At one time in the past I had intended to log every single walk I took, expecting to eventually travel walk the distance in miles of a trip to Phoenix, Arizona. Since that “dream” I have gone through multiple walk-tracking apps and have changed the way that I track my walks several times.

Things always change it seems. I used to be content with starting up a tracking app and then stopping it at the end of my walk, then posting that to Facebook, but I’d sometimes forget to start the app at the beginning of my walk, so it would only have half or a portion of my walk recorded, or none at all if I finished my walk before I remembered I forgot to start the app.

Today, Google Fit takes care of everything. It knows when I’m walking and when I’m not, and it tracks what it can automatically via GPS. The rest, like when I’m walking indoors at Vista, still gets tracked but only as steps and distance without a map. Even any photos I take are included in my timeline. And I earn “Move Minutes” and “Heart Points” as well, which is Google’s way of trying to keep me motivated.

I still post my walks to Facebook occasionally, but only when I feel the distance is exceptional or if I took a decent photo along the way and feel like sharing it. I might just stop the Facebook posting of my walks entirely though, and start posting them over here instead. I can never find what I’m looking for on Facebook for some reason. There just seems to be too much clutter and inconsistency there these days. I can look at my newsfeed on Facebook and then refresh it and every single time it shows me something different. Is it “rotating” recent posts? Sometimes I see posts from yesterday, sometimes today. The only way, it seems, to see everything the same way consistently is to actually go to a specific friend’s timeline. At least THAT doesn’t seem to change until they post something new. And what’s the deal with posting to your “News Feed” or to “Your Story”? It doesn’t some weirdly different stuff when you post to “Your Story” and it drives me nuts. I think they need a “Simple” version for us fogies that works and appears just like a blog. Predictable, add-free, simple. Wait a minute, I have one of those!

Don’t get me wrong, I like options. I’m a huge Android fan and not a Apple fan for just that reason. But Facebook got bloated and off-the-rails a long time ago and never stopped. I’m a big fan of Reddit now (thanks, Mike!) and find everything there much more interesting as a daily stop-and-browse site. I would even be fine with quitting Facebook entirely if I didn’t have so many friends and relatives still on it.

So what was my point with this post? My walks? Facebook? Reddit? I don’t really know. Just ranting I suppose. Filling my site with more content. Or gibberish, or maybe even flibbertigibbet, whichever you prefer.

On my way to work this morning at about 6:20 AM I was driving South on Lewis Avenue through Beach Park when several emergency vehicles approached from both directions. I pulled over and watched as they began blocking the intersections behind and in front of me. After they passed, I pulled up to the next intersection and they were allowing vehicles to go through going South, away from the area, so I continued on toward work, but I kept watching the cross-streets to try to see what was going on. Obviously something was up. As I passed one intersection I noticed a while cloud of what I thought was fog crossing the road down the road to the West. I thought nothing of it, assuming it was just morning fog as I’ve seen this many times before.

As it turned out, there was an accident on Green Bay Road and 29th Street, to my West, and a truck carrying ammonia was involved, spilling or leaking a great deal of ammonia from its tanks. That was the fog I saw… a cloud of ammonia. I have included a few links below. The one from NBC Chicago has a pretty good drone or helicopter video of the area covered in that “fog”. Click here for that one.

I’m kind of excited for Stephen King’s new book, which comes out September 10th, 2019. Entertainment Weekly recently published an excerpt. Take a look.

I made a huge mistake with my website recently. I have been getting alerts from my WordPress installation recently that I need to update my PHP to version 7. My site has been on PHP 5.5 since I moved to WordPress several years ago, but now, it seems, PHP has come a long way, and WordPress is insisting I update it. I assumed that eventually WordPress would require PHP 7, so it would stop working after I updated it one of these times, crippling my website.

Since these alerts started appearing, I have been looking all over my host’s admin panel in search of options for PHP, but was unsuccessful. So I decided to start looking elsewhere, and with Leo Laporte’s constant recommendation to use WordPress.com as a host for WordPress sites, I figured I’d try it out. Well, that little experiment lasted less than a day. I had chosen the “Premium” plan, which is one step up from “Personal”, their lowest paid tier, so I figured it would offer enough of the options I needed. As it turned out, for starters all of the site’s money amounts were in Polish “zloty” values instead of US dollars, so I had to use Google to convert the values to USD so I knew what I was getting into. I looked past that and tried to move on, figuring if that’s the worst issue I have, I’l be fine. Next I found that with the plan I chose I can’t use Plugins. None. Nada. Nothing. And I’m stuck with WordPress branding on my website. Sure, my plan removes all WordPress ADs, but apparently branding isn’t considered an ad. Then there’s the e-mail. I had this crazy notion that ALL HOSTING included e-mail accounts. HA! WordPress.com includes no e-mail whatsoever. They give you instructions on how to setup e-mail with another host–and they even recommend several good ones–but WordPress.com doesn’t have e-mail accounts. Period.

Well, that was the last straw. And stupid me didn’t even go the slow route–I went ahead an transferred my domain to them during this whole process! So now I’m a bit stuck. They say my domain is locked for 60 days, per ICANN, after any transfer, and can’t be moved until after that. Whoops. I e-mailed support at WordPress and asked if there’s any way to unlock it sooner. I saw that the site on my host also have a lock option, but I have the ability to remove that to allow the domain to be transferred. That might not apply for new transfers though, but we’ll see what they say.

So, desperate for another option, I did a web search for how to upgrade PHP on my host’s site, and there it was. There is an option in the “CGI and scripting language support” section in my admin panel with my host that says very simply: “Select the version of PHP that will be run for files with a .php extension” along with a dropdown containing 5 PHP versions from 5.3 to 7.1. I switched to 7.1 immediately and went back to my self-hosted WordPress site’s admin section. Whaddayaknow, the alerts werer gone. Problem solved. Except…

Yup, now I’m a little messed up. My domain name was transferred to WordPress.com and I don’t want it there, I want it back where it was. WordPress.com as a 30-day refund policy, so the first thing I did, once my domain transfer was completed at WordPress.com, was to change the DNS addresses back to MY host, which still hosts my same old site (which is now on PHP 7.1) and cancelled my subscription to WordPress.com. I guess this will allow it to function properly for 60 days until I can transfer it back, but I was in a little bit of a panic for awhile there, wondering if my site might be offline for 60 days, stuck in the ether without a home. Not that it would have been the end of the world for my site… I’m sure I’ve gone over 60 days without a new posting many times over the years. After several days (not a good turnaround time for hosting support) WordPress.com finally responded to my question about unlocking my domain before the 60 days, and I was told that it’s a ICANN requirement (as I already knew) and there’s no way around it–I have to wait the 60 days. So I marked my calendar. My site should be fine though–at least it’s pointing to the right place.

In the end, my site is basically just a glorified “portal” to other sites and a sort of journal where i can practice my writing (and bitching) skills anyway. I don’t advertise anything and I don’t expect anyone to visit besides me. If they do, they’re perfectly welcome, and I’m always aware that everything here is 100% public and I have curated it completely. So, if you’re reading this and you’re not me, WELCOME! You are among very few who stumble into this little corner of the interwebs. Enjoy the posts, check out the photos and videos too…but they’re not actually here, they’re sitting on much more popular sites like Flickr and YouTube…but I made em, that’s my (our) stuff. And this is still one of the last remaining ad-free, popup-free, non-malware-infested websites in cyberspace, and that’s the way I intend to keep it.

Well, the puppies are taking shape. We now trust them enough to let them sleep with us instead of in their pen. They seem incredibly happy about this, especially at bedtime, and they’ve adapted to it very nicely. When I get up to use the restroom in the middle of the night they do too, running right to their pad (or outside if it’s warm enough) and do their business, then we all go back to bed at the same time and snuggle up again.

Our grandkids Haylie and Connor spent the weekend here recently, and the puppies tried sleeping with them, but they didn’t last long. Haylie said they were just too hot, so she made them leave the bed. She’s not kidding either. Those little buggers are like space heaters in bed. I almost always sleep on top of the covers because I get too hot under them, and now, with the puppies in bed, I still get too hot even on top of the covers.

They’re still struggling with pad training though. As far as urinating goes, they’re nearly perfect and only sometimes miss the pad, but only due to bad aim. Pooping is another matter. For some reason, about 1/2 the time they’ll drop it somewhere other than the pad and think nothing of it. We’re not sure if they’re trying to mark an area because there’s two dogs in the house, or just trying to get attention. We try to look past it and not scold, and simply discourage the bad habits by not treating them, but I don’t think we catch them pooping on the pad often enough to reward the good behavior. We’ll get there though. And right around that time the weather will get good consistently enough to where we’ll be totally retraining them to do their business completely outside without a pad at all, unless they’re penned for a few hours, or in case of emergencies, like Socks was trained to do.

I’ve been trying to read more, trying hard to get back to the “old-fashioned” reading where you actually read words on a page. Well, not fully old-school, I’m using a Kindle Paperwhite, but it sure “seems” like I’m reading off of a printed page… it is nice. I threw a few hundred books from my collection onto my Kindle and I’m reading a bit whenever I get a chance. I might play some of them as audiobooks in the background while I have the printed book open on my Kindle just to try to transition a little more comfortably. Right now I’m finding it a little difficult to stay focused, usually having it very quiet when I’m reading. Or I might try putting some good music on in the background while I read. Like maybe a playlist based on the book I’m reading. Spotify users often create some really appropriate playlists, like the ones for Ready Player One.

Speaking of books, I just read this posting by Wil Wheaton. He’s trying to work on a book he’s writing, but he’s been suffering from depression for the past few months. He’s seeing a therapist, and it sounds like it’s helping, but this sure was enlightening. Everyone (or is it just me?) thinks celebrities must have these elaborate, perfect lives, where everything is catered to them and they are so happy and “living the life” all them time. Well, Wil is always very honest, as you’ll read, no different than anyone else, just trying to get by. I’m a huge fan of his, and hope everything works out ok. I’ll be one of the first ones to buy a copy of his new book, whenever it comes out.

Shadow actually fetched a ball and brought it back two times yesterday! This is a first for either of them. They love to chase balls when I throw them, but this is the first time he ever brought it back to me. He was praised and rewarded, of course. Progress! I also walked them around the perimeter of the backyard, one at a time, yesterday. They did ok. Shadow did a bit better than Tiger, sniffing things and looking around, like a puppy should. Tiger is still skittish, not knowing what to do or where to walk with leash on, still wrapping himself around my legs, looking up at me, trying to jump up my legs instead of walking. He’ll come along.

The puppies are doing great. They have totally consumed all of my spare time and attention. I only hope it’s enough. Yesterday I walked them both, one at a time, for a short distance. They’re both about the same, not sure when or where to walk yet, running around my feet and wrapping me up. I try to keep the leash short so this doesn’t happen, but if I go too short I feel like I’m going to choke them. Then I think about their poor tracheae, which are much more sensitive on chihuahuas. They’re getting a little better every day though, sometimes walking alongside me perfectly for short distances. This is when they get a treat. I walked one dog to the mailbox to get the mail and back, and the other I walked to the fire hydrant on the corner of our yard and back. So we didn’t leave our property, but it’s a lot better than where we were last week, when they couldn’t even walk down our hallway in the house. They would just freeze up (Shadow), lying down flat on his belly, legs spread out, clinging to the rug. Tiger would just sit down and refuse to walk, no matter how hard I tugged or begged him or held out a treat for him. He would even refuse to eat a treat when his leash was on him. So right now they’re still a little hesitant, but they don’t freeze up any more, and will take treats with the leash on. We’re making progress!

On more than one occasion we’ve caught them like this– both of them actually sitting inside their toy basket, on top of all of their toys. We’re not sure what the point is, but it’s funny. They know how to wrap themselves up into their blankets, so it’s not to keep warm.

They’re closer to being fully pad-trained now, but still have an accident once in awhile, which doesn’t really seem accidental. It’s never pee, as far as we can tell. They just occasionally poop in other places. We’re using a spray in those spots afterward, to both clean the spot and to deter them from going there, but then they just go in other places. We’ll get there soon, I’m sure. Just when it starts getting warm enough to start their outside potty training and we have to start all over again. Agh.

I also find it very difficult to write anything at home now… The puppies constantly try to get my attention, pulling at my socks and toes, running in and out of the room chasing each other–anything to get my attention. As I write this, Tiger is pulling my pant leg trying to get my attention. So I’m going to go, it’s time for puppy breakfast.

But first I have to mention this thing:

I don’t know what the heck it is, but I vaguely recalled it when we first got Shadow and Tiger, and after many views now it’s stuck in my head again. It’s a weird ad for the drink KickStart, which contains 3 ingredients. I get it–3 things blended together–but it’s just weird enough and disturbing enough to get stuck in your head. BE WARNED.

Well, taking on two puppies has gotten quite interesting already. We’ve learned that each puppy is an individual and must be treated separately as often as possible. This means separate walks, separate training sessions, and separate one-on-one playtime whenever possible. We were also told to crate them separately (in separate rooms, far from each other), but this didn’t work out the first time we tried it. After several hours of crying and screaming by both puppies long into the night, we gave up for the night and put them together. Asleep they went, quickly and comfortably. I guess, since they’re littermates and have been together since birth, sleeping together is all they’ve known.

We had our first vet appointment last night, so I brought this up and they can be crated together overnight, no problem. This was quite a relief for us. But they should have plenty of time apart from each other as well, so they can grow and develop as individuals. And we have to get them around as many different people as possible during the first few months to socialize them. We have a pen for them, in our living room, that they sleep in. Their potty pad is in there as well, and they’re getting more and more trained to only pee and poo on the pad.

Whenever we’re home, they get to run around the rest of the house, but we’ve found it a bit much to control all-at-once, so we’re blocking off access to other rooms as much as possible at times. Shadow seems to be the most curious one. He’ll explore every room and steal pieces of clothing whenever he gets a chance, just to see us react I think. He gives them up easily enough. He’ll grab underwear or a sock from a laundry basket and run across the house with it whenever he can, and he even snuck into the bathroom and grabbed the end of the toilet paper roll and ran down the hall and into the living room with it, nearly unrolling the entire spool. He’s a real stinker that one.

But overall things are doing good. They tolerated their first set of shots last night pretty well, and are getting comfortable going in and out of their pen to do their business, rest and play. I also take them out on the backyard once a day, even in the cold, just to start getting them used to it. They’re pretty much just cold, and maybe a just little curious right now, for a few minutes, then they beg to go back in and try to jump up on me so they can get warm again. It’s only for a few minutes a day, and I’ll slowly increase their outside time so we can start training them to go potty outside as the weather warms up. All of the staff at the vet seemed glad to have them, and one staff member said “I think we’re going to have to keep them here for observation for a year or two just to keep an eye on them!” We thought that was pretty funny. They’re both almost exactly the same weight, 3.5 lbs each. After we finished with the doctor, Shadow and Tiger were passed around to each of the office staff members to socialize, which was very nice, and they both seemed to enjoy the visit overall, they were just a little scared because everything is new, and they’ve rarely been outside of the house up until now.

We lost our wonderful Chihuahua Socks today.  His health had been on the decline for the past few months, so this wasn’t totally unexpected.  He had recently starting refusing to eat, so we (meaning Sandy) changed up his diet and tried several different foods and combinations.  Some things worked, for awhile, others didn’t, and he often went without eating. Other times, when he did eat, he would have difficulty keeping it down, so we had quite a few messes to clean up.  As a result, he lost a lot of weight and got weaker.

We noticed his vision and hearing also got much worse over the past few months, so we knew it was only a matter of time.  We wondered if we would know exactly when would be the right time to have put him down, and worried about him suffering too much before we did.  But in the end, he spared us that painful decision and passed away peacefully this morning on his own.

The day before yesterday he had started continuously panting and slowly looking around as if he was having much more difficulty seeing things than he had before.  We comforted him, but he would keep getting up, walking a little, then just stand there panting and looking around. He got even more restless last night, and didn’t sleep at all.  I stayed up with him, sitting in my recliner most of the night, and he came and sat with me as he always used to, but last night he never stayed there for very long, then he’d jump down, just panting and slowly looking around.  He would walk around a bit, looking around again, then he would come back up and sit with me again. He repeated this several times, and I felt so bad there was nothing more I could do for him other than pet and scratch him when he needed it.  He never complained, the little trooper. He didn’t have any noticeable pain anywhere, no sensitive areas at all, so we’re sure everything just took its natural course and he died on his own terms.

Last week, during our first big snow storm of the season (the one before yesterday’s big storm) I let him out in the backyard after having plowed a large oval-shaped path through the backyard for him to run.  I figured he might not use it, since he usually doesn’t go far from the door these days when relieving himself, but he made a liar out of me and walked all the way to the farthest point of the oval before squatting to do his business.  I was hiding inside, as usual (if he saw me, I knew he’d come running back) but watching him closely. When he finished, he started the walk back to the house, but must have caught a chill or saw an indent in the snow at some point and he tried to take a shortcut!  He began plowing through the snow in the middle, beelining it toward the door! He made it halfway, slowed to a stop and then was stuck. He just didn’t have the strength to go on, and just stood there. I threw on my shoes quickly and ran out into the foot-high snow and scooped him up.  I ran him back inside and he was pretty excited (or relieved) once he shook off all the snow, and that little bit of drama didn’t seem to affect him at all.

I’ve accumulated many little stories like that one over the past sixteen years.  I only wish I had documented more of them to share with others. Fortunately, I have documented his life pretty well in the hundreds of photos I’ve taken of him over the years, so I’m going to assemble his final photo album as soon as I get a chance.  In the meantime, if you’d like to read a few of the “Socks” posts from my website, click here.  Be sure to go all the way back to the very first post, titled “Lost Peanut”, which explains how we ended up getting socks in the first place.

When do you know it’s time to put a dog down?  Socks is a 16 year old Chihuahua.  He’s lived a good life and has provided us with a great deal of happiness and has been my faithful companion for all of his 16 years, but he’s clearly fading now, and we’re having a hard time with it.  We’re basically just trying to keep him comfortable and dealing with whatever we have to, but at what point do we throw in the towel?

Right now, he’s still up and walking around, aware of his surroundings, somewhat, but he’s no longer active.  He mostly sleeps and goes outside to relieve himself.  He can’t see very well, his eyes are foggy, and even putting food or anything else in front of him doesn’t effect him unless you bump him on the nose with it or tap him to let him know something’s there.
He can hear only very loud noises, not much else, and often acts as though he doesn’t recognize us when we walk into the room or come home.  Once we calm him he’s ok then, seeming to then recognize us.  He often walks around aimlessly and just stops and stares at nothing, standing there, like he’s trying to figure out what to do next, then returns to his bed or gets a drink of water.

Lately he’s been refusing to eat more often, sometimes going a few days without eating.  We try different foods–cooked hamburger and rice seems to work sometimes–but sometimes he just won’t eat.  He’s getting skinnier and skinnier each week.

Several times, lately, he has vomited up all of his meal, and then he doesn’t eat again for another day or two.  We don’t want him to suffer, but also don’t want to end his life prematurely.  It’s a very sad situation.  So, for now, we just wait and watch, keeping him as comfortable as possible, and just letting him live his life.  Hopefully, like most human beings, he would prefer to just go in his sleep, at home, and rest in peace.

Here’s the video I created from our Christmas Eve celebration at Scott & Jenny’s.

Whoops, missed posting in November completely. Welcome to Winter. The Holidays are almost here already. Ya know, the older you get, the faster time seems to go. Anyway…

Something I’ve always struggled with is the massive accumulation of the thousands of photos and videos we have accumulated over the past many years as or technology has evolved and grown, is the question “What do I do with this huge pile of media?” How can I utilize, sort out, and make use of them all?

Well, my new Android phone has provided me with some nice new options (Samsung Galaxy Note 9). First of all, it has 1TB of storage. That’s a TON of space, and by far the most I’ve ever seen or had on a cell phone. It’s enough to hold my entire Spotify library, ALL of our thousands of personal photos and videos we’ve taken over the years, a bunch of my favorite movies, and a ton more. Not ALL of my movie collection though, that’s obviously way beyond 1TB, but hopefully you get the idea…1 terabyte is a LOT of storage space.

It took a few days of transferring, but I managed to get all of this data on my phone pretty easily. So all of this is on my phone, now what do I do? I searched the Play Store and tried out several different photo apps and photo album widgets, eventually stumbling upon one called “Animated Photo Widget”. It’s free, but a bit limited, as usual, until you purchase the “PLUS” version to unlock the “nice” features. That was expected, so I thoroughly tested the free version and eventually sprung for the “+” version. It gives you two nice home screen widgets that are photo slideshows. One is a single photo window, then other is a 2×2 4-paned window that shows 4 photos at once. Add whichever widget you want to your home screen, size it any size you want (I’m using Nova Launcher Prime, which makes resizing a piece of cake) and then you can choose the photo change interval, frame style, and which photo folder you want to get your photos from… or even just choose “All Photos”, which randomly or sequentially displays all photos on your phone in the frame. Since I can have unlimited widgets and unlimited home screens in Nova Prime, I can create as many small or large photo frames I want on as many different home screens I want, each showing different folders of photos or each showing ALL of my photos, or any combination of options I want.

So now I’m all setup with a specific home screen I like to display alongside my work monitors all the time while I’m working. It contains a large photo frame rotating through all of my photos as well as a 5-day weather forecast, a Google Keep widget so I can start a new note each time the help desk phone rings to write down my notes from the call, a Spotify widget that randomly plays my Spotify library of songs between phone calls, my Uptime monitor, a memory and storage monitor widget, and my current network status widget. This is everything I usually like to keep updated on at-a-glance while working, so it’s perfect for me. I get to see all of our photos from over the years, randomly, giving me nice flashbacks, while playing my favorite music and letting me know the current weather outside, since we’re in the basement of the hospital with no windows to see the outside world.

Having my entire library downloaded is a also a big thing because I can play my music freely without disrupting the network by constantly streaming. Sure, I’m only on our Guest network on my phone, but I still don’t want to eat up any amount of what precious little bandwidth that chunk of our network is provided when a hospital patient might want to use it for something important to them.

I must say though, this is the best experience I’ve ever had with a smartphone overall. With the previous two phones I had (Google Pixel and Pixel 2XL) I had a lot of freeze-up and slow-down issues almost daily, usually requiring a reboot of the phone before things improved. I have had none of those issues with the Note 9. I haven’t been forced to reboot it at all, though I have rebooted, knowing a once-a-week restart, at my convenience, is probably for the best with any smartphone, and I have had two system updates install already, which also required a reboot. But all that is normal, so I must say, I am very happy with this phone, although it does have a high price tag. At this point though, I think it’s worth it. In this case, I think the phrase “you get what you pay for” is pretty on-point.

Since my surgery I’ve been wearing sweatpants.  I tried wearing my usual jeans a few days after surgery, but they irritated my wound quickly, resulting in a nasty rash around it, so I switched to my comfiest loose sweatpants.  The rash quickly cleared up, so I decided to stick to sweatpants.  Today, with my wound healing very well, I went back to my jeans and they feel great again.

One big problem I had while wearing only sweatpants was the lack of a wallet pocket.  With nowhere to carry my wallet (most of my sweatpants have front pockets, sure, but my wallet barely fits into them, and when it does fit it just feels weird.  So as a result of this, I often forgot my wallet when I needed it, and even misplaced it a few times.  This resulted in a few pretty panicky situations, knowing all of what I would need to do if I really had lost my wallet.  Fortunately, I found it after a little searching each time, but that’s something I really fear with not wearing my regular pants, so I’ glad to be back in them.

So it’s “Jeans Day” for me… And it’s FREE… I don’t even have to pay $5 to wear them… at least for another few weeks that is.  To elaborate, at work (Vista Medical Center) they have “Jeans Days” on some Fridays when you can wear jeans to work…if you donate $5 to charity.  So we normally just wear dress pants, making wearing jeans (at work, at least) a little special.

My next checkup with the doctor is on October 23rd, ten days from now.  I’m hoping to get cleared for work at that time, or at least I should be able to find out when I can plan on returning.  Physical Therapy is progressing, but they say it’s slow.  My primary focus is with the bending of the knee.  They say it needs to be up to 115 to 120 degrees.  I’ve been at 100 degrees for a week now.  I’m doing some pretty painful 5-minute stretches 5 times a day to push it further, but so far I haven’t seen much improvement.   So with this issue, and the fact that I won’t be able to continue with my physical therapy sessions and work at the same time, I’m not sure if I’ll be allowed to return to work just yet.  I’ll find out on the 23rd.

I am back to walking at least 1 mile a day though, so that’s helping, and I’ve actually dropped a few pounds since just after the surgery.  I also saw a dietitian this week and learned how to count carbs and was given a reasonable plan that should allow me to lose weight a little faster.  We’ll see how it goes.