The Overpriced Echo SRM - 225U Weed Trimmer

** I added more photos after the original post **

Most of our days here are "spur of the moment" plans. Without a list of things to do to the house or outside this summer, it became a very very lazy summer.

This morning I decided to implement a new 2016 Plan of Attack against the falling leaves. I know it's not even close to October, where the 4 hound crew last year supervised in getting rid of the leaves. This year I am going to get rid of them a little at a time, maybe when I feel like working with them and today was the 'test run' for that new plan.

I also wanted to start my overpriced Echo SRM-225U weed eater with the steel blade and knock down some giant ragweed today. I bought it a couple of years ago when I needed something that could cut through brush and 1"-2" diameter trees, in the area that I cleared last April 2015 and then planted grass seed.

It did well that first year and I had all of that brush cut down not only there but along the bank that runs beside my driveway. It also cut through the small saplings with no problems. It sat a full year, I didn't try to use it last summer. Before this winter I emptied it's gas tank and stored it for the winter. Earlier in the spring of this year ... it wouldn't start. So it went back in the shed for the summer.

Today I brought it back out and followed all the steps of troubleshooting the problem of not starting, along with a brand new mixture of gas/oil and a clean air filter that is dry after being saturated with fuel at some time ... it wouldn't start. I finally got it started. It coughed and sputtered but would not idle. Once it was going strong enough that I thought it was running but when I pressed the throttle, it died.

 So it sat there long enough for the photo and it went back in the shed. I paid a lot of money for that piece of crap and many other's have the same complaint as I do on the internet. I have a feeling it's a fuel filter problem. I bought it at the local hardware store, they carry all the Echo equipment. They will fix it at little to no cost if I decide I don't want to try fixing it.

But I didn't need it to blow leaves. I knew I had a small leaf blower somewhere. I hadn't seen it for years, in fact it was so long ago I couldn't remember if I still had it. In one of my high energy cleaning the shed days, I put this old dirty leaf blower on one of the racks near the top of the shed out of the way ... and out of sight.

I poured in some new fuel, and it started by the 4th pull of the rope. After all of these years of not being used, it coughed, sputtered, blew blue smoke out the exhaust but it kept on running ... then finally hit it's prime and we were blowing leaves off the driveway and off of the bank ... in the direction of my area to burn. It's wasn't overpriced like the Echo SRM-225U.

The driveway was pretty well covered with leaves to start the fall season and in less than 15 minutes that little old leaf blower had moved all of the leaves right next to the area I am going to burn them. After some testing in the yard, I think it's going to be a major new tool this year instead of raking leaves. It will also eliminate me working with my larger leaf blower/vacuum that needs electricity to run and working around a 100' electrical cord.

For some reason, not until this morning, did I realize the corn field across the highway has almost finished it's process and will be picked fairly soon. I remember that field being planted earlier than most others around here, right before 3 straight days of rain, so only logical it has died out first.

Not sure if you can tell but if you look closely there are a few red leaves inside, showing signs of leaves starting to change their color.

While I was trying to get the Echo weed eater started and then blowing leaves off the driveway ... Sadie and Stella spent time roaming the field in back. I was happy to see they were within their boundary out there while I was busy doing something else.

Sadie was the one that got her running in today. Stella on the other hand thought it was a little too warm to exert much energy. She moved slow today and it didn't matter where she was ... she was in slow motion mode.

Sometime around noon we headed out for our walk. It was getting warmer today, mid 80's, and I knew later this afternoon was going to be too hot to do much walking. Summer isn't over yet I guess.

The hounds took off and once again they trotted way ahead of me. I guess they had places to go while I tried to focus in on some of the many butterflies.

By the time I was in range to zoom in on them, they were in the far right hand corner. They didn't have any problem leaving and following me as I walked by them. They had a lot of places they wanted to check out today.

This was a fairly small butterfly but I was able to photograph it. They move fast and I really think the sound of a beep when my camera is in focus scares them off ... today I turned that sound off.

Not sure what it was but I really liked the design and color of this butterfly.

By the time we were 3/4 of the way done with the walk I could tell that Stella had had all the fun she needed for today. I think she prefers the hay to be cut lower so its easier to gain speed when running.

I wanted to see if I could photograph one of the younger butterflies. They are really small, may be hard to see ... but it's dead center in this picture.

The hounds cruised back home at pretty slow speed ... they were both asleep soon after getting back inside. The house inside had increased to 80°, so I shut the blinds on the west side for the afternoon and turn the ACs back on. Heidi approved and rolled on her back to sleep on the couch.

Later in the afternoon we sat outside enjoying the weather. I took some hand trimmers and cut down a lot of the giant ragweed in the field and near my burn pile. Those hand trimmers may be a better option than that overpriced Echo SRM-225U weed eater ... that won't start.

I had thought about a 2nd walk for the hounds but it felt hot, the iPhone weather app was telling me it 'felt like' 90° and with Stella's tongue falling out of her mouth, that was a sure sign a 2nd walk would not be attempted today. We decided we had to take a walk after I posted this, so I have added some new photos below.

Here is the link to the pictures of butterflies I took on the walk today.

My new iPad Mini2 arrived today. Free shipping and day delivery. I had forgotten how small it was but did remember it fit in my hand perfect to read an ebook, a pdf file or a website. It didn't take long for me to download the few apps I use, and change some settings.

Just like the iPhone with the retina display, all the photos on this blog looked really sharp, and clear. I can't believe the difference compared to the older Apple 27" LED Cinema model monitor.

I thought about restoring my backup from November 2015 from my last iPad Mini but instead set this one up as a new account. Google Photos worked just like advertised. I had all my photos on the iPad Mini by using Google Photos, online. So it will take no memory on my hard drive.

Speaking of photos ... last night while I was in Apple's Finder (like Windows My Computer) I was changing some file names when I saw I wrote something wrong here last week when discussing the size of my photo library.

I said it was 22.4Gb but last night I see that was just my old iPhone library. The newer Photo Library that Apple used to replace iPhone is 167Gb of photos. There are a lot of duplicates though .. maybe not a lot ... but more then I want to go through and delete. It's the way the program Photos handles different devices.

So I am pretty well set. Some diet changes, football season is here, my old leaf blower works, the weather is great, Heidi likes the venison and lamb blend of dog food (her skin looks better), I'm back in the world of electronics with a new iPhone and iPad Mini ... all are used daily.

Now, if I had someway to have groceries delivered so I wouldn't have to shop ... I'd have it made.

Life is good here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Some Mid-Week Rambling

We were all up early but the day really didn't start until after lunch. It was one of those days where you weren't sure what you wanted to do. The hounds were no help in me making a decision.

So, we kicked back most of the day ... isn't that the norm around here?

Heidi decided to surprise me by going an entirely different direction and was only in that area long enough to dump her tanks and then head back to the door to be let in? Why on such a beautiful day? Winston would have taken off to explore every inch of the yard, maybe lay in the sun but Heidi has a much different personality than he did.

This morning Stella didn't have much interest other than eating that soft dirt pushed up by my yard moles. Over the years I've tried everything suggested to kill the grub worms and prevent yard moles ... all with no success. Anyone have some ideas on what to use?

By the time I read all the internet news on sports, answered emails, read Facebook and Twitter a couple of hours had already passed. I was still curious about my password manager that I use called LastPass so I started more Google searches to find out if any recent news had been released ... maybe some alternatives. I like LastPass and have it on my desktop and laptop for free ... I am too cheap to pay the $12 per year just so I can use it on my iPhone.

It might not just be my way of thinking but I rarely if ever use a site, banking (never), Apple Pay (no yet) on my iPhone where I need a user id and password. I am still not convinced that is secure like a laptop or desktop is. So I continue to use the free version of LastPass.

Plus I aways enjoy doing a Google search on ".... vs ... " when I have something on my mind.

By 4:30pm, Sadie was giving me the 'stare down' to get my butt out of my chair, back away from the computer and get an afternoon walk in ... sounded like a good idea to me. It also felt like rain as soon as we stepped outside.

It was all clear to the north but looking south it was storms showing up on the WeatherBug radar.

It was a day for butterflies and I was able to catch a couple while on the walk.

Sadie and Stella both went their separate ways, finding all these nice spots to bury their noses in the thick grass. During the whole walk, they both spent a lot of time stationary, in different spots, doing what they do.

You can tell how fast the Mist Flower is dying out, more and more by the day. They will return to those ugly dead stems scattered all over the field until they cut the field again, which may not be until next summer.

Ten minutes into the walk it felt like those rain clouds were right over the top of us ... luckily it was only gray clouds and no raindrops. I didn't realized rain was a possibility today.

While I was spending time taking photos of butterflies, adjusting my camera setting to 'no beeps' when in focus, Sadie and Stella had already moved to the very back of the field ... a long way away from me.

I am loving the new Tamron lens I bought a few weeks ago ... it has all the ranges I use on one lens and more important to me .. it focusses first time every time without errors.

By the time I caught up with them, they were back to their own individual tasks of identifying different areas of the field.

I continued my walk and letting them stay on their own schedule. When I was a at a point of the walk where they would be out of sight, I called each of their names one time and they both came running. That is pretty good for hounds, noted for being a stubborn breed and not recommended to be off leash.

Sadie trotted right past me and headed home ... with only a couple of stops along the way.

I didn't want to wait to describe today's walk after my rambling. I like to kind of match the walking details with the photos. During the walk I thought that I had a lot of 'other stuff' on my mind to write about. Nothing important and maybe not even interesting topics to blog about ... but as I mentioned yesterday, it's been hard to write lately so maybe a little rambling was due.

I admit and have many times before, at times I feel this blog is pretty boring and if it feels that way to me, it has to feel that way to some of you. Yet, I like to write and I like taking photos of the hounds even if the path never changes and their routines are consistently the same.

Let me know via email or by commenting here ... any suggestions for what you would like to see on this blog.

I know it's my blog and I can do or write about what I want .... some say "it's your journal and write about whatever you want, readers can choose if they want to read or not". I agree with some of that but not all ... I feel that if you take the time to visit my blog then I have some responsibility to cover information or photograph things that you are interested in  when it comes to "Hounds and Other Stuff".

So I am open to suggestions.

I have a couple of other private blogs on Blogger where I write. It's been less frequently lately but one is a private journal of personal thoughts. Then I kept a private blog with the same colors and template that this blog was back in December 2015. I was using that as my main blog for the hounds and my life here in the tropics when I wasn't posting on the public blog ... mostly as my reference for future use. I have photos of house maintenance, issues, repairs, more photos of Heidi as documentation ... supplementing my memory. It has been quite useful.

I can also import all the new blog posts from this blog to that blog when I feel I want to update it with all my blog pots.

Yesterday I ran onto something that may be hard to imagine but in a way it IS POSSIBLE ... more government control of bloggers. It's toward the bottom of this blog post ... but it made me wonder, what would happen to all our blogs if this were to happen in the future. With all of the current mainstream media censorship plus Facebook and Twitter controlling what content is seen by the public ... that blog post could be fairly accurate.

It would make me want to move my 'personal blog' back to a Word Document on my hard drive ... suggested by one friend of mine years ago when I told her about my new blog. There are a lot of things I like about Blogger over a Microsoft Word document but at the same time ... having those deep thoughts only on my computer sounds like it might be right and time for a change.

As you know last week I spent a large amount of time after midnight so I could use the free data period offered by my internet provider to upload close to 30,000 photos to Google Photos as a backup ... an online backup. Yet the picture quality on Flickr is much better because it will upload all of your photos AFTER you have made any edits on the original photo and they are not compressed into a smaller file size. Google Photos does not and would prefer you do your edits on their program.

A lot of work was put into Google Photos, so I hate to stop using it. It's nice that any photos I take of the hounds with my iPhone (which I keep forgetting to add to the blog) is automatically updated in Google Photos and vice versa. With the automatic setting it's fast for me to upload every photo taken that day (25-100 per day), just by doing a "select all" and then exporting them to a folder on my desk top. Google Photos will upload those automatically as soon as those photos touch that folder.

I've started loading those same daily photos to my Flickr account which I have linked on the left sidebar of this blog in the upper left corner. You can see the sharp quality in the photos. In that case I do the upload manually after midnight to save my data. Since those photos are in the edited original setting and are NOT compressed ... it takes more data to upload but is just as fast.

So I am using both and it really doesn't take that much time. I also don't have to do it every day even if I take photos every day.

I usually post 1-4 photos on Facebook but not all the time. It's for those that do Facebook but never read my blog. I have had very few friends that are local, read my blog but they are addicts of Facebook.

I still like my Wordpress blog a lot. Although it updates on my left sidebar I rarely get a visit to that blog so I guess I'll keep it just for me. It has only a couple of sentences of verbiage and mostly photos. Yes, they are the same as you see on this blog.

As far as blogging ... is it dying out slowly? Are bloggers quitting, moving to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter? I see less updated posts on the blogs I follow here. No big deal but I am just mentioning it because of the trend ... less blogging frequency.

Traveling ??? The urge has slowly disappeared as I feel more and more content where I am. I've done enough analyzing on all the pros and cons of traveling with the hounds, sell or not to sell the house and change my base camp location, and what vehicle to travel in when I do end up traveling. I will, it's just not going to happen with two bloodhounds.

I've tested them here locally. They go on all the short trips with me except the grocery shopping trip. They ride well ... except there was the time a month ago where we were driving the short 3 mile drive home after buying dog food ... I did not realize until I got home, that Stella had tore the bag of dog food open and was eating kibble as fast as she could before we got home. LOL

They ride very well as does Heidi. Yet controlling them with two 6' leashes or two leashes on one splitter doesn't work well with them when tested here in the field. They are both very strong and they like to go different directions, one splitter and two leashes presented a control problem.

I analyzed and decided that before I decided to go get Stella (Dipstick) last August. I was fine with that decision now as I was then.

Should you force yourself to eat when you never feel hungry through out the day? I've been having more days like that.

For some reason I have not been taking my Z4 drives. It is being driven a lot less than the Mini Cooper I had. When I take off in that car I know I like it better than the Mini Cooper and even if it's not driven much, it's a keeper. One of the Z4 forums did a poll to check ages of Z4 owners. Very very surprising that the majority were 65 or older and many over 70 years old.

Oh I almost forgot. In 10 months I have gone full circle after selling my iPhone 5S and my iPad Mini2 last November ... A few weeks ago I went back to an iPhone 6S, a little bigger screen than the 5S, better camera and the updated guts to run it. Great decision in getting back to a smart phone.

A few weeks ago while sitting on the couch with a laptop while watching football ... it's a great way to watch the stats of games you are watching ... I realized I missed the size of the iPad Mini, doing the same thing I was doing with a laptop. Then when I downloaded a few free books to Kindle I once again missed the size and convenience for reading books on the iPad Mini.

So, last night I bought a new one. It was on sale, it's the 2 not the 4 like I had before and only a few dollars more than I sold my old one for last November. I never used it to take photos with, the iPhone is doing that. I didn't buy the one where I can add cellular data because I would rarely use that. I read about the difference in the 2 and the 4's ... not enough for my use of it to pay a little more. It's fast, great for reading e-books ... although I go back and forth between them and books.

Options are always good and I don't see myself ever being a bare bones minimalist. It is good to know though my urges to trade cars, where that at times were obsessive, are gone with the two vehicles I now have.

I'll remember all the stuff I was going to ramble about as soon as I post this ... but this is way too long as it is and it's already past 6pm.

It's been a good summer here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana ... so good, that it's already over.

I'm In Total Hibernation

It looks like it has been a while since my last post, that talked about being a nester or an explorer. In the past 18 days since my last post I have turned into a serious hibernator more than anything. It's not even snowing yet, temperatures are fantastic for this time of year but that hasn't got me outside a lot. It's like I am almost house bound and I'll tell the reasons further down the page.

The hounds and I are fine and still get in the daily dog walk unless the ground is so saturated where it is just too muddy, soft or wet to walk through the field. With Winston's belly so close to the ground when he walks, it doesn't take much to get his whole underside wet if the hay is damp when walking. Sadie will walk in snow, rain, wind or fire ... she just doesn't care what the weather is doing when she hears the word "walk". Heidi on the other had is strictly a good weather walker. If she finds herself having to 'tip toe' through the yard or field, she does a 180 and sprints for the house and refuses to go.

Heidi and I went for a vet followup visit on November 28 to check on her treatment for erythema and alopocia. There was improvement but not as much as I thought would happen after a month of daily doses of 100mg of Atopica, medicated shampoo baths every 4 days and diphenhydramine (benadryl 50mg) every 8-12 hours to prevent itching. Yet, the vet was very happy with the progress. We walked out with a $16 bill or a 'check-up' visit and a month supply of Atopica worth $150 for free because he had started the treatment process. She wanted me to continue the daily doses for 2 more weeks than move to giving the Atopica every other day.

I will say in the past week Heidi has looked the best she has in a long time, skin-wise. All 4 of her paws have a thick growth of hair, along with under her neck and her rear hocks are starting to show a layer of hair coming back. Of course whenever there is some kind of allergy involved, the question lingers in back of the mind asking, is t the medication working or is it the season change where allergies are not as prevalent?

Anyway, either way she is looking much better and it's nice to know that steroid shots were not needed for the improvement. We go back January 9 for a followup. After that I am hopeful the skin problem will be under control with doses of Atopica maybe every 3-4 days from then on. The vet says that is the plan and it should work out to less dosage year round for her allergy control.

One thing I like about blogging is the function of record keeping. When I glanced back through 2011-2013 in the month of December I saw that last year I only posted one time in December. It was on December 9th, a picture of the Coachman was sitting in the back covered with 12" of snow. I had forgot that it snowed that early in the month. After seeing that I was pretty happy with the current daytime temperatures in the low 40's most of the time. Also it also showed me that I rarely posted during the month of December, 3 times in 2012 and 5 times in 2011 only a couple of months after starting the blog.

So I guess for me it's just normal not to post much in the month of December.

I do write on two other blogs that I have now. One is a personal journal that I write in every morning. I started that journal in late August. I like doing that because it kind of clears my mind. Plus I wanted a way to record my mood swings and health conditions. It will also give me a record for any computer issues and solutions, and a history of what the hounds have done. That blog is in the private status and I decided to use that format because it was much more convenient using Blogger rather than Microsoft Word.

The other blog was just started this week. As you know I am a sports junkie. Over the years I would send out an email before every game IU played in football or basketball, to a group of friends I went to college with, back 40 years ago. These emails would cover stories, statistics or previews. This year the 'roar' seemed to get louder from the small group of friends saying "you need to start a blog and write about all of this".  I thought about it off and on but thought 3 blogs were too much.

Then I decided why not? The purpose would be a little different than the private journal and this blog about my rv research, retirement life and future travels. Unlike this blog, I also wanted to add some Google Adsense and some sports affiliate links for some possible income. So this week I decided to take the plunge and started a new sports only blog, talking about no specific team or sports, just sports in general.

That small group of friends liked the first post so much they passed the blog link out to their sports friends and family scattered all over the USA and it is showing me through google states I am getting some pretty good traffic after just a couple of posts. One friend even said that I might have to go into hiding after writing in such a controversial tone about our favorite team....lol. I even signed up for a Google + account, put all the settings to public to get the blog spread out as much as possible.

No matter what time of the year or where I am, my interest in sports is always there and I am always reading about it or watching it, so the sports blog should be pretty fun. I'll not have any problem finding something to write about.

Speaking of those Google stats that are provided to bloggers using Blogger as their blog platform, behind the scenes on your blog traffic, it showing this past month that the Ukraine not only passed Canada in number of visitors but also moved to the #1 spot above the blog visitors in the USA. How strange is that? Are they trying to hack me or do they just like the hounds? I don't know.

So I have added a couple of new blogs to the list of blogs for those that are interested in security news, online or shopping. One is the LastPass blog. It is the free service I use for all of my passwords to my banks, and any other sites, all encrypted passwords. The other blog is about security not only on your computer but also credit cards. That blogger usually has a new post every day M-F with some great information. Like today I found out that my browser updates did not run and install automatically along with the Microsoft Office for Mac. His blog will always be near the top of the list because he blogs frequently.

Since I am hibernating there might be some readers wondering if I am sitting in front of my computer 15 hours per day or am I still using that Nikon D3200 camera I bought a few months back and if I am why not any pictures?

I am spending very little time on the computer. Just enough to write, read blog updates and sports news. The rest of my day is including a lot of book reading, more than I had planned on but I can't stop reading and am finding books that I have bought but never read until now. I am still downsizing plus some normal indoor maintenance/updates that comes with home ownership. I pop in an occasional movie. I finally sorted all of my DVDs alphabetical. That will prevent this older brain from buying duplicate movies which I found about 7 different shows where I did that after I sorted them.

I use the camera almost every day but those photos are not much different than what you have already seen of the back field, sunsets to the west taken from my yard or the hounds. The hounds are not really doing much besides winter sleeping. Sadie won the war on changing the dinner time for her and the bassets. When we "fell back" in the fall for the time change, she would come and sit by the desk at 3pm not 4pm if she had not been fed yet. Then as Heidi started feeling better she started barking at 3pm wanting to be fed and Winston walks toward his bowl but just sits and stares as if to say "what are their problems". So we eat by 3pm based on the bloodhound's demands. So much for the time change.

I will say there have been a couple of close calls but I have NOT dropped the camera or lens, I haven't dropped the new iPhone or iPad Mini. I love the Mini iPad even more than the larger, heavier 1st generation iPad that I used previously. The retina display is fantastic and I can tell the difference with my eyes. My glasses are not needed to read the smaller fonts.

Well it looks like I have rambled on enough here. I'll try to load some photos on my next post and will try to start blogging her more. It's hard to decide sometimes what is boring and what is interesting to readers since my current lifestyle is pretty mundane.

I do enjoying reading my blog list to keep track of everybody. Weather-wise it sounds like the best place to be most of the time is in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

More Computer Play & Leaf Removal

Not a lot has been going on since the rain stopped late last week. I continue to read blogs of people traveling, on retirement and sports. Some of the blogs on my blog list I moved to my Feedly account. That is a really good free program that I like and it's easy to keep up with all the different blogs I read.

Since late Thursday I have been having a lot of enjoyment installing, and learning about the new Apple OS update called Yosemite. For the readers that have Windows PC this probably will not be of much interest but I have a few readers that have Macs, iPads and iPhones, so maybe some information here will help them. When I have looked at the store, I haven't liked any Window changes after XP, especially not Windows 7 or 8. Their prices are tempting though for laptops.

I switched to Apple products in October 2014 after spending almost 14 years on Windows PC's. I was willing to pay more for what I have found to be a very reliable system with zero malware problems or "blue screen of death". I was having major malware problems towards the end of my PC usage and it was almost to deciding to reformat my hard drive and reinstall or buy a new computer. I chose to go in the direction of Apple and buy a new computer. Their computers have the maintenance system built in so I no longer had to spend time defragging the hard drive nor using 5 different programs to seek, find and destroy different malware. I've been running my iMac with no anti-virus and have had zero issues of any kind in my 4 years of ownership. (knock on wood)

I also have started my annual tree leaf cleanup. Due to laziness and being a dreamer, my first step is to do nothing and watch the winds, the leaves, then decide at what point I need to get outside (lol) and start by either raking and burning or use my leaf machine to blow them into a central location, then suck them into a bag that is too small and break them down into mulch material that I usually pile in the area in back that is not mowed.

I wait for a couple of reasons. A few times in the past years during the day very strong winds have come through and basically cleaned the whole yard and blew them over the hill out of sight. I didn't have to do anything those years. I'm hopeful of that this year. The other times they will be blown to a central location where little raking is involved and I can clean them in a few hours. There are a lot of leaves on the ground today and the trees are not even half bare. So there is a chance the longer I wait the larger the leaf piles are and of course longer to clean up, then again ... there is always the chance the wind will take care of them for me.

Back to the new Apple OS X. First of all I am not an expert. I'm a common user, that reads the iMac Forum (Mac Rumors) for most of my answers or use my best friend Google Search to find my answers when I have questions on how to do things on a computer. In the past I have kind of waited for the dust to settle before doing any upgrades on my iPhones, iMac or iPad but this time I decided to go for it when it was available and if it didn't work, I could revert back to the previous OS X Mavericks via my Time Machine backup. Like any new release either in Apple or Windows you will always hear both sides of the story in either love or hatred but after 4 days of operation I can say I love all the changes including the changes to Safari.

With my Exede Satellite Internet monthly limit of 15Gb's per month, I do all my uploads and updates during the free period between midnight - 5am. I don't stay up that long but recently even before the OS change I have been staying up until 3am most nights just because I am a true night person. So the past week my sleep schedule as been all out weird to some ... but it's beautiful outside at 4am when I take a computer break.

So a little past midnight last Thursday night on the first day of availability I downloaded the free OS Yosemite and installed it as a update and not a clean install. I've never had problems in the past doing it that way so I thought I'd continue the same way. After about 3 hours I had the system installed and the fun began. I had to force myself to go to sleep at 5am and that gave me a couple of hour nap until Winston HOWLS by 730am to go outside.

Nope ... no problems at all !!

Sure, there were some changes where I might have to change the way I do things or at least do some research and find a while to make some adjustments to get some features back to the way I had them....but I like change, so I have done some major changes on the way I use my browser without keeping the same processes of the past system.

In fact Safari has improved so much on this update that I have made it my default browser and have left Google Chrome ... something that I thought I'd never do. I moved my dock to the left side from the bottom and stretched my website window down to the bottom of my monitor. I have a choice to have a list of notification on the right side such as calendar, weather, time, etc...but since I'm retired my calendar means nothing anymore and weather and different time zones don't mean enough to have the notification center open on a fulltime basis. So it's doc on the left side and all content filling up the 27" monitor.

I will say at least on my "old" iMac, i3, 4Gb ram ... that Safari is really fast. I have also tried different designs such as bringing the favorites bar back to the top of the screen, for a few days like the old days but decided to go with the new design changes in Safari and follow that. So far, I love the new changes of surfing the web.

A couple of strange bugs ... every time I start my computer the background picture on my main monitor changes to one that I used last spring. So I moved the picture I like to my lower desktop and with a couple of clicks, I reset my background picture upon every restart, hoping that will be fixed in the next update. The other thing and it might be the 'cold war' between Apple and Google ... when I open my blog there is no way to log into my blog in the upper right screen, or new post or design. I use Google Chrome to write new posts or look at the design. I have a feeling that will not change as long as Google and Apple are not playing well with each other, lately.

Last summer while I was waiting to decide whether to buy a new iPhone 6 or the 5s because I was due an upgrade and a new phone contract, I did some reading and found out that a 5s would have the upgraded features. I found out yesterday before upgrading to OS 8.1 that my 5s phone will not have the ability to use Apple Pay, which is ok with me because I'm not sure I want to use Apple Pay anyway ... I'll wait for it to be a requirement in a few years, as I am sure it will eventually get rid of credit cards as we know it, with Google, Windows, Amazon, eBay getting into the electronic payment market. All of my devices have synched without any problems. You have the choice if you want your iPhone and iPad to have the same internet history and bookmarks. I have chose to do that but I can change back later with a click and synchronize the device.

I also found out that my iMac was made right at the cutoff to use the new Apple feature called "handoff". Meaning I could start an email or work on an excel spreadsheet on my iMac and finish it on my iPhone or iPad ... not a big deal to me. My computer missed the cutoff by a .02 on their build number.

In summary for readers that use Apple products ... the new updates are nice, in my case work well without any program or computer hardware issues. One thing to note is the HD space required on the iPad and iPhone is around 5.6Gb, so some might have to delete some old unused apps, maybe some photos to a different drive, to free up space. On my older iMac I am finding things are moving faster and no "spinning beach balls".

I can't promise it will work smooth for you but I can say on my equipment both OS updates have worked flawlessly.

Yes, I have been using my Nikon D3200 camera almost daily and posting most of those photos on my Flickr account. There is a link on the blog in the upper left called "My Other Photos" if you want to see them. The hounds are great and spend a lot of time outside, except Heidi because she is the Queen of the couch and a true hermit staying inside unless we walk or her short trips for relieving her kidneys. As they say you cannot lead a horse to water, she is free to do as she pleases. After all, she's a basset hound and they are a stubborn bred at times.

I have gone back to Fromm dog food. It cost more than I like but I can see a difference in the hounds when I feed them Fromm food. Family owned for a 100 years, all products are made in the USA and they have never had a recall. They are 1 of 3 dog food companies that deal in just dog food, no other markets.

I'll add more pictures in my next post.

All is good in the 'tropics' of southern Indiana and in retirement.

Sadie's Nose

It has become such a habit of letting the hounds outside when they want to go out, to where I have forgotten to check if we have any visitors nearby before opening the door. We go out the same door every time. I use to glance outside the door window to make sure there were no other dogs, birds, squirrels, cats or other animals in the near vicinity before opening the door .. but Saturday morning I wasn't paying attention.

I didn't glance outside before opening the door and just as I did, Sadie had already barged through the door into a full sprint at olympic sprinter speed along with those other two short legged bassets baying behind her. What ever it was had already darted from under my Toyota FJ and scaled the fence running along my driveway, and down over the hill. As soon as the (squirrel??) was out of site all three of them had to return to the scene of the crime to start their own investigation.

I was not able to take pictures of all of them and basically the only picture I came up with that was any good, is the one you see. Between scrambling to keep the hounds from taking off on me and hoping they would remain on top of the hill and not head toward the highway 100' down the drive, I didn't have a lot of time to run back into the house to grab my camera and snap pictures of all them scrambling in different directions. By the time I had my camera Sadie was the only one on the hunt.

If you look right below the silver color of the bumper you will see Sadie's nose as she is stretched out tracking the smell of what I think was a squirrel. Every time since then I have glanced outside before opening the door and will get back into the habit of doing so.

The next picture I took of Sadie late Saturday night. It's nothing out of the ordinary except being one of the first pictures I took with my new iPad Mini. I was holding the iPad out arm's length over her head so I would not wake her. I was curious how well the iPad picture would look.  I like the new Nikon DSLR so much that I almost want to take every picture with it but realize in the mode of hound spontaneity it is not possible to use just one certain camera, that you have to grab the one nearest to you.

She was into a deep loud snore at this point and had lost all interest in watching the last football game of the day/night.

Taken with an iPad Mini

It was cold (50's) with rain off and on most of the weekend. I didn't get far from the couch and never left the house for the weekend. With the cold mild winds Saturday during the day, Winston decided he wanted to spend time outside and wouldn't come back inside. He sat like this for quite a while enjoying the colder temps. I even went back inside the house and when I came back outside 10 minutes later to check on him, he was still sitting just like this, like a statue and the cool breeze blowing toward him.

Heidi has decided that she is only good for a couple of days per week getting her picture taken and was uncooperative whenever I pointed the camera at her his weekend. Funny basset.

That's all for now.