The Hounds Love The Interent

What do I mean the hounds love the internet??? Not really ... the hounds have no idea about the internet nor do they realize just how popular they are online and Facebook. All they care about is food and scents to track.

Their owner?  That's a different story. He doesn't love the internet but he is addicted to it. This morning proved my point once again.

There will be times when the weather is warmer and I have things to do outside where very little time will be spent in front of the computer screen. I have had days in the past where only 200Mb of data have been used in a 24 hour period. So maybe it's not really an addiction but more of a routine.

The hounds didn't mind what I was doing this morning while sitting in front of the computer monitor. Once we head outside they are always ready for another walk. Actually their excitement starts when they see me putting on my coat. Today the down parka was needed. I can't wait to get back to a t-shirt and cargo shorts.

Stella had to stop for a scratching session. This is happening too much lately and I wish I could find out the cause. No fleas or skin irritations have been found.

Once she stopped she was right up there with Sadie. They were really active in their walk this morning and stayed out ahead of me for most of the walk. A couple of times I wondered if they were going to take off on me.

Sadie was sure she had deer scent but her nose couldn't pick up deer near us. I wonder what she heard during the time she stood and stared motionless.

Stella was her happy-go-lucky self this morning. Nothing bothers her. I started to say that nothing excites her but then I remember the times she has chased deer baying all the way and the daily howls when breakfast / lunch are served.

Sadie locked into something strong and was moving so fast in all different directions I was barely able to catch her on camera. She was doing multiple figure eights.

Stella had other ideas, on her own path. I hope to see her ribs disappear in the coming weeks with the recent change in food and increased quantities.

At this point I was almost positive both hounds were going to take off on me. Sadie stopped for a short glance back at me and then took off again.

I yelled pretty loud to get them to stop. Once again they looked in the direction they wanted to go and then back at me. Both of them decided to meet me at the final turn toward home.

Sadie still had the whole field to work as we walked home. She was moving nonstop so the scents must have been strong this morning. The weather was crisp this morning. Although the sun was bright, you could not feel any warmth from it.

When Stella is looking this way, it's not so much what she sees but what she smells and hears.

She finally decided it was time to go home disappointed and there would be no deer chasing today, at least not this morning.

Sadie on the other hand was going to track stuff all the way to the house. Neither one stopped to eat anything again this morning. That is a nice change to the daily walks.

It's cold today, mid 30's but as you see it's beautiful again here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Back to my internet discussion ... my plan today was to spend all day away from any electronics. No computer, no iphone, and no tv.

After the first 15 minutes or while making my morning coffee I thought to myself ... why?? What's the point?

The fact is I will do other things on the computer today while NOT connected to the internet. At the same time I have some questions today that I know a quick search on the internet will give me not only answers but a long list of sites where I can read more information.

The thought of 'taking the day off' from the internet might be from the book I am currently reading called The End of Absence by Michael Harris. I have not read that far into the book but it discusses the changing world of being constantly connected online and how to reclaim what we are losing or have lost.

I had another idea this morning of moving my blog to Wordpress. That did not work out well the last time I tried to move 6 years of posts. They have a different platform than Blogger, different coding. It is almost impossible to move to their .com site yet if I were to buy a domain and use their .org side of the house it's pretty easy to move everything. Yet it does work if you transfer a Wordpress blog to Blogger.

Just like everything else, I like parts of each blogging service and I dislike certain parts of each blogging service. So unless I get really bored today and decide not to read books I might give it another try and see what happens.

The hounds hope to get a 2nd walk in today. We only did one yesterday but with the sunshine out and the ground a little more solid instead of muddy ... chances are good for another walk later this afternoon. The late afternoon will bring warmer temps.

The sun is bright right now in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

No Problems With Last Night's Storms

The storms did not arrive until late last night, almost 11pm. I pulled up the Intellicast radar site so I could see what was headed our way, if anything.

I also follow U.S. Tornadoes on Facebook and they have updated radar from the National Weather Service. When they used the term "devastating velocity" and the radar shows the tornado rotations were 70 miles away heading our direction, it's not good.

I will say we were lucky and missed everything. There were a long string of storms and at one time they said that over 20 tornadoes had been moving together over 155 miles through 3 states. Various times it looked like those cells of intense rotation were headed our direction when they were 70-90 miles away.

Yet, every time they got within our range of 20 miles, they would blow by the north or south of us. Finally past midnight I decided I was going to call it a day and decided if something bad was about to happen, Stella was sure to let me know. I slept and never heard anything the rest of the night, although we did wake up to a thunder and lightning storm really early this morning.

I was almost sure the field was going to be too wet to make any hound walks today. The picture above is right on the path just starting our walk. Usually if it is wet 'down here' it is even wetter and muddier at the back of the field even with slightly higher elevation.

Sadie and Stella decide we needed to find out for sure and before I could say no, they both were long gone heading along the edge of the woods. I could tell their noses were extra sensitive today and they were picking up a lot of activity.

Even Stella was out in front with her nose to the ground. All through the walk this morning neither hound stopped to eat anything ... they were seriously interested in tracking scents and it was obvious there was a lot of them to identify.

It was strange not to have to say "come on Stella" during this morning's walk. She kept up with Sadie most of the time and a lot of the time they were side by side with their noses to the ground.

I had to walk just a few inches off our worn path. If there wasn't standing water, the ground was saturated enough that water was coming up over the soles of my hiking boots. Each time the hounds trotted, there were water trails coming off the back of their paws.

I had not walked to far past the first turn when Stella and Sadie took off sprinting to the far right corner. They ran non-stop along the back edge of that corner, never checking out the deer area to the right that usually holds their interest.

Sadie was moving faster than my film speed but with her feet in the air and her ears flopping you can tell just how fast she was going. The scents must have been strong this morning.

This is just past that corner that goes to the far right part of the field. It's pretty rare that you see standing water in this area. I can only assume it rained through most of the night.

Sadie was serious today ... no time to play around, too much stuff to investigate. As usual she was a very happy bloodhound.

It's warm today and windy but nothing like yesterday. By looking at the sky you can see the clouds are moving at a very fast speed, all from the SW.

I was beginning to wonder if the hounds were going to stop and make the final turn home. Stella thought about heading into the 'no fly zone' but she stopped and looked in that direction, then at me, then back in the direction she would like to go.

She finally decided on her own to head home with me and Sadie.

These are the skies looking southwest. We don't have any bad weather in today's forecast, just a lot of wind. With the sunshine breaking through the clouds at times it shouldn't take long for the field to dry out.

Yesterday I decided to make a new blog on Wordpress. I found the same free template I had used before and it didn't take too long to upload some pictures and write a few sentences. The link is on the left sidebar of this blog under the blogs I follow.

About every year before my Exede internet service and Directv service renews, I call around to different companies to see if they now have service in my area. With all of these good deals you hear about with unlimited data or prices locked in for two years without an increase, you have to see if there is something better.

Talking with Exede yesterday I found out they are just like Directv ... you have to threaten to leave and move to a different provider when they tell you there is not any discounts available for long term customers that pay on time. This is after they have been giving you a discount for the past 12 months.

It is amazing how fast they give you that $10 - $15 off per month for the next 12-24 months when you mention to them you are going to look around at other companies and will even pay the fee for breaking a contract early. They call that "a retention discount".

Still, I did find out that Frontier Internet does have service in my small town. They can't verify online in their program if I can have that service here at the house. When she said she could give me 45Gb of data a month for $60 including $9.99 per month for the modem I told her I'd accept her offer to have a technician come out to my house to check to make sure if I could get their service.

I now pay Exede Satellite Internet $80 per month for 15Gb of data. That 45Gb sounds better than 15Gb as well as $60 compared to $80. Here is the difference ... Frontier says they can give me download speed "close to 6Mbps" while Exede tells me their download speed is 15Mbps. I do a speed test at SpeedTest.net and it is always around 10-12Mbps or twice as fast as Frontier's top speed.

Is the extra speed worth it?

I almost forgot to write about Stella. She did not even react in any way when the winds picked up last night nor the lightning and thunder that woke us up this morning. She slept through everything so evidently the fear she had of storms when I got her in August 2015 is gone. Storms have never bothered Heidi or Sadie. She has also continued her streak of no damages when I am gone, today was grocery shopping day and nothing was damaged when I returned home.

I don't have any random thoughts today so I guess that idea of ending my posts every day with a bazaar thought may not work.

The windows are open today in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Live Writer Update and Storm Preparation

It must be the weather, I feel like writing blogs today and this is my 2nd post of the day.

My quest to find out all the information I could about Live Writer was short and to the point. I had forgot from my previous research that it is a Microsoft PC based program, not for Apple Macs.

I did look at alternatives to Live Writer for Macs, plus something called Open Live Writer, but even at the end in the FAQ section they admitted their program was not fully coded for use on any Mac products.

I ran into a blogger that had just moved to a Mac computer from a PC after "living on Live Writer" ... he listed an app that would work for Mac's but it was internet based and when I tried loading my blog into the program, ScribeFire did not play well with Blogger and wouldn't load the blog for it to work.

He suggested what I always thought was the best solution for writing, editing and formatting blog posts offline ... Word. I have the Mac version of Microsoft Office for all the Excel spreadsheets I use, so Word is available. I have used that before, then you copy and paste into Blogger when you return online ... but it has problems with pictures.

I took this next picture not because of the trees or skies but for the first time in all the years I lived here (19+) I had not noticed the tall Sycamore tree with the bright white bark. Maybe I have and forgot but today that white tree trunk really stood out.

As I was reading about all the 16 different alternatives for Live Writer for Mac users, my thoughts turned to a new Wordpress Blog. It must be the weather, where I am stuck inside and have only a couple of choices of activity. I am always in the mood in bad weather to start a new blog and I love Wordpress templates to work with. I should have never deleted the blog I had there this year named Living with Hounds or Life with Hounds. Once you delete a blog on Wordpress dot com, you never get it back.

Looking at the weather site Intellicast, a huge storm moved south of us. The rain had stopped but I could still hear how wet it was from cars passing on the highway. The small forecast section said I was headed for damaging winds, large hail, and a possible tornado tonight. With those high winds coming from the south I am always concerned about the last 100' tall Sycamore tree that stands by the driveway.

The last 100' Sycamore tree that was pulled out of the ground like a weed in 2008, fell through the fence and was tall enough to reach the other side of the front yard. I looked at another weather site called Wunderground and saw that the next rain would be around 7pm with 44% chance of rain ... that's when I am tuning into the IU basketball game so there is a chance my Directv signal will be knocked out depending how strong the storm is.

Yet at Midnight throughout the rest of the morning into Wednesday, the 98% chance of rain and storms looks to be the time period for high damaging winds. I'd rather see them in daylight rather than after midnight.

As you see from the pictures, Sadie and Stella went outside to check the condition of the field. It looks dry but with the paws prints going across the carport floor I could see it would be too wet and muddy if we were to take a walk. While they did that I put the car cover back on the Z4, connected the bungee cord under it to each side of the cover to prevent it from blowing off tonight. I also put my chair inside so there is nothing that can blow around causing damage tonight ... just in case.

I'm sure Stella will do a little pacing tonight when the storms do start. In the past she has been pretty good and once she realizes that things are going to be okay for her, she has laid down and slept through most of the storms we have had.

I was surprised that Sadie did not give me the look or stare down telling me she wanted to go for a walk. Instead she trotted back to the house without any begging to stay outside.

It's close to lunch time for the hounds and I think I will spend the afternoon reading my two books from the library and may even look at Wordpress again and rebuild the blog I had before. It got very little traffic and I mean very little ... but I liked it because I kept the content to just two to three sentences and then 5-10 photos.

The quality of the photos were better compared to Blogger because Google will compress them once they are loaded into the blog. There were a few days it was nice just to post pictures and that was all. I thought it would work for many readers here because I think most come here to see pictures of the hounds instead of reading my rambling.

That did not prove to be the correct assumption.

Last week I was mentioning how great this weather was for February but I read my posts in February 2016 and the weather was almost identical on the same dates of the month.

Well Stella is standing beside my office chair with her head bowed to let me know she is hungry and she can't remember her last meal of 4 hours ago. Sadie is in the doorway giving me the stare that she wants to eat. I'll have to go wake Heidi up but once she knows food is involved she will be instant energy.

I hope that I DO NOT have any "post storm" pictures to post here tomorrow.

A Seattle weather day here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

The Storm Came Early

With the current weather early this morning and the slim chance of the daily hound walks today, I decided to post early and include the photos from yesterday afternoon's walk ... Sadie was the featured hound.

I am not sure what time it was but it was still dark when the roar of thunder and a lightning bolt bright enough to light up the bedroom woke me up. It was almost immediately I felt a bloodhound muzzle trying to lift my hand up from the side of the bed.

It was Stella standing by the side of the bed wanting to let me know it's storming and to remind me that she is not a fan of thunderstorms. I was told when I picked her up that she hated thunderstorms but compared to my first basset hound, Harry, she is not bad at all. She whines a little and paces a little during these storms but isn't what I would call frantic.

All of us got back to sleep as the thunder continued to roll but I didn't hear rain hitting the storm windows so maybe that took place earlier while we were sleeping. Wunderground shows there is a pretty good chance of rain continuing from now until Wednesday at 10am.

Sadie was wondering this morning if there was still a chance to take walk in light rain even before the first cup of coffee was poured. No, there wasn't.

With Stella not interested in getting any further away from the driveway than this ... plus the light drizzle ... the morning walk has been canceled at this time. When there is standing water in the low spots next to the house, that means the field is too wet to be hiking through.

So with that in mind, I'll post some pictures from yesterday afternoon. It wasn't planned but Sadie turned out to be the featured hound of the walk All hounds were given free reign to go and do anything they wanted during this walk.

Heidi chose not to go on the walk and only took her back way out to the front yard long enough to relieve herself and then back inside for her afternoon siesta.

Stella stopped within 20' of starting the walk and didn't move, so I knew what her plan was and I wasn't going to stick around to watch.

It was Sadie and I enjoying the walk and the warm weather. There wasn't any wind, a lot of birds chirping among themselves and clear blue skies. It was perfect weather for a mid-day walk.

The way Sadie reacts every time we start to walk, I really think we could walk an unlimited amount of times per day and she would never care. In some cases Stella has a limit, where by the 3rd walk on some days she has zero interest and will take one slow step at a time to get through it.

This picture gives you some idea what Stella's plan was for the afternoon walk. You can barely see her just right of center.

Sadie on the other hand was intense in her exploration. She was in her own world enjoying every scent she could pick up. Her strong tracking instincts show up every walk, in all kinds of weather.

She started rolling in something before I could catch her. The only baths that I give her are outside with the hose in one hand and her tethered so she will not sprint away. I've tried before but there is no chance of her getting into the bathtub to get clean.

Luckily whatever she rolled in just smelled good to her and didn't leave any kind of residue on her back and shoulders ... too cold for an outdoor shower and not enough time to give her a bath.

While I was talking Sadie into getting away from that spot, Stella sprinted up behind us to checkout what all the excitement was about. By that time Sadie had walked away from the 'real good' spot to keep it hidden from Stella.

Once again Stella stayed behind while Sadie and I continued on.

I am not sure what the reason is or what she is thinking but on a lot of the afternoon walks, Stella will follow the path walking extremely slow, after she catches up to me, without the leash. She will do this up to the back edge of the field and then go into her search mode at a faster pace. Of course you will notice I needed her to keep up with us on the last half of the walk yesterday and I attached the leash as a motivating tool.

Sadie explored every inch of the field to the left of the return path home. Stella walked right behind me, out of picture range for the return trip home. I shut off the camera and enjoyed the weather the rest of the way.

It was a great afternoon with the temperatures just right.

Al over at The Bayfield Bunch has been having problems with a program called Live Writer that he uses to create his blog posts. He finally got the problem solved and is back to using it and as you can see is as happy as a kid in a candy store.

This has increased my curiosity enough about this Live Writer stuff that I am going to pour another cup of coffee while it is bad weather outside, then tear into Google Search and see what I can find out about this program. I am sure they will have a Mac version I can download to my iMac so I can play around with it.

I want to see what I am missing. About all I know about it right now, is that I could write a complete blog post with pictures, offline and someway it will post that to Blogger when I would turn on the internet. That sounds good for someone that is traveling full-time. I remember on our trip to Utah and Colorado in June 2015 I did not have an internet signal a lot of the time to where I could post on a blog.

This Live Writer also works with Google Photos. I only know that from reading Al's blog post this morning where he described how he fixed his latest problem. I use Google Photos daily as I upload every picture I take for the day into Google Photos to use as one of many picture library backups.

I took the two books I wasn't interested in reading back to the library yesterday and then picked up two more and started reading them when I got home, late into the night. So it must have been the subject matter I wasn't interested in and not the lack of interest in reading.

IF the weather clears up later today, long enough to take new pictures I might post again. Otherwise this post is it for the day while it rains outside.

It might be raining but at least it's warm on the last day in February in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.