Kodak Slide Scanner Works!!

Warning: Lots of photos and story telling involved.

If you remember last week I received my missing Kodak Slide Scanner but there were two issues that made it inoperable. The SD card would not lock in the slot which is needed to save the photos to that are converted from slides or negatives. Photos from that SD card are then transferred to your computer or TV screen, your choice. It also would not work once plugged into three different computers. I took it back for a refund, then ordered another one. I did not want to ship it to my house but to ship to the Best Buy store where I could pick it up. They texted two days earlier than planned for me to pick it up.

Teasing Us With Spring

With it raining most of the day yesterday there just wasn't any chance of taking an afternoon walk, otherwise all three of us might have floated away while walking the path. Heidi came out late afternoon but only to relieve herself and then headed back inside. The warmer afternoon temperatures are nice but those overnight lows make it quite cold first thing in the morning.

So when Stella and I went out for our first morning walk in two days, the "feels like" temperature was 23° !!! The forecast is telling me it will get up to 51° later today and that is fine with me. With the wide range of temperatures in a 12 hour period, Spring is teasing us. I want to feel the heat of the sun, not just see its brightness.

Cold temperatures were not the start to our day though. That happened in the dark bedroom a little after 5am when I thought I heard bloodhound toenails pacing back and forth on the hardwood floor in the bedroom. It's a familiar sound and I knew Stella was wanting to go outside. I could hear her stomach making those gurgling sounds again and figured she would eat some grass to settle her stomach

With it freezing cold outside I wasn't going to accompany her, even with a coat. I wasn't planning on getting dressed to go outside and figured she would be back at the door to come inside within 10-15 minutes. With the announcement of Apple updating their macOS, it was a perfect time to download that 2.5Gb of data while I waited on Stella. It would be a total of 5Gb for my iMac and MacBook Air and with the free data period (2am-8am) it would be the perfect time to do the update.

I have noticed Safari is faster than before after that update. There were some updates to their built-in privacy internet program. I found it interesting that I had to give my computer permission to allow access to Google Mail or the other way arround. I had not seen that before anytime since October 2010. I only use my gmail address to log into my blog on Blogger.

With the moon in the southern sky, I had a passenger plane flying from the north. When I see plane traffic I always wonder what their destination is and what model of plane they are flying. I am around 70 miles south of the Indianapolis airport so I do get to see a lot of air traffic, especially at night.  I forgot to mention that within a few steps of our walk this morning my face and hands were freezing as if the temperatures were in single digits.

One good thing about the freezing temperature this morning, the wet soggy path was frozen hard enough to walk on. Just the little bit of sun you see up ahead turned that frozen path into over saturated softness and as we approached the back of the field there was standing water on the path in the two to three usual places.

When you miss a day of walking due to weather you can count on the strength and number of scents will keep Stella more than busy. Just after she made that first turn I didn't know if we would ever leave that area. To get from this picture to the one below where she was on the right side of the path, looking in her direction, it took half the total time we used to finish the walk. She wasn't eating deer scat, just thoroughly investigating what her nose was picking up.

She darted across the path as if she was onto something but it was a false alarm. Within seconds of the sudden change in direction, she was walking toward me.

I did look at the different WordPress Themes yesterday. They have added quite a few new blog designs, or what Blogger calls templates. I've never gotten use to the word theme that WordPress uses. Either I was too lazy to really look for something different or I had lost my urge to make any changes ... nothing happened and I doubt I looked longer than three or four minutes. I decided a late afternoon siesta was the better option.

My own test with grains, beans and wheat bread continued yesterday. I am still eating some of those foods until they are gone. I hate wasting food and I wanted to see what combination caused indigestion. I have confirmed it does not matter if it is normal Jif Peanut Butter or one that is a different brand with "natural" on the label ... I can no longer eat Peanut Butter of any kind.

David's Bread is a high quality organic wheat bread with grain and seeds ... sometimes I can eat it without issues and other times I am reaching for a Tums. I am cutting out all grains anyway, so that will take care of that problem.

I went to the US News & Word Report where a panel of medical experts test, analyze and rank over 40 different diets. I've looked there before in past years. Their latest review was this past January. They have never had anything good to say about Paleo or Keto. This morning I had a different idea. I wanted to look at three kinds of diet and pull off their macronutrient percentages.

The diets I looked at were Mediterranean, Flexitarian and Paleo. For a man my age the recommended daily calorie intake is 2,200 grams per day. That is an US recommendation not the panel of experts. I wanted to see what percentages were recommended for Protein, Fat and Carbs. After writing them down so I could look at them to compare the three diets, there were some pretty interesting results.

For those that don't know how to convert a percent of those three topics into grams of food allowed per day ... the formula is this:  calories times the percentage, divided by the number of grams for Fat, Protein and Carbs. There are 4 grams of carbs and protein per calorie. There are 9 grams of fat per calorie.

An example for a daily intake of 2,200 calories would be:

2,200 x .29 / 4 = 159.5 grams of Protein per day in the Mediterranean Diet. It did recommend to eat only 1,527 calories per day for a man my age, so the amount of protein would be reduced.

As I looked at the different limits by each type of diet, it all fell in line with the way I have been eating for a year or so. I call it "My Diet" because I take a little from each kind, overall. I have tried enough of these diets since 2014 that I know which veggies to buy, which fruits to eat if I want to lose weight and those I can add back if weight is not an issue. I know that most of my diet has been and will be fresh veggies and fruits with more salmon, trout or halibut than chicken or beef.

Some of those days will be meatless, mixed in, not intentionally but because there will be times I will want to eat some veggie recipes I have used in the past, like Spinach Lasagna. Once or twice per month I'll lean Keto/Paleo where it's only meat and veggies. Pizza or burgers on special occasions I guess.

I was about to give up all dairy products because the short time I have eliminated them, my winter cough has decreased and my sinuses are clear of mucus. Yet, there are too many articles that overlap different diets that consistently mention cottage cheese and greek yogurt as beneficial for gut health.

I have to watch it if I add those two because I am addicted to both cottage cheese and yogurt.

Yesterday was my first day in a long time of getting on my road bicycle that is attached to an indoor trainer, where I can ride inside. I am still feeling the soreness after an easy 30 minute ride. Stella sat and watched me, not sure what was going on. Heidi slept through all the excitement. For a while I plan to ride every other day inside and hopefully be in good enough shape by warmer weather in April to take 25-40 mile rides outside. The 40 mile ride use to be the daily norm after work, then a 100 mile ride one day on the weekend.

I am probably past the days of riding those 100 mile rides.

So things are pretty well set up I think as far as eating. I have some new things I want to do besides the to do list. I need to get in better shape because just the short hour of climbing, leaning around the bank along the driveway cutting small saplings had me sore for a couple of days.

I didn't watch the Apple announcements yesterday. I never do but always read the day after articles to see what they are going to do. Since they don't sell software like Microsoft does they have decided they have to make their billions somewhere else. People like me are not upgrading or buying a new iPhone. Once I read that their new version of Apple TV would not carry prime time sports, there was nothing for me.

From what I have read the past year, Apple TV is the best streaming service of all, but if I cannot use it to watch live games in football, baseball or basketball, then this Apple customer will not buy their Apple TV services.

Speaking of sports, besides a day of bright sunshine I will get to watch a Reds game this afternoon in Atlanta and then an IU basketball game tonight at 7pm. Fit in an afternoon hound walk, some steamed broccoli and baked salmon ... that is almost a perfect day.

It's good to see the tables have turned in D.C. All I can say is, payback is a bitch and I hope they nail every one of them involved. I hope Lindsey Graham gets his request for a special counsel to investigate those involved with the real corruption and those whom directed this mess.

How many of you have lost friends due to politics since pre-election 2016 ??

It's trying to get warmer here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana and that's a good thing.

Stella On Her Own Today

I am anxiously waiting for that week of higher temperatures of 60-70°. I found out really quick this morning it had not started yet. We took our morning walk in 41° weather, but it was still nice.

A couple of trucks had partial loads of fertilizer dumped when we first went outside. By the time I started writing this post there were three more trucks show up and they tripled the amount these first two trucks delivered. One very important thing is ... it doesn't smell while we are out. That might change later but shouldn't be too bad.

Sadie didn't hesitate to let me know she wanted to go on a walk with her infamous stare. You have to admit she is consistent even when she knows I don't go anywhere until I have ingested at least one cup of coffee.

Stella was more than happy to come inside and curl up behind my desk chair for a nap as I scanned my latest sports news and the IU fan forum for the coaching search updates. As of this morning they were showing there had been over 1.2 million views on that forum post, just one post alone.

This was the first load that was delivered.

We headed out for the walk in cool weather but with no wind it was nice. We must of had a field cat in the area last night since both Sadie and Stella went to the same area as soon as they got outside for the walk. I do see a cat at night sometimes as I pull into the driveway. The headlights pick up those cat eyes while sitting in the dark.

I decided before we got outside today that I would let Stella do anything she wanted and go anywhere she wanted ... total freedom. You will see her path from this morning's walk but I am going to talk about different stuff than a verbal description of our walk today. Lots of stuff to cover and more pictures than I have ever added to a blog post, 37.

I have received some feedback from readers about the issue of the yews and septic tank along with the speed in which my blog loads into their computer, table or phones. I am almost certain that changes are on the way. Some will require a lot of manual labor but as I have been walking around the house this past month, surveying for any maintenance that might be needed, I can see that I am going to be a busy tired individual from a lot of manual labor.

I really don't have anywhere to plant them but I hate to let the Yews die while sitting on the burn pile for next fall's bonfire. I've been told that yews have very strong and a very deep root system. I'd have to look to make sure but I think I planted these about 6 or 7 years ago.

I didn't know at the time that my septic tank was right below the yews under the window to the right of the porch. It was described to me that the septic tank was in front of the carport and further down the yard. After finding an old diagram last summer among some house paperwork, I saw that the septic tank was right below the front edge of the yews, or 6' from the edge of the house and only 3' to the right of the porch steps.

Based on the diagram and written notes I am assuming they put in a concrete tank in 1975 with the clay type of pipe. So does it matter that the root system of the yews run deep with a concrete tank?

In today's world of high speed internet, many readers may have high speed with unlimited monthly data. Some may have slow internet speed that takes forever to load a blog like mine with a lot of pictures. I am one of those readers that pays too much for only 15Gb of data per month. I get 2 more Gb's from Verizon on my iPhone so that helps a little I guess.

Other readers have a lot less Gb's per month and when my blog is soaking up their data because of the amount of posts per page or the large numbers of pictures I include in my blog, it might be time to make some changes to the blog with the new Blogger templates available.

I did reduce the number of posts per blog page to one. Ed told me this morning that when he loaded the blog after that change it used half of the amount of data it took to load the previous day with two post per page setting. So that was good news.

I looked at the new Blogger templates last night, Blogger calls them 'themes'. A lot of them had the option that Wordpress has had for a long time, where you open the blog to see a list of blog posts. They have a short written summary with only one picture ... then an option of "read more" that opens to the whole post.

Or there is the option of having a single picture from each post, in columns with dates where you would click the picture to open up that specific post. Depending on how many posts I would adjust the settings to, would determine how fast the blog page would load I guess. I am leaning toward the theme with a list of posts, with short descriptions, one picture and the option to "read more".

That options sounds like it would help a lot of readers by using less of their data and loading faster into their computer, tablet or phones.

I did find a few of the new themes I liked with their default settings, fonts and colors. I would have the option to do changes to colors, format and fonts. Yet ... I like the way the blog looks now, the format, the colors, so it is a hard decision.

Still .... for longtime readers you know how I like change, how I like to mess around with templates, web pages, fonts, etc. Since it's cold outside and the first NCAA games do not start again until tonight ... I have plenty of time today to play around with new blog templates. Of course I will save this blog to my hard drive so if I decide to come back to the same design I can.

My other problem is and I apologize for, I can't seem to keep from loading a LOT of pictures in each blog post. This one has more pictures than I have ever done but I liked the pictures I loaded and only chose 40% from the total amount I took this morning. I put a few of the same pictures on my Facebook account for those few friends that don't read blogs but love the hounds. Stella's original owner and the young lady that gave me Stella like seeing her on Facebook. I don't know if they visit the blog or not.

Then I put a few on my Wordpress blog from this collection because I like that blog personally and have just a few readers that prefer less of my babbling and more pictures.

So let me know how you feel about changes to the blog. Feel free to send me any of your suggestions, complaints, or likes to me by commenting or sending me an email. Sure, I write this blog and it is mine as I have been told ... so "do anything you want" .. but really this blog is yours. You take time to come here and read or look through the pictures of the hounds and I appreciate that.

I like writing and I like taking photos of the hounds so it's an even trade off for all of us.

I go and have gone through periods where I don't feel like blogging but most of the time I have the urge to blog. It was interesting to read Al's process of how he puts his blog together. He too likes to spend time with photography, editing the photos and putting a blog together. I must admit though, after I read his process here I am not sure I would continue to blog on a regular basis.

His blog is fantastic and one that I look foreword to reading every night. His pictures are second to none. I am sure he spends a lot more time, in fact I KNOW he spends a lot more time editing his pictures than I do mine. We both shoot about the same number of pictures per day and we only post on blog post per day.

Yet we each have a different process of putting the blog together. As do ALL bloggers I am sure.

I have had only two people that have blogs, ask me how do I do mine blog on Blogger with the amount of pictures I post ... so here is my process.

1. Download pictures from camera card into my iMac's Apple Photos program

2. I edit each one by clicking the "enhance" button. That will change the color, lighting, contrast etc ... but not the sharpness. I can do that with a different option but usually don't because readers have better eyesight than I do and probably see the pictures being sharp anyway.

3. I then choose which pictures are going to the blog and export them to a folder on my desktop labeled "Blog Public". Due to Bloggers process in importing photos adding a folder to import from was the only option I had with the Apple Photo program.

4. I go into my Blogger dashboard to write a new post. Insert the title.

5. Something probably different than anyone, I load all of my pictures at once, in the order that I took them. Then I import them from the folder on my desktop.

6. I slide the first picture to the left and start writing. Then enlarge each picture as I write in between the photos.

I have been asked WHY do you load all of your pictures first?

I found out two things by doing it that way. It is much faster to put the blog together that way instead of inserting the pictures in certain spots of the content. The BIGGEST difference was getting rid of all the frustration of uneven spaces between pictures and paragraphs. On Blogger, sometimes the spacing between pictures and words would not be the same when I was inserting the pictures one at a time in between the content.

I find the time to put the blog together was much faster loading all the pictures at once before writing anything ... and ... the spacing is ALWAYS the same between written word and pictures.

I put my cursor below the picture, hit the 'return' key ... that creates the even space between the picture above and my paragraph. Then after I finish writing the paragraph the pre-loaded picture below is right next to my sentence, UNTIL I type the period and hit the 'return' key.

That puts the same spacing between words and pictures every time. When I get to the next picture in line, I enlarge it to X-Large, place my cursor in the space between the next pictures and hit the 'return' key.

So there is my blog lesson for today LOL. We all have different ways of putting our blogs together but for me this is the easiest and less frustrating way to do it.

Al, if you are reading this, you are to be commended on the way you do your blog. The time and detail editing you do is more than I could ever do I am afraid. I don't have that much patience.

That is why you have such a great following and a great blog, one of, if not the best blog that I follow. I appreciate all the effort you put into your blog and as all fellow bloggers know, there are times it's hard to put words to print ... even with great fast computers, so I know how hard it is sometimes.

So I am going to end all of this babbling and feed the hounds their lunch. It's already after 1pm local time. I have three hounds 'giving me the eye' so I know they are ready for lunch.

I see I have 37 new tweets about my sports and I am sure once I open my IU fan forum back up I'll have another 8-9 pages of comments to read to get caught up on our coaching change. I am pretty sure who it's going to be. I am a thrilled IU fan if that turns out to be Billy Donovan but I can still live with the other options listed too. Anybody but Tom Crean is good for me.

As you see Stella had a fantastic walk and got some running in, following Sadie more or less and I did not have to go out to get her with a leash.

I thought at this picture she was going to head to the neighbors so I stood silently watching but she had only found one specific spot that she was not going to leave.

Sadie and I left her out there and came back inside. By the time I took off my coat, poured my 2nd cup of coffee and started downloading the blog pictures ... she was still outside in the same spot.

As I walked out toward her calling her name, she looked up and started trotting toward me and then ran back to the house. She is a great bloodhound with a funny personality. I am still happy that I decided to pick her up in August 2015.

Remember to let me know if you like the upcoming blog changes and tell me what you would like to see or not see on the blog. Or any suggestions that will help load the blog faster for you no matter what tool you are reading from.

It looks like they will be spreading some fertilizer today with rain a couple of days away.

It took 2 hours and 7 minutes to put this blog together for those readers that are curious. It normally doesn't take that long.

Life is good here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.