Some Friday Rants

The photos today will be tied to no specific subject. I’ve picked them at random and it’s possibly a change of pace. All these photos are on the blog for the first time. All comments will be approved.

WP’s comment process is that all first time commenters require my approval. From your 2nd comment on no approval is needed, it’s live when you enter it. ALL photos will enlarge if you click the photo, in any format they are in. If you “hover” your cursor over the photo you can see the caption.

It’s been one of those “Seattle Days” to me this afternoon. It reminds me of the ten years I lived in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) and those winter days would be very similar to what the hounds and I have experienced today here in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana. If you are wondering, it’s like this … 44°, feels like 36° dark overcast clouds with either intermittent rain or a steady light rain, aided by 20mph winds. Felt warmer in Breckenridge Colorado in January with sub-zero temps.

So it was pretty easy to stay inside, forget taking photos of anything outside … and drink coffee. After all that is where I started my coffee habit, while living on Whidbey Island. It took 38 years before I started drinking coffee. The hounds were more than agreeable to the plan of the day. I am too but I need to get out to replenish the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator with food. Otherwise the comment today by the Spotted Dog Ranch may have some merit … Stella and I need a caterer!

So with that in mind, I decided my Friday afternoon post or early evening post for the day would be just a page of rambling, a few photos from the past and a rant or two a few rants thrown in. I mean life is good but there is always something to complain about in today’s world.

All I'll Say Is 1977

Before moving forward I will say the weather outside did nothing different to hounds lifestyle today except cut down on the number of trips they went outside. They had no interest in going outside just to stand in the rain. Smart hounds and I reassured them by repeating to them how good they were.

So Heidi did her normal routine after an early breakfast … grabbed the big living room chair. After scratching the thick Mexican blanket into the perfect pile, she has been sleeping there the rest of the day. A quick trip outside after lunch of course but right back in to the chair.






 Sadie and I played some indoor fetch. The game didn’t last more than 5 minutes before she stretched out for a day of sleep. Stella was the same way, sleep before anything else. No playing, no bone chewing, no whining for food … just indoor sleep, let it rain.

 

 

 

Sadie Goes No Further After Seeing The Rain

 

 

 

I am becoming more acclimated to WordPress. I love it. I have noticed though from what I posted the other night about my likes and dislikes. How stupid can one be to post things like that, only a few days later or the next day … have your answer on how the simplest things work? I see the spellcheck icon at the top of the screen … but I am writing this post from my “dashboard”. I love the dashboard … but there is a different “inside” page somewhere else where you can write new posts, edit them, etc .. that doesn’t have the spellcheck icon.

Inserting photos right now and see from doing from the Dashboard is different than the other pages where I wrote, inserted photos and posted them. Here I can’t there I could put multiple photos in one group.  HELP!!!!! If I am on my blog at .com, clicking the ‘edit’ button gets me to where that different page is, where I can edit photos and group them together.

I finally figured out the photos, how to link them so they explode to a large size when you or I click it. I’ve cleaned up all of the pages listed at the top of the blog, fixing all the photos so they will enlarge when clicked. Winston’s Story alone had over 100 of them to fix.

A Mini Cooper can be an SUV or a Truck bed when hauling 500 pounds is required!

Photo by Owner In Mini Cooper Forum

My 2009 Mini Cooper S at Home Depot

I want to take a time out here for my first rant of this post …………….

Ashley I don’t know who you are. After 19 months of getting MY new Verizon phone number, your friends, your late night texts, your debt, your bill collection calls, your ex boyfriends and those calls offering you ways of just getting out of all of your school loans and PAY NOTHING!!! Still haunt me. You get more phone calls in a day than I get in 3 months or longer.

I love Verizon phone service. I like my new number that is 19 months old … I DON’T LIKE ASHLEY!!!

So back to WordPress or WP as many use. I’ll use WP from now on, it’s techie sounding. Things are going very well with the change in blog platform. I am glad I moved the blog. Do NOT look or expect the long list of blogs that I had on my old blog. Sorry, I tried it with 53 different blog links but after looking at it … it made the new site look cluttered. It does take away the ability for readers to find new bloggers though.

Which would you choose?

Speaking of another rant.

Where else can you work for three years or less for multi-millions of dollars per year. Get fired due to poor performance and land a job within weeks MAKING MORE MONEY??? I want all the pressures that come with the job. Why would it matter, in this profession you will get paid your total contract whether you work or get fired … NFL Head Coach. You can also be a MLB Manager, a NBA coach and but not as fast, a College Head Coach and get the same results. Where do I sign?

The View From My Overpriced Seat At Yankee Stadium 2003

The hounds and I have had a couple of recent offers to head west, lay in the sun and get away from the cold temps, rain and snow. After seeing my friend’s rescued Mastiff rolling on his back in the hot sunshine on a yard of nothing but grass … no weeds, no yard moles … the offers are tempting. Not sure if, when or what will happen.

For new readers, and blog followers … over to the right sidebar on the Archive drop down menu will give you 4 years of posts where you can witness my decision making process or the lack there of.

Politics I will NEVER get into on this blog, nor any discussions about politics will be on this blog. I’ve never liked politics to begin with and this last decade has made me even more cynical. When my long time friend from college mentions it at times in our conversations … he tells me to read “March to Folly” by Margaret Tuchman. It was written around 45 years ago, give or take a couple. My friends says it has all the answers to today’s circus called the world. “Just relax and enjoy all the news” he keeps telling me.

As my profile states, I am a college basketball addict. There will be a weekend full of games, sliding around and in between the NFL Playoffs. I know I need more televisions but ‘remote channel changing’ during commercials of one game can keep me updated. Plus taping two games on the DVR at the same time also helps.

The hounds will sleep nearby through all the games, with dreams that I will have some food occasionally that can be handed to their begging faces. I run a pretty tight ship around here, so they don’t get many handouts from the bowl of people food.

Sorry that this post is jumping all over the place. I could but won’t go back and put it in some sort of sequence. I have to spend all my spare time on this post editing photos before publishing it. You can always just scroll through the photos. :)

A friend and I are 99.9% sure that all of the scratching that Heidi does is not allergy related. Not food related, Not environmentally related. Has it turned into an obsessive habit? Whatever it is it has been driving me nuts at times. I do wonder though, I just changed the ingredients in the Earthborn Grain Free food. This is the first time she has had Turkey as the #1 ingredient. Could be be turkey instead of a habit?

The more I type this in the “dashboard” the better I like it. All I can say is the other screen I’ve been writing my posts in looks like the same screen you use to edit old posts or photos. I’ll think of it eventually. I figured it out. That other place to do posts and photo editing is via my blog site and clicking the edit button … where I am heading now.

I have to ask though … why two different places to do similar jobs?

I need some feedback on the photo slideshow located near the top on the left sidebar. I thought when I installed it you could stop the slideshow, click a photo and have it explode to a big photo, like the ones in the blog posts themselves. Can’t do that. I also thought those light arrows and the pause symbol would only appear when you hovered your mouse over the photo … not so, they are there all the time.

My only other choice is to go from a slideshow to a grid of 100+ photos but that gets back to my issue with cluttered sidebars and something I would like to stay away from on this blog. So send me an email or comment to this post about your thoughts on the photo slideshow of a 100 or so favorite photos.

Next question?  {scanning the room for a raised hand}

Is this it? Is this all I have for today’s afternoon post? I really thought I’d have a lot more ranting going on but I have lost my train of thought. Plus I have to go through some older photos, insert them and edit them ~takes longer than Blogger photos … but they do look nicer.

Now THAT Is Some Snow - Bertha

Ah here’s one … Apple’s Photo Program that replaced iPhoto sucks!!!

I have followed the rules of the Photo program all the time. I have had it since it came out and was shoved down Mac user’s throats a few months later. As I trek through my thousands of photos that were transferred from iPhoto to Photos, a lot times as I look at old photos (like now), they might have a small yellow warning icon .. to let me know “The Referenced File is Missing”. Where did it go? Those photos transferred ok at the time they were  uploaded.

How can that be?? I’ve only transferred my photos a few different times to get rid of that message!! Luckily I kept my iPhoto program on my computer just for ‘special’ occasions like this. So, I do have that referenced file but I’m not sure I am going to transfer it into Apple Photo again. Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result? It says “over and over” not “a few different times”. :)

That is about all for Friday – IF you made it this far, THANKS for reading!

Have a great Friday night – from the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana.