Thursday, March 20, 2014

Show and Tell

.... other things, non beagle in my life...

Far Afield Podcast -- Rival Cast Media.

Do listen in.  This is the spin off show that came from the popular Grand Old Podcast, that really centers loosely around the 3 hosts Iowa roots [or issues].  Its a twice monthly run, sometimes up to 3 hours lin length, where we just sit around and have fun.   The other two hosts have shows in their own right, and I can just coast in and out where comfortable.  We bounce alot of humor off each other.  Seems to work well.  Lots of you are hitting me on twitter about the show with feedback.  I'm always listening.  Find stream links for the show on the networks site, or http://www.rivalcastmedia.com/shows/far-afield/





.... working my day job is about to get nutty again.   The crazy business season is about underway.  Due to the market expansion, they are replacing a store nearest to me... meaning it goes dark; so my store gets greenlighted for the next 3 weeks of insane traffic.  Not that I haven't been through this before, but I still dread it a little bit.  Most of my staff is stretched thin, customers are upset about traveling 15 miles to my location, and the extra workload doesn't make me thrilled.  It should be over soon.  Then its just normal busy mode.  For the next 4 months.   sigh...





.... photo work has slowed.  My website is up and functioning, and some new images are up for purchase.   The last few months have been terrible to get it working.  The root of the problem was the buyout of FotoMoto a while back.  Accounts were not transitioned very well, and mine was actually frozen; worse yet, the links crashed out so I wasn't able to sell any work for a month.  After that, and tinkering with new settings; I managed to get new images up for about 3 weeks.   Then ICANN hit me.  Their policies on domain registration changed, my hosting company failed to inform me, so ICANN delisted my site.  Not cool.   I actually noticed my email was offline first; but a day later found a potential client calling me asking: "is this a joke, your website doesn't even exist?"  I was pissed.  After raging at my hosting provider for an hour, I was told it would take 24 hours to repopulate on DNS entries.  I laughed.  It should take seconds.  More than 10 years with my hosting provider is about to cost them my business over this.  When my contract expires, they harass me with letters, emails and phone calls: but when my site is going to be blacklisted because they wont offer me terms of service renewals on time? Hardly an apology.  I can bitch  more. I suppose, but its done and settle at this point.  My contract is up in June, so I hope Ipower is listening to the bad rap I'm banging out on them!   More photos are coming; due to the puppy though, I'm stuck keeping close to home, so expect some random macro works and small projects to experiment with light in the mean time.   When he gets bigger, we can go explore.




....  on the personal level....  I had a pretty big falling out a few months ago.  I try not to talk about it.  She ended up moving out, unannounced over a holiday.  It was upsetting to say the least.  Does it matter? No.  I can still pay my bills.  I still function.  And I still want her to be happy.  I will delicately state, it wasn't about me or what I did.  It was her.  It was her decision to leave; as I even tried to convince her to stay and work on things in her life.  I'm a good trusting soul for that sort of thing.  She meant alot to me anyhow.  But I'm not kidding myself, what was the future anyhow?  She was a recent divorcee from a long term marriage who questions alot of things about life as her own person. Thats fair.  For me, she was never interested in anything long term.  There never were going to be kids or marriage or long romantic unending stories.  There was no reason there couldn't be, but its her choice.  I do wish her the best.  I was honest when I told her that her future is important to me; but I have to be me, she has to be her.  Thats kind of where we left it.  Its fair, but we both lose to win in the end, if that makes sense.    I also had a birthday.  Right after all that mess.   Which was sobering as usual because of it.  Big thanks to the phone calls and messages from friends to cheer me up.  This year looks to be more changes ahead!  

S

Welcome Mr. Wrangler

Mr. Wrangler

The last few days have been consumed with this little guy!  I decided a few months ago I wanted to get my own pet again, and had been doing alot of window shopping.  Eventually I decided on a beagle because of the HoA issues of my condo.  After cruising alot of forums and websites, I decided to stay local; and can say Mr. Wrangler is also an Iowa native just like me.  I spend the day making a 7 hour, one way, drive and brought home a big challenge.  He is about 10 weeks old at this point, full of energy and chewing teeth!  We're learning pretty quickly though.  Potty training over 5 days has resulted in 2 incidents, of which one was my fault.  Crate training has been more cumbersome.  He hates it.  Clearly.  As I'm writing, hes napping in the crate, but it took a half hour to get him to go in, and even then he still cries for 10 minutes before settling down.   But so far, so good.  Honestly.  For a dog this young, with a first time puppy parent, by myself, were doing good.  Follow me on twitter: alvarado_scott  as I'm sure more pictures and posts about him will show up there.   He managed to sit still just long enough for one portrait with a real camera.  Hes definitely a cute little guy....   even if he chews my hands apart!

S