she, always says the problem seems easy enough to resolve, but that it will need to be escalated to the next level of support, because they don't have access to the information I need. The next day I get an e-mail saying that my problem has been solved and my ticket has been closed. I then go to the website in question and discover that nothing has changed at all. The problem has definitely not been resolved. I then call tech support again and explain the situation to another friendly person. They apologize for the mix up, telling me that they have reopened my service ticket and that the problem will be resolved properly this time. The next day I get another e-mail saying that my problem has been solved and my ticket has been closed again. Once again, nothing has changed. This has been going on for weeks.

I'm trying to solve a different type of problem with another client and have contacted a developer who supposedly knows all the answers. Today, he sent me detailed instruction, telling me exactly what to do to make the changes my client requested. So far, so good. At the very bottom of the letter was a final paragraph telling me not to do anything to the website during business hours and to be sure to back everything up before I attempt to make any changes. The developer concludes by telling me that if I follow his instructions exactly, I still might crash the entire site. WTF? I was hoping that thy guy would give me an answer, not a roulette wheel.

I went to my hepatologist for another blood test this afternoon. From now on out, these periodic tests are somewhat of a formality. By all indications, the treatment has already worked. These guys are just playing it safe. I will continue to get bi-weekly blood tests until June, and then probably once a year thereafter. One thing I have learned during Dash's cancer treatment and my own Hepatitis-C treatment is that doctors tend to take the amount of medication necessary to resolve a serious problem and then double it, just to make sure. This is especially true with cancer, since there is no definitive way to prove that the cancer will never return.

Maybe I'll have time to get the lawn mower battery replaced tomorrow. I can't put this off too much longer, since the grass is still growing. Dash has another radiation treatment in the morning and I have an appointment with an egg at my favorite restaurant. I hope I can get some of these ongoing website problems resolved soon. It's way too late in the year for Ground Hog Day.

Bella is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1583

I ran into a group of photographers when I was walking the dogs today. They had tripods and long telephoto lenses and were attempting to photograph barn owls in a nearby tree. Surprisingly, I knew exactly which owls they were talking about. I told the photographers when I usually saw the owls and they told me that one of them recently had three babies. I hope the photographers got the pictures they wanted, because they had traveled a long way. That's the difference between me and the other people in the park. I live here. I'm not much of a naturalist, but I'm here every day, year after year. I see patterns. I can tell you when the White Pelicans leave for the Summer and when the baby ducks take to the water for the first time. I can predict when and where flowers will bloom and can tell you where the sun will touch the horizon on any given day. Some people become experts because they are passionate about a subject. My own expertise is usually acquired simply by showing up.

I know every inch of the park because I have a high tolerance for repetition. I have walked a succession of Dalmatians in the park for well over twenty years. This ability to to the same thing over and over again is why I am writing to you for the 1583rd  consecutive day. Endless repetition either drives you crazy or gives you the ability to see nuanced differences. Hopefully, I am not crazy. When I have by favorite breakfast eggs, I can tell if the chef has cooked them 15 seconds too long. When someone takes a book off the bookshelf, I instantly know which book has been removed. Inside every web page is a lot of HTML code that is very similar to all other web pages. The same can be said of print advertising. The only important thing is the headline. The text is just words place together in familiar patterns.

Maybe this is why Texas weather bothers me so much. It seems completely random. I can predict a lot of things fairly accurately, but I can't predict the weather at all. If it rained every Wednesday, I could compensate for it. I never know when it is going to rain, or snow, or when we're in the path of a tornado. The stock market is basically unpredictable as well. There are a ton of people who will tell you that they have the market figured out. Since none of these experts can predict the future, most of them have been fooled again and again.

Today was certainly predictable. Dash had another radiation treatment at the cancer center. I got my exercise by sweeping standing water off the roof. I made an omelet for breakfast using a recipe that became stuck in my head long before I ever moved to Texas. I used to wonder how dogs could get so excited about eating the same bowl of kibble over and over again for breakfast. I do the same thing though. Maybe we just like the ritual of eating. Whatever it is, I think dogs have discovered the secret of life. Eat. Sleep. Play. Repeat. That just about covers it for me.

Becker is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1582

Not a bad day. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. It was cool enough to keep the dogs happy, and warm enough to keep me happy. There aren't many days like this in Texas, so I try to take advance of them. As an added bonus, I was able to start the day off with a clear view of the total "blood moon" eclipse. As luck would have it, I actually did wake up to to to the bathroom about 2:30 AM and this was just about the middle of the eclipse in our time zone. I'm glad I went outside and took a look, since the dark red moon was quite spectacular. Red was definitely the theme of the night sky, since Mars made it's closest approach to Earth last night as well, glowing a rusty red slightly to the right of the blood red moon.

When the dogs were younger, it would have been impossible to go out in the back yard in the middle of the night without Dot racing out the back door and waking up the entire neighborhood with her barking. Neither dog woke up at all last night and slept soundly through the entire eclipse. I'm glad they didn't wake up. As soon as Dot and Dash wake up, they think it is breakfast time.

I generally don't like meetings, but I had a surprisingly good meeting with a client this afternoon. We tackled a tough problem and came up with a innovative solution that we both thought would work. Trust me. This doesn't happen very often at client meetings. I even got the go-ahead to develop a prototype and see if the idea works. If this happened every day, or even every week, I might actually enjoy working.

My mechanic called today and told me he might have a buyer for my old Maserati. The potential buyer is some guy in Holland why likes to buy cars in American and ship them back to Europe to restore. Unfortunately, the guy wants the car for a dirt cheap price. I could get a lot more for the car if it was running, but then I'd have to pay quite a bit to make the necessary repairs. Some of the parts the car needs are virtual impossible to find anymore. They just don't exist. My gut tells me that it would probably be better to sell the car "as is" in non-running condition. I could spend a small fortune fixing the thing with no guarantee of finding a buyer when all the repairs were finished. Selling an old car is a lot like selling real estate. Often the best time to sell is when you actually have a buyer.

I'm proud of myself. Janet got a free loaf of delicious looking artisan bread from Central Market last week when she was grocery shopping. So far, I haven't touched the bread, even though I would have loved to have turned half the loaf into a big stack of french toast this morning. As tempting as french toast drenched in maple syrup sounded, I had my regular bowl of oatmeal and fruit instead.

Sometimes it's hard to stay strong, but when I was watching Dot trotting along in the water treadmill this afternoon, I kept thinking "Hey, if she can do it, so can I."

Krissy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1581

I can see the writing on the wall. I think I need to get out of the website business. All my clients are unhappy. They're not upset with the design or the writing on their sites. They all think that whenever someone searches for their type of business on Google, they should be at the top of the list. I try to tell them it's not that easy when you've got ten million other companies who also want to be at the top of the list. It used to be relatively easy to get on page one of a Google search, but when everybody on the planet has a website, the game changes a bit.

I know a lot of the unhappy folks think it's my fault that they're not on page one of every Google search, but there's not all that much I can do. I tell them why time honored SEO tricks don't work anymore and why Google wants everyone to buy Adwords, but they don't want to listen. Adwords are expense. SEO companies are expensive too, and don't always produce results. Most of my clients don't want expensive. They want their website to be like Facebook. Facebook is free. Their friends notice their Facebook posts too, so they think everyone should notice their website. Sorry guys. It just doesn't work that way.

I had to turn the furnace back on this morning. The temperature dropped from yesterday's balmy 80 degree weather, to a damp, chilly 40 degrees this morning. Winter is not giving up without a fight this year. I didn't think I would have to wear my goose down ski jacket again, but that's what I had on this morning when I walked Dot. With the addition of a nasty thirty mile an hour wind, it actually seemed a lot colder than 40 degrees.

I never dreamed that Dash would be so eager to go in for cancer treatments. He know when he gets radiation now, and on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday he's the first one up. Often he is waiting at the front door for us to put his harness on while we are still getting dressed. I'm really glad that he likes the other dogs at the cancer center and seems to think we're taking him to doggie day care. It's definitely not what I expected though.

I'd love to see tonight's total lunar eclipse. I'll probably miss it though. In the Central Time zone, the eclipse doesn't even start until 1 AM and won't reach totality until 2:45 AM. My only chance of seeing the thing is if I wake up to go to the bathroom during the middle of the night and happen to look out the window. There was a time when I would have spent hours setting up telescopes and cameras to document an event like this, but not anymore. I've seen dozens of lunar eclipses and they're all pretty much the same. Anyway, there will be tons of pictures of the moon on Facebook tomorrow anyway.

I moved Dot's acupuncture appointment to tomorrow, since I have a doctor's appointment when she typically goes for acupuncture and water therapy. I need to remember to send in my Quarterly Estimated Taxes tomorrow as well. I got another jury summons in the mail today, so I guess they didn't forget about me after I postponed my jury duty last month. I don't know why they would want me on a jury anyway. I'm convinced that everyone is guilty before I even get to the courtroom.

Flash is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1580

One of these days, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and go paperless. Every couple of months, I try to wade through the mountain of accumulated paper and throw away as much superfluous mail as I can. I have a tendency to save things that I think might be important, and then forget what was so important about the letter later. On days like today, I find myself throwing away a ton of coupons that expired three years ago, invitations to attend seminars that have already taken place, and the ubiquitous unopened proxy statements. I don't know why I get the proxy statements in the first place. Please vote for the following slate of directors, they say. Like my 100 shares are  actually going to make a difference? Annual reports, proxy statements, unsolicited credit cards, surveys, almost anything from AARP is a total waste of postage.  Today I found five letters that really did need to be dealt with and threw away over 100 that were just junk.

What does it mean when 90% of your e-mail winds up unopened in your spam folder, 95% of your phone calls are from telemarketers, and virtually everything the mailman delivers is junk mail?  I must be the kind of customer marketers are trying to reach, because I am deluged with junk. I don't add my name to "do not call" lists because I'm convinced that this will actually increase the number of telemarketing calls. I never open anything in my spam folder because I think this might trigger a hidden malware application. Proxy statements go directly into the paper shredder. It wasn't always this way. As recently as ten years ago, I looked forward to a visit from the postman and clients routinely called me on the phone instead of sending cryptic e-mails that wind up in my spam folder anyway.

After I reduced my mountain of unopened mail to a more manageable size, I got some bleach soaked rags and tried to clean up my bathroom. Somehow when dust, moisture, and soap interact, it leaves a thin layer of scum that is almost impossible to remove. The electric toothbrush, water pic, soap dishes, and toilet are all sparkling clean now. In about a month, they will all be covered with the same scum again. I'll have to deal with the tile grout another day. That's getting pretty disgusting too.

The only reason I even attempted to deal with these tiresome chores today was that it was pouring rain outside for most of the day. I won't need to water the new grass in the back yard for a few days, but I will need to go up on the roof again and remove all the standing water. I'll need to go to the battery store and get a new 24V lawn mower battery too. If I let the front lawn go too long, it will be a tangled mess of tall weeds within a matter of weeks. The lawn mower battery will be expensive, but it's still a lot easier than putting my gas mower in the car and taking it to one of the city's few remaining lawn mower repair shops. These little shops used to be everywhere, but not anymore. Today, people apparently just drag their non-functioning mowers out to the curb for the trash truck to take away and buy another cheap mower at Home Depot. Actually, they just get a yard guy to mow their grass. I'm one of the only people in my neighborhood who still mows his own grass.

As the day progressed, the skies gradually cleared and by late afternoon there were patches of blue sky punctuated with billowing cumulus clouds. The day started dismally, but it ended up being quite pretty. The dogs were as eager to get out of the house as I was, so we took advantage of the nice weather and went on a long afternoon walk. On the way, I thought I saw a squirrel staring at me from a knot hole in a nearby tree. "This would make a cool picture," I thought, and inched closer to the tree to take a picture. When I got about a yard from the tree, I noticed that it was a rubber squirrel that someone had placed in the knot hole. Sure fooled me. Who would bother to put rubber squirrels in random trees in a public park? You'd have to be crazy. Oh wait. That would describe half the people who visit this park. I guess random rubber squirrels are just another aspect of life in the city.

Valli is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1579

Didn't this happen last year? I get out the lawn mower to cut the grass for the first time and the battery won't hold a charge. Batteries are the Achilles heel of modern technology. I hate them. I did everything right this year. I kept the 24V battery inside, so it wouldn't freeze during the Winter. I kept it on a trickle charger the entire time. How did this ungrateful battery reward me? It powered the mower for about three minute and then it died.

So far this Spring, I've had battery problems with my UP fitness band, my iPhone, one of my laptops, and now the lawn mower. Refurbished batteries never work as well as new ones either. My replacement UP band only holds a charge for seven days instead of the promised ten. The lawn mower battery was refurbished with new cells last Spring. Maybe that is the problem. I guess I could go back to the gas powered mower, but I probably couldn't even start it anymore with my dislocated shoulder. Gas mowers are difficult to start in the Spring anyway. Usually I forget to prepare the mower properly for Winter and the gas lines and tank are all gummy when I try to resurrect the machine in the Spring. Gasoline is meant to be used immediately. It really doesn't sit well for months at a time.

I counted six loose dogs in the park this afternoon. There are signs all over the park saying that dogs must be on a leash at all times, but nobody seems to care anymore. I live in a city where a significant percentage of the population doesn't even bother to get a driver's license. If they don't think a driver's license is important, I'm sure they don't think a leash for their dog is important either. There is an increase in people bringing aggressive dogs to the dog park as well. Just last week one of Janet's friends had her dog attacked by an aggressive dog in one of our favorite parks. With each passing year, I have fewer and fewer good things to say about living in a city.

I sympathize with those ranchers battling the government in Nevada. I've always admired farmers and ranchers. They seem to be the last hard working, no bullshit people left in this country. If my family had been grazing cattle on open range land for decades and I was abruptly told by some government bureaucrat that the land was now a protected habitat for a turtle, I'd be pretty pissed too. At any rate, I hope the ranchers stand strong. Our government has gotten out of hand on so many levels.

Although today's attempt at mowing the grass was a dismal failure, all the other weekend errands got completed. The grocery shopping is done and the pantry is restocked for another week. The car has been filled with gas and the sheets are clean. There are thunderstorms in the forecast for tomorrow, but I hope we avoid them. There is still a lot of work to be done.

Nellie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1578

Dash is back on schedule again. The cancer center called at 6 AM this morning and said the radiation machine was working again, so we resumed the treatments. He's slightly more than halfway done now and is starting to show a bit of what the oncologist euphemistically calls sunburn. They say this skin redness is normal during radiation therapy, but truthfully, nothing seems very normal about this whole process.

Work was slow today so I finally got up on the roof and removed all the standing water from last week's rains. You'd think that the water would have evaporated by now, but it was still there.  I should have gotten the water off the roof earlier, because pollen and debris from the budding trees had turned the water into a dark brown mess. The energy saving white roof was kind of pointless, because all the junk that falls from the trees every Spring has already stained the roof, turning the reflective white into a rich brown sienna color. I don't think Burnt Sienna is a very energy efficient color.

I need to find something new to eat for breakfast. I'm growing tired of all my Friday favorites. The only things that appeal to be now are wheat products like pancakes and french toast that are still on the forbidden list. I've done such a good job at eliminating sugar from my diet and keeping diabetes at bay, that I really hate to return to eating french toast and waffles again. My body seems to convert wheat products directly into sugar, so I'm better off without it. Bread sure sounds good though.

I still get lots of trade magazines in the mail. In fact, trade magazines and bills are just about the only things I get in the mail. I avidly read all the magazines with reviews about new gear. I love reading about the latest and greatest guitars, cameras, microphones, lenses, and recorders. The other magazines are filled with business tips about improving productivity and streamlining business processes. These magazines bore me and I throw them away. I have no interest in improving my business processes whatsoever. Actually, I think I started my company just to give me an excuse to buy lots of cool gear. It worked for quite a while, especially when I was doing a lot of radio and TV commercials. Now, I mostly just write things and this requires virtually no gear at all. What a shame.

It looks like it's time to get the lawn mower out of the greenhouse. If I don't get the front yard under control soon, weeds are going to overpower the Bermuda Grass and I'll have to ask the landscaping guy to come back again. The big Yazoo gas mower isn't going to start without a major tune up, but I've still got the electric mower. The electric mower should start just fine, because I've been keeping the heavy 24V battery nice and warm under my desk all winter.

I'm glad the weekend is here, although I don't really know why. It's not that different from the rest of the week.

Tyson is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1577

We still don't know whether Dash will be getting radiation therapy tomorrow. The cancer center said they're still working on the machine this evening and will call us between 6AM and 7AM tomorrow morning to let us know whether to bring Dash in for treatment. There must be a serious problem with the machine, since they've been working on it for almost three days now. Hopefully, everything will be fixed tomorrow. I worry that a big gap in treatments might compromise the effectiveness of the therapy.

Machines always seem to be the problem. On a much smaller scale, I've been having weird problems with my iPhone lately. I'll start to take a picture and the phone will abruptly shut down like the battery was dead. When I go to recharge the battery, I  typically discover that it still has a 50% charge. I went on a couple of Apple forums and discovered that this was actually a common problem for people who have upgraded to IOS 7. Apparently it is some sort of firmware problem where the battery controller gets scrambled ant doesn't know whether the battery is charged or not. I wish Apple would concentrate on developing a better battery, rather than making an even thinner case or a larger screen. I don't particularly care about the size of the phone. I just want it to work reliably.

One of my clients has been having problems with their online forms ever since the hosting company made a server change. The hosting company called me today and told me they had resolved the problem. I tried out one of the forms and quickly discovered that it still didn't work. This is the problem in dealing with technical support. Just saying that a problem is fixed, doesn't necessarily mean that it is actually fixed. It doesn't matter if the problem is a software glitch, a billing discrepancy, or a password that doesn't work, it usually takes at least five tries before you eventually get it right.

Despite all the problems, I managed to get quite a bit of work done today. I efficiently wrote and submitted three new articles. Then I wasted a ton of time inefficiently struggling to resolve a variety of technical issues over the phone with technical support people in India. I have a hard enough time understanding these people and and even harder time finding a satisfactory solution to my problems.

I was kind of disappointed to learn that Stephen Colbert will replace David Letterman. I was hoping that Craig Ferguson would get the job. Ferguson's lazy, largly unscripted brand of humor doesn't appeal to everyone, but he's become my go-to guy when I can't get to sleep at night. The guy does the same thing over and over again with minor variations, but it still seems funny to me. Maybe I'm just jealous that Ferguson gets paid for not really giving a shit about what he does. I wish I could get paid for not giving a shit.

Who knows what will happen tomorrow.  Either Dash will return to his radiation treatments, or the entire treatment schedule will slip even further behind. I sympathize with the folks at the cancer center. Their fancy radiation machine is much, much more expensive than my balky large format printer, but I'm sure their frustration is the same when the machine refuses to work for some inexplicable reason.

Apollo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1576

It was hard to remember what day it was. It was supposed to be Dash's radiation day, but it turned out to be Dot's acupuncture day instead. I drove to one vet to get Dash's thyroid medication renewed and to another vet for Dot's physical therapy. Dash still took his Paladia chemo pills tonight, but won't be going in for radiation treatment tomorrow, because the radiation machine is still broken. I try to keep all this straight, but I never had a good grasp on what day it was anyway. I'll be glad when all this is over. The longer the treatment continues, the more I worry about side effects. I'm one of those fools who reads all the fine print that comes with pharmaceuticals these days. There is almost always something dire hidden away in the tiny type on these product description and warning sheets that will make you wonder how these new miracle drugs ever got approved in the first place. All that being said, Dash is still doing very, very well.

There weren't many website revisions today, but there was plenty of writing work to catch up on. I finished two articles and started on a third. The writing will never win a Pulitzer Prize, but it does make the day go quickly. With several articles to write and several dogs to transport various places, I never have much idle time on my hands. I always try to make time to fix myself a decent breakfast every morning, but I'm starting to fall behind on a host of other things that used to be part of my daily routine. The house hasn't been vacuumed in a while and I'm sure there's still water on the roof from last week's rain. That's the way it is these days. I take care of the dog's needs, do enough work to pay the bills, eat as healthy as I can, and spend the remaining five hours sleeping.

I wish I had a better camera with me this morning. We walked earlier than usual and there was a fine mist on everything. I'm fascinated by the way water droplets tend to form on some plants and not on others. This morning all the while and yellow Primrose flowers has miniscule water droplets all over their petals. Other nearby flowers were completely dry. I only managed to grab a few quick shots with my phone however, because the dogs had plans of their own.

I suspect that tomorrow will be a lot like today. One of these days I need to go have lunch with some of my old work friends again. It's been at least six months since I've met anyone for lunch. Basically, I don't even eat lunch anymore. I'm never that hungry during the day and I find that it's a lot easier to keep my weight under control if I just skip lunch entirely. Essentially, no lunch equals no social life, but I don't really feel like I'm missing much. It's kind of like those cable channels I eliminated yesterday. If I'm not actively looking for the missing channels, I don't even realize they're gone.

Livy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day