The Hounds Stayed Cool Inside

I never did sleep last night. I tried but it wasn't going to happen. Even the hounds woke up earlier then normal when they heard me pouring their breakfast kibble into their stainless steel bowls.

I shut the computer off as planned at 5am with some confusion about Google Photos. I have yet to find the answer on their help forum, although I have learned a lot of good information from that help forum.

Today was one of those days where the winds are higher but they are blowing warm air, humidity was thicker than butter and the energy level for the hounds and I started out low for the month. Yes, I did finally sleep about 5 hours and feel great.

Earlier in the day and afternoon, with a few chances to take off on a walk, Sadie and Stella did not do much more than these two photos show and before they knew it, the day was almost over.

By 6pm the temps were about the same, wind the same but it felt cooler as we stepped outside. We headed out for a walk after all.

There was a lot of butterfly activity today and I'll scatter those photos and of the hounds out in my discussion of Google Photos.

The migration to Google Photos is moving right along but at times I have some real 'head scratching' questions ... just weird stuff. It was a few minutes after midnight when I started the upload of Sadie's folder the had 4, 775 photos. It finished in 2 hours and 40 minutes but that was when the confusion for the night started. The Google program cut out about 800 duplicates it recognized that were already in the system.

Normally after the upload is complete, it would ask whether I wanted to add the photos to a folder but since there were too many it just had an arrow on the small box to view all of the uploaded photos. When I clicked that arrow I arrived at a blank white screen with a spinning arrow telling me it was loading the photos.

With that many I knew it might take a while. After an hour ... no photos. As a test I did a small upload of 65 photos and it worked, they showed up and I moved them into their new album. Two hours later, no photos of the 4,000 that I had uploaded.

Yet, when I clicked a link in the uploader box "view uploaded photos" they were there and I was able to move them into Sadie's album. It didn't go that smooth though due to my lack of knowledge that each album has a limit of 2,000 photos. I guess that is why it kept telling me "trouble with adding photos to album" as I tried time and time again.

Google Search proved to be my best friend sometime around 4am, telling me ... nope ... you have hit the limit of 2,000 and need a new album.

The confusion didn't stop there. Over on my blog I had taken the "RVs" out of my blog title and noticed while reading some blogs on my list that my blog no longer showed up on their list. Strange. Did the blog title change do that ... it shouldn't.

Then I looked at my blog list and noticed something weird that is still there today .... a lot of the blogs I follow were moved to the very bottom of the list, without that little snippet telling us how long ago that blog's post was written. So I went back to the three blogs I looked at, scrolled to the bottom and there I was along with other blogs with current posts, no date of our last post anywhere. Even my WordPress blog was moved to the very bottom of my own blog list and I made a post just last night.

I continued to load smaller files into Google Photos. Those images showed up as they should and were moved into their own album. So I basically have all of those updated and set up the way I want. Stella's upload is tonight with over 6,000 photos and should take less than 4 hours.

You might be asking "what's the rush"???  There isn't one but I'm not wired like that. When I start a project my "workaholic" tendencies come out, along with some other crazy issues I don't know about ... and I work until it is finished. Almost in an obsessed state of mind.

I will say the Google Photo automatic update worked like magic today. I have found a pretty simple way of getting my daily photos from my camera card, through Apple Photos on my hard drive, exported to a folder on my desktop. As soon as 14 photos hit that folder on my computer desktop by my manual effort ... Google Photos updated those 14 photos to my saved data base "in the cloud".

It does not take that much time to move them to albums on Google Photos and is the same process I use on Apple Photos on the computer.

I confused someone and myself on using Flickr. I mentioned that I had read they were now requiring a paid membership to use their desktop uploader. What I failed to see when I read that info was the words "auto uploader". (I know the period needs to be inside the quotation but it looks better the way I do it ... lol)

So I could have used Flickr for all of this backup but that is not the main reason I started using Google Photos. It works with my iPhone and will with any smart phone, automatically uploading photos from your phone and then deleting them on the phone to free up hard drive space.

I have also noticed some processes are easier to do on Google Photos compared to Flickr.

I wonder how much cheaper my iPhone 6S would have been today if I had waited a week or so? With Apple releasing their new iPhone 7 today, I hate to see what the 6S is selling for and will not look. It was also announced today that the  6S model is the most popular smart phone in the world.

As I started to stepped inside the house after our walk, I thought I saw a little movement in the small nest in the corner of the carport. It looks like I am going to have to back the Z4 out of his parking space, shake my can of wasp killer and let'er rip.

A pretty enjoyable day today. I uploaded some photos, tested some stuff on Google Photos and saw more features as I played around. With over 10,000 photos loaded into my account, I did a search for "chevy", hoping to see photos of my 1994 and then I could move it into it's own album. The Google Photos search was so detailed that it pulled up every photo I had with a Chevy in it.

What was interesting, there were photos of my Toyota FJ show up but they were photos I had downloaded from the car dealer when I was thinking about buying it in 2014 ... but in the background were Chevy trucks parked on the car lot for sale.

How's that for a search?

Rain is predicted for the next three days here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Hounds and Other Stuff

She's AWAKE!!

It's been a pretty slow day here in "the tropics". We are down to one day to go with the days in the 90's. It is suppose to drop to the low 80's until Saturday and a freezing 72° after some forecast of rain. I'll take it. I love hot weather but low 80's is better than mid 90's when there isn't a beach around.

Some readers have emailed asking if Heidi is okay since she has very few photos posted compared to the other hounds. Heidi is doing great and is slowly improving. She is gaining some weight back after losing 28% of her 46# this past year. She has hair that continues to grow back in areas the vet did not expect due to the skin damage. I know that red skin looks terrible and sore but it's soft to the touch and doesn't seem to bother her.

The thing is she is a 'couch potato' ... always has been. She will roll and bark at herself, she will run sprints in the house when she first comes back inside in the mornings ... as long as the other hounds are still outside. She sleeps a lot like most bassets do. Plus I think a lot of her energy has been zapped by whatever is going on with her. She will go on the daily walks when she wants to, which isn't often anymore. About the only time she goes outside is to do this:

I think you will see her coat is looking really good after eating Earthborn Holistic dog food the past 52 days. I can also feel some muscle along her spine coming back and I am seeing a little less of her ribs. So I believe she is gaining some weight.  The skin looks good one day and all it takes is for her to start chewing again for it to look the way it did this morning. Overall, believe it or not, the majority of her skin issues are healing.

I am tracking on a spreadsheet everything that is going on with her, adding things that might be the cause of her skin issues. It's really hard to tell what the factors are that irritate her skin. I still think most of it is caused by the environment from the pollen and dust in the air.

Stella is still doing great off the leash. This morning was a real test as we were all outside before the sun came up and she took off for the field faster than normal. I thought there might be another animal out there she had to chase but found out she was just in a hurry to dump her tanks. Still it was dark enough that you could not see any of the hounds without a flashlight and she came running when I called her name. She continues to be a great bloodhound.

Winston and Sadie made sure to know what had been walking around their yard while they were inside last night. Their noses seem to work overtime. By the way, Sadie is now spending time sleeping next to Stella different times during the day. Stella is also becoming a little jealous when it comes to attention and will nose her way into the lead if possible. She seems to have taken over the couch.

I think I read the pet food and pet toys industry is more than a $350 million per year industry. I've spent more than my share on kong balls, deer antler bones, cloth bones, pig ears, hard marrow bones and bones from the local butcher at the grocery store that is no longer in business .... yet ... Sadie spent more time and had more fun licking out the very last drop of peanut butter from the Jif Peanut Butter jar her last night.

She was determined enough at the end to slide that jar as far back into her mouth as possible so her tongue would reach the bottom of the jar. She still couldn't get all the peanut butter out but she had fun. Amazing isn't what hounds like to do or any dogs for that matter, with things that don't cost a lot?

Since I had a little time this morning to mess around on the internet and do different computer stuff I dabbled with Google+ again, looked at, downloaded and then deleted Picasa, and read about Wordpress blogs compared to Blogger.

First about the blogs.

I was able to find some pretty honest opinions from the blogging geeks and even though they were set up on the Wordpress platform, the majority of them said Blogger was the way to go for what I am doing. I would prefer not to move my blog. Blogger has unlimited storage for texts and photos, etc. Wordpress of course has a lot more templates, a more professional look but a limited amount of storage on their free version. If I would want to go to their .com and furnish my own server for it to reside on, then no problems. Been there done that.

I don't know why since I am on Facebook where I follow a lot of groups, keep in touch with some old friends and post just a few photos of the hounds ... for some reason this morning I thought of activating my old Google+ account again. I did some research to see if there were any new updates or changes, clicked all the buttons I need to set up the account.

After spending a few hours adding photographs, looking for communities, trying to set privacy settings I decided it was just more work than I wanted to add to my computer time. This blog and Facebook are enough. I didn't see any reason to have duplication between the three platforms and Picasa is not my main photo manager. So I deactivated the Google+ about as fast as I set it up. I know that the new Google Photos has unlimited storage but I have all my photos in the Apple Photos program that is on my hard drive and it's backed up every hour on an external hard drive.

Since all the photos on this blog are stored in Google's Picasa, I wanted to see how much data I had used, and how much was left. I never liked it when I looked before because it always wanted to download the 22,000 photos I have on my hard drive, before I could input just what folders I wanted it to download. I was curious enough to look at it again.

This is that type of morning I have at times where I mess around with computer stuff. The college football game tonight starts at 8pm so I have plenty of time to do nothing today. Plus it was giving me something to do between the numerous trips outside with the hounds. It's one of those days with them. They want outside but as soon as they get outside, it's too hot so they want back inside. At least I am getting a workout today, thanks to them.

Anyway I couldn't find anywhere to log into Picasa with my blog info from Google+ so I did the same thing I have done in the past with the same results. Isn't that the definition of insanity?

I downloaded the Picasa program and as soon as it was downloaded it started importing all my 22,000 photographs automatically!! There might even be more photos than that because my Photos file is 25Gb and many years old. So I immediately canceled Picasa and trashed it. Then emptied the trash.

I already put a lot of my photos on Flickr, I use Photos to edit all my photos and can use the Nikon camera editing system if I really want to get technical in photo editing.

So basically the morning was wasted doing things on the computer that I did not end up keeping. Here are a couple of photos I took this morning. These white flowers are blooming all over the field.

A few weeks ago I blogged about killing all the wasps that were in that AT&T phone terminal box for the neighborhood. I had also gotten rid of a couple of nests earlier in the summer when I washed the house siding. Well those wasps are back with vengeance. I need more spray where I can attack them from 20'-30' away. The war with them continues.

Where were the hounds through all of this?? Their normal activity .... sleeping!!

Not much going on, that's about all today from "the tropics" of Southern Indiana.

Pulling Weeds Is Very Relaxing

Weeded Around The Center 

I had one answer to my question a few posts back, asking if anyone knew what those tall green plants/trees were growing along the fence. I had used google in the past and thought they were Sassafras saplings .... well they are Giant Ragweed .. I think that is better than Sassafras trees.

Before I bore you with details, I did a search on Google for blogs that talked about pulling weeds. While pulling weeds today I thought a blog just about my pulling weeds would spare you the details of my new hobby but also might lead to some affiliate income later on. (joke)

After seeing there were 902,000 blogs just about pulling weeds .. I decided the market was too saturated and I ran back to "Hounds RVs and Retirement Living" to post about weeds.

I knew before I started this project that it could be dangerous. There is absolutely nothing I can do outside the house, away from excel spreadsheets, from changing oil in my car to even mowing the yard ... that doesn't have some "Murphy's Law" involved. Something seems to always happen that is totally unexpected. But I knew the job was dangerous when I took it ... even without power tools.

Well today was that day.

I woke up a little sore and really stiff. I couldn't bend over to pick up the water dishes for the hounds to refill or give them fresh water for the day. I thought before I made any decisions for the day, like pull or don't pull weeds, I'd have my normal two cups of coffee and see how I felt.

For the past week I have been taking 1,000 to 3,000 mg of MSM, an anti-flammatory that is not as harsh as ibuprofen ... so with all of my stiffness this morning I took the three 1,000 mg capsules and waited a while. At 1pm I was watching the Colts first preseason game when I realized I really wanted to go outside and pull weeds.  How weird is that for a self proclaimed football addict?

After a short period of time I grew tired of watching 2nd and 3rd stringers trying to make the team, that missed tackles and lacked in pass coverage. I turned off the tv and headed outside. With my gloves, the ballcap, the hand tool and my 32gl trash can, I started by finishing that section where I ended on Saturday.

Before

After

After finishing that section I wanted to stay in the shade so that eliminated going down the sides of the driveway. For a change of pace I decided to walk around the drive and pull anything that was tall, any weed that was isolated. That included going all the way over to the fence, down equal to the front of the house. (I just can't stop anywhere ... there has to be a marker)

I had heavy growth around the grounding cable of that utility pole and also around the AT&T land line telephone transfer box ... it's the home of about 15 phone lines that my neighbors still have for landline phones. I started removing the weeds around that utility pole but when I got to the AT&T telephone junction box that is where things get exciting.

Before

After

Over the months of the winter, spring and then the summer rains .. the ground had moved up along that transfer box and cracked the cover open. As I cleaned around that box, I moved the level of the dirt below the box. I could now take off the cover, then slide it back in place all the way and tighten it down.

Now .... this is where the danger of pulling weeds raised it's ugly head. As I lifted off the cover of that junction box I did not know there were at least 20 wasps in formation with their engines running, ready to attack the person that opens that box (ME). And attack they did. I tossed the cover into the air and took off sprinting for the house while getting stung a few times. Right before getting to the door I glanced behind me to see how many were following.

In my very short glance I saw more than 5 in my line of sight. Slamming the door, I headed to the medicine cabinet for some first aid. I did not see any wasps had made it into the house, but knew that I had made them mad ... so I would have to move my trash can, pick up the cover and start pulling weeds in a different section of the driveway.

Sorry, due to the high speed actions and my urge for survival ... no photos were taken during or after the wasp attack.

I used the last of my wasp spray standing 5ft away. I knocked their nest out from the inside of the box and tossed it over the bank. I knew the rest of the afternoon I would have to keep an eye out for any wasps doing 'fly bys" over my head or around my shoulders.

I decided to head over to the utility grounding cable. It wasn't soon after I started that I ran into my 2nd problem ... ANTS ... the kind that bite ... hundreds of them!

Before

After

They were easy to get rid of after they covered my lower legs and ankles. I then decided to start at those 6 red tiles (Sadie's Patio) and work my way toward the utility pole. I then continued to swat wasps as they flew by me.

At times I would walk over to the junction box and kill as many as I could. I didn't feel any guilt about it nor could I remember any good things a wasp does on a daily basis but sting people. I'll google about them later, still the least amount of wasps around the house, the better.

By the end of my 3 hours I had completed the outlying area around the top of the drive. So now I have only the center that is left and the section of gravel that use to be the parking space of my 1994 Chevy Truck (should have never sold it).

Only The Center Remains

Old Parking Spot For Truck - A Place To Park A Trailer ??

Finding it was easy and fast to pull weeds along the fence line in the shade .. I decide that I will pull weeds along the fence line all the way to the bottom of the driveway. Rain is schedule for Monday - Wednesday so we will see how that works out. Based on what I have done so far after a total of 8-1/2 hours of work, I don't think I am that far from completing the weed pulling job.

Should Be Easy Down The Fence Line

Sunday - My 3rd Container of Weeds

I find that pulling weeds is relaxing to me. Similar to painting a house inside or outside, something that I really enjoy doing .. painting that is. Plus at the end of the day you can see progress, something that looks better than when you started. Once I am finished and during the times of the year that I am living here, I think it will be easy to maintain the "no weed" policy by pulling them as I see them. You can pull a lot of new weeds in only 30 minutes.

Also another factor ... there are NO CHEMICALS involved, which can't be a bad thing.

No photos were taken of the hounds today. Winston and Heidi stayed inside enjoying the air conditioning while sleeping all day. Sadie spent most of the time outside with me and finally becoming bored being the supervisor, she took a long nap in the shade under the Toyota FJ. By the time I ran inside to get my camera to take a picture of her, she was awake and standing at the door.

Something was said today about Heidi that makes more sense than any other reasons for her wanting to be inside all the time. She will always go to the door when she needs to go outside but returns almost immediately to be let inside after she is done dumping her tanks. While the other two will roam the field sniffing every inch of ground as long as I leave them outside.

I don't know a lot about Heidi's first 3 years of her life. All I was told by the foster mom when I bought her from GABR, that she had been in and out of shelters most of her life. I was told she did and would run away a lot if not on a leash at all times. That she had allergies that required shots.

I found out soon after that she would NOT run away off leash. She goes outside without a leash and without me going outside with her. When she does the daily walks, she walks off leash and has never ran away.

I was told today that she may not like staying outside a lot because in those first 3 years she may have been left outside tied up in all kinds of weather. A reason that she would escape and take off running, then end up in the animal shelter. That's a possible reason why she only goes outside long enough to pee and has never liked "hanging out" outside in the sun with me and the other hounds.

A reasonable idea or thought.

I sit here in "the tropics" of southern Indiana away from any weather danger since it's not tornado season ... watching and reading about all the fires out west and up in Canada. It is just unbelievable from this distance how long they have been going on, how those fire fighters (Undermanned) have spent 7 days a week, 24 hours per day fighting them with occasional naps... while they may go on for another couple of months. How much damage will there be when they are finally put out? I would hate having to leave everything behind to evacuate, some have left on foot.

Also for those traveling to the SW this winter. From what I read about the powerful El Nino predicted this winter ... those Soutwestern states are due to be cooler and wetter than normal. More snow in the Pacific Northwest and colder than normal temps here in "the tropics".

I have to decide for this winter do I want to be freezing and dry ... or warmer and wet.

The Ballcap For All Kinds of Yardwork