Squirrels Torment Watson

Luckily the neighbors I have talked to about Watson find his "baying" funny and are happy to hear him. A few think he is a great watch dog if people are around the property. Whether it be a garbage truck, an AT&T Technician, Water delivery or the lawn crews ... Watson will sprint outside and give them his loud hello when none of them are in our yard or driveway.

 I am not a real fan of his boisterous noise so I bought something called Bark BeGone. It stops Walter immediately from barking. Henry rarely barks but he and Watson will turn and look at me knowing that with that high pitched sound only they can hear, a dog bone might follow if they come sprint to the door and come inside.

So yesterday with the neighbor gone I knew when he was baying and not barking, his favorite squirrel was back. This squirrel torments Watson in different ways and at all hours of the day. He likes to walk on top of the AT&T large cable lines, he likes to sit on top of the fence and even sometimes early in the morning he will be in the yard but close enough to the fence where he can escape once he sees Watson sprinting out the patio door in his direction.

Yesterday afternoon Walter even joined the fun to give the squirrel his "two cents" of get off my lawn. He also likes to growl to emphasize that he is serious. 

While Walter and Watson are baking and baying at the squirrel, Henry just hangs out and watches. He doesn't bark nor does he care the squirrel or birds are near his yard.

I had just transferred the photos from my Nikon to the computer and into this post, when I heard Watson going crazy. I glanced out the computer room window to confirm squirrel or neighbor?? It was the squirrel. Henry seems to be telling me "he is at it again". 

With the new macOS there are changes inside Apple Photos on my iMac. It use to be so easy to straighten a photo but I just found out there is a very small sensitive bar I have to slide with my curser to get the photo straight. With that tree straight you can see just how much the yard is higher in the back than near the house. That is not good for my flooding issues after heavy rains or snow melt.

The squirrel, myself and any neighbors that are home can hear him loud and clear. My first bloodhound out of five over the years that bays and barks more than any of them. Although Stella use to look like that when she bayed to let me know I was late serving her lunch.

Walter is confused though. He wants to join Watson in the fun but it is 46° at 10am and like his slave (me) he does not like cold weather. So he doesn't know whether to run to the fence or back inside the house.

Notice the left paw on the fence and the stance below ... he has locked in on the squirrel and would love to be able to chase him. Luckily he will not try busting through the fence that is not as strong as I thought it would be when I bought it.

Henry is only wanting to start another day of his laidback lifestyle.

In a matter of a day, it is fall weather so no shorts and t-shirts. Yet when I look at the ten day forecast it will have highs in the 70s by the middle of next week. It takes all day to get that warm and in the past couple of days the temps never reached the predicted highs. I want summer back, humidity and all of the high temps.

Looking at those leaves you might think that winter is just around the corner.

This photo reminds me a lot of Winston.

I had a few stragglers left on my Nikon that downloaded this morning. They carried that pile of limbs and leaves away when they were finished cutting the tree limbs. Then they raked their yard and part of my side yard of all the left over twigs.

The yard had a nice layer of leaves yesterday. I decided I would raise the mower blade up a notch and mow the leaves knowing at a higher level the mulched leaves would blow out the sides instead of mulching them down to nothing with a lower setting. It's perfect size to give the yard some nutrients over the winter instead of a clean yard like I made last fall.

After spending most of their day outside by choice, by 6:30pm or 7pm they are always finished for the day.

For any readers that have downloaded the new Apple macOS Ventura, I might have some good information for you if you are experiencing issues with the Apple Photos. There are a few nice features to the new OS although I will not use all of them. As in the past 12 years I have always uploaded the new macOS as soon as it is released. Sometimes there are some minor bugs to fix but Tuesday was different, because trying to fix the issues moved into Wednesday.

Problem: After airdropping the photos from the phone into the iMac, going into the default folder 'downloads', Apple Photos would not import them. The process would start but the photos wouldn't show up. No, I don't and won't use their iCloud as my photo library storage. I have over 82,000 photos in my file that is 593Gb large. There is just something about having my photos stored in someone else's 'warehouse'.

With my memory issues at times I ended up searching the internet for a fix. I headed over to macRumors forum where a lot of geeks could tell me what to do. The only problem was I had 143 people view my post but 0 people replied or had an answer. I went to Apple Support online with no idea I could call them since my computer is 20 months old and the free 90 day support service was gone a long time ago. You can call the Apple Support phone number IF you are having SOFTWARE problems.

Long story short ... all told to me by the Apple technician ... back up the photos library to a different external hard drive. Erase and reformat the external drive the photo library file was on, making sure it was in an APFS format. Then drag the file from the backup external drive to the driver that was just erased and reformatted. As he was telling me each thing to do, my memory cells lined up and I could remember them, to the point he said "it looks like you know what you are doing". He could see my screen after I gave me approval to link into it.

Sounds simple and fast but with a file that large it took almost 7 hours to back up the file on Tuesday night and another 7 hours last night to transfer (copy) that large file onto the clean external drive.

Everything was working normal this morning after I turned on the computer.

I really do like their new weather app now on the iMac in the Applications folder. I moved that app out to the dock for easy access. On the left side there is a sidebar that I did not include in this photo, that will show all the towns you are following their weather. Having all that information on one screen with a click of an icon is very nice. 

I am sure the more I use Photos the more small new ways of doing things will be found. There are so many new things you can do with iMessage (texting) and Apple Mail that are nice if I were working but will not be used in retirement.

Going back through my brain cells to check if I missed anything I wanted to blog about.

Oh, I have added some old favorite blogs to the sidebar. It was good to see that Lori is getting a new puppy. That is always a hard decision after losing a dog. "Do I need a puppy since I am older" is what I asked myself three different times in the past two years. I am glad my answer was "yes", although Watson is giving me a run for my money right now. He still is not 2 years old though, so he is still a gigantic puppy.

Ah ha ... I remembered something else.

Spectrum Streaming TV. At least once per year if not a time or two more, I always check out deals for new tv, internet or phone service to see if I can save some money yet have the same quality service. I have not changed my Internet service since I moved here, very happy with Spectrum Internet. NO I am not making any money mentioning their name.

I am still thrilled with my change from Verizon to Spectrum Mobile, reducing my $84 monthly bill to $14 per month with not only the same features but using the same Verizon towers. But the TV ??? I love the sharp picture quality of Directv and the 8 screen feature when watching ballgames BUT I HATE PAYING MORE MONEY THAN A BRAND NEW CUSTOMER AFTER USING THEM MOST OF THE TIME FOR 23 YEARS !!!!

The "loyalty department" gave me a $40 discount last year for 12 months but I am still forking out $108 per month for channels I never watch. So I decided last week at taking another look at "bundling" services, my tv and internet.

Spectrum Streaming TV and my Internet $106.74, cheaper than Direct Stream and AT&T internet. Almost $91 per month cheaper than keeping what I have now, Directv and Spectrum Internet. After using the Spectrum Streaming service a week ... the picture quality is so close to the sharpness of Directv that I have a hard time seeing the difference. The game changer was yesterday when I found out they have a DVR "in the cloud" that will record as many movies and ballgames that I do with my Directv DVR.

I am very close of canceling my Directv service because the Spectrum Streaming tv is that good. I was NOT happy with Spectrum's cable tv and their DVR box when I tried that 18 months ago when I moved in.

So that is about it ... Walter is sleeping in the sunshine on the computer room floor snoring loudly. Henry is under my desk chair sleeping and Watson is stretched out in front of the heater vent that is on the wall but floor level, sleeping.

It's going to be another good day in "the tropics" of southern Indiana.