Day 2099

I listened to the local news coverage of the big Dallas Donald Trump rally while I was eating dinner this evening. I love a circus and would have enjoyed sitting in the crowd when I was younger. History, however strange, is always interesting. I used to make a point of visiting Dealey Plaza on November 22 just to hear all the conspiracy theories. Crowds never used to bother me. It didn't matter if it was a Fourth of July fireworks show or a Rolling Stones concert, I was there. Something has certainly changed. I'm a virtual hermit now. If I have a choice between seeing an event on TV or watching it in person, I'll almost always opt for the stay-at-home alternative. I've been to a lot of Rolling Stones concerts but when the Stones came to AT&T Stadium this Summer, I had no interest whatsoever in getting tickets. All I could think about was how bad the parking would be and what a pain it would be to drive all the way to Arlington in heavy traffic. I imagine that traffic is pretty bad at American Airlines Center this evening.

I was paying bills this afternoon and I couldn't figure out why my Quickbooks records looked so different from my bank statement. I had quite a bit less than I though I did. It finally occurred to me that I hadn't been recording a growing number of automatic recurring payments in my Quickbooks software. Everyone seems to want you to pay your bills electronically these days. I can see why companies like this. They get their money a lot faster when they directly debit your account. It's convenient too. Unfortunately, when you forget to record these automatic payments, things get confusing. Imagine how disappointed I was to discover I had forgotten about three months worth of automatic deductions from my checking account. I'm feeling poor now.

The weather continues to be delightful. This morning when we walked the dogs it was chilly enough that I needed a light jacket. It's hard to believe that jacket weather is here already. Of course, by mid-afternoon it was 90 degrees again, but for a few hours this morning, the weather was perfect. We'll have a few more hot days, but I bet it won't be long before I'll be wondering if the furnace is going to work this Winter.

I'm still reading the memoir written by the ad guy I used to work with in Seattle. Unlike The Martian, this is a very long book and will never be made into a major motion picture. I read a couple of chapters every day and maybe I'll be finished by Thanksgiving. What makes this book interesting is that I remember a lot of the people who are in it. The advertising world really was like Mad Men in those days. I had forgotten how much alcohol and general rudeness was involved. As far as work goes, I think I prefer the way things are now.

Life is peaceful these days. The only stress is worrying about Dot's health. I wrote an article this morning and sent it of to my client. I updated a few websites, and answered some correspondence. That was about it. Tomorrow should be very similar. I'll start with a cup of coffee and my trademark peach and banana smoothie. I'll end with an episode of Perry Mason. If I'm lucky, I won't have to clean up poop in the middle of the night.

Nicholas is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2098

Strangely, I actually enjoyed going to the gym today. There's no danger of me becoming a CrossFit fanatic, or buying a bicycle, but it is nice to feel in control of your own body. My dislocated shoulder is very gradually becoming stronger. I'm not gaining weight, even though I'm starting to eat normal food again. I still see some muscle atrophy in my arms and legs, but there is no flab. I'm just thin. I've still got a long, long way to go. Even though I have a much greater range of motion than I did a year ago, my shoulder is still very shaky and I can't even do a single push up without knocking my shoulder out of joint.

I spend most of my time at the gym using the arm crank and an elevated treadmill. The arm crank, or hand bicycle, is often a lonely and largely unused piece of equipment in many gyms. That's good, because there's always one of these machines available for me. The arm crank is a great way to get an intense cardiovascular workout while strengthening your upper body. I always spend at least 20 minutes on the hand bike and another 20 minutes using a treadmill that lets you walk at a steep incline. These two exercises are not for fun. I do one to help stabilize my shoulder and the other to avoid losing bone density. For fun, I shoot, baskets at the free throw line and occasionally punch a heavy bag for a while. Add in several miles of dog walks each day and I'm really not in bad shape for an old geezer.

Sunday is definitely the physical day of the week. We typically attempt to clean the house on Sunday, which usually involves lots of vacuuming and scrubbing things. The house doesn't look much better when we're done, but the Dyson is full of dust, so we must have accomplished something.

Today's chores included writing a bio that Janet needed for her new company. "What do you want me to write," I asked her. "Oh, just make something up," she said. Hmm. Every time I'm asked to do this, I realize that I don't really know much about Janet after thirty years. She seemed happy with the result though. Just another advertising job with zero input from the client. 

After I wrote her bio, I fixed Janet's activity tracker. She said it was broken and was going to throw it away. I suspected that there was nothing wrong and did a soft-reset on the band and plugged it into my computer to recharge. Two hours later, it was as good as new. I've done the same procedure many times on my own Jawbone activity tracker. I like the little UP bands, but Jawbone's quality control is terrible. Jawbone has already replaced three defective bands for me and Janet has had several lemons as well. If Apple can ever come up with a way to get their watch battery to last overnight and add a decent sleep tracker app, I may stop using the Jawbone wrist band entirely.

Dot had a really good day today, although she didn't poop on her evening walk, which probably means we are in for trouble tonight. She is noticeably stronger than she was a month ago and is even starting to walk at a faster pace. I may be imagining things, but I think she is even starting to gain a little muscle mass back on her left rear leg. While we are working to help Dot get stronger, we are also working to help Dash gain confidence. We take him to the small dog park at least once a week, hoping that he will start to play with other dogs again. Progress has been slow, but at least he isn't running away from the other dogs now. He is the largest dog in the small dog park, but the other dogs seem to accept him. Everything is baby steps these days, but I think we're making progress.

Molly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2097

It was only 67 degrees when I woke up this morning. Now we're talking! With clear skies and a cool breeze, it was a near perfect morning to take a couple of old dogs on a brisk walk. Dot definitely noticed the change in temperature. There was a spring in her step that is rare these days. Since Dot didn't poop in her bed last night and we all had a nice walk, it seemed only fitting that I fix French Toast for breakfast.

After a delicious breakfast, I mowed the grass for what is hopefully the last time this year. Fall officially begins for me when I can quit mowing the grass for another year, but I'm usually not very good at guessing when this will happen. Last year, I remember mowing at least three more times after I thought I was done for the year. I may have to keep mowing for quite a while if the neighbors don't get their sprinklers fixed. One of their sprinkler heads is broken and sprays water into our yard instead of theirs. The result has been that half of the yard is greener and grows faster than the rest. I'm not complaining though. It probably cuts down my water bill a bit.

Janet asked me to put new plates on her car this morning. I thought this would take me about a minute, but I ran into the same problem I had when I was trying to fix the old aluminum colander last month. All I had to do was unscrew four small bolts and remove the old plates. One of the bolts wouldn't come out though. The tapped brass shim on the car that one of the bolts was screwed into was turning in the same direction as the bolt when I tried to remove it. It took me forever to figure out how to remove the bolt without damaging the car. Eventually, I succeeded, although it took a lot more tools than the simple Phillips screwdriver I started out with. The car wasn't damaged and Janet was happy. It probably would have been easier to take the car to the dealership though.

There seems to be an enormous number of dragonflies and grasshoppers in the park at this time of year. I wonder where they are the rest of the time? I still haven't been able to get a good photograph of a dragonfly in flight, but I'm getting fast enough now to catch them when they briefly land on something. This is probably good practice for photographing hummingbirds. We occasionally see hummingbirds in our yard, but I haven't been fast enough to photograph them either.

I just noticed that the trash truck didn't completely empty our bin on Friday. There are still two trash bags on the bottom of the can. Our city uses those new automated trash trucks where a metal arm reaches out and picks up your trash can as the truck drives down the street and dumps it into a hopper on top of the truck. This all happens quickly and sometimes not all the bags get emptied. It's frustrating when this happens because then your next week's trash won't fit in the can. I'm sure this is another one of those "first world" problems you're not supposed to complain about.

I need to get to the gym tomorrow. If I've started eating French Toast again, going to the gym is almost mandatory.

Marcie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2096 - 9/11

I left the house this morning fully intending to try the new restaurant. I came to an intersection where if I turned left, I would be headed toward the new restaurant and if I turned right, I'd be on my way to my regular place. The left lane of the cross street was bumper-to-bumper cars as far as the eye could see. The right lane was practically empty. I turned right and headed back to familiar territory. This is probably how I found my Friday restaurant in the first place. If I turned left, I would pass three schools on my way to the new restaurant. In the other direction there were no schools and very few cars. I always tend to follow the path of least resistance.

This reminded me of the Dr. Who episode called "Turn Left" where Donna Noble has to go back in time at a critical moment and convince an earlier version of herself to turn left at an intersection to reverse a chain of events that was going to destroy the world. I don't think turning right at my intersection this morning will cause anything drastic to happen, but it did make me wonder how today would have turned out if I turned left instead.

I probably made the right choice. I didn't have time to experiment today. When I got back from breakfast, there was barely time to take a quick shower and check my e-mail before it was time to take Dot to the cancer center for her Ultrasound scan. The oncologist said that the tumor was stable and not growing, so it was safe for Dot to discontinue her chemotherapy. She agreed that Dot looked stronger and wants us to monitor Dot's condition with a follow-up Ultrasound scan every two months. Sounds good to me. I'm really encouraged to see that Dot is getting stronger again. Admittedly, we're taking baby steps, but this is so much better than seeing her slide even further downhill.

It was a very different day fourteen years ago. We hadn't met Dot yet, but she was a very young puppy on the verge of becoming lost and abandoned. I hadn't started blogging yet and wasn't eating very healthy either. I'll always remember looking at the kitchen TV in stunned disbelief as I watched the twin towers fall while I ate a plate of French Toast floating in a sea of maple syrup. I would soon learn that I was on the road to diabetes and needed to change my ways. Watching the Today Show while eating that big plate of French Toast was the end of innocence in so many ways. The world has never been the same since. Dot found Janet and I through the Dalmatian Rescue organization and her story had a happy ending. I don't think the world was as lucky as Dot. We are still facing almost all the same problems we faced on September 11, 2001. Two wars certainly didn't help much. In retrospect, we should have left dictators like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi in place. They were the only thing keeping a population of zealots that were still living in the Middle Ages in check. We've opened Pandora's box, and as the world descends into chaos, I'm not sure that anyone has a plan to close it again.

I certainly don't have any solutions.  There are too many of us on this planet and we keep making more. We are consuming the planet's resources at an alarming rate. Some of use are living in the twenty first century while others are still living in the fourteenth century. This can't end well. It really shouldn't be surprising that I prefer the company of dogs. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if that giant asteroid hadn't wiped out the dinosaurs sixty five million years ago. Maybe the dinosaurs would have done a better job of things.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2095

My activity tracker said that I only got three and a half hours of sleep last night. That was probably a generous estimate. I got to bed late and woke up just before 4 AM when Dot had another accident in her bed. By the time we cleaned her up and got her soiled blankets in the wash, I was wide awake. It was so close to morning anyway and my brain just couldn't go back to sleep again.

The whole family was practically sleepwalking through our morning walk. Dash was just as slow as Dot this morning.  I shuffled along, wishing I had a better camera with me, since the pre-dawn sky was quite spectacular. Low in the East, a thin sliver of a moon sat right between Venus and Mars. As sunrise approached, I watched the sun touch the tops of tall cumulus clouds and then inch downward until the entire cloud was bathed in a luminous pink glow. It was all quite pretty, but I would much rather have been sleeping.

The day turned out to be a lot busier than I expected. When I opened my inbox this morning, there were lots of website modifications that need to be dealt with quickly. It's funny that things can be wrong for months, but when someone finally notices that there's a mistake, it usually needs to be fixed immediately. I had my work cut out for me. I worked methodically through the changes until it was time to take Dot to her physical therapy session, and then finished up the remainder of the work when we returned.

Dot didn't do as well as she'd done last week. You could tell she was tired, so we ran the treadmill a little slower and shortened her workout to fifteen minutes instead of the normal eighteen minutes. She was completely off schedule today. In addition to pooping in her bed this morning, she pooped in the lobby of the vet clinic. Hopefully, she'll get a good night's sleep tonight, since she's got another big day tomorrow. We go back to the cancer center for the long anticipated Ultrasound scan that will determine whether she needs to resume taking the Palladia pills. Hopefully, the tumor hasn't grown since her last scan.

I still can't decide whether to try the new restaurant tomorrow. I'm curious and hear that the place makes a good Eggs Benedict, but I keep making excuses. I'll have to go through a school zone to get to the new place. I hate school zones during that hectic hour when everyone is dropping off their kids. Maybe the coffee is no good. I really depend on a great cup of coffee. I feel loyal to the staff at the other restaurant too. They expect me every Friday. We'll see how I feel in the morning.

Cleo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2094

We had to work around the rain today. Although the rainfall was sporadic, it was surprisingly heavy. The storm cells were so small and sprang up so quickly that the weather radar let me down. I thought we were in the clear when I saw a break in the weather around 10 AM, but about halfway through our walk, Dash and I got soaked. At least there wasn't much thunder and lightning. When we got home, Dot was still fast asleep on her dog bed.

I started to see patches of blue sky around lunch time, so I decided to drive up to the repair shop in Plano and get my laptop battery replaced. For a brief moment, I thought I was going to get a completely new computer, because one of the technicians said that my particular model was on a recall list. They had to do a test to see whether my machine qualified for a complete motherboard replacement. I was hoping the computer would fail the test, but it passed with flying colors. After looking at the serial number, they said that my computer was late in the production run for the recalled model and that Apple had already corrected the problem. Too bad. I did walk away with a new battery though, so the aging MacBook Pro will probably continue to serve me well until laptops are completely obsolete.

The sporadic storms made it difficult to take Dot outside at the appropriate times and consequently she pooped in the house twice. It's hard enough to time things right when the weather is perfect. Today it was impossible. All it takes is a few seconds of sustained barking to cause Dot to have an accident. There was plenty to bark about today. Thunder made the dogs bark. So did the sound of rain on the roof. When they weren't barking at the storm, they were barking at me. Neither of them seemed to realize that there was no reason to hurry through breakfast this morning. I had to wait until the rain stopped to walk them anyway. Needless to say, I did a lot of laundry today.

I'm enough of a geek that it was hard to ignore today's Apple Event. The last thing I need is one more thing with an Apple logo on it, but I was somewhat intrigued by the new larger iPad. I seldom use my iPad anymore, but this new larger model seemed like it could easily replace a laptop. With a large touch screen, and the ability to use a keyboard and pencil with it as well, why would you even need a laptop? Oops. I forgot that the iPad is just another IOS device and won't run any of the software I depend on for work. I guess I'm going to need that laptop with the brand new battery after all.

Work is still slow. It's time to send out my September invoices but I didn't feel my usual sense of urgency to get them in the mail. Billings are so low this month that it hardly seems worth the effort. I need to keep a positive attitude though. I remember when I got initially the laptop in 2010 I was going through a similar dry period and then out of the blue I got a huge job that doubled my income. I'm not sure a new battery will have the same effect, but one can always hope.

Chief is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2093

I was happy to see a long overdue check arrive in today's mail. Now I can finish paying my August bills. Of course it is September already, so the whole process will begin all over again soon. Vet appointments. Trips to the pharmacy. Writing checks and taking them to the post office. Sometimes entire months go by this way. It wasn't always like this. For many years the only things that mattered were having a cool job and a cool car. I didn't even bother to balance my checkbook. Karma took care of that. I'm mature and responsible now, but there are times when I think maturity is overrated.

I called the Apple Store and tried to find out what the procedure was for getting the battery replaced in my laptop. Apple service sucks. After spending forever talking to an automated computer that insisted it understood complete sentences, I finally ended up talking to a real person who knew nothing. She told me that I would have to come to the store and talk to a technician. "That's why I'm calling you now, " I told her. "I was hoping to talk to a technician on the phone, so I won't have to make two trips to the store." When I asked her if the store even had the battery I needed in stock, she told me she wasn't allowed to discuss the store's inventory over the phone. I finally gave up in disgust and called a third-party repair service that I always use when I'm frustrated with Apple. They told me to bring the laptop in tomorrow morning and they'd have me ready to go in thirty minutes. The price for this speedy service was exactly the same as the Apple Store price.

Dot pooped in the house again. I thought she was asleep and was surprised to see her standing by my desk. Thinking she might need to go outside, I got up and we went to the back door. It didn't take long to notice the little trail of poop leading to the door. She did need to go outside. About five minutes before she walked into my office. I wish Dot had a way of warning me. If she would just bark or scratch the floor when she needed to go, I'd come running.

Dash still likes his new food. Now, we need to find out whether this diet is a short or long term solution. Dash has a sensitive stomach and is prone to get crystals in his urine, so it took us a long time to find a brand that was nutritious, made in America, and didn't cause him to gain weight or form crystals. He seemed to love his food for several years, but maybe he's like me. I can eat the same thing for months at a time and then one morning I'll wake up and never want to see it again. I hope I don't sour on my fruit smoothies anytime soon. They are delicious and very easy to make. One day I'll wake up and they'll seem disgusting though. It always happens eventually.

I"ll probably go ahead and get the laptop battery replaced tomorrow. It would be nice to have a computer that didn't instantly die on me the next time the power goes out. I need to get a haircut soon, but that will probably have to wait. Thursday is reserved for Dot's physical therapy and Friday she has another Ultrasound scan at the cancer center. It's going to be a busy week.

Camp is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2092 - Labor Day

You could tell it was a holiday this morning. The park was filled with cyclists and joggers when we took the dogs on their early morning walk. Judging from the number of people we saw, Labor Day is pretty universally observed. Unlike President's Day and other seemingly optional holidays, everybody stayed home from work today.

I stayed home too, but that didn't keep me from working. As soon as we finished breakfast, I went up on the roof and removed the water from Saturday's brief, but surprisingly heavy rainfall. Just like our last rainfall, I wished that I'd remembered to sweep away all the pecan shells first. If you've ever gathered these nuts, you've probably realized what an effective and permanent brown dye they make. Nothing seems to remove the stains left by pecan and walnut hulls. I"m really tempted to ask the roofers if they could paint the roof to match the color of these persistent stains, because they are not going away. You may wonder why I chose a white roof in the first place. I was under the impression that the special coating would get me a nice tax credit the year it was applied, but my accountant said the roof didn't meet the government's energy efficiency guidelines for some odd technical reason. Oh, well. Screwed by the government once again.

Since I was already outside, I decided to wash the car when I finished with the roof. The car seems to get dirty whether I drive it or not. Birds shit on it. Sticky tree sap sticks to the windows. And the wheels are perpetually coated with a mix of road grease and brake pad dust. It's almost impossible to clean the house theses days, but the car is a smaller challenge. It makes me feel good to see a clean car. I may not be able to keep everything spotless, but at least this tiny little chunk of the universe is still under my control.

I thought I'd finished my website work yesterday, but apparently not. I got input for some additional pages that needed to be created in this morning's e-mail and then I noticed on Facebook that two dogs needed to be removed from an animal rescue website because they had been adopted. Increasingly, animal rescue websites are just an afterthought. The real news goes out on Facebook now.

I think we've solved Dash's eating disorder. He was just bored. Janet got two different brands of food to try yesterday and we filled Dash's bowl with one of the new choices this morning. He gobbled it down like he was eating a steak dinner. It's a shame that Dash doesn't like his regular food anymore, because it was perfect for him. It made life easier to feed Dot and Dash the same thing too. Maybe if he eats this new food for a while, we can re-introduce the original food and he'll think it's new again. You can't fool a dog all the time, but sometimes you can. It's worth a try anyway.

Janet goes back to work tomorrow. I go back to having my fruit smoothies for breakfast. Hopefully, Dot doesn't go back to pooping on the floor. We've had a nice accident free holiday.

Bailey is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2091

We made a serious effort to clean the rugs today. Some rugs went to the laundromat. Others got cleaned in the back yard. The rest just received a vigorous vacuuming. The house is cleaner now, although it still looks just as messy. It's hard to complain about the rugs though. They do their job. Dot is able to walk around the house without slipping and falling, which would be virtually impossible if she still had to deal with our slippery brick floors.

Whenever we do some serious cleaning, Janet tries to get me to clean out my office. There are probably a hundred good reasons to get rid of things, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I am surrounded by the remnants of decades of hard work and interesting experiences. If I got rid of these things, what would I replace them with? The ironic thing is that if I were really busy, it wouldn't bother me to work in a bare office. Now that I'm not so busy, I treasure the cluttered memories. My Dad's office was like this as he neared retirement. The University let him keep his cluttered office for a few years after he officially retired, but eventually he was forced to vacate what was probably the original man cave. He went downhill quickly after that.

I'm going to the gym earlier on Sunday's now. It probably doesn't make much difference, but I find that I have more time for other things if I do my workouts in the morning. The gym seems pretty empty on Sunday mornings. That's a plus too. I had a good workout today and still think the Apple Watch is keeping me from being lazy. I need to make an effort to get to the gym at least once more during the week. Maybe Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm holding my own now, but with two good workouts a week, I might actually start getting stronger.

When I was trying to figure out how to fix my computer's optical drive yesterday, I read that some people were wrapping a baby wipe around a credit car and sticking this crude cleaning instrument into the drive slot in an attempt to dislodge dust from the burner lens. This didn't really seem like it would work, but what did I have to lose? Eight people said this method cured their problem and one said it ruined his drive. This seemed like pretty good odds. I carefully inserted the baby wipe wrapped credit card into the slot several times and then tried to burn a DVD. It worked. I don't know if this is a short term or long term fix, but it sure beats buying a new computer.

Last week when I was taking a shower, I discovered there was a cockroach in the shower with me. Today, when I was washing my hair, I discovered a lizard in the shower. I don't know how these critters get in the house, but they don't appear to have much difficulty. At least we don't have a doggie door. People with pet doors in our neighborhood frequently find raccoons and possums crawling through them. When I was younger, I probably would have thrown the lizard down the toilet. Since I've mellowed quite a bit over the years, I carefully captured the small reptile and took is outdoors where I released it. You've got to be real careful with little lizards because it's easy to break their tails if they are handled roughly. This little guy did fine though and I was glad to see him wander off to join all the other critters in our yard.

Tomorrow is Labor Day. If my Facebook feed is any indications, a lot of people seem to get this holiday mixed up with Memorial Day. It's just another Monday to me.

April is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2090

The holiday weekend is getting off to a good start. Miraculously, the dogs let us sleep in a little this morning. Even though we got up later, Dot didn't poop in her bed. That's always a good sign. We set off on our morning walk around 7:30 AM, which is much later than normal. Dot continues to get stronger and I've noticed recently that she is actually starting to walk a little faster. Dash, on the other hand, is still acting strange. He is still finicky about eating in the morning, but seems completely normal the rest of the day. I don't know what's wrong. Maybe nothing is wrong at all. We're thinking about switching the brand of food he eats, just to see if that makes a difference. I'll ask the oncologist if we need to bring in Dash for another round of tests when I take Dot for her next Ultrasound scan this coming Friday.

Having bacon for breakfast made it seem like a holiday, but when I turned on the computer and checked my e-mail, I knew it was going to be another work day. There was a long list of website revisions to make. I guess I could have postponed the updates until Tuesday, but it made much more sense to go ahead and do them now. It's not like I was going to do anything special today anyway. Today's changes involved altering a Wordpress site. I've grown to hate Wordpress because clients often pick a template and then immediately set about trying to change it. It is almost always easier for me to create a custom site than it is to modify someone else's Wordpress template. Oh, well. Like I said, I didn't have much to do today.

We're trying to figure out how to clean the rugs we use to keep Dot from falling in the house. The little ones will fit in the washing machine, but most of them are too big even for commercial laundromat machines. The rugs in the kitchen are the worst, because that's where the dogs like to hang out. The Dyson is pretty amazing, but even this super vacuum is no match for two Dalmatians eating breakfast for several months. I'm torn between buying a power washer and renting one of those Bissell carpet cleaners. A power washer might actually work pretty well, since the rugs are all made of synthetic material that dries quickly. I need to clean all the spider webs off the windows anyway, so why not take the rugs outside and clean them both with a power washer at the same time. The only downside to this plan is that we'd have to buy even more rugs, so Dot would have something to walk on while the other rugs dried. If I spent my time trying to solve real problems instead of fretting about dirty rugs and broken optical drives, Lord knows what I might accomplish.

Yes, I did make one more attempt to revive the DVD burner in my desktop Mac. I failed again. The thing is probably just dirty, but there is no easy way to clean these drives anymore. My older Mac towers had flat CD trays that slid out to insert a disc. You could buy special cleaning discs that had a little brush glued to the surface of the disc. You would put some solvent on the brush, insert the cleaning disc in the players and run it for a few minutes. The brush cleaned off the laser head and almost always cured sluggish or faulty optical drives. If worse came to worse, you could just unscrew the entire broken drive from the chassis and replace it with a new one. New Macintosh computers are completely different. Almost nothing is meant to be serviced yourself. Some components are epoxied directly to the motherboard, so they can't be removed at all. I have no idea how I'd remove the optical drive from my current Mac. You can't even open the case. I'm sure Apple would prefer that I just buy a new one.

It looks like I'm going to have time to go to the gym tomorrow. I skipped my workout last Sunday since I was doing the photoshoot with the two children and their menagerie of animals. Nothing exciting like that this weekend, so it looks like I'll have to burn off some calories on the treadmill.

Allie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2089

Do you ever feel that your life is starting to look like a reenactment of Groundhog Day? I'm sure you remember the movie where Bill Murray was forced to repeat the same day over and over again until he finally got it right. Sometimes I feel this way. Every day I eat the same things. Almost every day I clean up poop and wash the soiled dog blankets. Every time I do a load of laundry, I plug the floor drain in the utility room with a rag so water from the rinse cycle won't come back up through the drain and flood the room. After I take a shower I always put rags around the edge of the shower stall to soak up water that has seeped through cracks in the tile between shower walls and floor. Every evening I print the same JPEG file to keep the ink lines in my large printer from clogging. There are literally dozens of little rituals like this. The dogs get the same two walks every day and I patch up and repair the same websites over and over again. I know that I've got to break out of this monotonous cycle, but it's a comfortable rut and I feel no urgency. Hopefully, I won't be stuck in the time loop as long as Phil Connors was in Groundhog Day.

I've been wondering why traffic seemed so bad this week, and then I realized that school was back in session. There literally seems to be twice as many cars on the road. I pass a private school on my way to breakfast every Friday and I see cars lined up for ten blocks as parents queue in the right hand lane to drop their kids off for class. Luckily, I am going in the other direction. The same cars return every afternoon to pick the kids up. When you add the additional trips for band practice, soccer practice, and other school activities, the roads are always busy. It certainly is a different world from the one where I walked or rode my bicycle to school. I wonder how parents find any time to themselves these days.

The stock market had another miserable day. When is this going to end? I feel like my retirement income is an ice cube sitting out in the hot sun. It is just melting away day-after-day and there is very little I can do about it. I think people are going to regret the day when politicians sold them this idea that a 401K Plan that they managed themselves could provide a much more secure retirement income than the old fashioned defined benefit plans their parents generation relied on. It hasn't worked out all that great so far. I'd trade my 401K for my Dad's pension any day. He and my Mom lived comfortably on that pension for many years. I can't say that I'm going to do nearly as well. I might not be able to retire at all.

Work was busy for a change. I added a new section to one of my client's websites and changed out photos in another. There have been no writing jobs all week though. It's always feast or famine. I can never manage to keep a nice, steady workload for very long. At least I can still pay the bills. There's not much left over anymore unfortunately, and that's a bit worrisome. 

We've got a three day weekend coming up. I don't know what we'll do with the extra day, but maybe we'll think of something. I know we won't be sleeping in late. That's just not in the cards anymore. If we don't get Dot outside early, it's a virtual certainly that she'll poop in the house. Of course if she poops in the house in the middle of the night, I can always sleep in a bit longer after I've cleaned things up. That's what I did last night. Oh, well. Here's hoping for a relaxing weekend, starting with no barking dogs at breakfast tomorrow morning.

Domino is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2088

I know some of you think that when work is slow I do absolutely nothing. Au contraire. I'm usually quite busy tilting windmills. Lately, I've been doing a lot of research on Google, trying to see if it is possible to adapt some of my old equipment so I could still use it in today's digital world. It would be nice if I could speed up my old computers so they could run today's complex software. It would be even nicer if I could use some of my old analog camera lenses on the latest digital bodies.

So far my efforts have been fruitless. I have some really nice Canon ENG broadcast lenses that I'd love to use on my current digital video cameras. So far, it seems impossible. These lenses were made to work with the 2/3 sensors found in Beta SP cameras. The image these lenses produce isn't large enough to cover the much larger 4/3 sensor found in my cinema camera. When I gave up on the Canon broadcast lenses, I thought my Bronica lenses might work. These medium format film lenses would certainly completely cover the 4/3 sensor, but nobody makes an adapter to attach the lens to the video camera. There are plenty of adapters for old Nikon and Canon lenses, but Bronica went out of business a long time ago and nobody cares about it anymore. There isn't a large enough market for anybody to make a profit manufacturing Bronica adapters. I even have some old Sinar view camera lenses that would cover any size sensor, but apparently nobody has even thought about adapting view camera lenses to modern video cameras. I found absolutely nothing on Google about using these lenses with video cameras.

It's frustrating to have fully functioning professional equipment that was good enough to shoot network TV commercials in the 1980's, but is now shunned even by beginning wedding photographers. I haven't adapted well. I love the old Macintosh towers I used to use in the early 1990's. My old Nikon F-2 still seems like the most useful and versatile camera I've ever owned. I even like reel-to-reel tape. Maybe this is why I enjoy watching old Perry Mason and Alfred Hitchcock shows on late night TV.

Dot had a good day. Now, she seems strong enough again to enjoy her early morning exercise walk and still have enough energy to do her afternoon physical therapy session. Today, she did a full seventeen minutes in the underwater treadmill. She's gained weight though. I don't know what that's all about. Nothing has changed since last week. I asked Dot's vet about Dash's strange new eating habits and she seemed baffled. She said she'd never heard of a dog who refused to eat from his bowl, yet ate everything normally when the food was transferred to a dinner plate. He doesn't seem sick. He just seems weird. We'll give him a Pepsid AC tonight before he goes to bed, just to see if he might have heartburn or a reflux problem.

I started a new book today. This one's been sitting on a shelf in the office for months. It is a memoir written by a co-worker of mine when I was starting out in the ad business in Seattle. I've been reluctant to read the book, since this guy ended up being hugely successful, building an award winning multi-million dollar ad agency while I was sitting in a small room writing with two dogs under my desk. I shouldn't be envious though. The first few chapters of this book were hilariously funny and remarkably accurate about what it's like to work in the ad biz.

It's hard to believe that this week is almost over. I've already taken this week's trash to the curb and gotten Dot's bed prepared for the night. I've still got to brush my teeth and run my daily test print on the large format printer. Then it's time for Perry Mason and sweet dreams about tomorrow's breakfast.

Domino is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2087

It didn't take me long to finish my book. Hmm. Now, what am I going to do? Without any pressing deadlines, it looked like it was going to be a long day. I could have used up some time making biscuits and gravy this morning, but I didn't feel like eating anything that heavy. I had my fruit smoothie again. For the third time this week, Dash didn't want to eat his breakfast. I switched bowls and put his food on a dinner plate and then he finally finished his meal. Eating shouldn't be so difficult though. Something is wrong.

I was a bit surprised that I was so captivated by a novel where the hero spends much of his time staying alive by solving complex math and chemistry problems. Unlike Interstellar and Farscape, there were no wormholes to make travel to other planets easy. Unlike Firefly, this wasn't a spaghetti Western with spaceships. The ship wasn't alive like Lexx. And nobody fired a gun. From what I learned during my visit with the NASA folks in January, The Martian is pretty realistic. It will be interesting to see how Ridley Scott adapts the story to film, especially since the main character spends most of his time completely alone without the ability to communicate. There certainly won't be much dialog. The story works great as a book, since the narrative is in the form of a logbook, much like the real log kept by Samantha Cristoforetti while she was a crew member on the International Space Station.

I guess this blog is kind of a logbook too, although my own ship is going nowhere and if I'm trying to escape from anything, it is only in my own mind. Like Mark Watney, I try to stay busy. I sewed a button on some pants today. I cleaned up poop in the living room after Dot couldn't quite make it to the back door after dinner. I keep the TV on a lot, but usually mute the sound. Typically, I just watch the moving stock ticker at the bottom of the business channel. It's not like knowing what is going on with the stock market makes any difference. I just like to know.

I thought about getting a new battery for my laptop today, but I didn't want to deal with the hassle of making a reservation at the Apple Store Genius Bar, only to discover that I'd have to come back again later. It's frustrating that you can't really call an Apple Store by phone and ask a simple question like whether they could replace a laptop battery while I waited. I've tried calling these stores before. Each store actually does have a local phone number, but when you call, it is really just a call center in another state. Getting a simple answer about anything isn't so simple anymore.

I paid a few bills and took them to the post office this afternoon. I mostly just did this to get out of the house for a little while. I would rather have taken a check to the bank, but there were no checks for me in the morning mail. It's always a good day when there's money in the mail, but mostly it's just bills. The mailbox is where the rubber meets the road. It is here that I watch my expenses continue to increase while my income slowly decreases.

Maybe I'll have the energy to make a decent breakfast tomorrow. I hope that Dot has the energy to have a good workout in the underwater treadmill. It seems like I just took her for a therapy session yesterday, but time goes by quickly these days. Dot actually does seem stronger since we stopped the chemotherapy. She's walking about the house again unaided. I'm often surprised to find her next to me while I'm working and wondering how she managed to get up without her harness. Moments like these make even the slowest day worthwhile.

Daisy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2086

I started reading The Martian today. I could have easily finished it if I didn't have the dogs to tend to and this blog to write. There certainly wasn't anything else going on today. I'd forgotten what a good way to kill time that reading is. As an added bonus, I could do my reading sitting next to Dot, who always likes having me nearby. Dot likes to lounge in the sun on nice days, so after lunch I took her out in the back yard and sat next to her reading my book for about 45 minutes. This worked out well for everyone. Dot had a companion and the bright sunlight narrowed my pupils, giving my eyes better depth of field, so I didn't need my reading glasses.

I could relate to the character of Mark Watney in the book. I'm not stranded on Mars, but I am alone a lot and spend a good deal of my time fixing things that break. Like Watney, I also spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about poop. I'm not in a desperate race to save my life, but I do feel like I'm trying to save my sanity at times. This book should be an inspiration to any aspiring writer. Andy Weir couldn't find a publisher, so he put the book on his website for free, one chapter at a time. Fans encouraged him to create a Kindle edition and sell it on Amazon. The e-book quickly rose to the top of Amazon's science fiction charts where it eventually caught the eye of traditional publishers. Five years after Andy started writing the book, it made its debut on the New York Times Best Seller List.

So, maybe there's hope for my dog stories yet. Not very likely. They'll probably be available free on my website forever. That's OK though. I never made any effort to get published. I kind of prefer doing things this way. There's a lot to read on my website if you're so inclined, but if you're not, that's OK too. At least you're reading the blog.

One of my clients asked me today if I'd be interested in taking over the SEO duties from another company they are currently using. Maybe. I asked the client what the current SEO experts were doing for them. He didn't know. "What do you mean you don't know," I said? "What are you actually paying for?" He really didn't know. "Have sales picked up since you hired this company," I asked? Nope. I'd say this was a pretty good sign that my client is wasting his money. I guess the question now is whether I could do any better. I'm not sure. A lot of SEO campaigns are totally worthless.

I'll probably finish reading my book tomorrow morning. I could have read the entire book in one sitting if I wasn't interrupted so often. I'm slow at a lot of things, but I'm a fast reader. I'll have to pick up some more books this weekend. They are a remarkably good way to kill time. I'm not even sure what interests me at this point in time, but I'm sure there's more to life than the trade journals and B&H photography catalogs that are my current reading matter.

I tried and failed to take pictures of dragonflies today. At this time of year, there are hundreds of them hovering over the meadows in the park in the afternoons. I've seem cool looking pictures of dragonflies in flight before, but the little critters are devilishly fast, fly in erratic patterns, and are almost impossible to keep in focus when you're using a zoom lens. Maybe I'll do better tomorrow.

Spot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2085

Sometimes I hate computers. I only had one job today. It was an easy one. I just needed to burn a few DVD's for a client. I hit the "burn to disc" button on my computer and almost immediately started getting error messages. Unfortunately, every time I got an error message, I wasted a blank disc. Some of the messages said it was impossible to calibrate the laser properly. Other messages said that the operation couldn't be completed because of some obscure error code number. I Googled the error code message and discovered that hundreds of people were having the same problem that I was. None of them seemed very happy with Apple. Many people said that their DVD burner worked just fine until they upgraded their system. A few suggested that Apple knew about the problem and that's why they no longer made computers with DVD burners. It didn't really matter what the reason was. My optical drive was broken.

I thought I'd burn the DVD's using my laptop, but there were problems there too. The hard drive on the laptop was almost full and I needed to transfer about 10 GB worth of photos before I could use the DVD burner. In addition to having very little free disc space, the laptop needs a new battery and I've got to run it using AC power. Hey, the optical drive still works though, and I was eventually able to burn the DVD's. These types of problems never used to occur when I got a new computer every three years. I can't afford that kind of extravagance anymore though, so everything is gradually falling apart.

Dot has become totally unpredictable. I took her out in the backyard after dinner when I thought she might need to poop. I walked her around with her harness for almost ten minutes and she did nothing. As soon as we went inside and I started unloading the dishwasher, she pooped on the largest and hardest to clean throw rug in the living room. Then she slipped and fell in the poop. I cleaned up Dot first, and then I tried the best I could to clean up the rug. Thank goodness for those new enzyme cleaners like Outright and Nature's Miracle. Without them, this rug would have been a lost cause. As it is, it will still take days for the rug to dry out enough for me to see if my efforts were successful.

Last year at this time, Dot was still having incontinence problems and I was mopping up pee almost every day. Now, I'm cleaning up poop. It wears you out after a while. Dash is acting weird too. For the second day in a row, he refused to eat his breakfast. There was no brisket on the kitchen counter today, so I couldn't use that as an excuse. I don't know what is wrong. He eats the very same food for diner without a problem. He still barks and begs for treats while I eat my own meals. It's just breakfast that he refuses to eat. Whenever Dash acts weird, I worry that the cancer has returned. If his appetite doesn't return soon, we're going to have to run some more tests. It's always something, isn't it?

I'd like to start reading my new book soon, but who knows what surprises tomorrow has in store for me. It's hard to believe it's September already. The dogs get their monthly heartworm pill in the morning. I haven't tired of my breakfast fruit smoothies yet, but it's going to be a tough choice tomorrow. I know that's there's bacon in the refrigerator. I'm wondering if it's even worth the trouble to get the optical drive in my computer repaired. I could get a brand new external disc burner for half the price of a repair. In the old days, today's problems would be a good excuse to go to the Apple store and buy one of those super fast black cylindrical towers. Times have changed though. Now the tech toy money gets used to pay vet bills. Oh, well. I don't need a super fast computer anymore and I probably couldn't afford one anyway.

Maybe nothing will break tomorrow and Dot won't poop inside again. One can only hope.

Domino is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2084

When I arrived for my photoshoot today, I was greeted by two kids, a cockatiel, several parrots, a rabbit, a Labrador retriever, a basset hound mix, a large iguana, a lizard, a box of puppies and kittens, and two very large snakes. Through a process of elimination, we selected five animals that seemed to get along well with the children and each other. Amazingly, the children weren't afraid of the snakes, but I got a little nervous myself when a large yellow python wound up in my lap while I was looking through the viewfinder.

These type of photos aren't easy. Is everybody looking at the camera? Is the cat going to go after the bird? Will the snake eat a puppy? We had wranglers for each animal to keep things safe, but still there were a lot of surprises. The seventy pound snake moved pretty fast and always seemed to slither out of the frame. The bird flew away several times. The iguana was getting old and occasionally fell off its perch and landed on the floor with a thud. I was amazed that the rabbit was so calm. Most rabbits wouldn't want anything to do with a situation like this, but our bunny was calm and collected and stayed with us for the entire shoot. I think the photo came out great. I'm not sure what the snake thought.

I thought Dash was sick this morning. He got us up early, went outside, immediately pooped in the yard, and then wouldn't eat his breakfast. This had me worried. Dash always eats his meals. He seemed perfectly normal on our morning walk and as soon as we got home again I figured out what was going on. There was a smell of brisket in the air when I opened the back door. Janet was fixing a slow cook meal in the crockpot and the smell of the meat simmering overnight must have driven Dash wild. He's a very stubborn dog and he woke up wanting brisket for breakfast instead of his dog food. As soon as we gave the dogs a little taste of the brisket, they both were happy and spent the rest of the morning sleeping quietly on their dog beds. This evening when the meat was safely in the refrigerator, Dash thought his dog food was just fine and ate it eagerly.

With a concert and a photoshoot on the agenda, this turned out to be a very busy weekend. There was no time to mow the lawn or go to the gym, but I'm surprised that we got as much done as we did. The dogs still got their walks. The dog's bedding got washed. Dot only pooped inside once this weekend, but that still required a full load of laundry. The house could be a little cleaner, but I did manage to get all the photo equipment packed up and back to the storage warehouse. Tomorrow, I'll need to burn some DVD's so the client can sort through the hundreds of images I took today. I think there are still some website revisions I need to make as well. Oh, in case you're wondering, the brisket was deliciou.

Tessa is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2083

We woke up to rain for the second time in as many weeks. Maybe the seasons are finally starting to change. The dogs always notice the rain first. I think they smell it. There was no thunder or wind this morning, but Dash went into his rain panic mode anyway. Dot taught him well, because now he's even more storm phobic than she is. Since Dot is half deaf now, she sleeps through a lot of things until Dash wakes her up with his barking and whining. She must have known what he was talking about this morning, because it didn't take long for her to go into storm panic mode too. It was a gentle rain and I knew she was going to poop soon, so I took her outside in the rain and walked her down the alley. We got wet, but it didn't take long. After barking at the weather a couple of times, she did her business.

I was hoping that we could go back to bed for a while, but Dash was wide awake when we returned to the house and he wanted his breakfast. So much for sleeping in on Saturday morning. By the time we fed the dogs and had a little something ourselves, the rain has stopped. I wish I had gotten all the pecan shells off the roof yesterday, like I had planned. Pecan shells must contain some sort of natural dye, because whenever it rains in the Fall, the broken shells on the roof immediately turn the water a dark tobacco brown that stains everything. If you're wondering why the pecans are all broken, it's because the squirrels feast on them. We gave up on eating the pecans or making pies with them years ago, because the squirrels always get them first.

When I went up on the roof later in the morning to check things out, there must have been ten pounds of broken pecan shells mixed in with the water. It was an ugly mess. It took me over an hour to get things cleaned up, and just like they always do, the broken pecan shells had stained the white roof even further. The roof looks terrible now, but at least it doesn't leak. In my ongoing battle with nature, it's the squirrels, spiders, and armadillo who always win. To add insult to injury,  I saw two well fed squirrels pulling up my St. Augustine grass by the roots and eating it while I was putting the Sump Pump away.

I thought one of my clients was a telemarketer this morning and refused to pick up the phone three times in a row. Janet, who is more curious about repeat phone calls than I am finally picked up the line and apologized for my behavior. Hey, it seemed like a telemarketer to me. There was no name on the caller ID and telemarketers often call several times in a row. They know you'll eventually pick up the line.

We went to the Eisemann Center tonight to see the Rich Tones. Janet has friends who sing in this group and we go every year to this annual concert. I didn't think I'd like a 100 member women's barbershop chorus when we first started going to these concerts, but the music grows on you. The group often takes pop hits like Lady Gaga's Born This Way or Michael Jackson's Beat It and re-arranges them as massive acapella numbers for their 100 voice choir.  The show was good tonight, but I worried that we were leaving the dogs alone too long. Of course, they were just fine when we got home.

The big photo shoot is tomorrow. I"m supposed to take a group portrait of several dogs and cats, a large lizard, two snakes, a rabbit, and a guinea pig. Maybe there's a parrot too. I hope the snake doesn't eat the guinea pig.

Duke is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day