Stella Is A Funny Bloodhound

It's hard not to start taking this beautiful weather for granted. It's Indiana and it will change eventually but right now I'll take what it gives me day after day. Since I am a fan of hot weather, the heat and humidity does not bother me. Spring and Fall are still great times of the year also, it's those weeks in December and January where you think about packing up, throwing a for sale sign in the front yard and get out of town. You can see we started our walk this morning in the same weather of low humidity, high 60's and most of our path in the shade.

This will give you some idea just how wet the field is. It will also show you just how much of the field is full of wild plants, some weeds and very little grass.

Can anyone tell me what the 'theme of the walk' was???  You guessed it, and it made the walk slow and slower.

A fine example of Stella's blocking out all verbal comments, direction or begging.

That spot might look huge but it is a 1/4" thick, a little less than Wednesday when it was discovered. This morning there was no fluid that I could feel. There isn't a feeling of a 'rock' in that area but the same feeling if you were rubbing your hand along the side of her. I just brushed her undercoat out yesterday afternoon and can see more coming out this morning.

It was going to warm up to 91° today but with the humidity so much lower than normal, it doesn't feel that bad when we take our early evening or late afternoon walk. Stella now waits for me in the carport for me to hook the retractable leash to her collar, only on the afternoon walk.

Here is a good photo of Sadie's right side, the lump was barely noticeable this morning.

I was at the point of making the final turn toward home. Needless to say I had to wait quite a while until the hounds joined up with me. I decided while I waited I'd take a few photos of any flowers I found.

Galen posted on her blog last Friday that these are poisonous. This is the only one I saw in the field this morning.

Both hounds stopped to look and listen as we approached the north yard. Looking in the direction of the next door neighbor I wondered if they were smelling a late breakfast or heard something out of my hearing range.

At times Stella is hilarious. She stood next to this tree doing nothing, looking at nothing so evidently she needed a little shade to cool off before she came inside. I didn't call her this morning so when she was finished standing there she came trotting to the house on her own.

Poor "backyard breeding" gave Sadie shorter ears than most bloodhounds have. Yet as a 8 week old puppy the length of the ears passed the test by wrapping around the front of her nose when pulled out straight. It was 10 years ago next month that Winston and I drove a few miles north of town to see her. Her parents were there so we could see them. Both of them had bloodhound features of a hound that would be in a dog show. I wonder what happened in the breeding process ??

She is a great bloodhound though and actually surprised me how calm down she has become after being a destruction monster her first three years. I would not trade her for any other bloodhound.

Even though the temps were slowly creeping to 91°, it was still very nice mid-afternoon. I thought after lunch it might be time to sit outside. I would let the bloodhounds roam the field and I thought Heidi would probably take her spot in front of my chair as I looked out at Sadie ... That wasn't the case. You can almost tell that Stella and Heidi had no other plans but to get back inside where they could sleep with air conditioned air.

Trained to be a house dog at 12 weeks old, Sadie always knows that after every meal it's time to go outside, find a good spot in the field and relieve herself. Ten years later she still remembers.
 

Stella and Heidi decided to put their brains together in deciding what to do. It did not look like they had come to any conclusion as I swung my chair onto "Winston's Patio". It felt hot but it didn't feel that hot ... it was nice with a slight breeze, no bugs ... Heidi and Stella never came to the backyard so I knew that was a sign that they would not be outside too long.

Sadie had those same thoughts as she galloped back to the yard. Her job was done and it was time to go back inside.

Since Sadie is the 'team leader', she always makes sure the hounds are accounted for and no one is left outside. Only today was different. Heidi was at the door waiting for all of us ... and Sadie found out what it's like to be ignored by Stella. She (Stella) is in her own world most of the time.

Stella was taking a quick noon nap and was in such a deep sleep I didn't want to wake her up ... about 30 minutes later she was at the door wanting in, wondering where we had gone.

For those Apple users that are curious about the new macOS that will come out this fall, a new iOS is due at the same time. I am using the beta version of the macOS on my iMac and laptop but not on my iPhone as I plan to wait until the official release this for before I make that change. Last night I decided to go back to the "Light" version which is the background that all of us are use to. It wasn't 10 minutes that I went back into settings and changed it back to 'Dark' ... that is how much I like the new idea of a Dark background. It is a huge difference when you start using it.

The mind and advertising is an amazing thing, even the mind and your smart phone was/is programmed intentionally so you become addicted to it. Ask yourself if you can go 15 minutes without checking for email or a new text ???

Anyway we all understand the history of advertisements. I'll not go into it because it's too much to write about here and I can't write that long today. My story starts a few weeks ago when I was checking out different stereo receivers and amplifiers at Best Buy because my 34 year old Yamaha Control Amp finally broke. My shopping trips are usually pretty disciplined, and nothing more than in, buy and out. I do all my research online before I decide to buy or head to the store.

Of course they have the stereo receivers near the Home Theaters which have to be next to that huge wall of 4K UHD TVs ... not to hard to figure out their plan of attack.

My Samsung HDTV is 8 years old. It's only job is to provide movies every once in a while, ballgames every night and 14 straight hours of college football on Saturdays between August 30 and through the bowl games ending the first part of January. By that time college basketball has taken it's place. So the TV does get a work out but not for news nor prime time tv shows.

A week or so ago as I was walking through Best Buy to pick up the Amplifier I had decided to buy, my peripheral vision couldn't help but notice those fantastic tv pictures that covered the huge wall to the right of me. With more pixels and eight more years of technical development I could tell a big difference between their tv picture and my tv picture. Luckily I got out of the store unscathed and bought only what I intended to buy.

When things are slow, my mind wanders. In freezing winter days it's about moving, before each holiday it's about "deals or holiday discounts on electronics" and when you are 51 days from the first college football game in 2018, the mind turns it's focus to TVs ... a dream of tv's on the wall like a Sports Book in any Las Vegas Casino ... a wall of ballgames.

Today I shocked myself.

After a few days of careful analysis, the Stanley tape measure giving me a better visual with what I would be working with, plus digging into my Samsung Remote Control to make a few minor picture adjustments to keep up with eyes that need a new glasses prescription ... I was ready to do it. I was ready to buy a new 4K UHD TV. I would either sell my HDTV or keep it as a second TV giving me the capability to watch more games at once.

Hounds were fed, let out long enough to relieve themselves and when the hounds heard the words "I gotta go" in my sentence ... Sadie and Stella trotted to the bedroom and by the time I finished brushing my teeth Stella was asleep. Heidi had taken her place back on the couch and was stretched out as far as she possibly could.

But ... I wanted to take another look at my tv picture quality .. I had a tennis match to look at, some NASCAR practice, NFL replay games from last fall and an F1 Race on the DVR from last weekend.

That old (8 yrs) tv has a great picture ... not even bad enough to make a change.

The shocker came when I opened the bedroom door to let the bloodhounds out and then switched back to my cargo shorts/t-shirt and told the hounds I wasn't going anywhere ....

I'll stick with HDTV ... at least for today ... LOL

If any of you have made the switch from HD to 4K UHD+ TV ... let me know if you like the difference and if you think it was worth it.

Otherwise another great day here in 'the Tropics Of Southern Indiana" with two baseball games on tonight back to back, ending in San Diego.

To Move Or Not To Move

It's hard to describe how nice it feels to step outside for the walk and it doesn't feel like you are getting ready to cross the North Pole. I think the hounds agreed by the way the roamed the field this morning. While putting on my parka I decided that Stella would be on her own today, total freedom with zero verbal herding as I like to call it. She didn't disappoint.  LOL

I mentioned the more than normal yard mole damage this fall and winter. I saw this morning they have not wasted time taking advantage of the warmer weather to start their farming of grub worms. I guess we all have to get our protein some way.

Sadie was already locked in on new scent and was going to be tracking the edges of the half mile walk. She did not care what Stella was doing nor where I was walking ... she was in her own world of exploration.

Stella tried to get my pulse rate to jump suddenly as she took a few steps toward the woods. For some strange reason she decided to turn back to the field and join Sadie and I on our walk ... but only at her pace.

I could already tell that Stella probably wouldn't get much further than the first turn today. By the time she lifted her head to look were we were, Sadie and I were marching to the back of the field. The field was no longer saturated with rain and melting snow, it wasn't frozen and it seemed that those 80° days were only a few days away. I can dream can't I ??

The skies certainly looked like snow or rain was on the way ... but Weather Underground disagreed ... nothing but cloudy today and temps in the low 30's. Hard to believe that the field and all the trees will be green in a few months.

I needed a change the other day so I went back to Google Chrome as my default browser. It has had some surprising results as far as data usage. I'm using a lot less data doing the same type of internet surfing. I wonder if Safari's updates keep adding things running in the background for their automatic ad blocking and private internet use? It also seemed to have slowed down the past few weeks on Apple's Safari.

It felt much warmer but the wind was cold enough that my eyes were tearing up .. only the beep on the camera told me if these photos were in focus or not because I couldn't see that well through the tears while I looked through the view finder.

It was good to see that Stella was still in view as I heading toward the house.

Sadie got in some exercise for the first time in a few days, although I do remember her running through the snow one day chasing birds out of her field.

There is a lot of weight there flopping in the wind as she runs. I feel just how heavy she weighs when she steps on my foot by accident. That usually happens as the three hounds are jostling for position as I am gathering three food bowls to pour kibble into.

Don't be led into "fake news" ... Stella may be looking right at us but that doesn't mean she will start trotting toward us or even walking toward us ... she is just looking to see how much more time she has before I walk over to 'help' her go in our direction.

We stroll slowly back to the house as each hound explores the field inch by inch. They don't stop until they hit the yard and even then they don't stop sniffing around.

You would think that Sadie was sprinting all the way to the house but I'm using 200mm to even get this close to her ... as you will see, she still has scent to check out.

I always wonder how long I will be standing here as the hounds inch their way back to the yard. I know that if I said anything with the word 'eat' in the sentence, they would sprint past me like I wasn't even there and run right to the door.

But after a hard aerobic workout, Stella decides to 'warm down' before she goes back inside. She has only two paces most of the time ... slow and slower.

After a brand new iOS update and multiple updates the past two week with the Garmin Connect app, I still cannot get my Garmin VivoSmart3 paired up with the iPhone 8+. It worked perfect from May - December when I had the iPhone 6s. Yes, I can download the data from the Garmin to my iMac and then synchronize with the iPhone but it was so much nicer just to tap the icon on the phone and see all of the current data.

I mentioned the other day I had been looking around the SW for a possible destination. It's almost like the old days on this blog a few years ago when I was trying to decide whether to sell out and RV or not. I like using this site to give me a little more information besides just looking through real estate that is available.

To check the accuracy I searched my current town and other towns I have lived in. I find the information to be pretty accurate. At least it is fun to play with to see what kind of information comes up. In my case the town I am living in now is rated higher than the town I have a serious urge to move to.

I will not say a lot about my search or the possibility of moving the hounds and myself to somewhere warmer and for other reasons ... but it's 10° warmer on average, less humidity, cheaper utilities, cheaper insurance, reasonable house prices, and 75% less precipitation. I have talked to real estate agents there and here.

I may have grown up and went to college in Indiana but I've lived over 25 years on the west coast. Both places have their pros and cons. Nina over at 'Wheeling It' just posted her thoughts on major moves ... then last night I get an email from a company I follow telling me how to sell a house in the winter .... are they trying to tell me something?  LOL

It will be a fast pace today in 'the tropics' .. some house cleaning, some games of Mahjong, another hound walk in the afternoon and an IU ballgame tonight on tv ... life is good.

The Hounds Check Out Rain Except Heidi

All of that nice weather I've been bragging about has left again. At least it's not cold and the rain is suppose to stop by 1pm today. That will give me some time to work on a computer mistake I made yesterday. Nothing drastic, nothing that crashes my computer. We took off this morning in what looked like rain but looking through my binoculars standing in the kitchen, I did not see any rain coming down through the Sycamore tree. They hounds of course were happy ... they don't care about weather, they just want to walk.

Sadie took off sprinting while Stella had some fresh wet tall grass to supplement her morning kibble. After every rain I guess the grass tastes that much better to her. 

Once she saw that Sadie had found something she took off sprinting ... no way was she going to miss out on something Sadie had.

I was dressed for light rain, heavy rain or no rain ... so I walked my pace, they walked theirs.

I heard Stella snorting while her nose inspected the fresh scents.

Still a little color from the fall hanging around.

With me taking pictures and obviously not walking fast enough for Sadie, she had other plans and the scent she was on was all she was focused on. She sprinted around the corner with her nose to the ground, running out of sight.

I called Stella's name loudly to see if she would come running and join us ... LOL ... what do you think of her response? the picture after this one was taken within seconds of her looking at me.

That's fine, Sadie and I could continue on ... these seems to be the norm anymore for our 1st walks of the day. In the afternoon walks Stella is right there beside me without any words spoken, even during the times I don't have her on the 25' retractable leash.

I am assuming these are very very young tree saplings? Am I right?

I mentioned the other day, maybe yesterday's post that I had moved all of my spreadsheets back to Excel. They say that memory is the first to go as you get older and that proved to be true numerous times yesterday. While I was looking for a solution to my other macOS problem that was self induced, I was reminded why I moved all those spreadsheets to Numbers in the first place a month or two ago.

I have Microsoft Office for Mac 2011. Since I really only use Excel in that program and really just design basic spreadsheets for my personal use I have no reason to spend $150 for their 2016 version. Especially when Apple Numbers gives me what I need and the only problem is I have not learned all the ways to do things differently compared to Excel.

It will take me less than an hour to study what I am having a problem with and once that is figured out, then Numbers will be perfect for what I want. The reason I switched a month or so ago, is the new Apple macOS is not going to support the older 2011 version of Microsoft Windows. In fact Microsoft no longer supports it and updates will not be sent to that version.

Currently my spreadsheets are working but I didn't want to take the chance to lose them due to macOS finally realizing that I was still using 2011 version of Office and then not give me the ability to open them. That has already happened to many users.

So I changed all of them back to Apple Numbers late last night (early this morning) in a very short period of time.

The biggest 'senior moment' came yesterday afternoon where for some strange unknown reason ... I decided to leave the Apple Beta Program and download the latest public release of macOS High Sierra over the top of a more current version in the Beta Program.

No big deal. After a couple of hours it took to download and install my computer worked perfectly without a hitch ... and still does. EXCEPT I forgot something very important .... My 330Gb file called "photos.library" would not load with the new public release of the macOS High Sierra because the Beta version is always going to be a newer version.

My only choice was to start a new file for my photos. That is also not a problem. I know a few people that have different photo library files on their computer they work with daily, but in my case until the macOS is updated in a few months I have no way to access those 100,000's of photos on my computer, except to copy that file to my external drive and plug that external drive into my laptop which is still running the beta version of the operating system.

I wasn't in a panic. I haven't lost those photos. The file is still there and is also backed up. I also have all them backed up online in Flickr, a free TB of storage in original file size. So I joined the Beta Program again with a few taps on my mouse pad but didn't get the screen to re-download the beta version of the macOS.

I dug around online and found a different way to get that page of download links. An hour and half later when the file had been downloaded, it stopped before it installed the program. It didn't show up anywhere in my files. So back to the mac forum to see what to do. Others had similar problems.

So the rain has come at the right time. I really do enjoy solving computer problems like this and will spend this morning looking for more ways to fix my problem. Once I can get the Beta version of the operating system installed, my large photo file will be available again.

In the meantime as a temporary fix ... I'll continue to operate as normal on the public released operating system and keep adding photos to my 'new' photos library file ... then import from that file later on when my large file is available again.

Yet, those two examples with the photo mix up and forgetting about why I moved my spreadsheets shows that as you get older you have to be on your toes when it comes to making decisions on a computer. Memory, memory, memory.

An online friend that reads the blog sent me something to check out for my slow Safari problem. Once I went into preferences and unchecked the Apple Pay box ... Safari was back to being faster than fast (thank you Mary) ... thus it is back to being my default browser. It does not let Facebook, Twitter, and all my Sports sites to play their videos automatically. I like videos but I want to be the one to decide what I want to watch not the computer gods.

Once again this morning I told Sadie to "go find Stella" ... she ran right to her, directly in front of us. Needless to say, Stella didn't get in her large number of steps in this morning but she doesn't count them and does not wear a Garmin watch or FitBit to track them. She is just Stella ... in her own little world ... that likes to sleep behind my computer desk chair as I type blog posts everyday.

We were almost finished with the walk when I thought I heard drops of rain hitting my light rain jacket. It was light enough that I really couldn't tell but it was good that I convinced Stella to at least head our direction with Sadie and I.

She acted busy and ignored me of course until that rain became a sprinkle ... that moved her from head down in the tall grass to a slow paced walk. I wasn't going to wait any longer because it was starting to rain harder ... so I ran to the house with the camera facing down in my hand and Sadie running right beside me.

By the time we got to the carport Stella had decided it was raining harder and she never likes to be in the rain ... she picked up her speed to somewhere between a fast trot and a slow run. But that's just Stella ... one of the most hilarious personalities in a hound that I have had in 30 years. There isn't a day she doesn't have me laughing about something.

With her sprinter speed, she brushed by me hitting the side of my knee as she ran to the door with plans to get inside before Sadie did. Everything is competitive between those two.

The rain sounded harder then it shows on my cap. You don't see many ball caps that say Sacramento State Hornets back here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

So a little rain, some online research to fix my self induced computer problem and ..... my interest has been tweaked into looking more into the specs of those new iPhones ... Verizon told me yesterday that I could get a new phone and get paid $197 for my 6s after trading it in for the upgraded phone. I don't need one but why not ... ???  LOL

It's still a nice day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana even with a little precipitation.