Where Did Summer Go?

Wasn't it just weeks ago that the first picture of the blog was always of sunshine and hot temperatures? Maybe it's the overcast skies or the cooler temps ... but summer feels like it happened long ago.

I am not a fan of winter ... I love hot weather. I could see from the clouds today it was going to be about the same as late afternoon yesterday. Which is okay I guess but I prefer sunshine.

I thought I might catch this farmer a couple of fields away across the highway but by the time I picked up the camera and ran into the front yard to get an angle to see him, he was already to the edge of the field.

It looked like a large mower where he was mowing his corn stalks to ground level. I could tell there were some difference in the height of the corn stalks based on the path he had created.

It started raining about the time I took the photo above and he disappeared to side of the field to his left which is blocked by the row of trees. I never could tell if he was mowing or cutting the stalks to ground level and that became more confusing when I saw both sides of his machine in the upright position so he could travel down the highway.

What ever he was towing did not look like mower blades when he lifted each side to the upright position for traveling down the highway. Before I could really tell what they were, he was out of sight.

With cooler temps today it really didn't matter when we took the walks. Before the hounds went anywhere they had to check out the 'new area' where I had mowed yesterday. I'm sure there are a lot of new scents for them to check out. It's nice not having to pull out 5-6 burrs from each hound now that the ragweed has been cut.

Stella thought that Sadie may have started the walk without her this morning and without me ... but when I yelled 'coffee' Sadie came running to the house. That word 'coffee' seems to work first thing in the morning to get both hounds to come back to the house so I can have MY coffee ... it's not for them.

By the time we started the walk today the sun was barely out, no wind and the temps were a bit nippy. Like I have said before, for whatever the reason, I don't believe we are going to see the bright vibrant colors when the leaves change color this year. So far those bright colors have not shown up before the leaves have died.

By the first turn I thought Stella might decide to walk with us today but once again she found that one spot she likes and stayed behind. Sadie moved out toward the middle of the field for a short time but sprinted back to the area where the deer hang out.

As long as their noses get a workout I know they are enjoying their walk.

While we continued to walk, Stella never moved from that spot. It came to the point I actually thought she might not move until Sadie and I had walked all the way up to her.

While looking through the lens at her, she acted as if she became startled or surprised that we had left her. It was nothing new having her stay back while we walked but she acted as if she was surprised and came sprinting on the path we had taken.

Her nose made a change and she started to move in our direction. Once she saw us, she stopped running and slowly walked toward us, almost with a look of disappointment.

Of coarse Sadie had to make nose to nose contact to make sure it was Stella.

I have continued to look at different internet options and I have called again today with the local company that installed my Exede Satellite Dish in 2014. Even moving to DishNet and keeping that 15Gb per month at the speed I have now, it's the identical cost.

I called the local company I had before Exede to see if anything had happened in the past two years, possibly having wireless internet in my area. They offer a much lower monthly fee and UNLIMITED data .... but ... the trees I have on the north side of the house block would block the signal from their tower a mile or so away.

DishNetwork tells me they can give me the same TV programming for $35 less per month, guaranteed for 2 years, plus add the Pac12 Network that I would love to have so I could see ALL of the Washington Husky games here in Indiana. I can see them on ABC or ESPN at times but not every game. Once again that is a contract issue (money) between the Pac12 Conference and Directv.

I did have a Directv customer service rep tell me things have changed since AT&T bought Directv and a lot of those things are not as good as Directv had before, so he did not know if they would ever get Pac12 or not.

I noticed something interesting last night as I was downloading photos from my iPhone to the computer. Due to only 5Gb of iCloud storage I do not have that on automatic settings to synchornize with every picture is taken by my iPhone. I found it interesting the difference in picture quality of the two photos I took just minutes apart, with the same lighting.

Can you tell which photo is from my iPhone and which one I took with my Nikon D3200 w/Tamron lens?

The back seats are still upright in the FJ but the more I thought about it yesterday ... the hounds have to be able to ride even on short trips. I'll just have to plan to vacuum the inside out more often and maybe a weekly swipe to clean the inside of the FJ windows. I do the same inside my house so why not the FJ?

I can confirm that Google Chrome uses less data than Firefox and Safari, for those that work with a data limit to be on the internet. That data also includes what it takes to upload a lot of photos into a blog for any post that you are writing.

As I sit here wearing cargo shorts and a sweatshirt, I am declaring that fall is officially 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.

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.