Seven Hours Flew By With Little Accomplished

I don't have anything tonight but 6 more photos and only 5 of them are of the hounds. I didn't get started working on Wordpress until about 10am. It's is 7-1/2 hours later and really I don't have squat on that blog.

It's fun to do that type of work, setting up a site. At the same time it is frustrating. I will say though .... THE PHOTOS ARE SHARP - LOOK MUCH BETTER THERE THAN HERE!!

So is that a tease or not? Almost like the game of golf. You play a round of 18 holes, and even if you are a 32 handicap or a 7 handicap ... you are going to hit only 5-7 great shots that will keep your addiction to the game alive and you keep playing.

When I saw how sharp and clear those photos were that were uploaded when I was rebuilding the pages, 'My Hounds', 'Winston's Story' for example - same photos and look better - enough that you can tell a difference, I was surprised in the difference. That is just one of the things that keeps me from quitting all of the tweaking/building of the site.

The skies turned blue about 11am, the sun came out, only the bloodhounds went outside because evidently Heidi has canceled today. She was up to eat lunch at noon, after her first trip outside of the day at 6:03am, and she has been hibernating every since.

Sadie and Stella did their normal recon in the field after lunch. Dumped their tanks, looked for any deer scents and came back when I called them. When their tails are curled like that - their radar is locked in.

Later in the afternoon when I had to go outside to talk to myself, mumbling all the way ... they followed me outside of course but didn't get out of the backyard area. By the time they both came up for air, their noses were probably frozen but they didn't feel anything. I think they were only smelling under the snow and nothing was eaten since there was no residue hanging from their jaws.

They returned inside to sleep the rest of the afternoon.

They feel no pain - They're Bloodhounds!!

Take a look at my first post, the layout, the design and let me know if you like it better than this blog. I still have to add my blog roll links on the new blog. I can also change the theme (blogger calls it a template) but I cannot changes all the colors on that page to make it the same as this page. I would need upgrade my WP account to Premium. Take a look here.

A beautiful day here in the "tropics" of Southern Indiana.

To Move Or Not To Move??

Don't panic for you long time readers ... not moving from the house ... I may move my blog to Wordpress. Just like waffling on my decisions of the past 4 years of what kind of RV to buy, or a trailer, or should I travel, or should I sell my house and move west, or ... or ... or.

The list goes on and on ... written about right here on this blog. Just remember if you decide to go back and catch up reading my "rollercoaster" thinking, that "you have to be a little crazy to keep from going insane".

It all started with the 'little' issues Blogger gives us at times. Similar to my Nikon D3200, but I'll not go into that today. There are many bloggers that have used this platform a lot longer than I have (4y 3m) and probably have a 1,000 more photos than I have but Spotted Dog Ranch made a comment here a few days ago, saying that Google is now wanting to bill her for any more photos she adds to her blog.

I thought I saw somewhere that Blogger gave us unlimited storage on Picasa for photos uploaded to our blogs.

Add in the post I made yesterday morning about most people will have to have a google account to make comments, maybe read or follow the blog (I'm still confused on that) although I have my comments open to everyone, even anonymous with word verification to keep the spammers at bay. If I read it correctly everyone would need a google account. Feel free to correct me if I am not understanding their statement I posted yesterday.

Add in the times I have clicked on an older post, only to see all of my photos for that blog post are gone and nothing more than a big white screen where the photos should go. Takes a lot of time of going back and uploading old photos, as they are not always located "in this blog" file.

Still, even if the Blogger templates are a little barbaric in the land of blogs and websites today, I must say that I like my current blog template design, the colors I chose and the fonts. So it really is a tough decision to move my blog to Wordpress.

I have experience in setting up a host for my domain, loading this blog's backup files into FileZilla to upload into Wordpress. I never enjoyed it. Very time consuming, at times frustrating when either the site didn't show up, or an additional plug-in needed installed by me for it to work.

I don't want to be a website designer ... I just want to blog.

So after talking to my GoDaddy rep, where I bought my domain years ago, he verified what I thought the process would be if I would want to transfer my blog to Wordpress. Let's say I did not go outside in the dark, jump up and down in the snow .. screaming "I can't wait to do that!"

So I have two options. (1) Keep my blog here, there aren't that many issues I guess. (2) Use Wordpress's free version.

The only way I can move this blog and all it's photos and posts is to use the paid version of Wordpress so I can use the FTP to transfer files. I can leave this blog here, with a final post directing visitors to a new location on Wordpress's free version and start a new blog starting within the next few days. I would have the time to cut and past all my January 2016 posts, plus the photos into Wordpress if I chose to do that. That's just me ... I can't start a blog on January 12 when January 1 seems like a much nicer way to start a new blog.

That is similar of mowing just the backyard last summer and letting front yard go for a week or two. I couldn't go through with it.

Wordpress templates are plentiful and professional looking ... even the free ones. They look 'clean', the dashboard is very easy to work with, their photos load really fast and in fact may just look a little nicer in quality ... but with old eyes, who really knows if I am seeing that or not.

So I set up a free Wordpress account late yesterday afternoon. After two hours of working on a new blog design I didn't have a lot done. I still had not decided on what template to use and don't even know this morning. I did do two pages, the 'About' and 'My Hounds' pages. I could have everything set up in design and ready for my first real post by noon today ... I think.

I do like messing around with website design. I like changing my default browser on occasions. I mean what else is there to do while being snowed in besides playing fetch with Sadie (going on right now), reading books, surfing the 'net or taking naps. So I will probably get back into Wordpress after I publish this post and see what I can do. I can also find out if the move is worth all the time it will take.

In the meantime leave your thoughts about this move in the comment section and keep coming back here because this blog has not moved yet and maybe never will.

The hounds have been in their normal routines again this morning. Snow flying sideways as I type this. Of course Heidi went out early, like at 6:03 am, then to the living room chair until lunch ... pretty smart basset.

The bloodhounds have ran, sniffed the snow, played outside, played inside, Sadie played fetch with Stella tackling her while bring the bone back to me ... and they have slept, like now ... it's quiet.

Snowy, warm with just below 32° here in the "tropics" of Southern Indiana

The Hounds Enjoy Monday

Heidi knew as early as last night that it was cold outside. She headed to bed early and borrowed my Marmot sleeping bag, even with a warm room and the heat turned on. With the ballgames over, and I'm not being a big tv watcher, the evening ended pretty early. Sadie and Stella decided they were too comfortable to move from the living room and spent another night sleeping in the same spots they took hours earlier.

The daily routine is slowly stepping back to the one of the past two years. The hounds are still waking me up a little earlier than I like but that seemed to have started with the Daylight Savings time change in November. So they wake me up, they go outside quick for their first trip of the day. They always think breakfast is served when they come back inside, so they do not stay outside long.

At 6:00am or 6:30am, their breakfast is not served ... nor at 5:35am. What is different, recently Heidi is up before any of them, with a full body shake and enough flapping ear noise to wake me up. She has actually been going outside every morning with the other two hounds. That has not happened in months, if not years. She was a sleep until lunch type of basset hound.

We return for about an hour of sleep with breakfast being served around 7:30am. The thing that bothers me is not the hounds waking me up but when I glance out the window and see it is so cold that the storm windows are completely covered in frozen condensation. That means the temps are low teens if not single digits.

With bloodhounds temperature will not make a difference. They don't want to wear jackets, sweaters or shoes ... just nose to the ground or inside the snow and away they go. One thing I have to be really aware of though is Stella is starting to expand her traveling past a "house rule" boundary. One of those "give 'em an inch they take a mile" type of things.

Luckily the couple of times I have had to scream her name as I am running toward the suspected location - she will turn around and come sprinting towards me.

There wasn't much done this morning with the temperature at 9° our first trip outside and 13° at the 9:15am trip outside. Heidi never even opened her eyes when I asked if she wanted to go outside for the 2nd time of the day. She had moved to 'her' other spot, on the chair in the living room.

Sadie and Stella though charged outside for about 15 minutes of searching, sprinting and a little play. Once again my trusty Nikon D3200 failed when trying to focus to take photos of them playing. I cannot say that after a year and some months being a Nikon owner that I am a happy customer. I just realized that in my recent posts this past week I may have said D3100 instead of D3200. The D3200 is my correct model number.

I would go back and edit those posts but I have a fear that Blogger will move that old post to the most recent post after I click "update" ... that seems to be an issue lately. Is it time for me to seriously consider moving the blog to WordPress?

I started making some afternoon coffee with the temps hitting a high today of 24°. I found out I was down to my last cup of grounds so it was off to the store buy some, a 25 mile trip. Maybe I'll start buy coffee online and keep one bag of coffee ahead. Plus, stay warm.

There was still time for some afternoon jogging by Sadie and Stella. About all Heidi did for the afternoon was a quick trip behind the Yews to dump tanks and come back inside.

Sadie had been pretty nice to Stella since she arrived last August, they are great friends ... that is until Sadie has "her" container of The Greek Gods Greek Yogurt to lick out ... I don't think she is into sharing that.

Later on they still wanted to go out one last time for the day and double check that no one had been in their field while the snow flew. They would probably be able to stay outside all the time because they love it so much ... in the end they are always happy to come back inside where it's warm.

Yes, it does feel different without Winston around. He loved the snow and loved licking out the container that had the very last part of  yogurt, cottage cheese  or on a rare occasion ... pudding.

It's heading for the 40's here in a few days in the "tropics" of Southern Indiana .. all that snow will turn to mush and a really wet and soggy backyard / field.

Blogger Policy Change Effective Today

I don't know how I missed this announcement from Google Blogger, but it was on my blogger dashboard this morning. I was going to state the policy change in my own words but thought instead of just copy and pasting the notice. In a nutshell, for some readers it might change the way they follow my blog and other blogs.

Please read the statement below:

**********************************

In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs.

As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.

We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.

We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.

Posted by Michael Goddard, Software Engineer

**************************************

Feel free to email me if you have questions or need help making adjustments. I know I am a little confused by what they are saying. Basically all the big companies want control of their sites and traffic.

Sad.

First Snow Of This Winter

I see that Blogger is having issues again. I posted my last blog post on Saturday afternoon January 9. I see after I made an edit to Saturday's post this morning, Blogger changed the date of my Saturday's blog post to today January 10. I know it's nothing ... really ... but stuff like that drives me crazy.

Woke up in the middle of the night, but it wasn't Winston's whine I heard. It was a snow plow barreling down the highway with me hearing howling winds up here on the hill after that snow plow passed the house. So I was pretty sure the local weatherman was a few days off with his prediction the other day of snow showing up in the middle of this week. Even wunderground.com, my weather channel, predicted snow Wednesday.

So as I opened the door at 5:21am to let the hounds outside I saw my Mini Cooper S covered in wind blown snow. A few friends have suggested to me over the years living here, to convert my carport into a garage, it would prevent wind blown snow settling on my vehicles. I'm "old school". I like that the house still has the original but painted aluminum siding. I like that all the cabinets and counter tops, along with the stove that almost caught fire a few weeks ago ... are the original 1975 feature.

What has kept me from changing that to a garage is a different reason besides being the original design. It would block the view I have out the large window when I sit at my kitchen table either eating or being on my laptop.  I remember in 1979 my great aunt and I sat there drinking iced tea as I took a break in the summer sun while painting the overhangs. I never knew I would end up living in this house back in 1979. I am not from the area but my parents, grandparents were.

So Stella, Sadie and Heidi sprinted out into the snow at 5:25am. Of course Heidi stayed under the overhang and wasn't outside more than 30 seconds. The only reason Stella and Sadie came back to the door so fast to be let in after their trip outside ... Stella thinks it's time for breakfast.

It wasn't. Not at 5:30am. We all caught a few hours of sleep before we were up for the day. As you can tell, as it probably does with  your dogs, snow seems to give them more energy. Stella and Sadie played as soon as they stepped onto the snow covered driveway.

Just as fast as they started ... they stopped playing and sprinted a few laps around the field. I would have had more photos of that but my trusty Nikon D3100 that I told you about a few days ago ... was back to not working for a short time.

Just a side note:  At 10:43am Stella is whining beside my desk chair wanting lunch. Not going to happen. The photo below is what I call her Phase II of begging to be fed lunch. Phase I is the whining beside my desk chair and Phase III is when she is howling. Phase II .... she lays her ears back and looks as pretty as possible ... "look at me, I need to be fed".

 

She tried to enlist Sadie to help ... but Sadie doesn't care

 

 Heidi comes out in 15° weather - Believe me, she wasn't outside long  :)

Between the two NFL games, ALL the hounds had their nails cut. Only Sadie needed bribing but all of them got a peanut butter bone after they were finished.

Last time I looked the snow was flying horizontal outside ... so the hounds and I spent the rest of the afternoon hibernating inside.

That's it from the "tropics" from Southern Indiana for today.

My Blog Has A Special Reader

First of all I am going to include some photos of the hounds that were taken this morning. They have nothing to do with this blog post but there are a few good photos of them, if I do say so myself. It will break up the paragraphs of this LONG blog post.

Sadie Letting Me Know That Stella Is Outside Of Her Boundary

I am sure that most of us that have or had blogs, never realized where our words or photos on our personal blog would reach. We don't even think about how far away readers come from or the total number of readers that would return daily, hourly or with every updated new post. Many of you made a blog just to add photos of your travels for family and friends so they could see and keep updated with your travels. My blog started October 2011 about the RV lifestyle I had just found out about and I was interested in doing that. Over the years it changed direction and moved to more about my hounds instead of RVs.

A couple of years ago I even stopped and deleted the blog. I shut off the domain name. Due to blogging being an addiction to someone like me, I brought the blog back in time to recover the same domain name and Blogger could bring all of my blog back online. Sure they deleted a lot of my photos but it didn't take that long to reload the photos.

Anyway ... where was I? Stella just came over to my desk chair doing her Phase I of begging to have her lunch at 11:35am ... you would think she would at least wait until after 12 noon. She hasn't started howling yet, that is usually her last resort. (~smiling)

I think some of you might find this to be a very heartwarming story ... but also show bloggers, like yourself, you never know what your words or your photos may do for someone that is having a bad day, a bad month or even a bad year. In my case it is a mom that read my blog to her disabled son, who laughed at all the hound photos and for some reason became quite attached to Winston.

He is my blog's "very special reader". -- {I forgot to mention that all quotes were pre-approved by mom & son}

This past fall as I did less yard work outside, most of my blog posts and photos, if not all of them ... were taken in my backyard with the hounds roaming the field by day and sleeping on the couch at night ... I was becoming a little bored with it. I was sure if I was bored than the blog readers were becoming bored, with some of them not coming back.

So last month on December 11, 2015 ... I made a post telling everyone that I was making the blog a 'private' blog, where I could document the hound's lives for only me to see. More like a personal journal instead of a blog. Later that I afternoon I received an email from a reader that 'blew me away'.

"Winston, he stole my heart, they all did actually. My son, who is disabled, really enjoyed me reading your blog to him and he would look at your hounds photos and laugh out loud when he saw the action photos. He misses your hounds too."

I am not really sure why I went with my plans of shutting the blog down from public to private, but I did. I guess my feelings were too strong, that I no longer wanted to write about my boring life for all to read. I was being selfish and looking only at me and not the 'big picture'.

During that next week I received a lot of emails wondering if I would reconsider putting the blog back online so all could read. There were more people than I had ever imagined, telling me they loved coming to my blog just to see the photos of the hounds, and it didn't make any difference what they were doing.

So December 22, 2015 I sent out a few emails to some people, including this mom, saying that I was going to bring back my blog to a public status, where everyone could read it. This was also only 3 days after Winston had hurt his back. Not only did I want to document what was taking place to help him recover, I wanted to post photos I could use as a reference during the process.

I also felt after all the years of my blogging and all those readers that came here only to read about the hounds and see the photos, deserved to know what happened to Winston just 3 days prior and would want to follow along during his recovery process.

I felt more than any other reader, that one "very special reader" needed to know what happened to Winston.

It was a short time after I sent out the 'reopen' emails that I received this from the mom that read the blog to her disabled son.

"That is the BEST news I've heard. We sure do miss the hounds"

That's not all though ... these next few quotes will show fellow bloggers just how much influence your blog may have on someone's life.

After I broke the news on the blog that I had to put Winston down, I heard from the mom.

"My son stayed sad ALL DAY and then last night he asked me to print out pictures of the hounds. He had me write all their names on the pictures EXCEPT for Winston's name. He went to his room came back with the Best Buy advertising flyer, took my scissors off my desk and did his best to cut out the word "BEST" then took tape and used almost the roll to tape the word "Best" on the bottom of Winston's picture, THEN he had me write the name "Winston" after the word BEST. All the hounds are taped to the wall right now. Winston's is face level to him. He has leaned his face against Winston's pic a few times. I am so shocked how he took to Winston like this. Especially since he has not ever saw the dogs.  I am suspecting Winston may have reminded him of a stuffed puppy that he had when he was a young boy which had the big ears and close to the same color as Winston."

I cannot tell you how many times I read that paragraph over and over. As bad as I was feeling about losing Winston just the day before, this "special reader" was feeling even worse ... a million miles away.

Like any good idea ... I had one pop into my thick skull, just out of nowhere, it was just there. For this "special reader' I wanted to tell him all about Winston, the hound he fell in love with. I wanted to show him when Winston wasn't much bigger than a 24oz plastic Pepsi bottle. I wanted to show him that Winston use to have a huge bloodhound named Bertha, bigger than Sadie, who taught Winston everything because she thought Winston was her puppy. She even taught him to be a squatter instead of lifting his leg.

As I went through my photo file of Winston, picking out certain ones to load int the blog, I started feeling better. The more I wrote, I felt better, so I couldn't imagine but was hopeful it would make this "special reader" feel better also. By the time I was finished I had uploaded 121 photos for "Winston's Story", linked at the top of the blog page.

Sadie, Stella and Heidi had just returned from a short fast trip outside ... when I had this in my email inbox ---

"The boy is in love all over again. Ran out of ink printing out the Winston puppy pics. And, he has someone looking through a HUGE stove box full of his stuffed toys, he pointed to Winston's photo and they are looking outside in the shop through that box for his stuffed puppy. That baby pic did it. My son knows he has a puppy like Winston."

Then the next day ... something else ---

"We are still looking for his beagle stuff dog, it was black with brown and had big ears."

The latest news from the mom arrived this morning ... "We now have Winston wallpaper. It is not too bad for cost, under a $100 and will cover a wall space of 4 feet by 10 feet!"

Winston would have been happy to have this "special reader" as his friend. He would would have given him "that look", as he looked up at his new friend, wagged his tail back and forth ... waiting for his new friend to pet him ... or give him a treat to eat, or maybe some of his pizza crust.

I am watching college basketball and the NFL Playoffs this weekend with hopes I'll start feeling a little better. That prediction the weatherman made yesterday of 51° and sunny is a little off today with 47° and a lot of rain here in the "tropics" of Southern Indiana.