The Hounds Feel The Heat

With the air smothered by the smell of honeysuckle and the first real feeling of 'sticky humidity' we headed out for our Friday morning walk. Allergies have been ragging through my sinus system to the point I could tell that May was officially here. Sadie is almost positive the new black cat has paid us a visit.
I can't remember the last time I used only 100Mb of data in a 24 hour period but it happened yesterday as I went full work mode here in 'the tropics'. Again this year, instead of using Roundup or another spray weed killer I am sacrificing a better look for less chemicals ... weed eating the weeds as low as possible and let the sunshine kill them the rest of the way.

I prefer a whiter gravel look to the driveway but have decided no chemicals works ok. This past week starting the walks Stella has been taking a path way to the left of the return path, yet she had been keeping our pace and before that spot she stops to scratch at every day, she will have veered back in front of me.

Every day is the same for Sadie. It doesn't matter what the temperature is, if there is rain or snow, once she hits the field she is there for only one reason ... to track scent. Our afternoon have been spent outside with me wearing a "hound mitt" brushing out all of her undercoat and letting the hair blog in the wind. It's amazing how much hair is brushed out.

Rabbits like to head into this direction. I am not sure if that is what she saw but I was just happy that she turned and headed back on the walk instead of charging into the woods. My legs were already dripping with water up to my knees and I wasn't enthused about running through brush and thorns after her.

I know lately I have been saying this almost every post, but it's strange to me. Throughout the whole walk Stella has two places, the same every walk, that she will stop and scratch. This is the first spot. Any ideas why?

With my North Face snow boots drenched, lower legs drenched, my lens hood that I installed a month or so ago for picture picture quality is now a valued protector of the lens because as the grass gets taller ... wet marks are showing up on the outside of the lens hood as we walk. I hold the camera up high while we walk but at times that will not prevent it from being hit with wet hay.

What can be so interesting at bare ground level through all of that thick grass and wild flowers?

Since yesterday was laundry day, Stella's collar was thrown in with Heidi's blankets. It came out nice and bright. I forgot it was outside drying in the sunshine until Sadie sprinted toward it right before the downpour of rain started late yesterday afternoon. At the time I thought it was strange that her first move was to the right toward the front yard and not south out into the driveway.

When I saw Stella panting yesterday I knew the inside temps were above 80°. With all of the windows open and a breeze stronger than any fan could produce I held off turning on the AC. It's about a month too early for the AC but it's temping as the humidity becomes stickier each day. The AC is like my heater in the fall, I like to see how long I can hold off before turning them on.

I would say that Stella is basically her normal self, except for her lack of running and wrestling with Sadie. Has becoming a year older had that much effect on her activity? She would eat the whole 40 pound bag of kibble if I would let her. She shows no sign of pain jumping on the couch but runs in her sleep.

Where's Heidi??? With a bath and manicure yesterday she has been recovering with solid hours of non-stop sleep. I even carried her outside yesterday afternoon to join us and as soon as her feet hit the grass, she turned and sprinted for the door. I guess she wanted to keep her nails clean as they were cut back the shortest I can remember, without drawing blood.

What ever Sadie and Stella found must have been good tasting ... I didn't catch the tongue until I downloaded the pictures from the camera today.

The pictures may not show it but there is a lot of doubling back to pick up our slowest walker. Not picking her literally but going back enough times to remind Stella that we would like to end this morning walk sometime before the day ends. She will walk at her own speed, not ours. I can't afford to leave her behind with her increased interest this week looking at the woods to the north or the neighbors house.

It might take a while on the return path but there is always a scent they may missed on the way out. Slowly they inspect every inch back to the yard.

I guess the weather experts might be right this time. As I write this the sunshine has disappeared outside of my window and that rolling thunder seems to be getting louder. The hounds are in their sleep mode until lunch. Heidi's is in Bertha's chair stretched out across the ottoman, Stella right next to my desk chair and Sadie protecting her water bowl with her nose just inches away.

I took this picture with hopes of showing you just how much taller the hay is near the yard compared to what we walk through. Each morning we take the walk, our path had been covered by night time growth.

It's been a few days since I swapped out my 27" LED monitor for a 21.5" Retina iMac. I am somewhat surprised that I have felt no buyer's remorse with my new iMac purchase and missing the larger monitor. I thought of selling the other monitor but first I want to buy an adapter so that I can hook up my old PC to it and see what is on that Windows XP professional hard drive. I turned it off after losing the war against malware in October 2007. It has been sitting wrapped in plastic, on the floor of the closet that houses my stereo.

It's too hard to mix and match Apple and Windows so I am not sure what I would do with that hard drive even after I turned it on. Yet, it would be a good computer for my old Microsoft Flight Simulators, or the Falcon 4.0 F-16, and one of my old time favorite games ... Sim City. So maybe after I take a break from working around the house ... I'll check out those possibilities.

Things I have noticed with the new computer .... the new wireless keyboard is fantastic and I swear my typing speed has increased. It was fast before but my fingers seem to float over the keys even faster. The retina display is still noticeable and not even close to what I thought was a good picture on my larger monitor. My pictures download faster and upload to the blog faster. Programs open much faster and it takes less than a minute to boot up.

I have yet to see the "spinning beach ball" known as the "hourglass" on a Windows PC. For some reason I still think there is hope for recovering my old iMac, yet it does not fail to remind me quickly that it is not healthy with hanging up at startup, or the amount of time it takes to boot up before I can use the cursor to open something ... only to see that "spinning beach ball".

I found yesterday showing some differences in a day with no computer time and the camera only taking two pictures first thing in the morning. Both hound walks were done without taking the camera and as much time as possible was spent outside. It will be a day of my "inside to do list" because the rain has just started to fall lightly.

It's warm and mugging in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana today.

Still Alive After A Few Days Off

I guess it has already been 3-4 days since the last blog post. I usually try to take at least one day off without computer time and find it amazing just how much I can get done in one day when I am not vegging out in front of the computer. With great weather, quite a bit has happened in the past few days. I took a day off from the computer but not activity.

From the sound of that, don't expect any exciting news from the hounds. Their days most of the time are all the same. That's an early morning yard inspection, a nap for an hour or so while I drink coffee and their first walk. We have been taking three walks per day around the activity I have been doing outside and around the house.

As long as I can remember I seem to fall into the "all or nothing" category. That has followed me to the world of blogging, although when I first started, if you look on the side bar those first couple of years I did less than a hundred posts in a year. Somewhere along the line blogging became almost an everyday thing ... sometimes multiple times per day. Recently I have been noticing a change that I needed to fix.

I started off the spring fast in mid-April by burning and clearing the bank along the side of the driveway. After that, some of it might have been because of weather but the main excuse for not getting anything else done on my annual house 'to do' list was laziness. I couldn't pull myself away from the computer even on the days that had great weather. That had to and has changed these past few days.

While I ramble I will include some commentary about some of the pictures. Here you can see just how fast the field is growing near the house.  It is not nearly this tall after we leave this lower area where the hounds have spent the winter fertilizing it and all of the underground water in that field ends up on this side. I mow that path to see where my anchor is for the rope.

So as I was saying, my routine had to change. Based on what I was doing the past three days, a lot of times I was busy doing stuff outside during the hours I normally download and edit my pictures, then upload to the blog and start writing. I started noticing a trend that if I did not get away from the computer after we left for the first walk of the day ... I was there for the rest of the day.

Therefor I will probably go back to posting on my blog at the end of the day after this. That leads to the next problem I had. With a full day of outdoor activity getting stuff done, fitting in two hound meals and three walks per day ... I was tired by the end of the day. I am not in 22" push mower shape right now but getting there. By the time I fixed dinner and cleaned up afterward I would read, surf the internet, check email or watch a ball game but there didn't seem like enough time to blog.

I enjoyed a 'normal' life again as I say. Yet, I like to take all the pictures of the hounds and I like writing on the blog ... so there is a fine line when you have a personality that leans towards the 'all or nothing' policy.

I did find out it helps to get things done, if I print out my 'to do' list rather than use the lists on the computer or the 'Reminders' app on my iPhone. There is something about putting a line through a task after you complete it and see how many things you knocked out in a day. Otherwise on the computer you click something is complete and it usually disappears from view.

The thing is I have just started on a long list of things to get done this summer before it gets too hot. Usually I high pressure wash the house and shampoo the carpets once the weather gets hotter because each will dry out faster rather than doing that in cooler spring temps.

I have inspected under the house in the crawl space. My crawl space is a big 'moon crater' that the Mennonites dug when they built the house in 1975. So it's easy to walk around bent over instead of crawling with not much space. I have some new things I need to get finished under there before it gets too hot. They are both all day tasks, where the hounds might only get two walks during those days instead of three ... plus there may not be any blog posts on those days.

Sadie was flushing out birds this morning that were sitting in the field, hiding in the deep grass and wild flowers.

Even as I write this I have a few things on my mind that I want to get done today and since I did spend time away from blogging it's almost like I feel rushed to finish this and get back outside. Some of those activities is bike riding again. I've made a few trips to town on my mountain bike just to enjoy the ride and still get a good workout in. When I start riding my road bike I will be riding for at least an hour and longer after I get in better shape. In that case picture taking and blogging might move to the side.

Basically when the weather is nice outside, sometimes there isn't enough time in the day to set down and put a post together. It does take time to process the pictures, upload, write the post and then go back into the HTML side and changes those photo settings so they stay sharper and clear after they are posted on the blog. After all that is done, I like to proof read before I publish the post.

Someone asked me about cars the other day and wondered if I missed my Toyota FJ. It's only been 4 months since I traded the FJ for the Mini Cooper Countryman. That's a hard question for me because when it comes to cars or trucks, I like every one I have ever bought and traded. I wish I had them all.

I have found the Mini Countryman to be a great car. Plus the gas mileage is great, it's got speed when you want it and room to take two trash cans to the recycling center. There is room for Heidi in the passenger seat and the bloodhounds fit in the back for trips to the vet. I thought at one time of trading for another FJ but stopped for the simple reason ... when I think of my future travel plans I am not set on what type of vehicle to use. Right now I like what I have, or an FJ, maybe a Chevy truck with a truck camper or a Chevy Express cargo van.

So with that many options floating around my pool of ideas, nothing will be traded until I come to the point in time that I am ready to hit the road. That will not happen until I am down to just one hound or maybe none, depending on their situation.

Every walk, not just every day, Stella will stop at the exact same spot in the field to scratch. Is that a habit or something else?

I need to take time to take Heidi to the vet for her annual checkup and weigh her. She looks and feels like she had gained the 13 pounds she lost in June 2015 and kept off until this past winter. It's the middle of May and I have seen no sign of her allergies that bother her skin. Based on past pictures, it usually started in late April or May where her paws would be raw from licking plus she would have a lot of scratching. So far, that has not happened this year.

Stella looks like she is gaining some weight but really nothing can be confirmed until I take her to the vet 11 miles away and use their scales. She still does not run full speed but she has been trotting more and her tail is in the upright position more than it had been. Whatever she has or had, I think it will take a long time before she returns to her old self.

I guess I'll announce some big news on the topic of my computer situation.

Each time I would move my laptop from the desk to the living room or kitchen table to use, most of the time I would lose the settings for the wireless keyboard and trackpad. That meant that every time I sat down to use it I had go back into 'preferences' and reset those so I could 'drag and drop' cells in Excel or hold down the delete key to scroll and delete words or sentences fast, not one character at at a time. I was told yesterday by an computer geek that with a wifi connection that is normal.

While mowing the yard yesterday at noon because it would be 6° hotter in the late afternoon I decided I was going to clean up after that and head to Best Buy to buy the Mac Mini hard drive and move the laptop back to it's normal home ... the kitchen table. Like I said a few days ago, I had plans to use that Mac Mini with my tv later on if I decided to by a new iMac.

Luckily when I was at Best Buy yesterday the sales rep I had help me was a true definition of a computer geek and gamer. Whereas on Saturday I had a sales rep that was a college student working part time and was more interested in telling me about this MacBook Pro and why I should buy that ... instead of asking me what I was going to use my computer for or even what did I do on a computer.

So we started with "what can I help you with today", I knew I was getting a professional sales rep. He showed no favoritism to brand names, nor the type of PC or a Mac. It was all facts with him. I'll spare you all the details but I found out that what I wanted to use the Mac Mini for later with my tv was not possible.

Yes, it did have a HDMI connection but that was only for output and not downloading movies or ballgames I would be watching on my DirectTV DVR and using it as a storage unit for playback. If I was streaming shows or games over the internet, then it would. With a data limit per month on my internet service, I don't stream anything.

With that news, the Mac Mini was no longer an option. So my only two choices were 'small or large' monitor because the hardware and specs were the same thing between a 21.5" and a 27" screen on the iMac. Once you see a "Retina Display" on a large monitor it's hard to look at another LED monitor the same way again, even with a high quality picture. My iPad Mini and iPhone have retina display.

The smaller screen is a 4K. I guess that is the new buzzword that is just starting with televisions and shows, similar to the change from analog signal to HD. IF a 4K tv shows this much sharpness and clarity on a tv screen then I am in trouble and I will refuse to look at any 4K tv just for that reason.

Of course like many people I said years ago that I would never buy a CD player with all the music I had on other formats between vinyl albums and cassette tapes. Then I said I'd never buy a DVD player, why do that when I have hundreds of ballgames and movies on VCR tapes. I've ended up with both players and now have hundreds of CDs and DVDs on the shelf ... so when it comes to electronics ... never say never.

Trying to keep this story short ... I'll just say after many weeks of analyzing, researching, thinking and working on each size of computer ... I decided to buy the 21.5" iMac with a retina display just like I did in October 2010, minus the retina because they were not out yet. Sometimes a 27" monitor is just too big. I suspected before I bought it and have found out in the few hours I have been on this computer ... the retina 4K quality picture makes up for the decrease in monitor size. So far I have not missed the 27" display I had before.

What happened to the idea of installing new memory sticks and a new solid state hard drive into the old broken iMac? I confirmed with the computer geek yesterday that it was a concern that a new hard drive and memory sticks may or may not match up with a 7 year old processor. Yes, I would be buying what the company would tell me would work with my model and year of computer but no guarantees I would not continue to have problems.

Looking at the process of installing stuff inside an iMac was much different than when I did in my old PC's many years ago. With no guarantees I decided to leave the old iMac as it was and will either use Best Buy's trade in program even when they know the HD needs replaced or sell it to someone that can use what parts are usable.

So I moved the 27" Apple Cinema Display off the desk last night, moved the old iMac to my other desk and out of the way and moved the MacBook Air back to it's home on the kitchen table. The new computer set up pretty quickly without any problems. I migrated my files from the old computer to the new computer using my Apple Time Machine Backup. That took the longest amount of time of the set up.

I have more ram memory, a faster processor and a HD twice as large. This computer is just as fast if not faster than my laptop that has a solid state HD. So the computer situation is settled, the car situation is settled at least for a few more years, the hounds are happy with their dog food and my 'to do' list is printed and taped to the refrigerator door so I cans see and mark off what is done. Everything is good.

Another problem I have with blogging is my own fault. Those people that know me, know that I like to talk. You can correlate that to typing long blog posts that take longer than I like because I type as much as I talk sometimes. If I only blog once per week or per month or even every few days ... the next blog post would always be longer and more time consuming because of me trying to write about all that has happened in those days I did not blog.

I didn't care for the sale rep on Saturday. He was bored with the lack of customers since the university had ended their spring semester. The population has gone from 40K to around 10K for summer school students. While answered my questions he was on other websites at the same time. But ... he did one thing good ... "if you like playing Mahjong, then you will love the app 2048 tile game".

He was right ... I am addicted to that game.

For example about this blogging stuff. I have been working on this post since the hounds and I stepped back inside. This picture of Stella and Sadie was taken at 9:33am ... it is now 12:28pm and I am still not finished ... close to finishing but not yet ... so over 2-1/2 hours. In my eyes ... way too long. I still have to go into the HTML and change the settings on all of these pictures.

The bottom line is it's great, fantastic weather. I have a new fast computer. The hounds are ready to eat and I have a printed 'to do' list that I can see. Everything is good.

Back to the 80's today here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Hounds & I Are Loving This Weather

While it was 74° after midnight last night, the hounds were sleeping peacefully. They had a pretty active day yesterday with 3 walks, and numerous other trips outside. This morning the air was filled with the smell of honeysuckle and a cloudy sky of blue. I find it interesting that the rows of corn did not float away while spending days under water. 

I took a cup of coffee outside this morning while keeping an eye on the hounds. They have been wandering off more and more recently. It's to the point that I cannot let them out on their own anymore. Sadie is checking to see if she is the only hound being call back in or does Stella have to follow the rules too.

I didn't get a picture of Stella over by the burn pile, but I did get one of her starting her day in the normal fashion of a good deep itch relieving scratch. This is also after not finding any ticks, fleas, hot spots and anything else that could cause her to scratch like this. She stood inside the bathtub like a statue as she got a bath yesterday.

The bugs were out in formation early. I could hear them buzzing close to my ears and to me there may not be anything worse than having to fight battling insects that fly and dart fast enough to stay out of my reach ... biting me. We headed back inside for that 2nd cup of coffee.

With computer problem solved and operational, the only crisis around here was whether to go back putting the blog post content above the picture it went with instead of below. How's that for having all of the world's problems solved here in 'the tropics'?

With the morning being so nice, Sadie did not hesitate in getting me outside for the hounds first walk of the day. I had not sat in my chair 5 minutes before she was at my elbow telling me "lets go". Her mouth grabbed my left hand leading me to the edge of the field, then she took off running to get ahead.

Stella was back to her slow pace this morning and wasn't going to change much. Although she did trot to catch up with Sadie later on and was even leading the walk at one time.

The new computer set up is working out fantastic and I continue to learn new things by finding small changes to tweak it a little finer. You never know the settings have been changed with the fresh restart, until something doesn't work.

As expected with all the recent rain the field is growing at a fast rate. It might not be as thick in the majority of the field but it is getting taller than my knees. The brush along the sides is thick enough to where you cannot see through it, let alone walk through it.

Sadie was certain there had been deer in the area before the first turn.

Stella was back looking for that rabbit she accidentally stumbled on in the 3rd walk of the day yesterday. Even I heard the rabbit charging through the small brush breaking sticks as she ran to get away.

The noses of the hounds were really active this morning but that did not mean their energy levels increased along with it. I decided I'd let them go where they want, do what they want, just as long as they stayed out of the woods and out of the gully.

When they both made the turn to the far corner I decided to join them. Not only could I keep a better eye on them in case they decided to bolt out of bounds but it would give me a different angle to take some pictures.

Is this what I am smelling? If you are a plant or flower hobbyist, please chime in here to correct me or give me answers. Google images tells me that it's honeysuckle.

For these two partners in crime, there is nothing better than some fresh morning natural protein to add to their diets. They were so stubborn when I called them that I had to walk back and nudge them to get going.

Stella took the short cut again, cutting the corner of the last turn. She stood and looked into the area of the 'no-fly zone', then slowly followed behind me. I still have my suspicions that she is sick. So much change in her in a years time.

They both continued the slow walk home. I wanted to get back to fix some breakfast/brunch before loaded up the Mini Countryman with two 32gl trash containers for a trip to the recycling center. One had my recyclables and the other had bagged trash that I can drop off for a whopping $2.

They tried their best to casually veer right, walking further away from me. Lately in the afternoons, without taking my camera, they have been going too far out of their boundaries when I let them continue their wandering off.

With the recent rains, there is something in the drainage ditch that runs along the edge of the field and the neighbor's yard. Stella is very attracted to that area and it almost takes me grabbing her collar to get her to leave. She was following that ditch toward the highway Monday, so the recent afternoon walks have been without the camera and carrying the 25' retractable leash in case I need it.

I almost stepped on this guy, luckily Sadie nor Stella saw it. I don't see as many of these worms as you would expect. I see a turtle every once in a while but not every year, no snakes and lately no sign of the large blonde field cat.

The flooded water receded a lot over night. The water level can change by the hour. With my trip west of town to the recycling center, I saw a lot more flooding than I have been seeing across the highway. As it should be since the river is in that direction.

Whenever you do a major install of a new computer that you just bought or changing out one like I just did, all of those settings change. Anything from your cursor not able to move to drag and drop cells in Excel to the keyboard not scrolling to the left fast enough when I am trying to delete a sentence.

Yet there was nothing worse than finding out yesterday afternoon that when I did the migration from the iMac to my laptop, it set my Mahjong game back to a brand new start. All of those games I had spent hours playing, achieving my goal sometimes of completing the games under 3 minutes were gone !!!!

A 160 different games were all setting at different times above 4 minutes, just waiting for me to start over on my quest of under 3 minutes to complete. It's harder to play on a screen twice the size. Using the keypad on the laptop was still slower than normal with the larger monitor.

One great thing I found out how to do yesterday ... I can close my lap top and as long as it is on and plugged into my external monitor it works perfect just like a hard drive. So I am back to one monitor instead of two. I'll see how I like that change ... because the results could determine if a possibility could happen months from now.

What is that?

I remember the first time they were set out on display a couple of years ago, the iMacs with the 'retina' display blew me away. The difference in picture quality is indescribable. I told myself then and remind my self to this day ... "STAY AWAY".

So on purpose last night, I surfed the web during commercials of the baseball game I was watching, on my iPad Mini ... that has ... a ... retina display.

My brain cells scrambled, pulse rate went up, ideas, temptations, justifications, and maybe even some slight drooling took place as I looked at the clarity and perfect picture quality ... KNOWING ... an iMac with that retina display was just a 40 minute drive away.

I admit it ... after the game was over, with my Reds beating the powerful first place Yankees, I sat in my desk chair and went straight Best Buy online to take a look a those iMacs with the retina display. It was a tough fight all the way not to change my current path from what I have set up to buying something new ... with that damn retina display.

Other websites, and bloggers who talk about Apple computers almost always warn their readers NOT TO go take a look at them on display because you will never look at your computer monitor the same way again.

With some sound sleep, a bowl of fresh fruit for breakfast ... all of that "retina stuff" had evaporated from my thought process. Sometime overnight I had been drug back into reality and lectured on my lack of focus.

With the yard mowed yesterday, recycling trip this morning, days of salad cut up in advance, a fresh pineapple cut and ready to eat ... there are not any plans for today. I'll continue to live in those '5 minute' windows like a child, led by the decisions of the hounds. (ie: would you prefer I stand on the right or left side of the door as I let you out for the 100th time today?)

I love that I have gone from a work-a-holic to a full blown slacker without any transitional pain. Being 'a slacker' should have been my career path from the start.

It's too quiet in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana today ... just the way I like it.