Storms & Sadie Forces Her Way Onto The Couch

It's been doing a lot of this so not much has been going on except a lot of rain passing through with spots of sunshine before the next storm. Some severe weather was forecasted but as usual in my location, the severe weather seems to split at the Indiana - Illinois state line and follows I-70 toward Indianapolis and the Ohio River towards Louisville, KY. That also happens in the winter when the snow is coming from the west.

Believe it or not, my gutters are not plugged up but more rain than they can handle in this particular storm. I was on the roof last week before the forecasted rain making sure the gutters were clear and could do their job.

Needless to say, I haven't been too far from home and have spent most of my time being lazy ... as have the hounds. I was able to get some sunset pictures, and some bad quality pictures of Sadie that tells an interesting story. She never fails to entertain in any kind of weather.

These are in order and from this past week, taken without any filter, standing in the same spot every day facing due west.

Severe thunderstorm warnings plus a tornado watch until 1am this morning.. but like I said, it splits and goes in two different directions so the warnings for both were later canceled.

The leaves are starting to change a little color but nothing dynamic like the Aspens out in Colorado. 

Now to Sadie, who at times has cases of "cabin fever". We don't take the daily walk when it is raining or during thunderstorms so she will bring a ball or a bone to where I am sitting while on the computer, drop that ball or bone expecting and getting a long session of fetch.

For readers that are unfamiliar with the bloodhound breed, they have their own rules. At times Sadie will use those rules to her advantage. She is never aggressive but she tries to intimidate the basset hounds when she wants their food or when she wants their spot on the couch. You can see the "bloodhound property laws" here toward the bottom of the post.

In this case, Winston was sleeping in a deep snoring state. He isn't moving no matter what but that does not bother Sadie because she has a plan. Due to his length I am pressed to the far right side with no room to move and there is just enough room for Sadie to sit ... but as the pictures show, she isn't interested in just sitting ... she wants the couch to sleep on, with not a lot of room available. She actually would prefer that Winston and I get off "her" couch but when we don't move, Sadie goes to Plan B. My couch is longer than a love seat but shorter than a couch with two oversized cushions.

Sorry for the poor quality but I was trying to get these taken quick without waking Winston up. I was holding an iPad Mini with one hand and probably to close for clear pictures.

Sadie sees a small spot available on the couch and even after telling her "no", she takes a seat. This is only the first step of her plan to create space for her nap. As you see there is more dog than space available.

Her usual process of intimidation is nothing more than holding her head over the hound that has something she wants, in this case she wants the space that Winston is using to sleep. He doesn't move, and doesn't wake up.

Sadie then looks at me as if I am going to wake Winston up and tell him to get off her couch or if she is lucky I would also get up to move off the couch. At the same time she is finding out if I am going to tell her to get down off the couch again or if she can proceed with her plan.

Once she sees the coast is clear and I am not going to do anything to her ... she does a slow sliding 360 to position herself in the last small space left on the couch, as I feel myself sliding to the right against the couch arm. She declared that space as hers when she jumped up on the couch. Still not enough room to lay down.

As she moves into her sleeping position, she uses her weight to push Winston up against me, thus moving me more to the right with no space available.

She continues making small adjustments by using her weight and strength, to gain just a little bit more space. Plan completed and now taking a nap just like she planned. Winston is now forced to hang his head over the edge to continue his deep slumber, due to lack of space.

That was about the highlight of my week, besides some great football games on Saturday and Sunday. It currently looks like the last part of the storm has moved east of me and nothing forecasted until Wednesday and after that a week of sunshine.

The pace of retirement living is great.

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.

A Covered Bridge

At what point in time does a covered bridge not remain original or historic? I don't know the answer to that question since I don't follow covered bridges but the part "extensive structural renovation and replacement of timbers" made me wonder and asked myself that question.

On cold winter nights I can see a light off into the SW distance across the plowed fields and through the trees with no leaves. I know that is the covered bridge. It is a nice covered bridge.

Also on Friday or Saturday nights when it's quiet I can hear kids hanging out over there. It's has enough space for cars and trucks to pull over, has a few camping spots along a creek that looks to be about 50% low. The water is muddy so any swimming would be out of the question.

Late Wednesday afternoon I decided to run over and take some photographs. I debated whether to take the bag that held the other lens or take the 2nd leans by itself ... I took neither ... bad decision.

I mounted the 55mm-200mm lens and took off. I wasn't even finished with the first shot when I wished I had brought the 18mm-55mm lens. I drove the shortest distance, parked and didn't realize until I had walked through the bridge that I had parked and started my photographs on the backside of the bridge.

Even with the renovations I found it to be a pretty neat bridge, plus it's nearby. Due to the amount of traffic I left the hounds at home.

I'll be hibernating this weekend, more than normal. At least I can head south today to replenish the food supply and miss all the traffic from the east and west that will fill this small town for their annual Apple Festival. It will end Sunday with a parade featuring the high school band. With the high school's small number of students, they do not play football therefore this parade is just one of the few highlights for the band.

I'm not a festival person, wasn't even as a young child. My mom would take me along with my sister to festivals, she loved them, but even as a 5-6 year old I would walk the around the festivals thinking of the football games I was missing on tv ... in those days there were only a couple of games on Saturday's whereas now they will be showing 5-7 games at one time and then slim down to 2-3 after 10:30pm eastern time. One word can describe the reason for the increase of televised games ... money.

I went to the festival the first year I lived here. I couldn't believe the amount of traffic backed up on the highways coming from the east and west. The local police department, county sheriffs' and temp deputies direct traffic. So ... from 1998 onward I have not attended the popular festival. Too many people for me walking around. I'll hide out with the hounds instead, watching college football.

That's it for today.

A Year Ago Today & Other Thoughts

One thing about using a blog as a journal of sorts, it is easy to go back to certain times of the year or a particular month to see what was going on with you, where your mind was and what was going on.

Since my weather here in the "tropics" of southern Indiana turned south last night, with it raining every since, at times very windy and hard rain .. I thought I'd get some blog reading done in my busy retirement schedule at a little past noon.

Ironically it was a year ago yesterday, October 2, that the weather also changed for the worse but that wasn't the big news going on. The big news going on was after a couple of weeks of RV ownership and only 1 long shake down cruise with the hounds included ... I had found an oil leak. If interested you can read about it here.

I can say now, that one small incident poured a lot of doubt into my mind ... enough to put the RV up for sale a few days later just to see what kind of feedback I would get. Also the site I listed it on had a special that day ... list it until it sold for ~$20. So it basically was listed through the winter before selling in early April.

When my eyes picked up that small drop of oil dangling from the hose connector, my first thought was not about the problem but the first three answers I got when I asked five people years before "What do you think or know about RVs?". Three of the five had the same answer ... "They are money pits". All three had owned an RV from all different categories...the Class A, an older Class C and an older Class A.

I guess some people just get lucky and rarely have problems ... or they don't blog about them.

Anyway that was my first thought as I moved my finger up to touch that drop of oil. I spent the next few days around my daytime job, replacing those lines with OEM lines from GM. I'm not a mechanic so to me it was a pain in the ass to do the repair. I wasn't thrilled about the situation. After the test drive all things ran smoothly with no oil seen underneath the RV.

Still those thoughts of having more repairs waiting for me around the corner at unexpected times didn't give me any warm and fuzzy feelings, just a lot of doubt. It is also when I started thinking that the tow vehicle and a trailer might be the best combination for me.

I've gone through all of that in the past, so for new readers you can check the past blogs on the right sidebar if you are curious what went on. Once you open up the "month" link, the posts are listed with the oldest on the bottom.

Now on to just general rambling.

After a few months I am enjoying my internet satellite service ... the speed ... but I am not enjoying the part of trying to stay within 15Gb's per month, it's hard to do. That's my monthly allowance with Exede (prior Wild Blue). I always knew that watching any kind of videos were data suckers but I found out something the other night that changed when I would upload my pictures from my computer to Flickr.

That uploading of pictures also took more data than I thought. So I have to decrease my daily usage the rest of the month to keep within the limit of 15Gb's. The company stated that unlike others, once you reached the limit you would NOT lose internet access but would just have a slower connection. I found out last month when I ran my account to 15Gb with a couple of days to go on purpose, that nothing would load....so it did run slower I guess but you could do nothing as far as the internet. I wanted to see what happened if I hit the limit earlier than 30 days.

Data plans remind me of the new war declared this past week when AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all came out with new data plans, offering to double your data now for a new contract and a new phone. Nina over at Wheelingit has a very good detailed description of the different plans on her blog today.

If any of you are at the point of changing internet plans while on the road or thinking about it ... I'd take a look at her post today and look at Nina's detailed options available.

A few days ago I did the "devil" of upgrades for my Apple iPhone and iPad. The news was full of horror stories about what would happen if you did the upload at 8.0, but like I said the other day the 8.0.2 seems to be great ... I have no problems a few days later. Sure I have to find and learn some new ways of doing things but that's ok ... I'm happy with the update.

I noticed recently the blog is kind of turning away slightly from RVing posts. Readers have decreased about half from what I use to have before announcing that I wasn't going anywhere. Strangely enough the #1 post searched and read of all time on this blog of three years ... is about the Lil Snoozy Trailer. I get readers looking for information on that trailer on a daily basis and at times it is the most read of all the posts that day. If I were depending on affiliate income with ads all over my blog that decrease in traffic would be a concern ... but as it is, I understand why some people stopped and it has no affect on what I write now or in the future.

The hounds decided to slow down their number of photo shoots and have taken a couple of days off. With it raining outside both basset hounds will get no further than the roof overhang and the bloodhound will sit next to me outside with a look as if "what are you taking me outside for, I'm not going out in that weather".  So there is a break in dog photos, but they will return soon.

So like I was saying the RV posts have kind of decreased lately. I haven't been looking at any trailers for sale nor glancing on Craig's List for RVs that are local. I moved my large folder of RV bookmarks back to the general bookmark population and off my favorites bar that runs across the top of my screen .. so out of sight. I still read all the blogs along my left sidebar on a daily basis.

I still have urges to hit the road. But what in? When I saw Tom's blog up in Alaska yesterday and his weekly forecast posted on his blog, I commented that I would pack up and leave with that forecast. Yet, those temps are nothing close to what what we will experience in the main months of winter. I already can feel I don't want to put up with that kind of weather.

So the travel bug still lingers deep inside the brain cells.

Eye Level Pictures, iOS 8.0.2 Update & Picture Storage

I had a comment from Tom a couple of days ago, that his best pictures of his dog were taken at below eye level. He even mentioned that might be hard to do with Heidi ... I found out yesterday it was doable but interesting laying on the ground looking up or close to eye level with two basset hounds. During the process I may have taken "the best" picture I have ever taken of Winston after 10 years. Here is that picture.

Of course when I got down on the ground with a camera in one hand, all three hounds thought I was either hurt or playing, and either way they were all going to run to me and make sure I was ok or find out what the playing strategy was. I mean it was three hound heads right on my face and Sadie's paw in the middle of my chest.  lol

I got back to my feet, took Sadie over to where I could connect her to her anchored rope. Of course that made her quite curious on what was going on because both basset hounds were able to walk or run freely. She was confused right before I walked over to hook her up, at least she stayed there to pose for a picture.

As soon as Heidi saw that Sadie was hooked up and she could get out of Sadie's range, she took off sprinting ... it surprised me enough that I didn't have the camera ready to take a really good picture but did take one that was a little blurry.

With the two bassets now in a relaxed mode, I was able to lay at the base of a very small incline in the yard. That position got me close to their eye level. After I looked at the pictures I had to agree with what Tom said, I thought they were much better pictures when taking them at below eye level or in the basset hound's case ... "close" to eye level. It could be hard to do that the majority of the time though.

As you see, after a few short weeks from receiving an allergy shot, Heidi's skin rash is coming back on her lower rear legs and all four feet. They are worse this morning as I type this. I have a couple of new things to try that fellow readers have suggested. I will try those separately to see if/what works and hopefully will not do any more shots.

After a little more reading about Picasa 3.9, Flickr, and iPhoto, I found some information on a blog that made it very easy to understand. I found out that I was wrong what I thought about Picasa 3.9. I understood the process, which I don't like having it download every picture you have ever had on your computer even after deleting them, but I was wrong thinking where it was. I found out that it is on YOUR HARD DRIVE, and isn't web based like Picasa Web Album ... or like Flickr. I found out that Picasa 3.9 was just like iPhoto or my new Nikon ViewNX 2 ... to edit and store pictures.

I knew it was a picture editor and storage but I thought it was located on the web, not on my hard drive.

After playing around with Picasa 3.9 some more, I decided to stick to the web based Flickr. I like the program a lot. The main reason I was looking for a different storage program for all of my pictures to begin with ... I wanted them stored "off location" in case my computer crashes or I have a problem with the external hard drive backup.

It is a long process uploading them to Flickr and I found out yesterday it sucks up a lot of my monthly internet data limit of 15Gb's per month. Just like any other website when you are uploading files, it uses a lot of data. I do have a free period of unlimited data I can use between midnight and 5am, so I will do my Flickr uploads after midnight.

I'm sure most of you have heard in the news about all the trouble Apple is having with their latest iOS 8.0 update. They came out with a fix to those problems in 8.0.2. I did some reading online at MacRumors Forum to find out what the geeks were saying and as well as the normal users like me. I normally hold off before doing any new updates to the iOS, but I wanted to check out this new Health program that Apple has doing ... it basically can track about everything imaginable about your health, even your sleep routine, without any wrist devices.

With a lot of users not having problems of any kind and after a lot of reading, I thought it was safe to do the updates to my iPhone 5s and my iPad Mini. There is the option of doing these downloads (huge file) via wifi but I was reading on that geek forum, it was recommended to do the following simple steps:

For Apple devices only !!!

1. Do not use wifi, plug your device into your computer and use iTunes to update.
2. Download only ... do not do the download and install option.
3. After the download is complete, back up your device to your computer, not iCloud.
4. In your device settings, under the general, reset, click "reset all settings".
5. Install the update
6. Set up device like a new devise.
7. Then restore from backup.

One important thing is NOT to sign up for iCloud Drive yet. That causes a big problem of losing documents in some cases if you have saved your documents to iCloud Drive. It will not work until the new OS update for Mac comes out in a few months, called Yosemite.

Now, once that OS update does come out for iMacs, Macbook Pros and Mac Air .. called Yosemite ... and you activate iCloud Drive ... you will be able to use the Office programs in all three devises and even start an email or work on one device while finishing it on your other device.

Right now I think the iOS 8.0.2 is worth it, just to be able to use Apple's new "HealthKit"....which is called just "Health" once that program is automatically uploaded during the update.

After my updates to both devices, I've had zero problems and have seen nothing going on with my two devices that i have heard on the news. At least in my case iOS 8.0.2 works great.

For Window readers, what I have just said will probably confuse some. I am not sure what PC users have the ability to do with these new Apple apps because I don't have Windows PC. For Apple readers, I hope this information helps.

To close this post that has turned out longer than I planned ... I thought my iPhone took great pictures when using it most of the time for the past couple of years. As it should, the Nikon D3200 takes so much better pictures it's hard to describe. I am really happy that I made the camera purchase.

That's all from southern Indiana.

I Am Using Flickr For Old and New Photos

If you glance to the left side bar under "Other Interests", I have add a link "My Other Photos".  That link will go to my new Flickr account where they are giving me 1 terabyte of free storage. Some of the photos you have seen on the blog but there will be many others that are not on my blog.

It's a long slow process after they are uploaded, adding titles and a short description but I am working on transferring all of my current photographs on my computer, using Flickr as a "off location" photo storage. I don't have to be tied into a Google Plus account, which for me is a plus, no pun intended.

As I take more and more photos I'll add them to Flickr but some of them may not deal with RVs, Hounds or Retirement Living. They will still be sorted by subject and put in their own albums. I am only a few days into this new venture but have over 600 photos titled, described and edited so the public can see them.

Once again, there will be some duplication here on the blog but many more photos on Flickr. Some of the recent photos on the Flickr photostream will be posted to the blog, but not all of them.

If interested, click the link on the sidebar.

New Day & New Smells

It's another beautiful day in the "tropics" of southern Indiana ... Hard to believe it's just a few days from October. 

Sadie is going over her schedule mentally in her head for today ... no need for one of those stupid iPads ... she has her whole itinerary for the day between those ears.

The life of a hound is hard but someone's got to do it ... when do we eat??

Winston on the other hand may look slow and his eyes are always bloodshot but his nose is always working and something has touched off his sensors ... not sure what he smelled ... I didn't smell anything.

Heidi had the "Do Not Disturb" sign on her door ... no photos today

A Weekend of Computer Play

I turned out spending more time than I had planned on the computer this weekend but it was all at night just as I said I would do last week. I want to spend my computer time after 6pm and be able to enjoy the days outside since the weather is so nice. So I did that but I got more than I bargained for Friday night.

I was up until 4:00am Saturday morning all because of a new external hard drive I bought for continuing my backups. 

Luckily I like that kind of stuff. I like working on computer software that has problems, reading online on how to get it to work if needed and then seeing it eventually work ... so the stories below may sound very frustrating but I enjoy the process of figuring everything out.

Four years ago when I bought my iMac I bought a external hard drive for backing up all my files, the same size as the hard drive. Currently my computer hard drive is barely even filled. The way Apple's "Time Machine" works when backing up, it keeps adding backups with changes as it should but space wise, my external hard drive is full. It will keep backing up and will let you know that for it to complete the backup it will delete the oldest file, which is this case is in 2011. The Time Machine works well as I have gone back into the files and pulled out pictures or older files that I have deleted and wanted back.

So last week when buying the camera, I bought a new external hard drive twice the size of my hard drive as recommended. I thought it would be simple just to move all the backup from my older drive to the new one and then reformat the old drive and use it for backing up something else (system files). I searched on Google to confirm the transfer process and it looked simple, should be no issues.

Due to the size of the file, it took forever to start the transfer of files and eventually stopped although not completed. I started reading about the process again in case I missed something. I found out by reading online that what I was wanting to do should work but a lot of people had problems doing it with the hard drive I had. I found it hard to believe there would be any problems because when you buy the drive it was already formatted for your type of computer, Windows or Mac.

Long story short ... I was up until 4am Friday night / Saturday morning, having fun trying to configure the drive based on what I was reading. The problem was after I got it to work, it took from Saturday morning until earlier this afternoon (Sunday) to complete the transfer.

But it didn't complete the transfer ... after almost a day and a half of non-stop transferring ... it had a problem with a file on the new external drive!!!  I remained calm though and decided I would try Plan B, after almost two days after I started. During the dog walk on Sunday, I decided that I would do one more update on the older drive, take it off Time Machine as the backup drive and disconnect it from the computer with a note to myself that drive has backup files from March 2011 until today.

So far I am into 44.70Gb of backed up files on the new external drive without any problems. IF ... IF it does not finish the job without error, I will return it Monday and buy an external drive with a different brand name. WD does have known issues with Mac computers from what people say on the forums, yet like all things, some people have zero problems with that match up. The new drive is WD My Passport for Mac. No formatting required.

I found out in the early hours of Monday morning, there is a different way to transfer the backup from the old external drive to the new drive. I was on that screen the other night in Disc Utilities, but was hesitant in clicking the "erase" button like I should have. So later tonight I will try that process. I also found out since the time I bought the computer in 2011, updates to the OS has changed what the Time Machine backs up and with the current Maverick OS, it does back up the system files and a lot more.

I am not sure I even need a new drive, if I don't mind having older files deleted on the backup disc from 3 years ago.

Besides seeing that my kitchen counter top in the photo above is the original "vintage" 1975 model, there is an iPad Mini sitting next to the hard drive along with an external CD/DVD drive. A few months back my CD/DVD drive on the iMac started spitting the discs back out once I slid them into the machine. I was in the process of downsizing my music and movies to use while traveling. Once again I did a lot of reading about what the potential problems could be, some do some don't have problems. I personally think it had something to do with the last OS update to Maverick. The optical drive worked on the previous OS, so that is just my guess.

The external CD/DVD drive is part of my "downsizing" ... I am putting a lot, not all of my music on the computer along with some favorite movies that I can take with me when traveling instead of DVDs and a player to use. I also like playing music on my computer while I am on it rather than the stereo in the other room. That drive has worked perfect so far and downloads 4x-5x faster, so transferring a CD does not take long at all.

I bought the first iPad when they first came out and actually used it more than the laptop I had at the time. I also thought I could use it at work for all the meetings I attended plus replace the notebook I would keep during the work day. I didn't think there would be a problem .. the first generation iPad did not have a camera, no way to connect an external drive to download anything or upload from my government computer. There was no way to break the restrictions of using or being around a government computer.

About the second day I had it at work, the department IT guy went ballistic when he saw it on my desk and that it was even in the building. Whereas just two weeks prior I was in a meeting in the corporate office that included high ranking military personnel and the iPad was the machine used to present the meeting.

So it wasn't that big of a deal, I had bought it for home use more than work anyway and I thought for what I did I could use it and sell my home laptop, which I did later on.

Since my iPad is the first generation, Apple quit including that model in their system updates recently ... good business sense ... forces me to buy a new one if I want to take advantage of their latest OS where the iPad, iMac and iPhone will all be synchronized easier and plus all the added features like all three devices using documents and spreadsheets.

I found over the years the 9.5" iPad was too big for reading a book, meaning it was not something you could hold with one hand for long periods of time. You couldn't do that with even the newer lighter Air's or iPad's but I found I could do that easy with the new "Mini" version. I like the mini version and it's still a great replacement for what I used my laptop for which mostly turned into internet browsing, email, photography, and reading electronic books. With the new upgrades I'll be able to synchronize documents from my iMac to the other two devices.

The thing is I spent all my time looking at the one with a retina display and thought that was what I was buying. I wasn't paying attention at the cash register to notice the difference in price and really didn't notice the difference on the box. When I got home and opened the box I realized the sales rep pulled out a iPad Mini with the regular screen which is nice but that retina display is unbelievable. I have used the Mini this weekend but I know that if I don't take it back and exchange it, it will continue to bug me.

I bought some Rockfish camera lens filters at Best Buy today on the clearance shelf. While there I took another look at the iPad Air, a larger screen to work with spreadsheets and a laptop replacement when traveling. I decided to go with the Mini and the Retina display. Of course that not only has a sharper screen but also a faster processor. After a few hours of working with it, the exchange was worth it. I can tell a difference in speed and picture quality, whereas these past few days i wasn't sure the difference would be noticeable.

The next big fiasco this weekend was photograph programs.

I downloaded the disc that came with my camera ... Nikon ViewNX2 ... it's great for photo editing and I think is better than iPhoto that I have been using for the past three years on this blog. I am still in the process of learning how that works, along with how my camera works and how to do things with it besides just taking a picture. I want to get to the manual mode of photography as soon as possible.

But that wasn't the fiasco.

I decided I wanted to backup all of my photos in a 3rd party program like Picasa or Flickr. I had read about Dropbox, iCloud, and some others but I basically decided it was down between Picasa and Flickr as the best programs to use. The fiasco started as soon as Picasa was installed on my computer. It started downloading EVERY photo that had ever been on my computer. For me the problem was in the past I had over 50,000 images of items I sold or loaded on my websites to sell, provided to me from my suppliers. When I stopped that business, I deleted all of those photographs and I thought they were gone.

When I moved to a new computer in 2010, all of those photos were transferred to my new computer and then deleted from their folder and from the iPhoto library ... but Picasa must have started pulling images from my 3 years of backed up files because the photos I was seeing during the upload I had not seen in years and thought they were deleted. I am not sure where Picasa was getting those photos.

I immediately stopped the upload to Picasa and un-installed Picasa from my computer. I went to Google and searched what might be the problem. I posted comments on my blog hoping for some answers. I emailed Al who is a power user of Picasa. During my online reading I was able to find my Picasa account that had been set up automatically when I set up a Google Plus account last summer. Of course I knew that Blogger keeps all the photos uploaded into the blog in Picasa Web Albums. A lot of reading and trying things. I was seeing too many people were complaining about privacy issues after Google Plus was added to the Picasa program. So I was hesitant in using it. The more I read it seemed as if I would need a Google Plus account eventually.

I noticed once I brought up that Picasa file, on the right side was my profile name and when I clicked it, it would move to a screen to upgrade my profile to Google Plus....so my Picasa was still linked to my old Google Plus account I deactivated last summer. I think think about letting it upload photograph it wanted and then I would spend many many hours deleting photos I did not want or had deleted in the past...such has the 50,000+ sports images of the memorabilia of my past online business. That would take way too much time and I didn't want to do that. I wanted to have control on what I uploaded and could do that with a bulk upload.

I went to check out Flickr and I liked that program. I spent a short time loading around 500 photos of my dogs and VWs, not all of them on the dogs but a lot of them. I'll work with those 500 photos to find out how Flickr works and after I find out how it works I plan on putting all of my photos on my computer into Flickr for a 3rd party storage. They give you 1(Tb) terebyte of free storage. 

Where I almost made a huge mistake was earlier this afternoon when I had bright idea to go through my iPhoto Library and delete any duplicated photos and increase some of my hard drive space plus clean up my photo files before I would upload them to Flickr.

Also the new Apple OS 8.0 update will change iPhoto drastically, moving folders around and naming them something different. I have not read all about it yet but what I saw when glancing at the article there will be some major changes to the photo program. To much info to discuss here.

Well I spent a lot of time going through the Library and deleting duplicates, luckily I didn't not empty the trash and could restore them if I needed to. Well I needed to. The first folder I looked at was Sadie's and 2/3 of her photos were not in the folder. I checked some VWs folder and they had the same result. So I am still in the process of going through photographs and adding them back to their correct folders. When I saw photos missing, I restored all the images I deleted and added them back into the iPhoto Library. They are all there, around ~2,100 of them.

So it was a relaxing weekend but also a lot of unexpected time spent on computer with things that should have been very simple.

I am posting this while I take a break from working with Flickr. I like that program so far.
 

Heidi Comes Out of Hiding

For the first time I took the new Nikon with me on the dog walk. For the first half of the trip, Sadie was off leash so I could use the camera on the way. Still I remembered the last time she was off leash years ago, in the middle of a December snow where she saw a deer and took off. The deer jumped the short worn down fence and so did Sadie. She returned to the door step 5 hours later and didn't even wake up the rest of the night.

Due to that experience I always have her on the 25' retractable leash for these walks, but today I thought I would take a chance. No problems, but I don't think I'll do it again because I can't take that chance with her and there are signs of deer everywhere.

So I took a few photos during the walk and then afterwards I had Heidi come back out to the yard to get some updated pictures of her. She didn't want to come back out into the yard at first and really wasn't thrilled about getting her picture taken but she finally faced the camera. She was extremely happy when I said "ok" as she sprinted for the door and wagging her tail until I let her in. Food was not the motivating factor since she had been fed before the walk.

Let me know if these pictures show up to big when you open the blog. I'd prefer to fill up the available space on the sides of the pictures but if it causes problems from your point of viewing the blog, let me know and I'll decrease them down one size.

Sadie is ready to go outside anytime the word is mentioned and will walk in any kind of weather EXCEPT rain. She loves this field. For some reason she will face this camera instead of the iPhone. I mentioned that before but I don't know the reason why. The photos are in sequence of the walk.

 

Winston completed the walk without a leash but has to have a collar put on him so he feels that is part of the walk. There are times if I don't put the collar on him, he will sit in the backyard watching us walk away ... he will not walk any further unless I put a collar on him. So really it's just for looks and is used on occasion where a leash is needed. Otherwise he and Heidi do not wear collars anytime unless they are walking or in the car.

I touched up these photos using my basic iPhoto program that I have been using the past 3 years on this blog. Friday night I did download the Nikon ViewNX2 to use not only to edit the photos but also use that program possibly as storage. The few photos I worked on in that program was much more detailed than the iPhoto so I will eventually start using that on the blog photos.

I am happy with the new camera and the quality of photographs. It's more than just quality, it's what can be done in the future after I get more experience. Also the different lenses have already made a difference in other photos I have taken. That might turn into a different blog for just photography, not sure.

As requested, I will try to get more photos of the hounds on the blog but their daily routines are about the same so the differences in photos could be slight.