Live Writer Update and Storm Preparation

It must be the weather, I feel like writing blogs today and this is my 2nd post of the day.

My quest to find out all the information I could about Live Writer was short and to the point. I had forgot from my previous research that it is a Microsoft PC based program, not for Apple Macs.

I did look at alternatives to Live Writer for Macs, plus something called Open Live Writer, but even at the end in the FAQ section they admitted their program was not fully coded for use on any Mac products.

I ran into a blogger that had just moved to a Mac computer from a PC after "living on Live Writer" ... he listed an app that would work for Mac's but it was internet based and when I tried loading my blog into the program, ScribeFire did not play well with Blogger and wouldn't load the blog for it to work.

He suggested what I always thought was the best solution for writing, editing and formatting blog posts offline ... Word. I have the Mac version of Microsoft Office for all the Excel spreadsheets I use, so Word is available. I have used that before, then you copy and paste into Blogger when you return online ... but it has problems with pictures.

I took this next picture not because of the trees or skies but for the first time in all the years I lived here (19+) I had not noticed the tall Sycamore tree with the bright white bark. Maybe I have and forgot but today that white tree trunk really stood out.

As I was reading about all the 16 different alternatives for Live Writer for Mac users, my thoughts turned to a new Wordpress Blog. It must be the weather, where I am stuck inside and have only a couple of choices of activity. I am always in the mood in bad weather to start a new blog and I love Wordpress templates to work with. I should have never deleted the blog I had there this year named Living with Hounds or Life with Hounds. Once you delete a blog on Wordpress dot com, you never get it back.

Looking at the weather site Intellicast, a huge storm moved south of us. The rain had stopped but I could still hear how wet it was from cars passing on the highway. The small forecast section said I was headed for damaging winds, large hail, and a possible tornado tonight. With those high winds coming from the south I am always concerned about the last 100' tall Sycamore tree that stands by the driveway.

The last 100' Sycamore tree that was pulled out of the ground like a weed in 2008, fell through the fence and was tall enough to reach the other side of the front yard. I looked at another weather site called Wunderground and saw that the next rain would be around 7pm with 44% chance of rain ... that's when I am tuning into the IU basketball game so there is a chance my Directv signal will be knocked out depending how strong the storm is.

Yet at Midnight throughout the rest of the morning into Wednesday, the 98% chance of rain and storms looks to be the time period for high damaging winds. I'd rather see them in daylight rather than after midnight.

As you see from the pictures, Sadie and Stella went outside to check the condition of the field. It looks dry but with the paws prints going across the carport floor I could see it would be too wet and muddy if we were to take a walk. While they did that I put the car cover back on the Z4, connected the bungee cord under it to each side of the cover to prevent it from blowing off tonight. I also put my chair inside so there is nothing that can blow around causing damage tonight ... just in case.

I'm sure Stella will do a little pacing tonight when the storms do start. In the past she has been pretty good and once she realizes that things are going to be okay for her, she has laid down and slept through most of the storms we have had.

I was surprised that Sadie did not give me the look or stare down telling me she wanted to go for a walk. Instead she trotted back to the house without any begging to stay outside.

It's close to lunch time for the hounds and I think I will spend the afternoon reading my two books from the library and may even look at Wordpress again and rebuild the blog I had before. It got very little traffic and I mean very little ... but I liked it because I kept the content to just two to three sentences and then 5-10 photos.

The quality of the photos were better compared to Blogger because Google will compress them once they are loaded into the blog. There were a few days it was nice just to post pictures and that was all. I thought it would work for many readers here because I think most come here to see pictures of the hounds instead of reading my rambling.

That did not prove to be the correct assumption.

Last week I was mentioning how great this weather was for February but I read my posts in February 2016 and the weather was almost identical on the same dates of the month.

Well Stella is standing beside my office chair with her head bowed to let me know she is hungry and she can't remember her last meal of 4 hours ago. Sadie is in the doorway giving me the stare that she wants to eat. I'll have to go wake Heidi up but once she knows food is involved she will be instant energy.

I hope that I DO NOT have any "post storm" pictures to post here tomorrow.

A Seattle weather day here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

The Storm Came Early

With the current weather early this morning and the slim chance of the daily hound walks today, I decided to post early and include the photos from yesterday afternoon's walk ... Sadie was the featured hound.

I am not sure what time it was but it was still dark when the roar of thunder and a lightning bolt bright enough to light up the bedroom woke me up. It was almost immediately I felt a bloodhound muzzle trying to lift my hand up from the side of the bed.

It was Stella standing by the side of the bed wanting to let me know it's storming and to remind me that she is not a fan of thunderstorms. I was told when I picked her up that she hated thunderstorms but compared to my first basset hound, Harry, she is not bad at all. She whines a little and paces a little during these storms but isn't what I would call frantic.

All of us got back to sleep as the thunder continued to roll but I didn't hear rain hitting the storm windows so maybe that took place earlier while we were sleeping. Wunderground shows there is a pretty good chance of rain continuing from now until Wednesday at 10am.

Sadie was wondering this morning if there was still a chance to take walk in light rain even before the first cup of coffee was poured. No, there wasn't.

With Stella not interested in getting any further away from the driveway than this ... plus the light drizzle ... the morning walk has been canceled at this time. When there is standing water in the low spots next to the house, that means the field is too wet to be hiking through.

So with that in mind, I'll post some pictures from yesterday afternoon. It wasn't planned but Sadie turned out to be the featured hound of the walk All hounds were given free reign to go and do anything they wanted during this walk.

Heidi chose not to go on the walk and only took her back way out to the front yard long enough to relieve herself and then back inside for her afternoon siesta.

Stella stopped within 20' of starting the walk and didn't move, so I knew what her plan was and I wasn't going to stick around to watch.

It was Sadie and I enjoying the walk and the warm weather. There wasn't any wind, a lot of birds chirping among themselves and clear blue skies. It was perfect weather for a mid-day walk.

The way Sadie reacts every time we start to walk, I really think we could walk an unlimited amount of times per day and she would never care. In some cases Stella has a limit, where by the 3rd walk on some days she has zero interest and will take one slow step at a time to get through it.

This picture gives you some idea what Stella's plan was for the afternoon walk. You can barely see her just right of center.

Sadie on the other hand was intense in her exploration. She was in her own world enjoying every scent she could pick up. Her strong tracking instincts show up every walk, in all kinds of weather.

She started rolling in something before I could catch her. The only baths that I give her are outside with the hose in one hand and her tethered so she will not sprint away. I've tried before but there is no chance of her getting into the bathtub to get clean.

Luckily whatever she rolled in just smelled good to her and didn't leave any kind of residue on her back and shoulders ... too cold for an outdoor shower and not enough time to give her a bath.

While I was talking Sadie into getting away from that spot, Stella sprinted up behind us to checkout what all the excitement was about. By that time Sadie had walked away from the 'real good' spot to keep it hidden from Stella.

Once again Stella stayed behind while Sadie and I continued on.

I am not sure what the reason is or what she is thinking but on a lot of the afternoon walks, Stella will follow the path walking extremely slow, after she catches up to me, without the leash. She will do this up to the back edge of the field and then go into her search mode at a faster pace. Of course you will notice I needed her to keep up with us on the last half of the walk yesterday and I attached the leash as a motivating tool.

Sadie explored every inch of the field to the left of the return path home. Stella walked right behind me, out of picture range for the return trip home. I shut off the camera and enjoyed the weather the rest of the way.

It was a great afternoon with the temperatures just right.

Al over at The Bayfield Bunch has been having problems with a program called Live Writer that he uses to create his blog posts. He finally got the problem solved and is back to using it and as you can see is as happy as a kid in a candy store.

This has increased my curiosity enough about this Live Writer stuff that I am going to pour another cup of coffee while it is bad weather outside, then tear into Google Search and see what I can find out about this program. I am sure they will have a Mac version I can download to my iMac so I can play around with it.

I want to see what I am missing. About all I know about it right now, is that I could write a complete blog post with pictures, offline and someway it will post that to Blogger when I would turn on the internet. That sounds good for someone that is traveling full-time. I remember on our trip to Utah and Colorado in June 2015 I did not have an internet signal a lot of the time to where I could post on a blog.

This Live Writer also works with Google Photos. I only know that from reading Al's blog post this morning where he described how he fixed his latest problem. I use Google Photos daily as I upload every picture I take for the day into Google Photos to use as one of many picture library backups.

I took the two books I wasn't interested in reading back to the library yesterday and then picked up two more and started reading them when I got home, late into the night. So it must have been the subject matter I wasn't interested in and not the lack of interest in reading.

IF the weather clears up later today, long enough to take new pictures I might post again. Otherwise this post is it for the day while it rains outside.

It might be raining but at least it's warm on the last day in February in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.