This Post Turned Into Rambling

With Heidi preparing for the expectation of the 'heat wave' blowing away today, she is back into her winter hibernation mode. She never even moved when I walked in to take her photo. With Stella interested in other things, it was really just Sadie and I doing the walk this morning ... at a faster pace.

Don't be fooled by Stella's fast start, getting way ahead of Sadie and I. She had no plans what so ever in walking with Sadie and I. I guess yesterday afternoon's walk checked off that box. It was okay, it was still warm, and only a light jacket was needed this morning.

I did notice one thing this morning while downloading, looking at and editing the photos I took this morning ... the lack of sunshine took away the quality I saw in the iPhone 6s pictures from the past few days. See if you can notice them. I've scattered only a few into this post.

I'm back to playing around with different browsers, using the 'Big 3' and finding out that the latest Safari that did so well with it's initial big improved update a month or so ago, now has some sort of hangup at the start of a new webpage. I only used the new Firefox Quantum for a couple of days after I found out there was no way at this time to stop videos from auto playing on Twitter and Facebook plus the sports news sites .. that soaked up too much of my data.

So this morning I decided to take the chance of getting a 500Mb hit of data if Google Chrome updated automatically when I turned it on. After more reading they have made it very hard to turn off the automatic update and change it to a manual update due to security reasons.

One thing different proved my point ... webpages loaded instantly without any hangups. So that shows me at least on my computer that something has changed in the Safari browser with their recent updates. I'll test it later by clearing all the history and cache files and see if that fixes the problem.

Here is Stella enjoying her walk.

With the weather so warm yesterday I got a lot done, some things not listed nor expected. The new smaller, lighter Black and Decker 20v battery operated leaf blower worked fantastic blowing the leaves out my gutter as I walked along the edge of the roof. There were not many leaves left but at least the gutter is completely clean and ready for winter snow and ice.

I backed out the FJ so I could get into my small shed easier. Of course Sadie and Stella thought they were finally going to go for a ride. By the time I had backed out, they were both standing at the back of the FJ waiting for me to open the door.

They didn't mind we weren't going anywhere ... while I put the ramps, car jacks, large leaf blower and large rake back into the shed ... they roamed the field. I almost pulled the snow shovel out for easier access but didn't want to jinx myself this winter and left it where it was.

I even knocked off a couple of items on my to-do list that had been overdue for many months. The carport was cleaned of all the cobwebs, dust, a few leaves and I double checked the three vents in the foundation that lead into the crawlspace. The have remained closed the past few weeks with one night of very high winds.

Once my 'mystery' cover arrived for the Z4 I opened the box only to put in the RMA form the company requires for me to get a refund after shipping it back at my cost. When I placed the order based on the list of parts in the insurance estimate there ended up three parts that could not be identified nor their locations. I called the BMW dealership for help in finding their locations and they were not near where I needed the repairs.

The sales rep offered to double check my order and include all the nuts, bolts, washers needed. That resulted in a lot of it being duplicated since the parts I put on the car already had a lot of the hardware included on the part. It will be interesting to see how they handle this return and how long it will take to complete the process.

Due to my lack of trust with this company, I took pictures of the shipment documents and also included my own spreadsheet that showed their company part number, the BMW part number, quantity, unit and extended cost. I know they do all of that anyway but I want to see if we match numbers by the time their refund is back into my account ... ~$197.

I also double checked my work on the car for any oil leaks after changing the filter on Monday. By that time there was 200-250 miles on the car after the filter change. Not a drop or sign of a leak anywhere. At least all of that work didn't take long and I know the job was done right ... yet I would not want to do any of it even for a part-time job.

The last time the oil was changed at the dealership, they put more oil in than required and there were signs of leaks or drips due to their lack of "attention to detail" ... drives me up the wall, so I do it myself.

With most of my to-do list finished for this time of year, my over active mind turns to things I can change on the computer. I think trying different browsers is proof of that. I will not be changing the template of this blog but am very seriously considering a template change on my Wordpress blog.

I talked about it in previous winters and even started manually scanning my old photographs (1,000's) two to three photos at a time into a digital image. That process was too slow. This year I am thinking about buying a scanner that is built specifically for scanning a large number of photos at a time, and also converts slides to digital images ... or taking them all in to have them scanned professionally.

Another winter project I am thinking about is making an electronic book (Apple's Keynote) about my 1976 Cross Country Bicycle trip. I have the journal I kept, where I could type from that journal into an electronic format. I also have some photos of that trip plus some slides that would need converted commercially. That trip ranks as probably the best if not one of the top two summers for me.

Someone told me once that if I were going to blog I needed to write about different things, "not just hound walks". So again I am thinking that I might on occasion write about the past basset hounds and bloodhounds I've had. There have been many over a 30 year period. I mentioned it once before but never followed through.

Two days from December is almost too hard to comprehend for me. It seems like yesterday I was surviving 80°+ temps in cargo shorts and a tshirt. It has been a nice fall season though with a few surprises sprinkled in.

I remember twenty years ago in the computer world my two favorite computer games were Sim City and Microsoft's Flight Simulator. I even bought the joystick to plug into the computer to fly the planes much easier than using the keyboard. None of those connections would work in today's computers whether they be a PC or Mac. Yet I still have all those games and others on CD with their instructions.

Another game that started my computer addiction was something I was playing in 1993 or 1994 called Wolfenstein. I see that game has come back as an app.

There is one solution though where I can bring these games and a couple of flight simulators back to life. In my closet wrapped in plastic for protection are my last two PC hard drives. One has WindowsXP and the other has Windows95 as their operating system.

During the next day(s) of bad weather I might have to unwrap them, sit them on the kitchen island, hook up an old monitor and keyboard and bring them back to life. I can look through them to see if I find any files or pictures I may have missed converting to a new computer in 2007 when I went from PC to a Mac. Afterward I can reformat the hard drives, then reinstall newer operating systems and only install old PC games and flight simulators into the hard drive.

Doing that I might have a major problem with the operation system install because of the out of date hardware since they are older than 10 years old. I probably should just leave the operation systems there, delete all of my files and then clean the hard drives for any malware. They would not be connected to the internet ... just stand alone gaming computers.

Falcon 2.0 was another great flight simulator I enjoyed. It is the Air Force's F16. I guess I could do some more online searching and find all of these available either as an app or a game for Xbox and Sony Playstation consoles.

So you can probably tell I am gearing up for winter, after all I can't watch college basketball 24/7. I need to diversify.  LOL

I have a Yahoo email account because I needed one to open a Flickr account for all of my photos. It is never used for sending nor receiving mail. But today that email account is the favorite of all spammers ... It's not quite noon and I have over a 100 emails automatically sent to my junk folder from that Yahoo account.

Yahoo email users beware ... something is going on.

For you that think you'd like to have a bloodhound or two, let me tell you something. They are much different than basset hounds. They are not the 'couch potatoes' you see in tv commercials sometime. (Chevy trucks years ago???).

I have two of them that always want more attention given to them than the other one. Or they work as a partnership. They just came into my computer room at 11am as I write this. Sadie starts hopping up and down like she does when we are getting ready for a walk.

Stella is poking my right arm with her nose because that is her way to tell me she wants something. Then Sadie backs off and starts giving me her 'stare down'.

You know what they want if you stop by the blog on a regular basis ... it's 11am or noon during the summer months ... they want their lunch and they want it now.

The problem with that is ... with my late morning we didn't start our day until 8:35am, not quite 3 hours ago. They will keep bugging me until I feed them.

Or while you are outside doing normal stuff around your house you realize that neither hound is anywhere within view or yelling range. You can look for miles on the horizon and not see a sign of them. So you stop what you are doing and start the search .... they have migrated to the back of the field in the far right corner next to the ATV path.

I thought I had lost them ... that they had disappeared. Not a good way to increase your pulse rate.

They did come running at me when they saw me, then ran past me toward the house and was at the door wanting inside by the time I walked back to the house. What did they do after that?  Water and a nap ... no big deal ... just another day being a bloodhound.

They are a funny breed with great personalities that sometimes pushes you to the edge of insanity.

With not much planned today I'll be taking the Z4 out for a drive through the hills of 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Cold Weather Has Arrived

With the storm windows locked down tight for winter weather and all the windows closed, the hounds and I had a solid night of sleep and I could tell my mood was much better this morning than when I heard the salesman knocking on my door yesterday afternoon. It was the coldest morning so far this year as we stepped outside for our first walk of the day.

It might have looked like rain was near but we are not suppose to get anymore until later this afternoon. We should be able to squeeze in a couple of more walks before then, more photos and possibly another blog post tonight.

Hard to say what Sadie was hearing or smelling. She is facing away from the woods towards the neighbors and nowhere in the direction of Stella.

As you can see, Stella was on her own this morning. I had a feeling she wasn't going to go far by the time Sadie and I returned.

With it 46° and windy, I had a chance to try out a new Carhartt jacket a friend gave me. I can always use a different jacket but have always stuck to my down parkas and other down vests I have. This jacket will save some wear and tear on my other jackets and from the looks of it, it will do well as a hound hair collector and catching flying drool.

Those skies are to the north of us ... looks almost like a snow storm is up there. I still have not done any weather research on what the winter predictions are for this area. I have a gut feeling we will not be having a mild winter this year.

Sadie found out today as well as me ... what happens when you are eating dirt but due to all the rain it was really mud. I noticed once on the walk she placed her mouth on the ground and scratched with her paw. When she did that frantically back inside the house I decided to take a look.

All of that mud was caked up in her upper gums ... I cleaned that out in one step with a rag then brushed her teeth with some dog toothpaste and a toothbrush. I was shocked she let me do that ... but she seemed to like the result.

She never lets me get too far ahead of her, so once she saw I was not stopping my walk this morning she knew she had to run to catch up. After all she can't give Stella the chance to drink her water when we get back inside the house.

Poor camera work by the photographer but I think you can still see her ears flapping through the blurriness.

As usual as we approached the lower part of the field near the house, Sadie stood and surveyed the area with her nose and ears trying to find where Stella was.

When I told her to "go get Stella" off she went. You can barely see Stella off to the left up toward the house.

But bloodhounds get distracted easy when there is a strong scent picked up. I ended up getting to Stella before Sadie did, since she was no longer interested in finding her.

I guess the leaves are going to start showing their colors this year ... the trees seem to change every 24 hours and there are a lot of leaves left for a colorful fall season.

That is the most skin I have ever seen fall over Stella's eyes.

You might think from the wrinkles on Stella's forehead she is either in deep thought or stressed out. I just think that gravity is stronger this morning when it comes to her extra skin.

Well will be tuned into the first World Series game tonight. For some reason Los Angeles is having higher than normal temperatures. By game time they are expecting it to be in the high 90's, no retractable roof and no air conditioning like they have at Houston stadium. The starting time is great for baseball fans east of the Mississippi River but right at the start of rush hour traffic in LA.

I came back to Google Chrome this morning. For some reason while looking through my updated blog list and reading different ones, I glanced over at my Activity Monitor when I was shutting down Safari and saw in the short time I had been online, 248Mb of data was used. That is way too much for what I was doing.

I'll compare that to what I do here in the next hour or two. It might be the new update to macOS, but for some reason my Google Data Saver is no longer working. I deleted the app and reinstalled it but so far nothing is showing up. With the computer's Activity Monitor I will still be able to see how much data Chrome is using after I visit the same websites as this morning.

Heidi made it outside about 4pm yesterday. She didn't stay out too long, just long enough for what she needed. Then she trotted fast back from the front yard to the door. With temperatures even colder today it will be hard to get her to do much outside. She might move from her bed to the couch but not much else besides eating lunch. I hope to get some photos of her at our lunch break.

I am not ready for winter here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Rain Has FINALLY Stopped !!

I've seen the water levels much higher than now, a few years ago, but I am not sure that was worse than now. The standing water in back of my house was more than my underground drainage system could handle. It just shows how much water is moving underground in the field, which slopes towards my property. Yet ... THE RAIN HAS FINALLY STOPPED !!

For the first time in two days, Sadie and Stella walked out into the field. It will still be too wet to take any walks today and maybe even tomorrow since it's suppose to start raining again after midnight before blowing out of the area for a few days.

Sadie didn't stay long but was able to explore a little in the field. About all she was doing was finding that one spot that all dogs look for when they have dump their tanks.

It is May 5th and this is not what I had in mind for my May weather. Wasn't it just a week or so ago where we were touching the mid 70's and thought summer was right around the corner?? I am not a fan of this kind of weather.

By last night I think we can officially say the wild yellow mustard flowers (weeds) are gone. It will be interesting to see just how long it will take to dry that field out enough where heavy tractors, and planters can work there.

That same field runs up next to the highway. All water, but it still did not crest and go over the highway like it did in June 2008. I've seen hard rain fill my culverts and flood my driveway near the highway but nothing like that happened this week.

I think it's safe to say all of that work they did early in getting their field fertilized and planted before May 1st is now a tax write off as a loss. That water also stretches to the right where the majority of the field is located.

This is from yesterday afternoon. The rain had let up enough for the hounds to take a break outside. I was going to pull out the 3-step ladder I have and reach over the top of the gutter to unplug whatever was blocking the downspout. That was not why it was flooded, the downspout was not plugged and all I heard was large amount of water flowing down from the gutter.

It takes a lot of rain to get to the point. I have 6" black corrugated drainage pipe that runs the full length of the house in back right below the edge of grass and rock/gravel toward the bank.

Again, when the top of the driveway gets this flooded, there has been a lot of rain going on.

Yet Sadie was happy to be back outside. I had to call her to come back in from the field. Stella was already standing at the door wanting back inside. Heidi was still hibernating inside her Marmot sleeping bag.

I was still having some problems with Google Chrome today. I find it's a common problem after looking on Google search ... it was freezing when I tried to scroll on a webpage and preventing any kind of curser movement. So as a test I decided to read and find out how to clean up the files inside my Safari browser. I stopped using it months ago because it was corrupted and was deleting all of my bookmarks each time I turned it off.

It was a quick fix, deep inside 'Library' system files where Apple does not want users to go. Safari is now my default browser again, not freezing my computer and not using as much data as Google Chrome based on what my Activity Monitor is showing. It is also very fast loading the pages.

Here on top of the hill we don't have it bad at all compared to other people in the local area. With one of the main rivers in the state of Indiana running outside of town, many people have had their homes flooded, bridges and roads are closed due to being under water. It's times like these that I am happy we lived about 80' up on a hill.

Hard to believe it's Friday. It's been a strange week to say the least. I hope to pull the ladder out of the shed and get up on the roof later this afternoon. I saw this morning some small sticks sticking up from inside my front gutter. That is what is causing all of that water to come over the front edge into the mulch I have in front of the carport.

It's extremely wet here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana but at least the rain has stopped.

Hounds Survived Single Digit Temps

It will probably not be the last time we experience temperatures from -4° to 8° during the daytime hours this winter ... but we did over the weekend.

All three hounds didn't venture much further than the yard and only long enough to dump their tanks. Still, that didn't mean they just relaxed inside. Heidi did her normal winter routine of sleeping, eating and sleeping. Stella also slept most of the time except to remind me it was time to eat.

Sadie on the other hand had a severe case of cabin fever. That started as soon as she returned from her first trip outside after her breakfast kibble. She did not understand of course that the very low temps combined with frozen snow could harm her paws as we walked. Plus I wasn't really enthused that much either to be outside. Daily walks were canceled.

Today was different though. With the highs forecasted to be in the upper 30's by late this afternoon, it was already 24° when we got up. That felt like a mid-summer heat wave. With plans of some early grocery shopping, we took our walk around 9:30am ... the hounds were thrilled to be back on track.

They moved out fast as if they had to be somewhere. I glanced to the woods left of me and up ahead on the horizon to see if any deer might be lingering that would cause a sudden change in plans. I saw nothing ... but Sadie & Stella both either heard or smelled deer in the wooded gully area.

Once they stopped and looked into the woods and then took off running along the edge of the gully I was thinking deer were around the corner and the chase would be on. There are deer tracks all over the snow coming from the wooded gully area.

Once Stella made her stop and glanced that direction, I had my camera on and ready to capture any deer jumping out of the overgrown brush area.

Sadie was so agitated with what she was smelling or hearing that she went the deepest she had ever been in the brush. You really have to look hard but you can barely see her just left of center, with her tailed curled. I was yelling over and over for her and Stella to "come on, get out of there".  They both jumped out of the brush and looked at me as if I had lost my mind.

Instead of turning to the right corner and further investigating the area where there is always heavy deer traffic ... they sprinted along that edge only to run into the brush on the back edge of the field. By the way they were acting it's mostly likely deer were here running earlier this morning, but not now.

As I turned around to see where they were ... both of them were sprinting my direction and went right past me, heading for the 'no-fly zone'.

24° was feeling like summertime to these two today.

All of us made the final turn toward home but Sadie had another area to check out and identify.

Between the snow and warmer temps ... they started playing just a short time, did some running around outside of my reflexes to get the picture and then eventually headed home.

They both stopped to see which one would make the next move. It's funny how long they will stand like that, each waiting for the other to move.

Then they are at it again, but only for a short time.

Back to standing still waiting for the other to move.

They finally decided they had enough, it was just a bit colder since we were outside for almost 30 minutes. They sprinted down the return path toward home.

Even when Sadie stopped to sniff something one last time, Stella just kept on running .... all the way to the door.

It's suppose to rain a lot the next 4-5 days but with the temps in the 40's and 50's I'll not mind the rain. How wet the ground is, will determine just how many walks we get in and how many pictures we take.

I tried Firefox as a browser again yesterday. I was really liking it, seeing that it was blocking any auto play videos. Even with the settings at "do not auto play" I've noticed recently that a lot of these news or sports sites have smaller videos in their front pages that pay automatically no matter how you have your settings, thus increases my colored data use bar on the Activity Monitor.

I once again put Firefox on the shelf due to something running in the background yesterday, that used over 300Mb of data so fast I couldn't get it turned off in time. I am not sure what it was since I have all auto updates clicked off. It will notify me when I have updates but I am the one that decides when that will be updated, so I can control my data usage. I get free data between Midnight and 5am.

I tried Safari. I imported all my current list of bookmarks, then updated the browser. That was working out pretty well except it kept deleting the 714 bookmarks I had imported. All of my favorite sites across the top bar would vanish. After re-importing the bookmarks 3-4 times, I closed Safari and went back to Google Chrome.

Only this morning when I clicked the FlashBlock icon did I find that all of the settings were unchecked. Must have happened after an update of some sort. So after I rechecked those correct settings, Google Chrome has been blocking all video.

Not much I can do when I have a monthly limit on data unless I want to take a out a 2nd mortgage to pay for additional data ... it's ridiculous how much they want for just a few more Gig's of data per month.

I don't know how I started thinking about it ... maybe it was the single digit temps seeping into my brain cells ... but the spelling and use of the word "coUrse" or "coArse" came up. I had always used the word coUrse when writing on the blog but it would yellow out on a spell check telling me that was wrong and would accept 'coArse'. I used that for months if not years on this blog.

It never felt right, didn't look right.

All I would have needed to do was type either word into the browser address bar to get my answer. I cannot tell you why it took me this long to further investigate the proper use. I found out 'coArse' is wrong so today I am back to using 'coUrse' when saying "of course".

Maybe the discussion I saw on Facebook yesterday about the correct process in using a period cause me to step in the forbidden area of the english language. The discussion was about how many spaces were to be used after the period ending a sentence ... 1 or 2 spaces.

A century ago when I was in school taking a typing class I was taught to put 2 spaces after a period, and 2 return keys between paragraphs. They are saying now that is incorrect, that only 1 space should be used after a period. I wonder if I will adapt to that change or keep typing the way I type.

College Football will be officially over tonight sometime a little after midnight eastern time. Should be a good game with the same two college teams playing for the championship as last year. No matter what happens I doubt it will be as exciting as the Rose Bowl was last week between Penn State and USC.

Being the sports junkie that I am, I have now turned my attention to college basketball and I started really back in November when the season started. That will move me to April Final 4 games, ending college basketball just in time for MLB baseball to start. It's a vicious circle but someone has to do it.

I'm going to start a pot of Cajun beans and make some cornbread later, for tonight's 9pm kickoff. The hounds will be in the 'dream state' of sleeping by then but I'll still have to fight for my spot on the couch and don't dare get up and lose my seat.

Warmer temps here in 'the tropics of southern Indiana.