Some Hounds You've Not Met - Rambling Also

As I decided to do a little mid-day rambling, I also decided to defrost my refrigerator. It's old but I am sure it was suppose to do that by itself.

Frost built up in the freeze and strange noises told me otherwise.

It's the month for strange noises I guess, from the FJ to the fridge? I remember doing this in the past. The worst case is shopping for a new replacement no earlier than Monday.

I thought it was strange last night when I went to download my photos from the computer into Google Photos and Flickr, that I use for backup and save hard drive space on my iPhone and iPad. That is working out very well. The thing was last night I had only 3 photos downloaded for the day ... I guess I've had a lot on my mind since this morning I found out I forgot to download the camera card from the photos I took during the first of two hound walks.

As you can see I was getting ready to mow just as many leaves as I did grass Thursday afternoon. I'll still have to rake them and there is a lot of leaves still on the trees so all of this is going to move into November, while last year I think we were cleaned up for the year by the end of October.

With temperatures in the mid 40's this morning, both hounds were happy to get back inside after they dumped their tanks. I was to and those cooler temps made the coffee taste even better.

You can see the mower was set in the mulching mode instead of blowing grass and cut leaves out the side. They will be easier to rake also. But following my retirement policy of doing only one major thing a day IF I do anything ... defrosting the fridge is the main attraction today. Leaves? ... maybe Monday.

Around 11:30am, Sadie came into the computer room to let me know it was time for a walk. Stella was asleep but jumped up immediately when she heard the word 'walk'. Heidi has initiated her 'winter routine' and hides out on her camping sleeping bag. Even though it was washed last year, she probably smells some of Winston in there.

Stella started off going on her own walk. I let her do whatever she wanted but like yesterday, this afternoon's walk she will probably wear the 25' retractable leash with me not taking the camera.

The change of camera setting to 'single point focus' is doing exactly what I wanted for my pictures. I'll get bored enough in a few weeks to go back and study taking pictures manually again, then try that for a while. My old friend that has had Nikon's since I met him at college told me he has never used a lens hood. While I sometimes wish I had gone into coaching like I wanted when I was in school, he wishes he had taken that photographer job with National Geographic in the early 1970's. I guess we are both at an age to second guess career choices.

Leaving Stella behind on her own pace, I was walking the path with Sadie up ahead ... when I felt a nudge by a nose ... that is Stella's way of telling me she wants something. She will try to poke me with her nose to get my attention. If she is trying to open a door or FJ window she will poke that door or window with her nose.

As I was going over some last minute checking of the blue FJ for cleanliness before I drove to make the trade, I noticed up by the handle above the driver's window, the felt had light brown smudges on it. It finally came to me that Stella must have had dirt on the end of her nose when she was poking around the window looking for a way out.

This morning when I glanced back at Stella she was headed to what I called the "deer highway" a few weeks ago. As I was about to start walking her direction thinking I was going to have to keep her from going down into that gully ... I yelled "hey" and she turned toward me. She made the walk that much easier.

Overall she is a very very good bloodhound but stubborn as hell. More stubborn than Sadie or Heidi. Winston use to have a stubborn streak but its part of the bloodhound and basset hound breed.

I guess this is about all the leaf color we are going to get this year. Still time to change and still a lot of leaves on the trees. The temps will be back into the 70's next week so that might be too warm for them.

Stella is heading back to meet me and Sadie on our path. She knows there is deer scat up toward the corner of the woods up ahead. Lately they have both been running up there and eating before I can get there. Pretty smart for bloodhounds.

By the time we were getting back close to the end of the walk, the field was still extremely wet and my Oboz waterproof hiking shoes were working out great. I should have started wearing them a long time ago.

It looks like I have a lot of leaves that I will be raking in the future.

Well I think this "blog by invitation" is finally being worked out. I've had a lot of response to it, people seem to be okay with the process. I am pretty sure I have this right and if I don't, those of you that have Blogger blogs can correct me.

By me approving your invite confirmation -- all that does is give you access to the blog. I don't believe just because I have approved you with my invitation, that you will get automatic notices that I have posted something new on the blog. It just gives you access.

• I have been told that if my blog is bookmarked/favorite and you have approval, then the blog will open as it did before without any additional login by you.

Some of you that had subscribed by email or the RSS feed, have requested to be notified by email when I post something new. That is possible but Blogger tells me I can only add a total of TEN people for that Blogger automatic email feature.

• When I added my email address to test that notification, I received an email as soon as the post went public.
• Whereas the subscription by email or RSS feed took 6-24 hours after the post had been published to receive that notification.
• If you receive and read the blog from that email blogger sends, you have to go to the blog website to make comments, otherwise if you reply to that email you comments go only to me in my inbox, not on the blog.
• For some reason their first invitation did not work but the second one did without issues.
• For those that have the email sent to them, you still have to reply to the invitation that was sent to you, for me to approve so you can get into the blog. If reading the post by email is enough for you, that is fine.

Heidi's skin has stabilized over the past 12-18 months ... its still messed up, it comes and goes as far as irritation. Different dog food, with grain or without makes no difference. In fact, looking at dated photos, then looking at her Excel log to see what kind of dog food she was eating during those times ... dog food doesn't make a difference overall.

Bloodhounds are more attention driven than basset hounds. Stella wants more attention than Sadie and Sadie wants more attention than Stella. They both go to sleep though when I give all the attention to Heidi.

I took the Z4 out yesterday afternoon after mowing the yard. Top was up, windows closed and the heater about blasted me out of the car because it was so hot. It will be driven during the winter, but never on roads that are wet, or snowy. I do remember years ago in my other Z4, I put my down coat on, put the top down and drove my 42 mile loop on Christmas Day ... it got a little cold but the sunshine was bright.

People seem to like the color of the new FJ .. it's growing on me. The stock look instead of the radical blacked out look is also growing on me but at times it looks "too normal". It still has that new car smell that only dealerships have when they detail a used car. Stella continues to probe with her nose trying to get the back door to open. She knows there is a way for her to get inside.

I found out while looking at some older photos in the program that Apple furnishes with their computers, called "Photos" that a lot of my transferred photos from their old "iPhotos" had lost their original file. Typical. So I did a little reading online and found a iPhoto Library Manager in my Apps folder which fixed all the issues with the missing files.

While I was looking through iPhoto I came up with some photos of past bassets and bloodhounds I've had over the years. I have more hounds not seen here but I have to scan their old print photos first. Here are a few of them.

This is Arthur, who was Winston's Uncle. They had the same mother different fathers. It was interesting that Winston look almost identical to Arthurs father instead of his own. They were both two tone, whereas Winston's dad was almost all black.

No, that isn't Sadie ... it's Bertha, the bloodhound I had before Sadie.

Arthur looked different than Winston of coarse since his father was different but they had identical personalities. Ironically it took a sad accident where Arthur died for me to even think of buying Winston that following summer in 2004.

This is Kila. She was a Mini Dachshund that was my niece's. At times we would be her pet sitter. She loved the larger hounds and did not hesitate eating their kibble out of their food bowls when I poured it out. She thought their food was her food ... no questions asked. She basically 'took over' the house when she stayed her.

It looks like my couch has aged more than I have the past 13 years. Yes, that's a younger Winston laying next to his good friend Kila. They would sleep together the times she stayed here.

A whopping 5.5 pounds of brutal strength. She would have to be muzzled to have her nails cut and there was never a vet she didn't like to bite.

I picked up Max from the same basset hound rescue service I bought Heidi ... only about 14 years before Heidi. He weighed 84 pounds at the time and barely could get into my Miata when we made our 4 hour drive back home.

By getting him off his daily cottage cheese to to a better dog kibble, then getting him on our walks into the field ... he lost 21 pounds over time. He was just a big big basset to get much lower.

This first photo is after he LOST the weight.

Same field different hounds. At that time I had Max, Maggie and the bloodhound was Bertha.

Even though he spent his last 5 years blind ... she still liked to run on his daily walk as long as I had the leash on him.

That's Winston as a puppy laying next to Max while Bertha is letting me know its better inside where the air conditioning is on. Sadie is a lot like Bertha's personality.

Well enough rambling ... I need to go check out the fridge and see how that dreaded task is coming along.

Another nice day here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

The Shocking Unexpected Trading Of The FJ

When I bought this FJ in May 2014 I had plans of keeping it forever. Even as late as last Friday I had plans to keep it. Things had been changing though and by late Friday night I was searching on cars.com for 2007 FJ's for sale within 100 miles from my house .. I also went to a site called cargurus.com to see if their analysis was a good deal and find out how long they had been on the market for sale. 

The story actually starts two days after I bought the FJ in 2014, when those 4 warning lights on the dash blinked on all at once. I called the small family owned car dealer I bought it from, someone I did not know, and asked about the lights and any info they could give me. They said they had never seen them. Sure they hadn't ...

I went to a FJ forum, and found it was a common problem with FJ's that had a lot of miles. There were various ideas, solutions, some worked some didn't. I started by unhooking the battery so the ESC could reboot itself and then find out if the lights came back on. They did but it took over 5 short trips for them to do that.

Possibilities were:

• O2 sensors were bad
• Gas cap was not tightened properly or o-ring wore out
• Gasoline may have ethanol in the mix
• Catalytic converters were bad

I went to the local Toyota Dealer to talk to their service manager and found out most likely it was the O2 sensors, they could be cleaned and that could be a fix. They tested the car and it coded out as O2 sensors NOT catalytic converters. He told me I could drive the car with those dash lights on but eventually I'd have to replace the converters.

Move forward to the end of May 2015 a year later. After the lights had stayed off once the O2 sensors were clean, about a week before we were headed on the trip to Utah, all four of them came back on. The guys on the forum had said all of those lights were set to come on at once, as a packaged deal.

Flying down I-70 going through Kansas in June 2015 with Heidi riding shotgun, with Winston and Sadie in back ... at about 80mph, those lights clicked off ... never saw them again until a few weeks after we returned home in Indiana.

Was it change in altitude or the difference in octane ... 91/93 here in Indiana but 93/96 out west. So any thought of catalytic converters went out the window of my mind. At this time I did not know the cost of replacing them.

So from June 2015 until December 2015, those lights went on and off intermittently. At no time did the performance of the engine decrease ... ran like new. It was quiet, powerful and with the hood open and then engine idling ... nothing sounded strange.

Sometime last winter in the snow .. January or February the lights come back on to stay on all the time. I am sitting at Dairy Queen drive through, close to the pickup window but right next to the wall of their building, window rolled down ... when I hear some sort of metal vibration or small rattling. I figured I had a loose nut or bolt on one of the skid plates, thinking I would fix it when the days got warmer and I could crawl under the FJ to look around.

It was the same "rattling bb's sound" I heard last week when I am under the FJ trying to find that sound ... catalytic converter ... off to Toyota we went.

By August 2016 I "thought" I was hearing a whine from somewhere, transmission, wheel bearing, u-joints ... what? That is like me trying to figure out if those blog photos are blurry or not or is it just my eyes. Since I am half crazy ... or accused by some people to be 100% nuts ... was I hearing things?

I was almost positive what I was hearing was getting louder by the week although I really don't drive that many miles per month now while retired. Even when I drove to Indy to trade it on Tuesday the sounds had gotten louder and I was concerned a little bit ... if I would make it 70 miles with a breakdown.

Last Friday, the 21st I had gone over to see my friend and stopped by Toyota Dealer to have them plug into my car to see what codes were popping up. A SHOCK!!!!

Catalytic converters were bad PLUS a new one ... something about 'brake lights circuit'. I had brake lights and tail lights so that one was confusing. It was at this time on the drive home for 20+ miles I thought about making a possible trade.

I wasn't going to take ~$5,000 out of my account to fix a car, any car with 146,252 miles on it. I might be wrong on that idea but I won't do it. So I started looking for a possible trade around midnight Friday night and as you know once I start researching it's a non-stop venture and things start moving pretty fast.

One reason I wanted to buy from a Toyota Dealer this time was because I know the car would have been gone over with a fine tooth comb to fix any issues it had before it was put on the lot for sale. Toyota actually pays their mechanics extra for every problem they find and fix during their inspection before putting the used vehicle up for sale.

In the mean time, Saturday morning I called the Toyota Dealership for a cost estimate for replacing the catalytic converters (2 each) and new O2 sensors. Plus I checked with a business I have used in the past that works on all foreign made cars along with the garage in town that works on all kinds of cars and trucks.

Cost estimates were from $4,500 to $5000 with the Toyota Dealership being the cheapest. I did an estimate to compare what it would cost to fix to trading for a new car and financing it. Since I had bought the Z4 in May with cash, I was going to have to finance the FJ if I made a trade. My analysis showed it was very close to the same amount of money if I were to make the trade compared to fixing the problem. I compared total cost left for paying it off and looking at estimated new loan to see it was going to cost me close to $5,000 either way.

One key point in the decision ... I could trade for the same FJ model except for the off road package that included rock rails, extra skid plates and the TRD performance exhaust ... but ... I would have an FJ with only 119,000 miles instead of 146,252. That's a lot of miles to some but with regular preventive maintenance Toyota's are known to go for 200-300,000 miles ... I'm afraid I will not live that long to test that amount of miles out at my current annual mileage rate.

You may be asking why not buy a newer model, less miles???? I like the style of the older models more than the newer ones. I also haven't found a color I like on the newer models. Toyota stopped making them in 2014 but currently there are rumors they are going back into production.

I had found one with a stock look instead of the radical "blacked out" look of the Voodoo Blue one I had. Same size of tires although it looked lower to the ground compared to the one I had. I actually liked what Toyota calls "black cherry" compared to the "voodoo blue".

The new one had a lot less rust on the undercarriage than the one I had. There was one minor body mark that I can get fixed, but it was also cleaner on the inside than mine from the previous owner, not the hounds. I also need to buff up the roof rack.

I also estimated that if I wanted to go back to a "blacked out FJ" I could do that to the new one for a lot less than spending $5,000 cash to fix the one I had. I didn't see keeping the old one just because of the way it looked.

So after talking to the sales person on Saturday I planned to go up on Tuesday to test drive and look at theirs while they looked at mine. (I also knew if I could go to Indianapolis for most of the day, that would give any strangers that were blog readers enough time to stop by the house and check on the hounds for me while I was gone. j/k)  I sent them all the photos of mine including the dash warning lights that were on ... plus told them the story of O2 sensors and the recent findings of bad catalytic converters. They offered a NADA trade in value sight unseen ... we both agreeing that it could be adjusted after they confirmed exactly what need to be repaired.

I thought at that time they would decrease the trade in value for the cost of catalytic converter replacement of $4,500. Would I still make the trade if that turned out to be true? I decided after more analysis that yes, I would make the trade even if they reduced their trade in value offer. If they had to fix the problem before they could sell it ... that would only be the fair thing to do.

I found out they were going to decrease the offer by "their cost" to replace them for $3,000 not $4,500-$5,000 retail.

While looking the engine over I could see, as these pictures show ... Toyota had replaced the oil cap, new hoses, new switches, along with some new clamps. I knew from the Carfax I would be the 3rd owner but the previous owner had only driven the FJ around 8,000 miles per year for the last 4-1/2.

Both previous owners had it serviced as scheduled at Toyota Dealerships. No accidents or major repairs were reported. On the test drive on I-70 it ran quiet with not a sound from the transmission, transaxle, wheels etc. I still think and thought at the time mine might have had some future repairs in store based on those sounds I was hearing recently. The dealership also took my FJ out for a test drive on the freeway to check it out.

It has running boards instead of rock rails .. that also makes it look lower. Also both driver side and passenger side windows were not tinted like my other ... easy fix if I want to go back to that style.

It also doesn't have the second larger skid plate over the stock skid plate in front like my other did. I'm really not sure how much I would need that since I have no plans to be a 'rock climber' like you see out in Moab. If I changed my mind on that then I'll make the required changes.

Although it does not look like it the tires are the same size as the Bridgestone tires I had on the other one, the Yokohama's are the same size and TireRack has some good reviews for those tires. I will replace them with BF Goodrich AT once these wear out.

So that is the LONG story of what took place and a little bit about why the decision was made.

The hounds have not made their maiden voyage in the 'black cherry' FJ yet, although Stella has left some fresh drool on the rear corners as she was trying to see if there was a way she could open the back door and jump inside. She believes that there isn't a door that she cannot open and get in or get out. Dried bloodhound drool is hard to get off the surface of a car. LOL

There might have been some buyers remorse on the way home because I loved that blue FJ yet by the next morning all was good. By the time I was taking the trip to the lake yesterday I knew I had made the right decision ... it rain quietly ... no whines from anywhere!!

If you made it this far after reading all of that babbling ... you really are an "official blog reader" about the hounds.

Cooler temps today here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

The Invite Problem Update

First of all I can tell a difference in the first picture I take every day after I changed the settings to 'single point focus' on my camera.

As you see the field was "mowed" of soybeans and will most like see corn planted there next May.


I have found out some things for those unable to accept the invitation to join the blog. Of coarse those people cannot read this post, so I have sent them an email telling them the problem or what I am trying.

So this post is really used as a test because there are two way for me to set this up privately ... add your email address to a box named "add readers" ... some of you have been able to accept the invite with no issues. The other way Blogger lets me send an email to those I add every time I have a new blog post.

So this post is also a test for those on that email list ... I am on that list, using a different email address than the one tied to my blog. When I added my other email address to the "add readers" block, I got the email immediately, clicked the link and it processed without any problems.

I searched on Google with the exact error message some have sent me, not being able to get back in ... it has been a common problem with Blogger as far back as 2010 and nothing since February 2015. Of coarse on the Google Forum or Blogger help ... I have yet to find a solution from them although I am still searching.

It was interesting that as the blog owner not that I received an email tell me that I had accepted my own invite, just like I did for those that have accepted ... but what it said:

"The purpose of this message is to inform you that your invitation to my email address was accepted, but using a different email address. If your invitation has been accepted by someone you do not know, you can remove them by visiting the “Settings > Basic > Permissions” section of the Blogger dashboard.

Happy blogging,

The Blogger Team

Well that is NOT true Blogger or Google, I accepted using the same email address that the invitation was sent to.

Also if I sent an invite to someone that did not have an gmail address, those people were able to sign up using a 'google account' but I cannot figure out how someone can have a google account without having a gmail address.

It looks like rain ... but intellicast shows me it's just a day of being very heavy overcast, so I can mow the leaves and yard later this afternoon after it is good and dry.

The picture below is a 'teaser' of my post tonight with a very very very long story to back up the decision. It was an "accounting" based decision.

Well since Sadie has been tossing me various bones at me, begging me to play fetch inside ... I'll put on the waterproof hiking boots and get our first walk of the day in before their lunch. When you are up until 4am and can't get to sleep even after that, the day starts kind of late.

Why does Blogger have to be such a pain here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.