Hounds Smell Yard Moles

The routine right after they have lunch never changes. All three hounds check out the yard without going into the field wanting to take off for a walk. With the recent heat wave here in the Midwest, the moles in the backyard have been very active. Here you can see the hounds smell them but luckily do not try to dig them up. Their noses tell them the moles are there.

The Hounds Make History

I cannot remember the last time the hounds and I completed our morning walk before 8am but I know for a fact it has never happened in the months between November to March. Therefore I am declaring history was made today as we stepped into the field at 7:26am with the temps at 49°. Sadie was going wild tracking scent and moving faster than my camera could catch. I ended up with not one clear picture of her until we got to the first corner.

As usual, Stella stayed behind and did her own thing but Sadie made up for her being away. Her nose was to the ground almost immediately, moving in and out of the brush along the edge of the field. I thought the chances were good to see some early morning deer but it never happened.

 

I was the reason for the early morning start. It's what happens when you go to bed early, you wake up early. What a concept that must be but it will not become a habit with me. I am a late night person by nature so evidently it was time to catch up on some sleep. I tried to get back to sleep at 5am and finally gave up at 5:27am ... then headed to the coffee machine.

That did not bother the hounds though. The house was still dark as I tried to turn on the least amount of lights as possible. They slept for the next hour before they realized I was up and the day had already started. Heidi was in such shock that she had to be talked into having breakfast an hour early because she didn't want to get out of her sleeping bag.

I am enjoying this 'heat wave' we are getting here in the Midwest. I did a road trip yesterday in the Z4 and may have been able to do the trip down to my friends house with the top down but kept it up. While driving my car thermometer was saying something like 66° with the sunshine beating down on us.

I took the same freeway (interstate) that I took in September where I had plastic parts under the car destroyed. After 300 miles of driving since I repaired everything, nothing has moved and the grille that is a few inches above the ground is still attached to the bumper extremely tight.

The trip wasn't planned but after changing the oil filter yesterday combined with the warm weather I was feeling a long road trip was due. I was going to make the same trip on Friday but was sick that day. By the time I left just after noon, the hounds had been fed their two meals for the day and had two walks completed by then.

They slept most of the 7 hours I was gone. Again, Stella did not destroy anything so her separation anxiety may gone for good. She came with that issue and I was warned about it when I picked her up in August 2015.

There is one good thing about Sadie that is different than Stella ... when she falls behind during the walk I never have to call her. She will eventually come running as fast as she can to catch up with me.

That doesn't mean there isn't a scent that she has to check out, where she stops abruptly and turns around while running full speed.

I caught myself playing around with different browsers yesterday morning. Just in the past few days it has been taking a little longer to load pages. I don't know if Safari has added something new behind the scenes that protects against fake/spam websites but my download speed has decreased from 47Mbps to 33-35Mbps on a consistent basis. It did have those new features with their updated macOS a month or so ago.

When I looked at Firefox for updates, they had released their new and faster browser called Firefox Quantum. I had to try it. I looked at the same websites I normally look at so I could compare it to Safari. Safari had improved their download speed when they released the new macOS but this new Firefox browser was much faster than I currently was using ... I made it my default browser to see how the new system works.

Firefox has always seemed to use more data than Safari so I'll be able to compare data usage over the next week to see if that is the case.

Looking toward the north after Sadie had ran a large loop out in the middle of the field. Stella is nowhere in sight up ahead.

By this time I thought Stella had disappeared. I couldn't see her anywhere but Sadie led me right to her. She is hard to see when she is in the middle of the dormant hay.

With the hottest day yet predicted this afternoon I plan on washing the car by hand. I never take the Z4 through the car wash and since it's in a carport I always cover it with a car cover. It only takes a few minutes to take off and on but keeps all of the dust off the car that is carried in the air by the traffic 100' away and the fields.

I am hearing from a few friends that they have bought the new iPhone 8. One blogger has bought the iPhone X and has blogged a lot about it. If you can live with smaller screens, the iPhone 8 and the new iPhone X would be a great computer replacement. I tried downsizing one time years ago when I went from a desktop to a laptop. The Gateway laptop that was being advertised as a desktop replacement. That was over ten years ago when I was using a PC.

Still I will never downsize because I am addicted to my two 27" monitors that sit side by side. I still use my laptop, and the mini tablet plus the phone all in different ways. I had the iPhone 8 in my hands yesterday while visiting my friend and I must admit, it's an amazing piece of technology.

I have no plans to upgrade my iPhone to the new model.

Stella may take her own time or go her own way during the morning walk but by the time she hits the backyard she always seems to look satisfied that she had a great walk in her view. It's on to some inside play with Sadie and her feature this morning as been her Nylabone.

She will still fit in a nap before lunch is served.

Yesterday at noon we did our 2nd walk of the day. At that time I wasn't sure I was making the 100 mile trip south because my friend had not called me back yet to tell me if he was going to be available. So with Stella on the leash, I took the iPhone 6s with me and took some photos with that while we walked. Here are a few of them from Monday afternoon.

After downloading these photos from the phone to the computer I realized I did not have to edit any of them and in fact they looked sharper than the pictures I take with my Nikon. Tell me what you think and if you can see the difference in the 11 photos shown below.

I had to put the retractable leash down so I could hold the camera with two hands on this one. All the rest were taking with one hand while my other hand held Stella's leash.

Stella is dying to go for a ride with the top down on the Z4 but there has never been a hound inside the Z4 to ride. She was about halfway in the drivers side door when I first bought the car, thinking she would climb over into the passenger seat. How can you refuse a face like that?

I know it's a different time of day so the colors are better due to better light ... but the sharpness and clarity is much better than my larger camera. Remember I did not edit any of the last 11 photos.

I can feel a busy day is in store here today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Hounds Do Their Walk PreDawn

Maybe it's the 'heat wave' but we were out for the first walk of the day at 7:26am and back before 8:00am. That is definite history at least in the fall/winter months. Yet, I cannot remember the last time we were finished this early.

The Hounds Start A New Week Of Warm Weather

Even though it will be in the high 50's by late afternoon that does not meat that Heidi is changing her recent routine. She is outside first thing in the morning with the bloodhounds while I pour the breakfast kibble. As soon as she eats its back to 'her' sleeping bag and she will stay there most of the morning until lunch is served around 11am, adjusted for DST. Her routine will not change much this winter.

It's hard to believe by this afternoon I'll be hand washing my car along with changing the oil filter. Yes, I found the correct tool ... not online but at O'Reilly's Auto Parts just 12 miles away and open on Sundays. I decided to do more research online for the correct tool that would remove the cap to the oil filter. The Z4 has a different type of oil filter where the filter itself slips into a permanent casing on the engine. So removing the cap on top was the tool I needed.

Many of the online auto parts stores agreed their part would fit my 2003 BMW Z4 3.0i, but they were showing the same incorrect part that I was shipped twice and was the wrong one. The diameter was too small and would not slide down over the 86mm cap. Only by a description for that part on Amazon noted it would not fit the Z4 but if you needed that part to click here. I clicked the link to find my answer.

Since Amazon also lists other sources for the product you are looking for, there was a picture for a 36mm socket that would fit over the nut on top of the cap that is built into the cap. A quick phone call to O'Reilly's, speaking to someone finally that 'knew' cars ... he confirmed not only would that part work on my car but had one on the shelf for $9.99. I drove right over and bought the part, after checking to see if it would fit in their parking lot. When I got home I let the engine cool while I watched the Colts blow another 4th quarter lead and then used the new tool to loosen the oil filter cap.

Sadie seems to be getting more demanding (by staring) as she gets older for the times she wants to go on a walk. That is a minimum of 2x per day and most of the time 3x per day. She and Stella was go outside for short roaming trips around the yard or the front of the field near the yard, in-between those walks. So this morning she is sitting in the doorway staring me down for the first walk at a little past 8am. My first cup of coffee had not been consumed yet, so the earth's rotation had not started in my world.

She waited.

The temperature was great for an early Monday morning walk. Stella let me know soon into the walk that she was on her own schedule as was Sadie. I kept walking with my camera ready for any action shots. There wasn't a lot of action this morning but it was a good walk.

I wrote about it on my other blog yesterday how Sadie and I changed our path for the afternoon walk. Stella was left behind just like this morning but I heard the neighbor mowing his yard for the last time this year. I thought that mower would entice her to check him out to see if he needed any help and I didn't want her tempted in leaving the field. So Sadie and I cut our walk off before the first turn and walked toward the corner of the woods behind the neighbor's house to wait on Stella to migrate over to us.

If she would follow her past trips while Sadie and I walked up ahead ... if we stood there a while, Stella would eventually show up by walking right to us with her nose to the ground. She didn't disappoint us and that decision worked out well. By that time the neighbor was in his part of the yard that borders the field.

This morning Sadie and I moved on. She didn't hardly raise her head today as she explored the edge of the field. She was walking a constant pace as these photos were taken.

As I walked along the back edge of the field I saw a shadow moving up behind me at a rapid rate. Sadie was sprinting by me and then put her nose back to the ground to collect more information about who, when and what had been in 'her' field while she slept.

As I looked at the horizon I did not see Stella anywhere. She blends in well amongst the dead light brown hay.

In times like these I always ask Sadie "where's Stella" ... she will always stop what she is doing, scan the air with her nose and then take off running in Stella's direction.

It was not until Sadie was almost to Stella did I see her through the lens.

Once the job of locating her is over, Sadie moves to her own exploring.

Even with Stella within 5' of the path I am walking, she will not come when called, ignores me and then slowly walks to the yard on her own time. She has taught me how to have patience in the short 27 months I've had her.

She has another walk in the books, another new week starting and a new 40# bag of kibble to be opened for lunch. Life is good in her eyes.

After our morning hound walk yesterday I took the Z4 out on my 42 mile loop through the country side. It has country highways along with a state highway where you can see forever and a good spot to do a high speed run. I wanted to push the limits on my newly installed grille and that was the highway to try it on. Luckily there is plenty of clear space where I can see if any State Patrol cars are parked on the side of the road with their radar locked in on me.

I got home, laid down in front of the car and checked every piece I installed last week. Everything was tight and that's a good sign. I even had a few rough spots on the country highway that I went over doing 60mph. So the new installed parts have a little over a 100 miles on them and everything seems to be okay.

As Sunday moved on I kept feeling better after my short intense sickness. I knew I was back to normal late last night as I decided to change all of my spreadsheets back to Microsoft Excel from Apple Numbers. It was just a few months ago that I moved them from Excel to Numbers.

Why the change??

It's that time of year where I make new sheets for the upcoming year (2018). For those that don't know, I love spreadsheets, just short of the line of addiction. I've had these personal spreadsheets for at least 19 years, all the way back where Lotus 1,2,3 was THE spreadsheet software to use. So why the change? I was setting up new ones for the new year in advance. When I started inserting simple charts and adding their data source Apple Numbers was too long to do and too confusing.

I had to Google to find ways of setting up the data sources for the charts so I was already spending more time than I wanted and I still could not figure out how to do it. I tired copying the Numbers 2017 sheet and pasting it for 2018 but that did not work like it does on Excel.

In the amount of time I spent looking for answers online, I converted 24 spreadsheets back to Excel and set up data sources with a click of the mouse, or in my case a tap on my mouse pad. I found the few short months I used Numbers there are things that I like where one program uses it but the other doesn't ... yet overall I like Excel. Since my spreadsheets never leave my computer, sent to anyone via mail or messages, I am still using the Microsoft Office for Macs 2011.

Microsoft announced last summer they would stop supporting that version with updates "leading the sheep" to buy their 2016 or newer versions. I'm not going to do that since I only use Excel for very simple designed spreadsheets only on my computer.

Social Media was in action last night and may have set history outside the Presidential Election last year. The University of Tennessee was about to announce their new football coach on Sunday night when Vol fans caught the information online about who was being hired ... a Twitter storm erupted. Even state congressmen got involved. Long story short ... by the end of Sunday night the university let the coach and his reps know they had changed their mind and the offer to be their head football coach was being rescinded.

When I look at my iPhone weather app it is showing temps in the mid to high 50's for the next week. I'll take it without complaint.

Could be 3 walks today here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana and that could mean another post sometime later this afternoon right after another Z4 drive.