Russia Visits The Hounds

I noticed yesterday afternoon that Blogger Dashboard had a huge sudden spike in page views. The counter was showing the number of views to be 100's of times more than my normal count. I knew exactly what had happened, I just wondered what country it was from. With the 'new' blog being about a month old it has been indexed enough by the Google spiders so the spam/hack hits are expected. In a 24 hour period visitors from Russia outnumbered my blog visitors from the USA.

For those readers that don't have a blog, this is common activity whether you have a blog on Google's Blogger like this one is or on Wordpress like my older one was. Each platform gives the blog owner a 'dashboard' where they can work on their site behind the scenes. Not only does that include the ability to change designs, change fonts/colors, add sidebars, edit the photo library .... we get blog traffic reports.

Years ago when I was in the online selling business from home, full-time, one of my traffic stats programs was showing me someone spending almost all night on my website for only 3 straight days. That visitor never came back to the blog after that final day.

I could see what pages he was looking at and thought based on his time, it was very suspicious. Luckily that "exit link" gave me my answer. I clicked that exit link under his visit and that led me to his website on Esty. He was copying and pasting all of my content on his new sales site. The dead give away was when he copied my page explaining the process of authenticated sports memorabilia and quoted "a mom and pop shop" ... not many online will use the exact words like that.

I contacted Esty and furnished proof this guy in Ft Wayne Indiana had stolen my website information. Obvious he had also been approved to use the same suppliers I had (normal in drop shipping). To cut into my market share he was offering the  same autographed sports memorabilia 33% cheaper than I was offering it. He made up that difference profit by have very high shipping costs paid by each of his customers.

He also had an eBay store selling the same products just like I was at those discounted prices. After contacting Esty and eBay, they both shut down his site an hour after I emailed them. I checked a month later on eBay and he was no longer a registered seller. His Esty website was gone.

That story saved my business in a way and after that I was sold on those traffic reports that were furnished for free. Blogger's dashboard also showed me the two trouble makers I had last summer with my old 6 year old blog that I closed in September. They were downloading photos of Heidi. My photos are for any reader to use as they wish but I could see they were downloading only photos of her terrible skin conditions over the years. Combine that with their email threats of reporting me for animal abuse, I thought I might have a problem.

Again, I was happy to have those traffic reports available.

I am not sure how they do it, no matter what country they come from. I am pretty literate about computers but not the hacking aspect of it. As they did Sunday night through the early morning hours of Monday, it is usually an older blog that is used in some way to attack the blog. The blog that is uses normally has not had a post published for years. In this case it was a blog that had last posted in 2011. That year 2011 also showed up in my Top 10 posts viewed during that 24 hour period, taking the bottom 5 spots with one hit each ... all posts that I had written here in 2011.

It will be interesting to see how long it will take before I start getting spam email on the email account I use on my blog 'Contact' page. This same type of attack was common on my 6 year old blog and eventually that email was being spammed between 100-200 emails per day ... luckily sent to my junk folder automatically. I deleted that email account in September when I deleted the blog.

I assume that all business that require an email for one reason or another, will sell that email address because it is another form of income to them ... even when they say they do not sell emails addresses. So I have one email address I use for all types of subscriptions or purchases online. After deleting that older 'houndsnrvs' account, that I was also using for a spam collector ... I decided to use another email account I had but rarely used ... it took only a week before I started getting spam emails in my junk folder sent to that email account.

So with this blog being only a month old, approximately, those pesky Ruskies have paid the hounds a visit just to let us know they tried, may try again and who knows what they grabbed while they were here.

The weather here changed a little this morning just like the iPhone weather showed. Cold and rainy with a NE wind for once is never a good combination. I started sneezing ... which for some wild/weird reason makes Stella whine when she hears it. She will even wake up from a deep sleep if she hears me sneezing ... and start to whine until I stop.

I am hoping to see the UPS or FedEx truck back up my driveway with new OEM BMW parts for my repair, some time this week. ECS Tuning had free shipping. I've used them a little in the past for a Mini Cooper and liked everything about them, from pricing, customer service and shipping.

I mentioned yesterday that I had noticed what I was thought was less data usage with slower data internet speeds. This morning I found out that was not true. Today I had something running/updating in the background that was clicking off megabytes like dripping water. I couldn't find the culprit. My computer never started acting strange and Bitdefender scans gave my hard drive a clean bill of health after the Russian visitors.

Stella decided to end her morning walk with a path she had not tried before. She felt it was her job not to walk into the yard with Sadie but to head through the field past my property pole and our entry point from the 'alternate' path. The section of field that goes toward the highway is a pretty good hill that was not baled last June. Yet the dead hay/weeds is not much taller than the weeds/hay they cut last June. Still she felt it was her job to check out that area.

The further she went the louder I yelled her name. She finally stopped, stared at the highway and then turned around to head back to me. This is one reason I cannot and will not let her roam the field on her own like I do sometimes with Sadie. It would take only one scent or something curious, for Stella to head to the highway not knowing just how fast those cars and trucks are traveling.

The hounds have adapted to the time change. They are no longer surrounding me at the computer wanting to be fed lunch. The normal routine was easy with it not raining today. They never stay outside long once we are in cooler temps. Heidi takes the exact same path to the front yard.

Stella is ready for her afternoon nap.

Sadie shows no desire to go on a walk. That's good because I always like to wait a while after I feed the bloodhounds before they do any kind of activity. That reduces the chance of bloating.

With all the recent rain it looks like I will have to mow the yard one more time for the last time in 2017.  In the meantime Heidi was looking for the perfect spot that all dogs hunt for.

Then it's the slow trek to the driveway and never the shortest distance to get inside.

Once she finally arrives at the driveway she gets her daily hill climbing in for exercise. I don' see her out in the field walking with use until next spring. She has already written the year off for any kind of exuberant efforts.

As we do with every ice cream container, cottage cheese container or peanut butter jar ... Stella gets first try to clean out some of what's left. Without letting Stella take all that is left I will toss the container or hold it for Sadie to grab with her mouth. She will then letdown, hold the container or jar with per paws and lick it completely clean. I toss them into the recycling bin after that.

Her treat today was Ben&Jerry's ice cream.

I bought Heidi a couple of fleece blankets last night at Walmart. They went straight in the wash machine for cleaning before she used them. She was more than happy to dive into those warm blankets from the dryer, scratching them with her paw to get them just in the right position. Luckily neither bloodhound is into blankets so they didn't try to take ownership.

Nothing exciting happened during the walk this afternoon so I'll let the photos tell the story.

Up on the left side of the blog I have added a link to my Flickr photos. I have over 25,000 on that site as an online backup. The link shows the 975 that I have shared with the public. Most of them are the same photos I have posted here, a few aren't. One thing you will notice is the quality of the photos on Flickr are much better and the original settings from the camera. They do not compress the photos after I upload them. You can check them out here if you want.

The replacement parts for my Z4 have been shipped. I am pretty sure I can tear everything apart and install the new parts in one day. I want to get back on the road with that car.

Things were pretty quiet today here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Another Day Of Laziness

WARNING ... I started rambling unintentionally in this post. It was our normal routine after lunch is served. Even Heidi made an appearance outside long enough for me to capture a picture of her, just to let readers know that she still exists and has a pulse. She is into her winter hibernation mode earlier than I can ever remember. For Sadie and Stella I changed the camera setting back to "Auto-Area AF" for walk #2.


Heidi is in need of another bath, possibly an Epson Salt soak. I hid the wool blankets a few weeks ago thinking that was causing her skin to break out again. That does not seem to be the case and in fact may be just the time of year. Looking at her photos from October 2016 I saw the same changes to her skin after a summer of very little allergy reaction.

I am going to ramble about things in general this post, not even knowing when I will schedule it to publish. All of these photos were from our walk this afternoon (Monday). It's always nice the day after a storm blows through.

I've had another huge case of lack of motivation lately. I may have posted I was going to clean house, do laundry, rake leaves or whatever but none of those things have happened. I've been glued to either my computer with the large monitor at my desk either blogging, reading blogs, reading sports, working in my large photos library etc ... During the day I'll move to the kitchen table with a view and the permanent home of my laptop, to play Mahjong or write in my private journal.

There might be days where a siesta is needed from this fast paced lifestyle. You need all the rest you can get when you follow a nightly routine of ballgames from one sport or another and many times where multiple games are on at once. I did squeeze in a long movie last night instead of watching the NFL Sunday Night game.

It dawned on me during our afternoon walk that I have been using less data the past few days with internet speeds slower than Stella's afternoon pace. Does slower data download speeds equate to less data being used? I'll have to look into that later on the internet and see what I can find.

See it's questions like that keeping me at my desk in front of a computer. I have stupid questions like that all the time floating through my brain cells and the fastest way to find an answer to any of them is doing a search on the internet. Before you know it, it's 4pm and the day is gone.

Really though I am not in the mood for much more than I do most days, at least lately. So there are no feelings of guilt. It's kind of the lull before the storm as college basketball full-time viewing on tv starts this weekend as college football is heading for their last thee to four weeks of games before their holiday bowls and playoff games.

I have picked a couple of books off my bookshelves lately but stopped reading them soon after I started. my trips to the local library will probably not be a part of my week until the temperatures drop into the 30's and lower. The future weather in the next few weeks looks good for replacing the damaged plastic parts under my Z4. That should be a pretty easy fix, once the new parts arrive.

The pain in my jaw from a few weeks ago disappeared about as fast as it started. There isn't anything as intense as what I was feeling but I do have some occasional discomfort. After some jaw massage, or some heat and plus some ibuprofen, the jaw feels normal again. I still wonder at times what he cause of the jaw pain is.

From the few blogs I read that are showing snow in their area, it definitely proves to me I am not ready for that type of weather yet. I'll get through it when the times comes. The hounds will still get their walks. I will still wonder what we are doing outside with temps in the 20's or lower. I'll wear the same winter clothing I've worn every year since moving back to Indiana 23 years ago this December. Then before I know it, spring will be here and I'll be building my first large fire of the year, while burning the driveway bank full of dead ragweed and other wild brush.

I also remember over the weekend while looking back through my photos, it was October 25th last year that I traded the Voodoo Blue Toyota FJ instead of spending $3,000 to replace the catalytic converters and possible other repairs. I never planned to trade that FJ. It was the beginning of where I traded three cars within 9 months.

I'm glad those days are finally over since I have the only combination of cars that I have ever liked ... a sports car and a Toyota FJ. With the amount of miles I drive per year I don't need to trade cars ever ... and may not need even two cars. Yet with my constant brain activity it's always good to have options. So two cars are best for me.

My senior moment of the day was a little after lunch when I went to the fruit bowl to eat the last mango. It was gone !!! It was there last night because I remember seeing it while I ate the second to last one. I was about to interrogate Stella about the missing mango ... then realized that sometime around 3:30 am (yes in the middle of the night) as I looked at my watch, I was standing in the kitchen cutting the mango into slices ... eating my last mango in the dark.

A slight interruption here as I let you know that once again today, Stella spent a long time staring in the direction of the neighbor's woods and with hopes of seeing the yellow field cat that is larger than any cat you can imagine. She obviously smells or hears something over there.

I've been thinking about diets again lately. I've been eating healthy and just set an all-time historic event in the month of October for the first time I can ever remember. I did not make one trip through a fast food drive-thru and didn't spend any money eating out or ordering out for pickup.

That will not happen this month. I've spent the last three to four days thinking of the Chinese buffet downtown. It's around $8 for all you can eat. It is served every day except Monday's. It's hard to believe that we can have that kind of restaurant in a small rural town, out in the middle of nowhere, in the land of meat and potatoes. It's popular and has withstood all the economy has to offer for at least 15 years. It is one of my favorite places to eat.

With all the excitement and pounding my chest for the accomplishment of no fast food, there was disappointment at my monthly weigh in and measurement day on the 1st of November. Not only did I gain 4 pounds but measurements around my stomach and body fat also increased. That told me it's never a good idea to stop eating fast foods.  LOL

I continue to knock off one game at a time of Mahjong, completing that tile game under 3 minutes. I have 160 different Mahjong games to choose from, all different levels of competition. That is probably the best 99cents I've ever spent when I bought that app.

What does it mean when you are too lazy to get in your car and make a short trip to the store to buy the food you need or are craving to eat? Will those Amazon drones deliver to small town USA if you live outside of town?

Would that nice small round robot vacuum I see on every other commercial during the football games on tv, work well in my house? Or would it turn into a chaotic situation where the hounds chase it all over the house while it tries to be my maid? Would it be cost effective if it turned into a toy for the hounds with dog treats taped to the top of it? Does anyone know how good the suction is on those robot vacuums?

I wonder why these current hounds are growing more skin warts or skin flaps than any of my other hounds in the last 30 years? Food? Environment? Allergies? I think I have asked this question during a visit my vet but can't remember if they gave me an answer or passed it off as not important?

7 acres of field available to the hounds and Stella likes to walk very slow right in front of me. A huge stainless steel bowl of fresh water, enough for all the hounds. Yet, Sadie thinks enough of it to sleep next to it, protecting it from Stella and Heidi. Is there any food for human consumption that Stella does not like or at least feel it's not hers? Did her previous owners 'free feed' her?

Watching the tape of Dr Jeff, Rocky Mountain Vet last night ... they had their first Bloodhound patient. I have yet to see any basset hounds visit their facility on their tv show. This bloodhound puppy looked like Stella in the face but was what they call a 'black and tan'. He was accidentally ran over by the owner, breaking it's leg right next to the ball joint in his hip. They inserted three small pens with a prognosis he would be okay eventually. 14 weeks later, even with physical therapy, the hound was barely using his rear leg if at all. I hate seeing those kind of stories.

There is never a day that goes by that I don't think of Winston. He had the best personality of any of the basset hounds I ever owned. All of them had great basset personalities but his was much different. Hard to believe it's been almost two years later and I still find it hard to look at his pictures.

Well that's about it for this afternoon. I am not sure if I'll watch Monday Night Football or watch another movie. I know right now I'm going to grab a snack and play a few games of Mahjong for the first time today. I guess the trip to the grocery store can wait a little longer.

Life is rough in the fast pace lane of 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.