The Blog Is Backing Away From Chaos

With a new week starting with another change in weather, different internet browsers tried, and thoughts racing through my brain cells along with a delay in our morning schedule ... why not make some blogging changes also? No, not the design but the focus.
As you can see the weather yesterday was borderline freezing and neither hound wanted any part of it. At no time yesterday afternoon did they spend any time wandering and exploring in the yard. In fact by the time Stella and I headed out for a late afternoon walk, she was led by the retractable leash and our pace was swift. In out ... walk finished.

After a terrible night of sleep, getting in my normal 6 or so hours, I woke up dazed and confused. It seemed later than my watch was showing, I didn't feel good and Stella was standing by the bed whining ... in that tone where I know she needs to get outside. She's a good house dog, as is Heidi.

Backing up to the start of the walk this morning. Remember that Stella prefers to keep her paws dry if at all possible. She is not a fan of walking through water puddles and a path that has water rising to above ground with each step I was taking. So she walked along the edge of that wet path to stay out of the water. All through the walk she sidestepped the path or headed to the heavy grass to walk through, all her thoughts were keeping her feet dry.

The small screen on the back of my Canon G9 X was showing a light sprinkling of rain. It looks like those sprinkles are supposed to be going non-stop for the next three days. Just enough to dampen my coat and Stella's. Again I kept wondering where is all this water going to go.

Too wet for her ...

I want you to know that the late start of the day, the bad dreams, or the lack of excitement that it was Monday played no part in my change in direction for the blog. It's not really a change in direction but a step back ... backing away from all the chaos and noise in today's world. We all know what it's like. We all have different opinions on what to do, what's the cause or possible solutions. I don't need to drag you through that crap on this blog.

I know personally I follow blogs to get away from all the crap I see on tv news or see online. I DO read a few blogs that do a much more professional job commenting on today's political environment or news events here in the USA ... so I'll let THEM be the ones to do it ... I don't want to.

Just like Stella stepping away from the very wet and heavy saturated path I am going to step away from the daily comments about what is screwed up in this world. I am going back to being boring to some readers. I am going back to seeing my blog traffic decrease around 66% because I am not talking about chaos or politics.

Why should I care about how many readers I have when I am not into e-commerce or affiliate marking with embedded links all over my blog? Crisis, chaos, or bad news brings much more blog traffic just like slowed traffic passing a bad car accident. I just don't want to go and this blog, to go in that direction.

So the "Other Stuff" on the blog title is going back to the relaxed lifestyle here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana, owned and directed by two hounds and any excitement they generate in their daily life. Like the old blog I'll go back to posting photos from my house projects or house maintenance I will be doing in better and warmer weather.

For the fans of my "rambling" and going off track on occasion, posting my thoughts about anything in general ... I will keep doing that but like the 'old blog', I'll not touch the subjects of politics or religion. Readers that want that type of commentary will have to go somewhere else after today

When 9/11 happened they did tell us from that day forward our world would change. It has all over the globe but maybe not so much here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana where we are tucked in the middle of corn and soybean fields. About the only changes we have seen here the last 18 years since 9/11 are local business closing forever and leaving empty buildings, or the major repair work on the US Highway in front of the house.

Winston loved sitting out on the SW corner of the carport during that time and watching the road crew tear out the highway asphalt down to the bare dirt. He was really interested when they installed new rebar and then poured new asphalt a little bit further into our yard to widen the shoulder of the road.

The only other thing that has changed around here of any importance ... was me retiring in April 2014 and becoming a full-time professional doorman for the hounds. The could come and go as they pleased as they requested I let them out and back inside a million times per day. With only two hounds now instead of four, I am down to around 500,000 times per day instead of a million.  :)

9/11 did change my personal enjoyment of flying. I went from loving to fly to "I'll never fly again, screw this" .... when I retired from work, I didn't have to fly again unless I wanted to ... and I haven't.

What I did not realize at the time was that all the wars overseas would push people out of their home countries, and in some cases head to the USA from all directions. I didn't realize the effect it would have along the border south of California, a border that I use to cross every day sometimes as I would head downtown Tijuana to 'the book' to bet on any horse race track in America. Or the times friends and I would cross that same San Diego border to spend the weekend at the Rosarita Beach Hotel in Rosarita Beach or go further south for a beer at Husong's in Ensenada, Baja Mx.

We've had little change here in this small town based on all of that movement of people looking for a better life than what they had. Even in this small rural redneck town we have had a little diversity in our population. An Iranian family owns the Subway, an Indian family now owns the 'infamous' gas/mini mart, a Chinese family owns a great small restaurant downtown providing me with that buffet I blogged about in December.

We even have illegals from Mexico that work at the Mexican restaurant with some of the best food I have ever eaten, from Southern California to Ensenada Baja California. We have never seen or experienced terrorist activity yet the huge government facility nearby goes into severe lockdown at times based on what is happening in the world.

So that's the end of my talking and blogging on this blog about what is going on in the world and what I like or don't like in today's society. I am going to try my hardest to crawl back into my hole here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana and let the world decide what it wants to do. That doesn't mean I will not remain vigilant and aware but I will just not blog about it. I don't need the bullshit in my life, just like I no longer needed that from a job.

While the sopping wet sound came from every one of my steps on the path this morning and Stella in her own little world ignoring me when I said "come on" ... I thought about these past 18 years since 9/11 and wondered what would it be like today if the US would just stay out of other countries business and way of life.

Let them live they way they want to and all of those trillions of dollars spent on wars, could have been spent on a new rail system, new bridges, better health care and support for those in need right here in the USA. How many people could be led off the streets into a tiny home or an apartment with those trillions of dollars?

It's a complicated story on how far do we go as a country to help others in need outside of our borders but at the same time there has always been way too much focus on changing their governments to a democracy when they don't want that kind of government or our lifestyle. Why would they? Let them sort out their own problems.

After all, if I reverse the situation and ask myself if I would like a foreign country coming here in 'the tropics' telling me and the hounds we HAVE TO change to their way of life ... the hounds and I would basically tell them to get out of the neighborhood and leave us alone ... maybe not in that kind of nice tone.

So really Stella has it all figured out, as does Heidi .... stay calm, unattached, live in your own little world but keep an eye out for trouble or deer in the field. but be sure to get enough sleep time during hours and hours of sports on tv ... not the noise of the news. All we can control is what we do right here ... that's fine with the hounds and fine with me.

Many new readers don't know about the time I spent a week taking photos and blogging about me pulling every weed out of my gravel driveway and bank, while crawling around on my hands and knees back in August 2015. To read those exciting blog posts, dripping with drama and in a way chaos, you can click here, then scroll down through the different blog posts that are listed in order of the progress.

What I meant to say when I mentioned that ... was to show how weird blogging traffic is ... those four days of blogging about pulling weeds were some of the all-time busiest blog traffic days since it started in October 2011. The number of daily visitors were close to what I was getting just last week talking about politics and chaos in society !!!!

Isn't a story or link like that much better than a link about the refugees problems or the other faction of people trying to take over our country?

So I am going to get back to that type of blogging ... the boring daily life of the hounds and I then let the 'experts' write about the chaos going on.

The hounds, and life as it is in small town rural America with a an opinion from that angle, every once in a while. There is so much more to blog about besides chaos in society whether in our country or their's. Stella and Heidi doesn't care ... neither do I.

Stella spent the whole morning walk looking for something to make it a little more exciting. There wasn't a scent anywhere along the way for her to lock into, so her focus was just to keep her paws as dry as possible and enjoy the warmer temps, sprinkles and all, as she strolled through the field.

She gave the scents one last chance to show themselves but decided the best thing to do was to head back to the house and start her morning siesta that leads to lunch. In the meantime I am going to take the books on politics and government back to the library.

Then pull a couple of books off my self that I bought years ago but never read .. one about Willie Mays and the other about Mickey Mantle. Baseball season is just 43 days away and that is much better than paying attention to who announces they are going to run for President.

The free offer of Showtime over the weekend produced nothing as far as TV watching. It only confirmed why I don't pay the extra $10-$13 per month to get Showtime or HBO all the time. I had more fun watching the new AAF football league which brought in 2.9 million viewers opening night on Saturday, on CBS. It was reported those AAF games had a larger audience than ABC's NBA game that night with LeBron James.

See, I am not the only football addict in America.

I look forward to the 'new' way of blogging and back to the old stuff. I mean what could be more exciting than a good photo of Heidi sleeping through all the chaos not caring what happens. After all, it will not have any affect on her sleeping time or the two times to eat.

The hounds have the correct solution on how to live ... I just have to pay more attention to their suggestions.

It's wet but a bright overcast this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana ... it's all good.

Morning Is Rained Out

They warned us. All that snow we were walking through yesterday was going to be washed away by the time we woke up this morning. Their prediction was 100% true as it has been pouring rain all night and has not stopped. Here's the kicker though .. by late afternoon, the temps drop from 48° it is now at 8am to below freezing and all this rain will be mixed snow. The snow will not stick. I hate to write about the weather every day but it seems that is about all that is happening. Although in the background quite a bit of things have been happening ... not in life ... electronically.

Where should I start?

With the 5 pound bag of dog bones, grain-free with bacon flavor, gone ... it was time to buy more. That is only a half mile drive to the hardware store that carries dog food and dog treats. It's 4-star rated food and produced by the same company that produces Earthborn dog food. Stella had shown no signs of trying to escape the past few weeks when I have gone grocery shopping. I am usually gone for an hour and half on those trips. Yet it would have been hard for me to tell because I was still using the cord system, backed up with a baby gate. When I would return from those trips I'd check the door handle inside the bedroom for bloodhound drool ... there wasn't any. There wasn't any yesterday either but she opened the door someway.

No, I did not have the cord tied from that door knob to a closet door knob. I wanted to see what would happen so I just closed the door and put the baby gate up just in case. That was a good idea because when I returned ten minutes later, she had opened the door and is standing on her rear legs chewing the top of the baby gate. She didn't even stop when I walked in ... I yelled "hey" and then she stopped.

It has been suggested by others and what I've read, to install a deadbolt. I can do that and have thought about that many times. Especially every time I come home and she has that door open. Something always holds me back from doing that ... it's the "what if" thoughts I have. What if I install a deadbolt and she then tries digging through the door itself? It's a typical hollow interior door, easily replaced if damaged. You might think that is not a possibility but the time I spent repairing the drywall right next to that door in 2015 would prove otherwise. I hate the thought of having to replace a door just because she wants to get out for some reason.

No ... I did not leave her during anytime that she would have been fed lunch. It's just her. It's her DNA and exactly who she is, as the previous owner told me "she is an escape artist, NOTHING, keeps her contained." Those words haunt me three years and five months later.

I mentioned a few weeks ago I was having problems with the Wordpress dashboard at Wordpress .com using major amounts of data unexpectedly. Their support team suggested I use the 'old' wp-admin dashboard for everything. They did not tell me at the time they were redesigning the newer dashboard. When I say major amounts of data, I'm talking 700Mb - 1.5Gb just like that. Well over time I'd check the regular, newer dashboard and it seemed like things had settled down.

Until yesterday.

I was hovering around 140Mb of data usage for the first three hours I was online, after 8:30am. I glanced to my right at the 'Activity Monitor' to see Data Received at 974Mb ... Google Chrome was the browser. I checked their Data Saver which lists all activity from the most data used down to the least amount used, by name. There was Wordpress .com at the top of the list. So who knows and really, who cares. I'll keep using their older wp-admin dashboard. Like I have said many times before, I can't afford to lose 1Gb of data when I pay for 20Gb per month.

Two years ago the farmer hauled in and installed some of the largest black drainage system in that area of standing water. It's just like the same stuff we would buy in a 6" diameter. His looked like it had a diameter of 10 feet !!

At least I was able to install the new Apple iOS and MacOS updates this morning on my 'free' data period since it was before 8am. I like doing those updates mostly for security. They might include a lot of features, many that I don't or will never use but they always plug holes and tighten their security with those updates. You would be surprised how many friends contact me at times with computer problems, phone or tablet problems and the first question I ask is ... "When did you do your last update?"

In almost all cases ... they had missed the last 2-3 Operating System updates whether it was Apple devices or Windows. Doing those updates when they come out fixes a lot of problems you might be having.

I know many of you wish I'd get off this camera subject. The one I bought on January 2nd and it arrived on January 4th. I did a lot of research about that camera. I read reviews from professional camera websites, read the forum for that specific Canon camera and talked to a friend that had bought that camera and raved about it. I was still hesitant right up until the time I clicked that purchase button on my computer. For years I've wondered if it was my eyes getting older and why weren't the photos from my Nikon D3200 as sharp as they were when I bought the camera in 2015 (?) Then when I would look at the sharp clear photos taken with my iPhone 8+, that made me wonder even more. A reader explained to me it was the humidity in my tropical air that was causing the problem based on his experience ... the same thing. Just slightly not as sharp and crisp as they should be.

So yesterday I did some more looking online and found a website that does reviews, listed first after my search. I had been on this website before I bought the camera. When I checked my bookmarks in my Camera folder, I had not seen this exact page that gave me the answer I was looking for. I am NOT crazy ... LOL. There were many others making comments on this review with the same complaints I was having. BUT ... the review itself pointed out the problem and why I will NEVER get the kind of picture I want with this camera.

It's the lens.

Sure it's a great feature to have a small digital camera with a 1" sensor, only a few cameras have a sensor that big. That great feature still will not override what they called "a soft lens." The Canon G9 X Mark II will never take sharp pictures of Stella far away, like yesterday morning's photos. The review said it would not even take sharp pictures of landscapes, even after shooting in automatic mode or manual with adjusted sharpness and fineness tweaked. I've made those setting adjustments the review suggested and have taken a few photos late yesterday afternoon inside and outside. I plan on taking more today when the skies brighten up. Right now at 8:39am it is dark, overcast and raining.

I knew before I bought the camera the max zoom was 84mm ... I found that even shooting at that range was not a sharp image. Before I bought the camera I set my Nikon lens at 70mm as a test and tried taking my long distance photos of Stella with that range while on the walk. I guess I need to learn and practice using a shorter zoom distance, then cropping the photos to the larger size I want. That is something I have rarely done but I did it with Stella's picture at the bottom of this page.

So my brain cells were scrambling again about the camera. I know that sounds stupid as hell but that is just the way I am. I admit I post a lot crap quality pictures on this blog, meaning slightly out of focus sometimes. Or not as sharp and clear as I want. That may not bother you but it does me. I only read this blog on my phone when I check to see how it looks to phone readers. Same way with my tablet. I might read the blog from my laptop but those times are few and far between. I do all of my writing, photo editing and reading on a 27" monitor. So my photos will look different from what you see on a phone or a table, maybe even a laptop. Everyone has a different device they are using so what I might be complaining about is not seen by you.

Interesting isn't it?

I am not sure how many of you have blogs or do blog. Those that do might be able to relate to what I am going to say. I've had a couple of online friends that do blog remind me that "this is your blog, you are writing for you,  traffic means nothing." I answer to them saying I am not writing just for me because if I were, then I would have continued to write on my private blog like I do here. Using the blog as a documented journal to be looked at in the future as a reference or good memories. So since I am writing for readers mostly or posting photos for them to see, I try to put good stuff online.

Who knows what the reasons are but I am sure that other bloggers know ... there is something addicting about seeing your traffic statistics that Blogger or WordPress provides all bloggers. Are high traffic numbers fulfilling a hidden need our personalities need for acceptance or is like what I call the "Facebook Syndrome" of "look at me, look what I am doing, look where I am, look what I did" ... Of course with a lot of blog traffic that means you need more server space and luckily Blogger and WordPress furnishes server space. If this were an independent website I would have to pay more for that server space to handle large amounts of visitors. So that is not really something I like with average blog traffic.

I don't get anything near what other bloggers get in traffic numbers. I have a boring topic. I don't have a lot of emergencies, or crises to write about. I don't travel. Plus my daily photos don't change much in location or even how the hounds look. So I get it. No way am I going to get thousands of blog visitors everyday. That's good in a way because I don't get recognized when I am traveling or walking down the street like some do, nor do I have people knocking on my door to visit the hounds. I am a 'small time' blogger with small amounts of traffic.

What I am leading up to is ... it just makes me wonder out of curiosity how in one day after 44 days of consistent blog traffic ... it decreases 60% from the daily average.

In the meantime, Stella drank her water at the normal time of day, thinking we are walking. We aren't going anywhere. I'll put on a jacket and take some photos outside of what we are looking at to cause the cancellation for this morning's walk. The field will be nothing more than a pond if we were to walk through the wet grass today. I have standing water in the driveway and in back ... that means the field is even worse with water levels. Plus there are strong winds.

I left her inside as I went outside to take the pictures of the field and standing water. An hour ago there was much much more water standing than what you see in those pictures. The start of the path looks like it is close to having standing water on top of the leaves. Based on experience, the further we walk into the field as the elevation increases so does the water level.

This is the response that Stella gave me when I told her the walk was cancelled for this morning. "We might go out this afternoon." ...

It might sound like strange weather but this "yoyo" weather is normal winter weather for 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Heidi Joins Morning Walk

She 'kinda' joined the Thursday morning walk but no, she did not go with us in the field. What she did do was start barking nonstop as I got up from the desk to put on my hat, gloves and parka. I was pretty sure she didn't want to walk with us but wanted to go outside and wander around the yard while Stella and I took the walk.

Thursday morning had dark overcast skies but the temperature was warm enough I could unzip the top of my parka. Heidi took no time to sprint outside when I opened the door but she was headed to the front not to the field in back.

I asked her if she was going to walk with use and she had to think about it.

By the time I turned, Stella was already way ahead on the walk. This was much different than her normal pace. Was the Glucosamine supplements working even better after a few months?

To the left of me a sound so loud and strange stopped Stella in her tracks and made me focus the camera to the 200mm to see what was going on. It looked like the neighbor, down and across the highway from me, was having trees trimmed. The limbs might have been too close to his power lines. I found out a couple of summers ago that they will cut the tree limbs for free but I had to get rid of the limbs myself.

While I continued to walk and think ... Stella was in her own world, just as it should be when taking the morning walk. Once again Stella showed signs of improvement to her hips or rear legs. She was trotting away from me on the way to home. That is really good to see.

Again it was good to see Stella jogging a little faster than just a trot. Her new bag of GlycoFlex Plus arrives tomorrow from Chewy, monthly auto shipment.

As I got closer to home I saw Heidi over on the south edge of the property, a place that she visits a lot when she is roaming outside in the yard. When I yelled her name, she looked but couldn't tell where I was calling her name. She did start running toward the house. She knew that Stella and I were close to home.

Since they had breakfast so early in the morning of course they wanted lunch as soon as we walked in the house. They had to wait just so I could keep them in their normal food pattern. There is no reason for me to change their food schedule just because my sleeping habits are a little strange right now

I am also trying to decide if I will continue to follow the news just to make a comment here or there on the subjects. Honestly I don't want to follow any of the news. I want positive energy in my life, not the cesspool news from tv and online news. There is nothing I can do to change the news except ... turn it off and avoid all news feeds.

Also ... I don't want to talk politics or about certain politicians. It's a toxic environment which would make this blog toxic because my mouth becomes toxic when I watch, hear and read the news with those involved.

I will be open and transparent as I wanted and expressed a few days ago. It will be about me, and other stuff that does NOT include anything that deals with news.

It's all good here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.