It's Been A Hectic Week

I guess it is this type of weather that leads me to blogging. Although the weather has been great with normal December temperatures with lows in the 30s at night and most days in the mid 50s. Yesterday it did reach 63° before the thunderstorm blew through. Nothing like what happened late afternoon NE of Nashville TN thankfully.

I can't say we have been doing anything different than normal activity. I have even gone back through this blog, and my private blog I keep, to see just how similar things have been year after year this time of year. I can go back nine to ten years and not see much difference really. Although "the crew" has changed. 

Because of a ballgame I wanted to watch last week, I needed to sign up for Peacock Streaming. Luckily that same day I received an offer from somewhere that had Peacock for $19.99 for the whole year. I decided what the heck and signed up, watched my game and the found many other good shows or movies I could watch free of charge. While I watched, Walter snored. 

Last Sunday it was cold but I heard the roar of my neighbors riding mower. She was out mowing her leaves. By noon and a few degrees warmer I decided I would mow mine and while I was mowing the back yard, the neighbor on the other side fired up her John Deere mower and did hers. You might find that strange and it might be, but if you look at this photo I took the next day, last Monday ... all of the yards are clear of leaves. That is just the way this great neighborhood is.

Some of you might be asking why are those leaves still in my flowerbed though. Legit question. I finally confirmed that one of my battery chargers for the 20v lithium battery no longer works. I have two batteries for my leaf blowers and the first battery was dead because the charger didn't work. No problem, I'll just use the other one.

I walk from the shed to the garage and don't see the second 20v battery on the charger, which was weird. I found that battery dead and connected to the leaf blower. Did I get interrupted the last time I used it, distracted with another job at the same time or did my memory cells not work? Anyway, I was going to blow them out to the yard the next day after those batteries were charged, then mow them, but rain stopped that plan.

Sitting at my computer last Monday morning when I glance out my window I see all these birds. I did not reseed my yard for the winter so it wasn't the grass seed they liked. But they all liked something after mowing and mulching all the leaves the previous day.

I stood up at the window and could see the same number of birds on my neighbors front yard to the left of me. I grabbed my new iPhone and quietly walked to the living room to take these bird photos. That is Zoysia grass that has turned brown for the winter. The green area is the grass that was under the Bradford Pear Tree I had cut down a year or two ago. When did that happen? It was just this past January 2022

I found this bird phenomenon like a magnet. I couldn't stop watching them. The hounds and the dog were as mesmerized as I was and it was so strange that none of them made a sound, they just stood at the lower windows and watched.

I have not inserted the screens that go in front of those small windows. I would prefer to clean windows instead of repairing screens since I repaired all of them after Stella tore them out when we moved her so she could be with me in the front yard. She was quite the escape expert.

I did not have time to turn to take photos of Watson and Walter who were standing behind me at the short windows. I did a couple or taps with my knuckle on the window, held up the phone and caught all of them flying away. They are hidden by the trees if you look close enough.

Whenever I am talking on the phone to a friend, it is always on speaker phone. That bugs the crap of Walter because he is not getting the attention he wants. So Friday I held the phone up and taped that icon to where the camera would flip and be facing him. I was able to grab this photo of him while he stared at the voice coming from the phone.

If you notice, Henry is laying halfway in the middle seat on the couch. That middle seat was my seat before I got up to get something to drink while watching a ballgame. Like always, when I get up, most of the time I will lose my seat ... and no, he will not move. In fact he will play dead and act like he doesn't hear me when I ask him to move. If I try to move him he turns to dead weight ... without any help from him to move. 75 pounds of dead weight is heavy.

Back in May 2015 I drove out to the train trestle to look at it and take some photos of it. At the time I was living just outside of Bloomfield Indiana. Or "the house up north" as I call it now. Here are the photos I took in May 2015 to give you a better idea of its structure. Hard to believe they built this back in the 1930s if I remember that right. It is also used daily by much longer and loaded trains. 

I grabbed this photo off of the Greene County Daily World newspaper last week. That track is used on a daily basis but in this case it is a special train, carrying Santa Claus to where he will visit the local kids.

That is Walter when he was a puppy jumping up on Stella a few years ago. I found these next two photos on an SD card inside the small Canon G9X camera I have and rarely use. It has an intermittent dark spot on the inside mirror that I cannot get to. That dark round spot does not show up all the time in the photos taken but enough to where I don't use the camera. I never could get the settings right for the best quality photo.

Henry would have been five months old in this photo.

The temporary fence was for the hounds and dog until they could install our permanent fence in July 2021. Yes, that black puppy really is Watson.

This Kodak Slide Scanner has quite a story if you are interested. It is also the reason I found all of those photos on that SD card from the Cannon camera. Where do I start? How about I list the timeline to make it a quicker read. I bought the machine because I have a ton of old 35mm slides I want to convert to digital photos and load into my computer. It will also scan 110 slides as well has negative film for both those sizes. 

Until I started to set it up, I didn't know the SD card was NOT included inside, the most important feature. So I was looking for SD cards in all my cameras to use it in this. Nothing is ever simple though when I run into something like this. My camera cards were all SDXC and would not work in the new scanner.

• Nov 23 I order online at Best Buy and choose free next day delivery because they were out of stock until Dec 6th.
• Nov 25 I get a text from FedEx it had been delivered on my front porch
• The hounds and dog never heard him, nor did I and I didn't find a box on the porch either
• Neighbors son works at FedEx and offers to track it down.
• It was delivered to TJ Maxx Distribution Center by mistake on the other side of town.
• I offer to go get it but am told they will pick it up and deliver it.
• I had already filed a claim with FedEx before talking to the neighbor's son.
• Nov 27 nothing delivered and "the case is closed" ... FedEx told me to notify Best Buy for a replacement or refund
• Nov 27 Best Buy is sold out until Dec 6 so I choose a refund because I have found it on Amazon.
• Refund processed. 
• Every day until Dec 6th FedEx updates their tracking and tells me it is "out for delivery"
• Never happened
• Dec 7 around 8pm I get a phone call labeled "potential spam", which I never answer but since there was a commercial during a ballgame I decided why not ... and did.
• She asked if this was Steve and I replied yes
• She couldn't make out part of my phone number on the label because the box had been smashed a little taking out the middle number of 549
• So she had called 519, 529, 539 and then my last four numbers until I answered.
• "I have your box, it was sitting on my front porch."
• 4 miles away and nothing in our name or street address was similar enough to have the box delivered by mistake.
• Dec 8 I call Best Buy customer service to have them add the charge back on my account so I can pay for it. As of this morning, Dec 10 it has not shown up

But it doesn't end there. I cannot get the scanner to work. Although I needed a SD or SDHC card I could still slide that other card in the machine but it would not click like normal cards do anywhere else. Also when I pushed the card inward the spring would not push the card back out at all so I had to use needle nose pliers to get the card out.

The next problem ... My iMac, then my MacBook Air did not recognize the new device when I plugged in the USB cord and turned on the scanner.

By Friday around noon I was at Best Buy returning it for a refund on a transaction that had not shown up on my account because of the refund they gave me a week earlier. The girl at the counter was very helpful and things are fixed but will not be seen until their update to my online account. She said most likely the person I talked to on the phone never did add that charge back to my account ... as she said "our customer service sucks and this not the first time I have heard and seen this". My kind of employee ... honest, proactive and knows how to fix problems.

While there I thought I would check their supply of SD cards. The user manual said I could only use a 32Gb SD, or SDHC. Those are hard to find anymore because the whole shelf in the camera section was 128Gb at a minimum and all of the cards were SD, SDHC and SDXC ... I bought what I needed later that night on Amazon.

When I did not see my card in the camera section there was one more location to check out. As you see I walked past the printer section when a HP saleswoman asked if I needed help. Long story short I told her how my last Epson only lasted less than three years before it would not load paper to be printed. It made a sound it was loading but never would. It would just keep skipping.

I told her I replaced that Epson with the newer model here at this store but it would never stay connected to my network. Searching on the Epson forum I found out a million other people had the same problem, so I returned it and bought a Canon that had good reviews and cost very less than $100, then they added the old Epson that did not work recycling discount of $30 and the refund of the one I returned. 

The Canon stayed connected to the network with no problem but had not only poor print quality but would take forever to get things warmed up to just print a page. Now if you are like me, we don't print anything anymore, everything is electronic ... there is no need for printers ... I can scan a document now with an iPhone. 

But ... I need a printer to print out my coupons when I receive them ... .for dog food !!!  The pet food store told me they don't have time anymore to print out those coupons after I email them to their address. 

This printer was on sale, regular $349 but marked down to $229. With my refund on the Canon that I returned after I got home with this printer, I have a $349 printer for around $149 and the liquid ink is good for 2 years or 6,000 pages!!! I might have to take out a loan in two years to buy replacement ink ... but in the meantime I have a great printer and scanner that connected to my network with ease and will work with all the other devices I added wireless by using the HP app.

Well worth the money.

I frequent a forum of FJ Cruiser owners and have for nine years after buying my first one. A lot of good information there, a lot of great photos of their expeditions, dogs and FJs, camping trips or just local off-road exploration. But this post and photo I found something that would be simple to build and possibly be good for Walter if he ever decides to ride in the passenger seat of my FJ.  (Walter does NOT like to ride or walk anywhere).

Even at this height I am still not sure Walter or Henry would be able to see out the front or side windows. It can only be built so high because that glove box comes back at an angle toward the seat, limiting how long those front legs can be.

I was hesitant for weeks if not months before I changed my internet and wireless from Spectrum to AT&T. I must say though, since they were switched on November 21st, I have been happier about their services than I had ever expected. I had used them almost four years ago after moving to Sierra Vista but now I can see a lot of improvement. They are very proactive and transparent in letting me know what my billing will be. Each charge and discount itemized and clear to read. The internet fiber is faster than fast, testing out higher speeds than advertised and during the heavy storm yesterday it stayed connected.

I have a question though about the picture quality of my new iPhone 14 compared to the iPhone 11 Pro Max that I stopped using. They did not require me to trade that in. I will do some internet searching to get my answer about the photo quality difference. It might be just me but the 14's photos don't look as good as the 11 Pro Max photos.

My USAA credit card finally got "permission" from the JP Morgan Chase Clearing House to post the corrected large payment that was made back on November 18, incorrectly. As of this morning that has still not been completely corrected and I am guessing after another call to their customer service on December 8th, things will finally be corrected by December 12th. I had called them so many times with so many different stories, I made a log about them with dates, times and who I spoke to for every call. PIA.

Here in Evansville we pay the highest utility cost in the state of Indiana. From social media to tv news and the local newspaper that has been repeated many times. I don't have a subscription to the paper but I can see the headlines online and I do get a certain number of free reads.

What a shock to see five days ago that Center Point Energy had gone to the IUC (Indiana Utilities Commission) asking for permission to raise our rates again for 2024 through 2026. Them asking was not a shock but what they said was. I have been here since May 2021 and every year they announce an increase to our gas and electricity and proceed to implement those kilowatt rate increases. 

"It is our first rate request since 2009" .... let that sink in. Here is a detailed description of those increases. I am curious how these rates compares to what you pay where you live.

I expect annual increases to my utilities, tv and internet services, home and auto insurance but in the past two to three years these increases seem to be not only much higher than previous years but also more frequent and they are no longer just annual increases but different times through the year.

Maybe that van idea I had a few years ago even with the hounds wasn't a bad idea he? But I have a different crew now and they are all mostly homebodies, they like to hangout and see how many times they can get me to let them in and out of the patio door in a 24 hour period ... LOL

It's colder than I like today but all is good in "the tropics" of Southern Indiana.