Firefox Browser Is A Data Hog

Under overcast skies, sounds of thunder and storms all around us ... we will stay dry for most of the day. There is something about that I-70 corridor as it has thunderstorms and snow storms follow it across the state. It didn't take me long to find out this morning why I stopped using Firefox ... it's a data hog ... I'll discuss it at the end of this post.
As I made coffee I was sure it was going to rain any second and our morning walk might not happen. With my 11pm grocery shopping trip last night I had a new bag of Seattle's Best Coffee and a much needed caffeine boost.

After checking Intellicast radar I could see sever storms to the north and northeast of us but nothing was to the west or southwest of us. It was time for our first walk of the day. With Stella nibbling a little grass before we got started, Sadie and I took off on the path.

I was surprised as I turned to look behind me and didn't see Stella. When I looked to the side and in front of me I didn't see Stella. Holy cow!!!!  She was taking a brand new path and was over on the corner of the yard heading in the direction of her favorite woods ... nowhere near Sadie and I.

As I yelled her name she ignored me and kept walking north, parallel to Sadie and I. No doubt she was smelling the scent of one of the field cats.

While calling her name over and over, she sloooowly turns in our direction.

She started trotting toward Sadie at a fairly fast pace but not quite a run. I cannot describe how good I feel when I see her trotting again more than once per day and multiple days in a row.

Although we had assurances of no rain on the radar, the thunder was loud and in the skies up ahead. The colors of the radar of those storms were those deep reds, browns signifying just how serious the thunderstorms were. They were about 20 miles from us.

After reading last night that a favorite lens of a professional photographer was her Nikon 16mm-35mm lens I thought I'd try a few shots today on the walk with the lens set at 35mm. Here is one of them below, power tower and lines included.

Sadie had other plans and started running in the direction of the far right hand corner of the field, but she had a scent to check out first. That area is a deer lounging area.

This next photo is a good example of why it's so hard to put both bloodhounds on a leash that is connected to a splitter. In that situation they would be 6' away from me and walking right next to each other. They each have their own interests when walking and their noses leading them in different directions. No RVing for them. I would never do that here on our walks, only as a test for possible travel.

Sadie had found some fresh protein supplements this morning. Stella trotted to see if Sadie would share any of it. Of course I had to stroll over and tug on Stella's collar to lead her in our direction. Sadie will always come running when I call her name ... Stella is a different story.

Walking by those rolls of hay and smelling the aroma of hay bales (rolls in this case) reminds me of the summers in high school where I had part time jobs of baling hay for the local farmers, then stacking it in the barns. Extremely hot work, good money. You would have to wear a t-shirt to keep from being scratched by the cut hay ... but the smell of cut hay always brings those memories back to me.

When Stella heard thunder becoming louder she thought it might be to her advantage to get home a little faster this morning. She didn't trot all the way but I couldn't keep up with either hound all the way back to the house.

With everything green around here, I thought I'd add a little color to my blog post this morning.

During the walk I also realized that I don't and probably will never have a set time each day where I post to the blog. I am pretty consistent in posting in the middle of the day after editing our morning walk photos ... but I find it too hard at times to wait until the end of the day to post which adds even more photos.

Two blogs per day are sometimes missed by readers, at least statistics show that. They will alway view the latest blog post of the day but not read the previous one. Yet there will be days I'll blog multiple times per day because my schedule is basically this --- "do what I want when I want, no plans".

Now to the Firefox story ....

I opened it up late yesterday and used only 20Mb of data to get it updated. It seemed faster than it use to be. I liked the look of it. Yet it would open websites up a little slower than Safari (instant) or Google Chrome (2 seconds). It was not until this morning when I tried it, that it reminded me EXACTLY why I don't use it.

Since I have limited data per month for my home computer, no choice based on my location ... I always have Activity Monitor open and on my other monitor so I can catch any unexpected data usage that is more than I can handle to stay within my estimate of 665Mb per day to spread 20Gb out per month.

So this morning I did all of my internet reading on Google Chrome, which uses a data saver in the background. After I returned from the walk I opened up Firefox and went to my blog dashboard to edit last nights post and correct some spelling errors.

That was the only website I had open.

Right before clicking the 'update' button on the blog, I glance over at my Activity Monitor and see that Firefox had used 83Mb of data just on my blog edit. While two hours of internet reading, including my blog and looking at stats from the dashboard had used a total of 38Mb !!!

That probably doesn't mean much to you but when you have limited data 45Mb used doing really nothing is a lot. I can buy more data if I go over the 20Gb limit and luckily with HughesNet any of that additional data I buy but do not used is carried over for future use. Exede Satellite service zero'd it out at the end of the billing period.

Even writing this post and uploading photographs to it, I still have not used as much data as Firefox did this morning and that includes my 2 hours of internet reading while on Google Chrome.

The pace of life will not be out of the ordinary today. I have found an old John Grisham novel on the bookshelf ... it's hard to put down ... yet the hounds will get their 3 walks in today.

Heidi has moved from the couch to the floor right next to the register that has that ice cold air conditioned air flowing out of it ... she is a pretty smart basset hound.

Food supply was replenished late last night ... all is good again here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Hounds Burn Off Cabin Fever

With it staying cold all day and overcast most of the afternoon I didn't leave the computer much at all. Weather outside was not the only reason.

While loading blogs to my blog list I ran into a blog that looked interesting, had great photos and advertised it as a blog that documented their process of selling it all and hitting the road full-time. That sounded very familiar and about the same period of time I looked at it those same ideas but ended up with a different decision.

So since it was freezing outside, I made a couple of more cups of coffee, clicked on the On The Road Abode blog, dropped their archives down to their first post and then proceeded to spend the afternoon reading from the start. For any readers that are thinking about the RV lifestyle, that blog was a perfect example of the process and how important it is to have a plan and follow that plan. It is well written and covers all their experiences ... good and bad.

During this time there were still breaks for eating lunch, letting the hounds out, letting Heidi out a 2nd time and then the bloodhounds out later in the afternoon. While they were out in the field snooping around, I took a couple of photos and was about to call them to come inside ... when Stella decided it was time to play. Running and wrestling was sure to burn off some cabin fever.

They started then stopped. That is their normal procedure. Then ... the match was on. One thing to remember while looking at these photos ... they play rough at times but in the 7 months I've had Stella, neither hound has growled, tried biting the other or starting a fight when playing this way ... they just play, stop immediately in the end ... and walk back inside the house.

Five minutes after they came inside they were sound asleep for their short late afternoon nap, while I continued to read about Bill & Jodee's RV lifestyle.

With the 43° and feels like 35°, I'm going to stay inside and watch the Cincinnati Reds game. I'd normally feel sorry for them playing baseball in that cold of weather but when the average salary per player on the 25 man roster is $3,000,000 ... I doubt they feel how cold it is.  LOL

I couldn't resist, I had to look at the 10 day forecast ... it will be in the 70's in 5 more days but who's counting.

It's the weekend here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana but when you are retired every day is the weekend ... love it.

Zero Temperatures Makes My Mind Wander

Long time readers, blog followers know that when my mind starts to wander, things could get interesting. -2° was the high temperature yesterday. What the news calls the "polar vortex" I just call it a normal Midwestern winter. It happens every year. The difference is the tv news has to sell advertising and when they can create a crisis, and can try to scare the public with something like "a polar vortex" that will sell more advertising, more groceries ... still it's just winter and has happened annually for hundreds of years.

I'll get to last night's story later but I will say that I ignored all the warnings to stay inside and not travel anywhere last night as the temps dropped to -7° as I was driving. I know what I can do and can't do in bad weather, no need for the local news to throw out all of these warnings and try to scare me into staying locked up inside the house.

For those interested in my house heating experiment that I wrote about a few posts ago, it's turning out to be very successful in decreasing my "utility footprint", saving me some money and still able to keep fairly warm. In December 2013 with 12" of snow the 2nd week and single digit temps I used 1,495 kilowatts during that month and that was with me at work 5 days per week and gone 8-10 hours per day. During those times away I would turn the heat down or off.

This December, we didn't have the snow but it was just as cold. Actually it was pretty mild, with temperatures in the 30's to 40's range with the temperatures dropping below the 20s the last few days of the month. Even at those temperatures I needed to run the electric baseboard heat at times. My total usage for the the month was 873 kilowatts. A little over half of what I used last December, and only a $20 dent into the $301 credit I have built up after 7 months of billing. (May to May).

With the temperature at 6° outside at 11am, I just turned on my heat for the first time today around 1:30pm. Since this house holds that heat pretty efficiently, I'll turn off the heat when it gets to 65° inside. The house stays pretty comfortable at 60° with the older storm windows taking the brunt of the frozen weather.

During these temps in the teens and single digits I've only allowed the hounds out just long enough for them to dump their tanks, otherwise they would stay outside to the point of freezing their paws and then they would not be able to walk.

After a little over a week of changing Heidi's treatment and getting her off of the Atopica, I would have to say her condition on her paws and rear hucks as being stable. There was a slight decrease of improvement at the start. but I applied some diaper rash cream, more like a paste that has 13% zinc oxide to the red areas where she was starting to lick and chew again. That showed improvement.

I am trying to use that paste as little as possible because I want to see if the change in dog food to a no-grain, all pork diet from Merrick will show any visible signs of improvement. She isn't in any pain, has gained a lot of her energy back since being off the medication and just one paw shows where she has licked it a lot.

So, what about this "mind wandering"?

I wasn't going to complain this year about the cold weather ... and I haven't. It's part of the winter for the place I live, so this year I decided I would live with it and not focus on it.

It took one conversation with a local friend of mine that grew up in San Diego and Hawaii that started me house hunting ... in places that are warm. It's not like I had a lot to do outside in zero temperatures, so I had plenty of time to look on realtor dot com and zillow.

Still, it got me thinking again. Why not finally relocate to somewhere warmer and be able to enjoy outdoor activities year round instead of being locked inside the house during the three months of winter trying to keep warm?

The five main towns I focused on were Casa Grande AZ, Arizona City AZ, Eloy AZ, Alamogordo NM and Las Cruces NM. One area was on a suggestion because a friend had a relative that had moved there and really like it. The NM locations were past interests of mine. Needless to say I have all of those towns plus a few more, added to my iPhone weather app that comes with the phone so I can see and compare the weather of each place.

Between the two realty sites I was able to save different houses of interest. I had made up my mind that I would sell the one I live in and make a complete move west. I even considered moving as soon as I had the house packed up and cleaned, leaving an empty house for sale with a realtor. As usual, the thought of being a home owner raised it's ugly head and it was something I told myself I didn't want if I were to ever move again. I've never been a fan of house repairs or maintenance and cheap enough that I would rather do any of that work myself instead of hiring it out.

So that thought lingered as I scrolled through houses that were mostly trash when comparing them to what I had now, in the same price range. I knew I'd have to spend more to get the same quality I had now. I also knew even with a more expensive house or a newer house ... repair and maintenance ... were and always will be part of home ownership.

The thought of sunshine 300+ days per year and temperatures higher than 30° during the day also sounded great. During this time it was 2° where I was. I factored that in when analyzing my thought process. I remembered how much I liked living here last spring and summer and wrote about those feelings.

Still, maybe it is time to have a change of scenery. I've been retired now for eight months. Things have settled down, a retirement routine has been developed which is nothing different than what I did on weekends or paid holidays off from work. I never see the people I worked with, rarely hear from them so most of the time its the hounds and I.

A list of things to do once spring arrives as far as house upkeep keeps getting longer, just like every year. Winters are hard on houses and maintenance must be done before the next winter if you want to keep your house in good shape. It's like fighting against mother nature as she tries to drag the house away with her. Plus it's time consuming and always seems to be never ending.

The dreaded thought of home ownership was popping up at times while looking at all the houses under sunny skies ... it's something I have said I would not do if I decided to move. What about the hounds? I know from personal experience in my house renting days how hard it was to rent a house with just two hounds that weighed more than the "pet allowance" of 25 pounds. I have a little over 200 pounds of hounds walking around. I don't think condos would like us and even some houses that allows renting with pets ... just smaller than then ones I have.

After a call late afternoon from my old college roommate and friend for forty years, I tell the hounds I'm going on a road trip through dangerous sub-zero weather and I'll be back later ... don't stay up waiting on me ... I take off for a late dinner at Nick's, with a salad, a 12" strom and a few pale ale's.

My friend is also recently retired. His wife chooses to work until she is 70, so traveling is limited for him. He is the hiker that had a tent camping background but all during his younger premarried days.

Our conversation moves to the houses I've been looking at, the locations I am considering, while some of those areas nearby he has hiked many many years ago. Then he said something similar to what I've been say in this post about "home ownership". His house to him was one big albatross. He said if he was single, he would sell it immediately, buy an Airstream type trailer and park it somewhere. Now, he has not done any research on boondocking, state laws for boondocking, nor does he read any rv blogs but he said no matter what he would sell his house and buy a trailer to live in ... something smaller and a way to be more mobile.

He had no idea where he would park it but it would be out west somewhere. That led us to discussing the pros and cons of home ownership, even with ours being paid off, low property taxes and a low cost of living where we live. He lives in a town of of 120,000 people, one small college and a small university, not like me being outside a town of 2,500. By the time it was midnight and we were the only one's at Nicks because the students haven't returned to campus yet, I had decided once again that home ownership is not something I was looking for when changing my location.

As I made the 30 minute drive home watching my outside temperature gauge show -7°, then a -11° by the time I pulled into the driveway ... I thought about houses, the house I have, how everything is comfortable, yet I have the urge to make changes. I wasn't really interested in going through the new procedures (hassle) of purchasing a house by the time I went to bed.

Halfway through my coffee this morning, my mind was going a different direction where houses were not part of the formula. Of course the hounds were but not houses.

I think we've been down this road before.