Our RV Adventures

When we got up this morning we had a nice surprise waiting for us from our daughter Brandi. New Landon Photos!

But the real surprise was how much he’d grown. In these two new photos he’s almost 7 months, lying in his ‘Froggy Chair’. And note that he’s more hanging out of it than ‘in’ it.

And here he is in the same chair at two months. Quite a difference!

Brandi said he’s getting so tall, he’s growing out of a lot of his outfits.

We got up at 8:30 even though we didn’t want to, because I still had a lot of work to do on my seminar today. We were really overwhelmed by the attendance at yesterday’s seminar. As I said I thought we might have 20 or so. We had 117.

For today’s class I had planned on giving everyone a CD containing the programs that I was going to talk about. But based on yesterday I was going to need a lot more CD’s. So I made 50 last night and then did another 30 this morning.

And at the same time I was revamping my outline. I realized yesterday that I didn’t talk near as fast as I thought I did, so I knew I had to shorten the topics I planned on covering.

About 11 Jan and I took a break to walk over the the food vendor to get hot dogs for lunch. Turns out they were nicely grilled rather than boiled, and were delicious. We brought them back to the rig and had them with the last of Jan’s Twice-Baked Potato Casserole from the BBQ potluck on Saturday that Dennis Hill did for the parking crew.

Then it was back to making CD’s, and finally we able to started printing the handouts. The class was called Do’s and Don’ts of Computer Security

You can get your copy by clicking the above link.

Just to be on the safe side we printed up 120 handouts, and Jan finished stapling them together just fifteen minutes before the class started at 1pm. Talk about cutting it close!

The class went pretty well, and once again we had a lot of questions.

A LOT OF QUESTIONS!

But that was good. Everyone seem to have a good time and enjoyed themselves. And once again Jan had to drag me out of the room so the next seminar could start.

We ended up with about 79 attendees, so we were almost perfect on the CD’s and a little high on the handouts, but I’d rather have too many than not enough.

At 2:30 Jan sat in on a panel-discussion seminar entitled “How Not To Kill Your Spouse Living Together In A 400 sq.ft. RV” or maybe it was “Staying Married & Happy In An RV”, or something like that.

While Jan was learning to count to 10 before tazering me, I went shopping in the Vendor area. BTW I don’t think the ‘counting to 10’ thing is so she’ll calm down and reconsider tazering me, I think she just wants to give me a headstart to be fair about the whole thing.

Anyway, I went ahead and bought the new TireTraker Tire Pressure Monitoring System that I had my eye on.

Unlike my other system, the batteries in the tire sensors are replaceable, so they don’t have to be sent back to the factory for service every three or four years or so. I’ll let you know how it works.

We were supposed to have the Pizza Party at 6pm, but the pizza showed up at 5:30. So Nick had to get on the fairgrounds PA system to let everyone know to come and get it early before it got cold.

It’s really amazing how well Nick’s wife Terry has this organized. All 300 or so people were fed in less than 15 minutes. Almost like magic.

And there were plenty of seconds (and thirds) for anyone who wanted it.

And then it was time for everyone’s favorite, The Annual Cactus Queen Contest. For some reason Nick has entirely too much fun cavorting with men in drag.

The winner this year was Miss Lottie Hottie, the buxom young ‘lady’ in the pink halter top, fifth from the left. I think it just shows you that big boobs win every time.

And why exactly did Nick have lipstick all over his face after the contest?

Finally about 8pm, after all the Cactus Queen contestants had been run out of town by the ‘vice squad’, we all decided we needed a Dairy Queen fix so off we went to our local hangout. We’ve been there so many times, they now recognize us when we come in the door.

Or at least the girls behind the counter recognize Nick, and run and hid.

I’m not really sure what that’s all about.

Tomorrow will hopefully be a slightly less hectic day, although Jan had 8am front gate duty again, so no sleeping in.

More tomorrow. . .

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Thought for the Day:

"The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am" – Darth Vader

gsdfg

Thank goodness for coffee!

I’m not sure Jan and I could have gotten moving this early this morning without it. Jan had front gate duty starting at 8am so once again we were up before 7 to get ready. The front gate is where the local people get their day passes to visit the rally, and Jan had the first shift.

Luckily they had donuts at in the Vendor building so we had that final sugar rush to put us over the top. And after getting Jan set up at the gate, I made a circuit of the vendor booths to get a first look at the new products offered, and seeing where some of my money will be going in the next few days.

No new rigs came in today so it looks like that part of the rally is over for me. Which was good because it left me time to go back to the rig and work on my seminar outline.

I wanted to fine-tune it some more and then print 40 copies to hand out to the attendees. I was hoping for maybe 20-25 people if I was lucky, so I figured 40 would be plenty.

As it turns out, my calculations were a little off.

This seminar, “10 Things to Never Do With Your Computer”, was kind of put together at the last moment to help Nick fill in a hole in the schedule. So I figured I’d just take each point, talk about why it was important, and take questions.

Clicking the above link will get you your own personal copy of the outline.

Around noon I was satisfied with the handout so I printed them out and Jan stapled the two pages together for me. Then a little before 1pm we walked over to the Fine Arts Building where I was speaking.

When we got there I was happy to see there was already 5 or 6 people inside, meaning I wouldn’t be talking just to Jan. I went up front to set up my laptop and check the mic system. Then, a couple of minutes later I looked up and the room was half full. Wow!

Right about then Jan comes up that says she’s out of the 40 handouts. Oops!

Since it’s still about 5 minutes before 1, I ran back to the rig and print 30 more copies.

Still not enough. As it turns out, we had 117 people show up. Very gratifying.

The class seem to go well and we had a lot of good questions. In fact a number of people stayed around afterwards, still talking. Jan finally had to drag me out so the next seminar could start.

I told everyone that didn’t get a copy that I would print some more handouts up and leave them at the registration table later this afternoon. And a lot of people did just that.

Tomorrow I have another seminar entitled “Do’s and Don’ts of Computer Security”. Hopefully it will go as well as today’s.

Changing the subject, I did see this car tag today that I would really like to have. It would come in handy to wave at Nick Russell when he starts complaining when I don’t do a blog occasionally.

Man up, Nick. You can handle it.

With the nice weather, and since we’re parked grass, Mister really loves to get out on his lease. However the dead grass gets all over him and he’s a real mess. If he wasn’t so afraid of vacuum cleaners, I’d try to just vacuum him. Because it’s so dry here, if you try to brush him off with your hand, you just build up a static charge on his fur and start drawing sparks, which he doesn’t like either. You just can’t win.

Finally, a little after 5, the four of us headed out for dinner at a nearby Golden Corral, and while we were in line, we ran into Mike and Linda, RV newbies who’ve only been on the road since last October. But Linda’s not new to driving big rigs since she’s a former truck driver, and she kept us all laughing with her tales of the road, and what a trucker sees from their cab high off the ground.

Getting back about 7pm, we had a great Country/Swing concert from a duo called “Ea$y Money”. They were really good and got the crowd on their feet, with even some line dancing going on. A really great time.

Then, about 8pm it was back to the rig to work on tomorrow’s seminar.

More about that later.

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Thought for the Day:

Every knife in my back pushes me forward, but it sure hurts like hell.

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