Daily Archives: February 7, 2011

Cat5e and more Newfies . . .

Got up early this morning, about 9am. (Well, it’s early for me)

First things, first…COFFEE!

I had a busy day planned with a first stop at Fry’s Electronics to pick up 500 ft of CAT5e Ethernet cable, assorted connectors, wall boxes, wall plates, and an 8 port Wireless Switch. Then it was on to my first client.

As usual he had a laundry list of things that needed fixing so it took me over 2 hours to cover everything. His HP Laser Printer is toast and will have to be replaced, along with an XM radio antenna that had its cable chewed up by a vacuum cleaner. You never know what you’ll run into in this business.

About 1:30 I headed over to my new client’s office in Pasadena. I wanted to get as much of the outside cable-pulling done before it gets cold and rainy on Wednesday. And as it happened things went pretty smooth and I got a lot of the job done.

I headed back to the rig, stopping off at the house to pick up the mail, specifically a Priority Mail envelope from Nick Russell.

Getting home about 5, I checked in with Jeannie and Eldy concerning our dinner plans for tonight. Jeannie was out getting groceries, but as soon as she got back, we headed up to Webster to eat Floyd’s Cajun Seafood. It’s one of our favorite places and we always enjoy showing it off.

After a great meal, Jeannie and Eldy headed back to the RV park, while Jan and I stopped off at Fry’s right across the street. It turns out the the wall boxes I bought this morning weren’t going to work so I traded them in for a different kind.

We finally got home about 8:30 after a long day.

And to think, I thought I was retired.

Thought I’d leave you with the 2nd day of our Newfoundland trip in 2009.

More tomorrow. . .

——————————————————————————————————————-

Thought for the Day:

You can never have enough friends, horsepower or ammunition.

——————————————————————————————————————

A Rough Night at Sea…

Posted on September 5, 2009

After finally falling asleep about 1 am,  we woke about 7:30.  It was a rough night.  People coughing all night, people snoring, people talking in their sleep, etc.

About 8 am we headed down to Deck 5 for breakfast at the Cafeteria,  stopping off to go outside on Deck 6,  for a great view of the ocean.

Ferry at Sea

After breakfast,  we went to one of the many lounges to spend the morning.  Jan settled in to read and I found an outlet to plug in my laptop.

Our ferry,  the “Joseph and Clara Smallwood” is 587 feet long and can hold 1200 passengers and 350 cars,  RV’s,  and semi’s.   We’re 200 miles out in the North Atlantic,  and I have both WiFi Internet and cellphone service.  This ship is really something.

But being built back in the 1990′s, i.e. ‘pre-laptop’,  there are not enough electrical outlets in the lounges for everyone.

They were also showing movies on big screen TV’s.  We watched ‘Night at the Museum’,  “Shrek II”, and others.

Around noon we headed back to the cafeteria for lunch of soup and sandwiches.  And then after lunch we moved all our stuff down to Deck 5 so we would be closer to our truck on Deck 3 when the time came.

We docked about 2:30 pm and were called to our vehicles about 2:45.  We were told not to start our vehicles until it came our time to move,  and then we started up and moved out…not.

Actually,  I turned the key and only got a ‘click, click, click’.  Dead battery.

I still don’t know what the problem was.  None of my lights were left on.  Anyway,  I wasn’t the only one.  Two other vehicles needed a jump start, also.

Finally,  we were off the ship and on our way.

We decided to head south down the peninsular to drive what is known as the Irish Loop,  though we only did a half-loop since we wanted to get back to St John’s to get a hotel room before dark.

And now some pretty pictures of our drive. This is Tors Cove.

Tors Cove

These next photos were taken along the Irish Loop.

Irish Loop 1

Irish Loop 2

Irish Loop 3

Irish Loop 4

Irish Loop 5

And I’m glad we did come back a little early, because we had to try three hotels before we found a room.

While we were hunting hotels,  we saw Montana’s Steakhouse and thought we’d give it a try later.  And we did.  And it was good.

Tomorrow…Twillingate!

asdfaf