The Blog Has Changed !!

It was not too long after I published that post this morning that I sat down with a new cup of coffee and clicked on the WordPress dashboard "Themes" ... I was going to get serious about finding a blog with a sidebar on the right hand side. Should be easy to do with over 300 blog themes to choose from. Anywhere from 60-108 of them had sidebars on the right side of the page. A little over 5 hours later I found myself unsuccessful in the hunt, yet ... I made some drastic blog changes.

Yes, I did sit my my computer for almost all of that time looking through and trying out different themes. A few of them I made some changes and on two of them I had everything modified with my information ... just click on the "publish" button to change it all.

Didn't happen.

The hounds let me know by Stella howling and Heidi barking, that I had worked through lunch, their lunch. They wanted that new lamb and rice kibble right now. It gave me a chance to get away from the computer, fix myself some lunch and walk around. I could go outside and check out the weather. So much for that spring weather lasting until Friday.

Heidi did her lap around the house after relieving herself but it was cold enough that she ran to the door to go back inside. That was the last time we saw Heidi as she hid out in the bedroom on the dog bed sleeping the afternoon away. She's not stupid.

I'll take a break from the hound discussion and get back to the blog and what drastic changes were made. Based on what device you use, nothing will look any different to you UNLESS you scroll to the bottom of the page.

I reduced the rows of photos/posts on the home page from the 4-5 rows on the home page down to just 2 rows. Showing only 8 of my most recent posts. Why?

After I played around for a little over 5 hours, using around 800Mb of data looking at themes, and customizing some of them with my information or stuff I wanted to show ... I realized there was nothing better than what I have here. So why not work with what they gave me for the sidebar.

This theme has the largest photos anywhere on WordPress. In exchange for that wide photo, they give me only two places for sidebars. (1) Below each post, between the post and comment section. (2) In the footer at the bottom of the blog. I chose to make the footer like an additional page.

I see more and more sports websites and local newspaper websites doing that exact same thing. If it's available to be expanded, then the 'footer' of the blog becomes like an additional page added to the homepage.

Of course since I have some deficiencies in my mental make up, such as straight pictures in your house, or straight laps when mowing my yard or even when I make spreadsheets .... things have to be even, straight, and/or balanced.

So when you scroll to the bottom of the blog homepage to check out this 'new' footer (sidebar) I speak of, you will see 21 lines of recent posts only because I had 21 lines of websites that I follow. I put the shorter list in the middle so the outer edges of the links would be even.

For the sidebar under the post I just put the 'follow button' there to make it convenient for those that want to follow the blog after reading their first post as a new reader or first time visitor. First timers, if you make a comment WordPress tells me I have to approve your first comment, then all your other comments will post immediately. So your first comment did not disappear after hit the submit key, it is just waiting for my approval.

On that list of favorite blogs I have added five new links, some you have seen, some have not. I added the link to my old blog with the same name as this blog but only a letter difference, (B). That will give you more history and hundreds of more photos of the hounds plus of Winston and Sadie. If you dig really deep in the archive list, you'll read about my RV research.

Two of the links I added, I told you about the other day and posted their links inside a post. You'll recognize them as the Fraud, Crooks and Criminals and Creeping Sharia. Both of those are filled with good information that you rarely see on tv news. It might be buried online news but you have to dig to find it.

The last two links I added are blogs well written about the political scene or other news in the USA. Kuntsler's Blog and The Market Ticker both do a much better job of writing in a way that all people can understand it and they express the bullshit of Washington DC much better than I have attempted to do. So take a look at them if you are a little curious.

A reminder to my readers from my Blogger blog ... that list will not change when a new post is published. They stay in alphabetical order but I think we are all pretty familiar with who posts daily and those that space out their posts. You can click their sites based on that I guess.

I will be interested to see if this new format shows any changes in the traffic pattern within my blog. All my photos are available for downloading for your own use, as they always have been. On my Blogger blog I could see what photos were downloaded but I cannot on this WordPress blog.

I guess since I have attempted to change this blog design a couple of times in the past 10 days or so but left it the same, then it's the design I really want to use and keep. Wordpress calls this theme one of their most popular if not the most popular theme in their blogging history

So I believe I am set on the blog.

As you could see from the photos this afternoon, Stella was in her afternoon walking mode which means a pretty slow pace and mostly on the path for most of the way. She did test me once by straying away back there when I wasn't paying attention to her but that's just part of walking with a bloodhound. Bloodhounds are in their own little world when they are outside.

As we approached the 'Y' in the path, I veered left to take the old way home. Stella was heading down the newer way home ... then she realized what I had done.

She turned to follow me without me saying anything. Plus she can wonder on her own this way because she always seems to end up in the north yard.

It was interesting to see her still stop and stare over at the neighbor's yard or the woods behind their house. She was pretty far left of the path we normally take.

Once she decides that she is going inside, she doesn't move. She doesn't turn around. She stands and stares, waiting for that door to open. Not once in the three years and five months that I have had her, has she ever barked to come back inside. Nor has she barked at birds, squirrels, rabbits or deer. She never barks and only howls for lunch to be served.

Once spring arrives it will be a busy couple of days with my high pressure washer ... those steps and all of the house foundation will be stripped with the high pressure washer and then repainted with gray concrete paint. I am looking forward to the new look. I might also buy a new Larsen's storm door that would match the front door. My 'to do' list continues to grow for 2019.

It was sad to hear this morning that Tioga George had passed away recently. What an amazing man who influenced many with his travels through Mexico, leading many into RVing and traveling the country. When I would read his blog I found it amazing he was in his mid-80's, doing all that he was doing in the past year or two. He will be missed, like all the other travelers/bloggers who have passed away the past few years.

Well after a full day of work here at home ... It is steak and steamed broccoli night ... then another night of reading, glancing at basketball games on tv with the sound turned down while the rest of the world goes ape shit crazy over the State of the Union speech.

It was another great day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

A Day Of Changes ???

As you can see I had a hard time coming up with a title for this post. It might even change before I publish it, who knows. It's one of those days. I mentioned yesterday I might change the look of the blog. Nothing happened until last night around 10:30pm. I turned off the movie Woodstock and sat back down in front of my computer. I looked at only a few themes, tried one, the same one I changed too for an hour a few weeks ago. I was basically too tired to make any kind of decision nor did I feel like putting in the time to make the small adjustments after I would activate the theme. So, I ended the night and started today with the same theme as always. Why do I need to change it all the time?

Winter will not hit us until Friday.  A long time blog reader out in the Kansas City area always likes to test the weather we get here in 'the tropics' before it arrives. So sometimes, not all the time, I will get a warning a few days in advance of what to expect. She is more accurate than any weather online radar or local tv weatherman. I don't think she told me about this though ... the fog. She did tell me that temps were half of that 64° I mentioned and that was true this morning. I put my wool socks back on, the sock hat, my gloves, but stuck with the light four seasons jacket as a test. After the first photo from my doorstep, the low battery light started flashing. Could we finish the walk with enough photos?

I decided the best thing to do was to turn the camera off after every photo I took. Some might say that would wear the battery down faster but I remembered from last time just how little time I had left after that blinking battery icon a few weeks ago. I didn't have more than two to three photos left after that. So I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Off, on, off, on, off, on for over 25 times. I liked the fog this morning. It gave the walk a little feeling of mystery as Stella and I walked across a field fully saturated. There is more rain on the way this afternoon and tomorrow. It could be perfect weather for making blog changes.  :)

I also went to bed last night with my Apple Watch battery showing only 13% left. Would that get me through the night? I decided to test it and knowing I would be awake and up within the next six to seven hours, I thought the 13% of battery life would be plenty. I found out this morning, a night of poor sleep took a little over 1% per hour. I had 3% left as I let the hounds outside for the first time today. So ... two batteries needed to be recharged as soon as possible this morning if I was going to be able to operate like I normally do. Sad isn't it ... an electronic life. But ... a good life it is. I love electronic equipment.

Another change took place very early this morning. It's the first time in maybe two years that I am feeding the hounds lamb and rice instead of chicken and rice. I made the change with hopes that Stella will itch less, since I cannot find any fleas on her and there are no signs of raw skin or hot spots from any kind of allergy. Who knows, maybe she is allergic to deer scat? That's a joke ... at least I think it is. I did ask myself, what happens if Heidi's skin allergies flare up with the change in protein? Well if that happens I'll immediately go out and buy the bag of chicken and rice for her and let Stella finish the bag of lamb and rice. Remember, the vet told me two years ago that in his study on dog allergies, dog food was the cause only 3% of the time. Maybe Stella's scratching is a habit since it seems to take place in the same areas inside and outside. Strange.

Another change this morning, I went back to my old blog on Blogger, Bhounds And Other Stuff, and took off the private setting then checked all of the settings in the dashboard. Google always does this, someway settings that I set a long time ago were changed. For some reason the ticks had changed to where search engines were not allowed to index the site. The comments setting was changed. The number of posts on a page had changed. I thought at first all of those happened automatically when I changed the settings to 'private' the other day, but after checking my other two old private blogs, that was not the case. You can go there to see the blog list that updates each time a blogger posts something new. On WordPress I can list those same blogs but they do not update each time a post is published. WordPress keeps the list of blogs or websites in alphabetical order. It's that list of blogs that keep telling me I need a blog template that has the side bar on the home page or at least on the page that has the post.

Not quite halfway through the morning walk and I still am able to take pictures of Stella and the fog. The technique of turning the camera off an on is working so far. Later I'll look at my screen on the Canon camera to see if I can tell how much battery life I have before I get the warning so I am not in this same situation again. While walking I am still thinking about blog changes, or taking photos around my local small town that has some pretty sad buildings empty for the past few years. They all tell an interesting story and one that makes you wonder if the economy is really as good as the experts tell us it is. Or are they possibly proving just how hard it is keeping a brick 'n mortar store profitable year after year in the world of e-commerce? In a few cases the old businesses have gone out of business because of the owner's death but a couple more told me they could not stay competitive with online e-commerce. Other's just retired and could not sell what they had.

I could have gone lighter on this photo but I wanted to keep the overcast sky with fog as the main attraction. The tall grass really is that color next to Stella and there is something about that tall power line tower that keeps me taking photos of it. Over the years I will see an occasional state helicopter flying above the lines, going southwest, checking the lines but in the 21 years I have lived here, I've never seen anyone doing any kind of maintenance or repair.

As I walk this field I feel many mole tracks scattered within the half mile walk. That told me years ago, no matter what I put on my yard to control yard moles, they will always be a problem to my landscaping ideas. I saw one surface on top of the snow one year but other that than I've never seen them. I've tried everything on the market to prevent them from destroying my backyard. I rarely see them in the front yard. I remember in 2014 I dug 6" deep in the flowerbeds, then laid out the black plastic or net to prevent weeds from growing. I covered it up with 6" of river rock in back, mulch in front ... only to see dirt pushed up through the mulch or rocks, above ground level from mole traffic. I hate those little bastards.

No AT&T tower to see today ... the PNW has arrived in 'the tropics'.

Stella did not run again this morning but she did to a little short trot to catch up and pass by me. I keep forgetting that she will be 10 years old this summer.

Just as I snapped this photo, the screen on back of the camera went black and the lens automatically retracted. I had made it on a low battery for over 25 photos and 17 minutes of walking. So besides charging my watch, the Canon battery and finishing my second cup of coffee ... I had two decisions to make. (1) publish this now or wait until later today. (2) spend a lot of time and a lot of data, looking for that one blog theme that I wanted to change to.

The only search words I will use to choose from those 308 WordPress themes are "page wide photos", so the photos will remain as large as they are now with a different design. Besides the large photos on the post page I am looking for a sidebar either on the home page and/or the post page, where I can list those blogs of friends that I follow out in the open, plus other information. This theme puts them at the very bottom of both the home page and post page. I'm not a fan of that placement. Traffic reports show that for some reason there are not a lot of clicks on the past posts on the home page where all the photos/posts are listed, compared to my older Blogger blog. Some of that is by the way the blog is designed for phones and tablets. With those you have to scroll to the bottom to see the other posts. I tried it the other day and told myself "I'm not doing that" and stopped.

So we will see what happens to the blog design today. Maybe nothing.

I still have books to read. I will NOT be watching the State of the Union address tonight nor will I watch all the expert opinions afterwards. That reminds me, the other reason I want a sidebar ... I have four new websites I want to have on the side of the blog. Two of them were mentioned just the other day and two others were sent to me by a friend a few months ago. I read those two very informative blog in my Feedly account. So it looks like I have something to do this morning ... blog design. That also answers option number one above ... post this now.

See how easy life in retirement is. No approvals needed. No meetings to discuss those options. No outsourced input. I'm in charge and that's a good thing here in 'the tropics'. No .... I am NOT putting that period inside that quotation mark !!! :) Besides I am not really in charge here in 'the tropics' ... the hounds are the ones in charge.

I read somewhere yesterday, ah yes, in Team of Vipers. It's very well written and the author is very conscientious about what he is reveling about his time working in the White House. All the reports, the news, the chaos that goes on under the Trump administration does not bother me and does not surprise me in the least. Like I said a month or so ago, I use to work for a family owned business and one of the owners of the company was a twin of Trump ... he acted identical to him. He made decisions the same way, some good some bad. I found it to be typical business. People forget or don't want to remember, a businessman was elected not a politician. So why should his administration be something people and news stations are familiar with or like all the past presidents? It's not complicated for me to see and I'm not the smartest person around.

Well Heidi has moved her sleeping operation from the bedroom into the living room. Stella has joined her with a few hours to go before their lunch. That will give my Canon battery plenty of time to charge. Like I said yesterday or in the past ... I really like that smaller Canon G9 X with the Nikon D3200 as a backup or for those days I need a change. :)

It's foggy but still nice this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Super Bowl Outrage

I was more in disbelief of the weather Sunday afternoon here in 'the tropics' than the Super Bowl game. This was the temperature around noon but by the end of the day we had broke the all time high record with a 64° day. Winter returns on Friday.

Listening to sports talk radio today, seeing headlines on online sites, reading through my sports Twitter and all the "retweets" ... the general feeling was Super Bowl LIII sucked from the game, the halftime show, the commercials, EVERYTHING !!!!

The hounds sat and thought about what they wanted to do after their Sunday lunch and basically did nothing outside of their normal routine. They sniffed the air, looked around, sat and thought, then turned toward the door to go back inside. I returned to my books and knew by 1pm that I would be watching the game but not turning on my tv until they actually kicked off to start the game.

Since I like a defensive type football game in the NFL or College level, I enjoyed last night's game even if a team I dislike won. The icing on the cake was who was named the MVP of the game. They never mentioned one time during the game, that he was suspended for the first 4 games of the year for PEDs. If he had been in MLB he would not only been suspended but would have been ruled out of any playoff games and the Super Bowl. You can read about it here:

This morning felt like a Spring day. So much that it was almost scary and looked like an overcast April morning with thunderstorms in the afternoon. We will get rain this afternoon but not the spring type thunderstorms. I was back wearing my ballcap instead of a sock hat, no gloves, and a light jacket instead of the down parka. It was beautiful.

One of the local sports talk hosts had seen one of the performers of the halftime show play in Indianapolis last May and said last night it looked as if they couldn't wait to get their show over with and get off the stage. He said last May they were a fantastic show.

One key thing he said about the halftime show was "if you have to bleep out language, why is that guy performing in the Super Bowl?" Different group than the previous paragraph but I can guess which one based on the commercials in the first half of the game. Twitter was on fire during and after the game last night. A lot of hate going around and it's just not all about football either. Some idiots were mad because the game was not political enough !!!!

Needless to say, my tv has been off this morning and will be off all day ... I want 'quiet' around my house and NO WHINING .... I HATE WHINING !!!!! On blogs or tv.

Stella wasn't sure where she was going or what she was going to do on this walk. She ended up following a narrow deer path along the edge of the field in such detail that she was walking around and through the single deep red vines. She followed that path almost to the first turn.

I turned my tv off during the halftime show. Yet I watched not only every play of the game but all the commercials. They didn't seem as good as they did in past years. Maybe it was just me or have the expectations for even those now gone off the charts where companies are in a no win situation no matter how much they pay for 30 seconds? Nothing is ever good enough in this politically correct world.

Since it seems as if I finally have my Canon G9 X camera adjusted correctly on the Manual setting, which took place a few weeks ago, I rarely have to edit the photos now. The Auto setting showed me yesterday with that photo of Heidi above that the colors are too saturated, the lighting is too dark inside or outside. So I shoot most photos, if not all, in Manual mode and Auto-focus.

I ran out of eggs Sunday morning, oatmeal last Friday morning ... a sure sign I needed a grocery store run this morning if possible. So to fit into Stella's nap time and not in the range of eating ... I left right after the morning walk, especially since rain is a 90% chance after 1pm. At Walmart I found 14 cashier aisles available and ONLY ONE OPEN so for a few minutes I was an unpaid Walmart employee, checking out and bagging my own groceries. How soon will it be before Walmart hires robots to check people out?

After I returned home the weather was so nice I opened the storm door screen, opened the computer room window and the bedroom window. How nice to smell some fresh air and the sound of a misty wet highway as the traffic passes the house. I changed from a long sleeve insulated shirt/fleece to a t-shirt/sweatshirt, cotton socks instead of the wool socks. I caught myself counting the days until spring.

My eating habits continue to stay improved with 1400-1600 calories per day. No processed food, fewer cravings for chocolate or cookies, all fresh fruit or veggies matched with a steak, chicken or salmon. I shopped the same way today so I might have made the final turn onto a possible permanent path for healthy eating

In my blogging career I have disappeared for a few weeks, even deleted my other blog a few times and came back but I always wonder when a few people I follow disappear for months or years. Just recently after starting this blog, a blogger named "RetroRoxie" helped me out a lot with html code to paste to the CSS editing block. We emailed back and forth about dogs, blog ideas, and the codes for design.

She was my blog leader in making comments for a while and has disappeared. Her blog has not been deleted but her blog domain name shows an error message that says it will not connect to the server. I know she was going on a European vacation so maybe she took a longer one than I assumed. I have never seen an error message like that when a WordPress blog is deleted.

She had a great blog if you grew up in the 60's or 70's, with pages filled with old music, tv shows, products, or people. If anyone out there knows anything I'd appreciate if you could let me know what happened to her blog and if she is okay.

Another blogger that has a couple of labs, lives in Maine, hasn't blogged in many months. Maybe she just got tired of blogging, got busy etc. It just seems strange when people disappear after years of blogging without any kind of announcement for their readers. Is that just me or a general opinion from blog readers?

Again for those that have asked me recently, no ... I don't miss the FJ or the Z4 that I sold and traded for the Mini Countryman. The 4-door Mini, All-Wheel drive is a great multi-purpose car with great gas mileage, room for the hounds, and speed when I need it. It's a versatile car and I am happy with having just one car to maintain and drive.

Stella got in a full body shake on the walk this morning. She did not run in this part of the walk for the second day in a row. I continue to give her the joint supplements but I wonder what her reason is for not trotting or jogging. She has always like to run.

She is in this picture somewhere ... I was letting her do whatever she wanted while I stood near the yard.

I put my old blog in the private setting the other day. Regular traffic had almost completely stopped and instead, all of my traffic over there was spammers all from outside the USA. I guess that is what happens when you quite blogging but keep your site active.

I could feel that Monday was going to be a good day. Stella seemed to think so. Heidi thought so too. As we stepped inside she was barking at us instead of sleeping. I almost forgot ... yesterday afternoon Heidi started on the walk with us but then went her own way once she turned on the path walking along the edge of the field. By the time Stella and I returned she was exploring the southern edge of the yard. She spent a lot of time outside yesterday on her own.

You can tell the difference in the grass by the color. The deeper green grass I planted myself after I cut out, burned and pulled out roots of wild brush that covered that area of the darker green grass.  It shows how much yard I gained after my neighbor had the field surveyed six or seven years ago.

I was able to get a pretty good photo of Stella walking along the side of the house. I have said that has been her new routine the past few weeks and this is a perfect example of what she does. LOL ... don't ask me why ... I have no idea why she does things a certain way but it's always something funny.

I was going to wait to post this at the end of the day after I added some afternoon photos and try to get back to blogging at the end of the day instead of after the walk. I still might try that starting tomorrow.

When I saw I had 31 photos to be uploaded into the blog I decided to make it a published post now instead of waiting. I have a hard time reducing the amount of photos sometimes. We will see what happens.

I have a slight urge to redesign the blog today. That sidebar idea had crept up again.  Will reading books keep that urge to change the blog template in the background for another day?

It's a great February day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana today.