Some Rambling To Close The Day

After removing the old thermometer from the wall in the carport a year or so ago, due to swallows building their nest there and then crapping all over my cars ... it's been sitting in the corner giving accurate information while I decide where to put it next. I'm thinking of mounting it on the wall it leans against, yet that is in the corner and would that be a few degrees warmer?

Anymore it's pretty rare that I take the camera with me on the late afternoon walks or the final walk of the day in the early evening. It is a much better time to take photos though due to the light. Sadie kept staring at me for the past two hours, then lying back down when I told her we had to wait for it to get cooler outside. All of us tried our best to sleep the afternoon away so by 5:15pm we were ready to turn on the day again.

I think you will see a better quality of picture this time of day, a little after 7pm. I got to the point of wanting to go outside. It looked hot based on the temps my iPhone app was showing me but with some wind it might be okay. I remembered the other day that after 7pm it wasn't bad even with a temperature of 88°.

With the small worn path leading into an opening that is surround by solid growth, I'm thinking this is one of the ways the deer go to and from the woods into the field. In the past years I have seen up to ten deer at once standing by the edge of this location, until they sense me pointing the camera at them ... then they all sprint back into the woods.

Stella must be feeling like her old self today. More energy, showing a little more activity inside the house. Then tonight she slowly drifted away from me and Sadie towards the woods behind the neighbors house as if I did not see her. She didn't turn our direction until she heard my tone of voice change ... she must have thought I was getting serious.  LOL

This time of day I have caught deer standing in that grassy area at the edge of the woods. While I scanned the horizon for any possible deer, Sadie was looking the opposite direction. If I wasn't mistaken my nose was picking up some very good grilling going on at one of my neighbors. I can't imagine what her nose was telling her.

Just like this morning Stella trotted right past me to catch up with Sadie. I can't remember the last time she trotted 3-4 different times in one day. The norm for her in these afternoon walks is to walk as slow as possible with her tail and head lowered, like she is taking her last steps.

You can barely see it but the leaves of this tree are starting to turn bright red and bright yellow like it does during the heat of the summer. I'm too lazy to look up what kind of tree it is.

With 16mph winds, that didn't keep Sadie from doing her normal investigating work.

Nor did it keep Stella from following her own path on her own schedule.

Once Sadie and I had walked quite a way on the path I turned to see where Stella was and there she was trotting again ... good to see.

It never felt hot on this walk. I never felt a drop of sweat, so I decided when I got back I'd pull up my chair to 'Winston's patio', grab a glass of ice tea and enjoy the good weather. I still had a couple of hours of sunlight left. It was prime time to see any possible deer stepping out of the woods or I might even get lucky enough to see my backyard grass move as moles charged through it gobbling up all the grub worms under the grass surface. They have been relentless this month.

For those that wonder, yes I have thought about digging out some of the yard in back of the house and installing a nice stone patio, instead of being satisfied with just 6 red blocks. With all the underground water in that field that angles down toward my yard I have a huge problem with something I call 'ground surge'.

Of course one of the nice things about installing a bigger patio is that I would have to build a short retaining wall around it to keep the ground from covering the patio every year. Even then that surging ground would attempt to come up from under any installed stones like it does now to my river rock, mulch and those 6 blocks.

I originally put those blocks there because it always flooded there after heavy rains. Every year I'd add more dirt, then more stone on top of it, every spring it would flood out again. Sometimes the water would come from an overflowing gutter right above it.

Once Winston found out just how nice it felt when the sun had shined on it all day, he use to lie on those blocks while scanning the field. I guess the heated stones might have made his back or legs feel better as he got older. So it became known as 'Winston's Patio'.

All of these next photos are taken from me sitting in that chair. Of course after a walk and warmed up again both hounds wanted to sit right next to me. They really wanted to go back inside the air conditioned house.

Here is my viewpoint from the chair. After about an hour of sitting outside, no deer were seen and the hounds had had enough ...

Just about the time I was stepping into the yard on the walk, with both hounds way behind me interested in other things, a rabbit sprinted across the yard from the north and leaped into the tall ragweed that hides my burn pile. The hounds didn't know just how close they were, they never saw the rabbit.

Stella still thinks the best tasting green grass is inside all of the ragweed. It doesn't matter that 7 acres of grass are starting to grow again, this is her favorite spot to find grass to eat.

Sadie also enjoys eating the fresh dirt that moles push above ground level. Just plain good old brown dirt. If you look close enough you'll notice mud on her nose.

If the hounds could speak like a human, with a voice, I have no doubt they would be telling me to take them inside. Since I understand their body language and facial expressions I know they are telling me to take them inside, they've had enough.

Although I wasn't that hot, it was great to open the door and get hit in the face with a rush of cold air. Air conditioning is a great invention.

With about 5 hours to go before my billing cycle ends with HughesNet, I had about 800Mb of data left. I found out a few days ago that YouTube videos, videos from the sports sights soak up a lot of data, like over a gig's worth in a short period of time. But with some data left I thought I'd take a look at Firefox again, get their update and see if websites loaded any faster. I like their online security programs that run in the background but it's always too slow for me.

After an hour of using it I think I'll give it another try full-time and make it my default browser for a while. Their download speed isn't bad.

A might be a movie night tonight. Reds games are on hold with the All-Star Game tomorrow. I am not in the glitz of entertainment for their home run derby tonight. I hate how they have made all televised sports more about entertainment than just the game. They are all competing for the next best show in all sports.

I had another friend tell me last night that if I really do move out to the southwest like I have talked about, I should keep the house here in 'the tropics', and then rent a place out there to see if I can handle all the brown sand, the lack of trees before selling my house. He and his wife think I'm crazy to even think about leaving the location I am in now, even with cold winters. They cannot comprehend all the green trees, grass and fields I have around me.

No moves are planned as long as I have the hounds. This is the perfect place for them.

I mentioned the app Pocket the other day for Google Chrome where you can download websites into Pocket and read them later offline, no internet needed. That feature is already built into the Safari browser that Apple designs. I see that in Firefox it's already added.

I have not used it offline but what I do like about it is once you sign up for an account (free), they email you "Pocket Hits" ... they group interesting articles from media around the world.

For example one of the articles on this afternoon's email was titled "I kicked my smartphone addiction by retraining my brain to enjoy being bored" ... by Jordan Rsenfield at Quartz.

or "What happened when Walmart left" by Ed Pilkington at The Guardian.

Well I am going to try to sneak out of my desk chair and check out the movie selections. I'll have to move slowly since Stella has decided to use the arms and wheel under my chair as her pillow as she sleeps.

Monday flew by here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana today.

The Hackers Are Out Playing

Recently I've noticed a lot more junk mail being blocked by my Apple Mail than normal. Sometime last year all the spam experts decided they liked the email address I have here on my contact page. So I use that address most of the time when a website needs an email address either for me to log in or contact information. That way if they want to spam it my personal email address is not affected. Blog traffic is also showing Russia, Ukraine and Chine passing Canada in the number of daily visitors to the blog for the #2,3 and 4 highest.

I have all my browsers set to where I have to click for any website to play a video. I don't do automatic updates but will get notices where there is a new update available. I don't open attachments of any kind. I have a firewall set on my computer settings but I have never ran anti-virus protection on my Apple computers. I do run a malware finder every week. It will automatically isolate and quarantine any malware that is finds, keeping it from harming the computer. All of those settings are to protect my computer from hackers.

At times Facebook will starting showing some strange requests for people I don't know. I have my account there locked down as tight as possible. I don't have anyone able to request to friend me for that reason. Pubic has no access to my account or the few pictures I post on there.

So with increases I have noticed recently in strange traffic and even strange messages on my Facebook account, this post this morning over at A Satisfying Retirement didn't really surprise me ... but it does show just how hard it is to get rid of the embedded files that hackers plant once they have access to a computer.

He mentioned that if it happened again he would shut down his Blogger blog immediately. I found that when I moved my blog to Wordpress a few years ago I had twice the amount of hacker traffic there than on Blogger. Based on what they had blocked. I don't believe Blogger is his problem.

I would say it was more likely that an attachment was opened sometime or a weblink clicked that causes the damage to his computer. Otherwise if it was his blog being the culprit then it would seem logical to not visit his blog and to take it off my sidebar to protect myself.

I believe Apples security system has proven in the past it does quite well preventing access to a computer, table or phone. I mean when the FBI computer experts cannot access an iPhone they need to get into and ask Apple to do it for them ... to me that is pretty good security.

I believe that Stella is getting better. Today, in a very long time she trotted fairly fast on two different occasions. This morning before the walk she was nudging Sadie's head as if she wanted to play or wrestle. She has not tried that in many months. Both of those are good signs that she is feeling better from whatever has been ailing her since March.

The local tv weathermen keep talking about it being really hot and muggy but I'm not feeling it. When I think of hot and muggy I think of weather being unbearable. It has not felt that way to me on our daily walks. Yes it's hot in the upper 80's to low 90's but when I check different weather sites it is telling my the humidity here is 65-70% ... that is pretty low for this time of year. So I'll take the overcast skies today to keep the temps down.

All of us still prefer being inside enjoying the air conditioning. Heidi is setting all-time records in the number of hours she is sleeping. Sadie and Stella are always sleeping unless they are eating or taking their walks. This kind of weather really zaps their energy.

Another good sign for Stella is they she held her tail upright for most of the walk, instead of lowered. I really think she is on her way back to being the old Stella that liked to run and play with Sadie.

The yard is not quite tall enough to mow after 6 days but with 4 days in a row where Wunderground predicting a very high percentage for rain, you have to decide to mow it now or take a chance for it to be too tall if we do get rain this week. Nothing worse than mowing extra tall grass.

Whatever Stella found to eat must have tasted good.

This was the 2nd time she was trotting at a pretty fast pace. She was almost running before she caught up with me and went right past me to where Sadie was standing.

It's poses like this where I remember the bloodhound can hear things 4x as far as the human ear and of course smell 200x better than my nose. The look of Stella leads me to believe she smelled and heard the large field cat in the woods. The neighbor says no one owns it and yes, it's a very large cat and spends a lot of time in that wooded area. It's so large that the first time I saw it from a distance I wasn't sure what kind of animal it was.

They might be on the final stages of getting home on this walk but there is always one last thing to find to eat before I walk over and tell her 'let's go' ... if I'm ignored I have no other choice but to lead her by her collar until she starts walking on her own in our direction.

She still likes returning home by entering the north side of the yard. At least she keeps things interesting around here, with never a dull moment.

They will have another late lunch today and probably two more walks, unless some of that 50% chance of rain shows up in the next couple of hours.

I'm back to reading books today, totally motivated to accomplish nothing as I have decided to make this a long weekend. It has the potential to stretch all the way through the week. I am still thinking of other options of having groceries delivered ... that is how lazy I am feeling today. What I couldn't do with a drone.

I image by the afternoon sometime or tonight, my hunger will shove me into my car and lead me to the store. I have some food left but nothing I want to eat. I'd rather have a $1 frozen burrito than another salad right now ... strange stuff.

My circular polarize filter has been shipped, should be here tomorrow a day earlier than they estimated.

Time moves on here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Photos Experiment Continues

Since I only used my iPhone camera yesterday and didn't download anything from my Nikon camera, this picture of the Friday night rain did not show up until my download this morning. While surrounding towns had severe thunderstorms and wind, we had only heavy rain for only 15 minutes.

I didn't post any photos last night after our afternoon walk because using the 'zoom' feature on the iPhone 6s camera did not work out well.

I had fallen behind transferring photos from my computer to Google Photos and Flickr. I use both for online backups with a ton of free storage available. So I spent a little time doing that Saturday afternoon but also once they were uploaded I looked through them. In both programs the photos looked great whether they were from my Nikon D3200 or the iPhone 6s camera. Flickr still has better quality because it does not compress any photos that are uploaded.

These next 3 photos are from the iPhone yesterday afternoon and edited.

I wanted to continue my test for blog photos so I changed the settings from 'photo' to 'square'. I still needed to crop all of them to center each hound. I clicked the enhance icon on a few of them. I realize that each camera can do different things and each has it's own features to like ... so I have two really good cameras.

About the time that Sadie, Stella and I were going to head back inside after their late lunch break, I couldn't find Heidi in back or the carport. She had moved out to her favorite sunning spot in the front yard.

I am thinking of trimming the top third off the Yews to make them shorter. I know that I don't want them to get any higher than what they are now.

I found it to be very easy to zoom taking iPhone photos. All I needed to do was spread my two finger on the screen. It would be simpler if the sunshine did not block out what you were trying to see.

Sunday morning ....



By the time I had coffee, some internet and blog reading this morning, Sadie and Stella were more than ready for our first walk of the day. With the high humidity early this morning Heidi was in mid-afternoon form and had passed out on the couch with the AC running at maximum output.

With my running shoes getting soaked yesterday when it was after 12 noon, I decided to go back to my waterproof hiking boots for this morning's walk.

As I was saying earlier, using the zoom feature on my iPhone 6s last night did not work out well. I zoomed in the hounds where they had filled my screen before taking the picture. Every one of them turned out too blurry and distorted. Even those photos I took with 50% zoom turned out the same way. They were so bad that I did not even keep them in my photo library on the computer.

This morning I moved back to the Nikon D3200 for this morning's walk. I cleaned the lens, the mirrors inside with a camera cleaning kit just in case there was some dust affecting the quality of my recent photos. I cannot tell that the cleaning made any difference ... although I like these photos better than those taken with the phone.

Stella likes to change her walk routine about every 2-3 weeks. Today for some strange reason she never went left to the middle of the field but stayed on the path I walk and was the 'leader of the pack' for a lot of it. The theme of the day was 'adding protein' more than 'identifying scent'.

They were both around the corner and out of sight before I could raise my camera. Stella was doing a fast trot but not quite the same run that Sadie was doing.

Believe it or not, this is Stella out in front of Sadie and I ... she is usually way behind us.

Stella again ... Sadie is back near me before she took off sprinting to see what Stella had found.

With this much intensity I would expect to see something fresh but as you will see a couple of pictures lower that is not the case. The ground is basically dry under her nose.

Even with me standing above her saying "let's go" ... she doesn't move and in fact she resisted as I tugged at her collar.

As the hounds took off toward the far right corner of the field they had found some more additional protein. This area is heavily traveled by deer as it is just outside their entry down into the gully.

I looked at and even touched this area their noses were at and it was nothing more they dead dry grass near the dirt.

I took this same picture yesterday with the iPhone camera and wanted to do it this morning for comparison. Only today I did some editing and took out the power lines that were in the left corner of the photo. I prefer to keep pictures as original as possible but I did like not seeing the power lines in this picture.

Stella was more active in the field this morning than I had seen her in a while. A few times just after taking a picture of her in the distance by the time I turned to look for Sadie, Stella had ran up right behind me.

This is also a deer path along the back of the field that goes around the large power tower and heads north into the woods or into the field to the right.

Once we make that final turn home Stella always slows her pace, if that is even possible, and slowly strolls home. The last time I left her out there to go at her own pace and to go where she wanted ... she didn't show up at the house to be let in for 35 minutes after Sadie and I were inside.

Her newest routine, about 4 days old, is veering on the return path through the middle of the field and toward the pole that shows the north property line. As I walk the normal path that moves away from her, she heads toward the yard.

Today would be the type of day to move a chair or tie up a hammock in this shaded area and enjoy the day. I could move a chair and my ice tea but my hammock was lost or left in one of my moves decades earlier.

I have a busy sports day today on tv. This will keep me inside and out of the hot humid temps. I like this weather but I still don't want to spend all day outside in it.

After the hounds are fed lunch once they wake up ... they have all overslept their normal lunch time ... I'll get another walk in before the Formula 1 race is on at 2pm. Yes it was ran live this morning but I'm never in the mood to watch racing at 7am.

That race will lead me into the Reds game at 4pm while the DVR will turn on at 5pm to tape the IndyRacingLeague race from Iowa. I'll watch that later tonight.

On a recommendation from Tom I bought a circular polarize filter yesterday for my Tamron lens. With my Best Buy certificates and award points I had forgot about I had a huge 75% discount on the cost. I am anxious to try it out and see the differences. I'll let you know when I start using it. It's due to arrive on Wednesday, maybe sooner.

For something different I'll leave you with our morning picture of the cornfield across the highway in what my Apple Photos editing program calls "mono".

I think I can squeeze in a lunch before the hounds wake up. It even feels like a Sunday today so I can confirm my internal clock has been calibrated.

Perfect weather today here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.