Today Was Productive

I didn't know it this morning when we headed out for our walk, but today turned out to be very productive with dishes finished, house vacuumed, laundry done, shower and shave. I'll dust a little tonight and might wash walls tomorrow. We still got two hounds walks in and almost a third.


I thought about leaving Stella to do her own thing this morning and even expected I would return home after the walk without her. I decided again at the last minute that I did not want to do that. So I walked all the way back to tug at her collar to get her to move my direction.

She is still a good bloodhound but for some reason she has fallen in love with deer scat.

Sadie waited for us to catch up. The morning was nice and cool, and at the time I had no plans.

I also took off the lens hood for all of these pictures. I think that is what I am going to do from now on ... keep it off. I just remembered I keep forgetting to change the photo size in the html before posting.

I can see a difference in them morning pictures without the hood on the lens. I like these better. Yet, I have never had the same full color quality as I did the first time I was shooting pictures with the new camera. Is that because I was shooting them in "raw" setting and a larger size?

This is my view from my "Mahjong Desk" ... at the kitchen table on the MBA usually playing Mahjong.

While I was trimming some of the limbs on the Sycamore tree after lunch, Heidi decided to sit out in front to soak up some rays. She is a great basset hound. I wonder how bad she was treated since she was always running away and ending up in the local animal shelter before I got her?

By late afternoon I thought we'd sit outside and enjoy the weather while Sadie and Stella roamed the field. The only problem with that was, they did not want to roam the field ... they wanted to eat deer scat.

In the yard they also like to eat the fresh dirt pushed up by yard moles.

A little bit of house work wears me out usually. Combine that with a large plate of pasta and I could almost take a nap.

All is good here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

HughesNet Gen5 Is Great

We were up early enough to see the dew still on the grass in the field and backyard. It's amazing to see how much of the field grass has grown just in the past few days. With the temps reaching the 70's this afternoon, Stella will finally get a bath with dog shampoo that is focused on relieving itching.

We had our morning walk at 10:30am. All of these pictures are from that time. I am still using the lens hood and making zero edits on any of the pictures. Instead of narrating the walk, I'll talk about my experience with the new (to me) HughesNet Gen5 satellite internet I had installed yesterday.

Some readers like myself live in rural areas and may need internet service that is faster and affordable. I've had this service for 21 hours and have found a couple of more good surprises as a new customer.

Before I start I will say right up front, the speeds are way faster than advertised or were certified by the FAA. I have seen a distinct difference in the speed of loading web pages and uploading over 100 photos last night into Google Photos and Flickr. I was happy with my Exede service and thought it was fast ... but this stuff right now is 'crazy' fast.

One new surprise this morning is I have free data for the first 20 days of service. I called customer service this morning because their data tracker was showing I had used zero data, where my iMac's Activity Monitor showed I had used 1Gig of data by midnight last night.

So I had to call to see what was up. She told me they give me 20 days of free data so I can get all of the updates downloaded, new apps or software downloaded, movies etc ... without using my data to 'get things set up'.

Last week I was told by the local distributor, I'd get 20Gb of data per month, speeds of 25Mbps and uploads at 3Mbps all for $67 after tax. There was no installation charges. Their modem had the wifi router built in, so there would be only one box. He did tell me though they were getting consistent download speeds of 45-48Mbps instead of 25Mbps.

Those speeds have checked out and have not changed since my install yesterday afternoon. I am also getting those same speeds on my iPhone and iPad Mini using the wifi to my modem.

The $67 per month pricing includes the $20 equipment rental for the first 12 months of the 24 month contract. It will be back in the $80's after 12 months, which is what I was paying Excede AFTER a monthly $20 discount. For that ~$80 I'll still get faster speeds and more data.

As far as data, I forgot to mention I get an additional 50Gb per month between the hours of 2am-8am. I will most likely be up after 2am to use it before I am up at 6am to use it for 2 hours.

Hughes launched their latest satellite last month, March 16. It covers all of the USA, more area and Alaska. For those readers that have read reviews about satellite internet, take those negative reviews from complaining customers with a 'grain of salt'. Before I decided to install Exede in June 2014 I read a lot of reviews from different websites. Some were scary, but in my location I had no other choice for internet service.

After reading some of the Exede reviews you would have wondered how they ever stayed in business if they were that bad. Yet, my reliable source for almost everything electronics, or computers ... CNET ... had good reviews.

I found it to be very very reliable, even in heavy thunderstorms or high winds. My internet signal rarely dropped offline and when it did, it was never longer than 30 minute if that long. Speeds were consistent at 12Mbps. Exede's customer services was always helpful and knew what they were talking about. At least from the phone conversations I had with them.

With the word getting out to the public about the new HughesNet Gen5 system, I expect my speeds to decrease over time as more people sign up for their service. Yet, it would take a lot of people using their internet service to decrease the speeds in half to 20Mbps or so.

With the 20 days of free data I will be using the internet without limits just to check how much data I could go through in a day. My computer's activity monitor will be able to tell me how much data I use. Since I shut my computer off every night, that activity monitor starts at zero every morning.

I am also going to call my Directv technical customer service to get a better understanding of downloading movies in their "on demand" program. I am not sure if the data is used only when the huge library file is downloaded or as each movie is watch, or both. I know 3 years ago when I connected my DVR box to my wifi it was sucking data like water to download Directv's large library of movies.

For those that travel or live in an RV, I am not sure if HughesNet can travel with you like Directv can. I have not called to ask them about that. I do know for sure that Exede satellite service was not mobile.

I can't think of anything else to tell you about the new internet service I have. I am glad I decided to make the change and very happy with the performance of the new system. I am sure about the time I post this, I'll remember something I forgot to say. You might want to check back for any updates, which I will type anything I remember later in a color of crimson.

On this morning's walk I saw history taking place. Stella was on her own this morning and followed right along with Sadie and I until she got to the deer bed where she stops every walk. Only today was different. You can see her walking in the picture above out toward the path we walk on.

The "historical" part is when she turned toward me and started walking to meet me and Sadie without calling her. She would normally continue north to the neighbor's woods. I couldn't believe what my eyes were seeing.

She came right up to me as I got closer. The moon and stars must have been lined up last night for this to happen.

Heidi did come outside with us on her own but wasn't interested in walking. She did go with us on our walk last night but I didn't take the camera with me. So while we walked, she stayed outside around the house.

When I asked Sadie "where's Heidi" ... this is her reaction.

Then once she saw Heidi in the distance ... can dogs really see that far??? Some studies say no but I find it hard to believe she is running toward her just based on scent.

I tried but wasn't able to catch when Sadie touched noses with Heidi but she does that all the time when they meet like this. She will even do that when Heidi comes back inside at night while Sadie is inside the house waiting for her.

I guess this picture captures her tail wagging but a lot of my pictures of her do not. Her skin and coat seems much better than anytime I can remember since October 2014. Yet, when I look at her pictures a year ago, she looks the same. She has gained her weight back.

Stella being Stella, doesn't acknowledge Heidi and just walk right past her like she wasn't there. LOL She has always been like that for the 20 months that she has lived here. She will even walk on my feet at times or try to walk over my legs if I am blocking her path while I sit on the couch.

I am in the process of taking a series of pictures of the farmer that plants the field across the highway. I'll post those and only those pictures later tonight showing the process from expanding out their planter rakes to loading their seed.

Since they alternate between corn and soybeans every year or two, I am expecting soybeans this year but will have to wait and see what grows. while they do that almost a month early, the other field on the other side of the dirt path has not even been plowed yet. That field is owned by a different farmer.

Fantastic weather to be outside.

Yesterday was my 3rd year anniversary of retirement. I still call it my best career decision I ever made. Some adjustments had to be made financially but I would not change a thing, it's been great.

If you have any questions about the satellite internet, leave a comment or send me an email and I'll answer the best I can. I still feel the pictures are looking better with the lens hood on this Tamron lens.

A lot of good things happening right now here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

The Lens Hood Makes A Difference

My picture experiment today was using the lens hood that came with the Tamron 18mm-200mm lens. I saw a difference just after a couple of photos, that would be the same type taken every day at the same time of morning.


After the hounds have their breakfast, Sadie, Stella and I go outside for them to dump their tanks and while my coffee is being made. I only take 3-5 pictures during this time. The small picture I use to post here of the field across the highway, then a shot in back as I stand at the corner of the house and some of the hounds if there is something to take.

All of these pictures posted were not edited in any way and all were shot using the lens hood. I think that with this specific lens, the hood is needed at all times because the colors were being flushed out from the additional light.

Granted we are moving from winter to spring. Things are getting greener by the day if not by the hour. Pictures taken in the winter months in the Midwest are dull and drab in color.  Yet during those months the color of the hounds did not stand out unless I enhanced their color when I edited the pictures.

Stella decided it was going to be one of those days where walking was not her main priority, nor was tracking deer scent. After she moved from the spot above, this is what I found in the picture below. There was nothing there but the wet leaves from where she had been licking.

Sadie was on her own schedule and was always pretty far ahead of us, even after she would backtrack and wait on Stella and I.

I believe whoever or whatever was chewing the tree limb decided enough is enough and moved on to some other delicacy.

I was trying to decide while I waited on Stella if I should just walk on with Sadie and let her do whatever she wanted but I did not want to go get her near the end of the walk. Most likely she would have ended up by the neighbor's wooded area.

While Sadie was showing more energy than normal ...

Stella was walking and moving in an extra slow gear. I could almost hear her dragging her paws on the ground as she slowly walked along the edge of the field.

By the time I took this next picture, Sadie had already been up to the far right corner to check out the 'deer highway', then circled back to get Stella and I. That did not matter to Stella, she was on her own pace today and wasn't going to change.

Neither hound had any urges to take off out of bounds and as I turned the corner to head home they spent the majority of time walking right next to me with Stella right behind me, out of camera range. I had to stop and wait for them to get this far in front of me.

I believe you can tell just how slow she is walking. Each step is slow and once again she was falling behind Sadie. Based on the starter growth of the field and lack of weeds growing, it looks like their first cut of hay will be one of their best quality in June.

With temperatures headed to the 70's we were going to make a couple of more walks, fix the three screens that Stella destroyed last summer and do as much outside as possible.

I was off to a good start, with the 2nd hound walk complete right after their lunch, I went to work on repairing the small screen windows with new screen on two bedroom windows and one spare.

This is the new grass I planted a few weeks ago, really about a month ago. It survived freezing temps a few days after I planted seed the first time. I spread some more seed, then the heavy rains came. So I spread the last seed I had in the bag I bought in early March. It is filling in the bank quite well and looks to be right on schedule. It will look good next spring in 2018.

All the photos taken this afternoon were with the lens hood on, no editing.

I found out last summer the hard way that Stella was the escape artist they claimed she was. I made the mistake thinking there was no way she could crawl through a window that was only 16" tall and 39" off the floor.

She did.

By the time I returned from my Z4 drive with the top down, she was sitting next to the FJ, panting, ready for me to let her back inside for some water and a nap.

Before

After

If I don't have any more memory lapses when I get ready to leave the house, and make sure the windows are closed, then these new screens should last another 15 years like the others did. I guess there is one advantage of repairing them ... they will not have be cleaned with the high pressure washer in a few weeks.

I was at a good pace, getting things finished, and checking a few things off of my long 'to do' list, until I stopped at 2pm to eat some lunch. During the time eating a salad, a small carton of Chinese food, I remembered the final round of The Masters was on tv today. I usually watch the last 4-5 holes.

Around that was the Long Beach Grand Prix Indy Car race, 85 laps on a different tv channel. With some slight stiffness in my lower back from doing something as simple as repairing the screen windows I thought it might be the perfect time to cancel the rest of the list for the day and my rules in retirement. That rule is not to do more than one 'major' thing per day. LOL No schedules and no rush.

In the meantime we headed out for our 3rd hound walk of the day but cut it off short. Neither hound seemed too enthused and it ended halfway to to the first corner when Stella sat down looked at me and didn't move. So all three of us turned around and headed home. They both were sound to sleep within minutes after walking inside.

After looking at these pictures I am going to make one adjustment in the camera settings and set the light setting to -1. That will brighten them up just a little and other than that I think I have found part of the problem and it was the light that washed out the colors while using the lens without the hood. I never used the lens hood with the Nikon lens but need to with the Tamron lens.

You can take a look if you want at my photos on Flickr. This link will show about 1,000 photos I've made available for public viewing. I have all my photos in Flickr as a backup. The reason I bring this up, I think you will see a real difference in the picture quality when they are not compressed by Blogger. Also my Wordpress blog does not compress the images I load and they are the same pictures I use in this blog. I think you will see a difference.

Thanks for the emails and comments about my picture blog post Saturday night. It's always good to get opinions from blog readers. Check out these photos from today and let me know what you think. Maybe I have solved the picture quality problem by using the lens hood.

The 'to do' list is about to commence here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.