A Barrel of Monkeys . . .
Well, one monkey anyway.
After I posted the blog last night, I ended up spending about two hours on the phone with my webhosting company and the company that supplies the SSL Digital Certificate for the online shopping cart for one of my web clients.
The SSL Certificate is what gives you that little padlock on a website that shows your credit card info is safely encrypted.
Apparently when my certificate went through its yearly renewal night before last, someone screwed it up. My webhost said the SSL company sent over a corrupted certificate.
An SSL certificate consists of over 1600 characters and looks like this:
—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE—–
MIIE4zCCA8ugAwIBAgIDA8pAMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAMDwxCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT
MRcwFQYDVQQKEw5HZW9UcnVzdCwgS5jLjEUMBIGA1UEAxMLUmFwaWRTU0wgQ0Ew
HhcNMTExMDMwMTExMTAxWhcNMTIxMTAxMDk1MjMzWjCB6TEpMCcGA1UEBRMgU210
dzFiWFRVeEZMcFhrYVM2SjF1jZXUHk5LVS1AxCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVTMRowGAYD . . .
a lot of other characters . . . . . .
VQQKExF3d3cud2hpdGVzZXNvbTETMGA1UECxMKR1QwMTc4MTI1OTExMC8G
JPuG4i5C5v1Js+nZrPbWCZvzIe58i/Lf+rC0dCGS6exhjXjHJKgG0qqBHqrZn4FZ
Xlsc3fvX1L2v0mY9EYkBN95NPrNHwy7TJFtu0VF/xJIMId1FNk1Rz0R1uWJMIyVE
UlWo0iKLHQ==
—–END CERTIFICATE—–
If one character is wrong, the certificate won’t work.
So my webhost company says the certificate was bad. The SSL company says it was fine when they sent it out, so the webhost company must have screwed it up.
By the time I got them talking to each other and things straightened, it was almost 3 am.
Isn’t modern technology wonderful?
Our daughter Brandi sent over some more adorable Landon pictures.
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More trick or treating . . .
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Indian Lakes Thousand Trails, where we’ve been parked for the last week, is another very nice park in the TT system, especially with all the fall foliage around.
Like us, there still a number of hanger-ons who’re staying until they kick us out and close the park next Monday.
They’ve really got some nice facilities here, including an 18 hole golf course, a service station with diesel, and a beauty salon. All very nice.
After lunch, I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with Verizon trying to straighten out a problem with the way our account was set up. We’ve been with Verizon Wireless since 1992, and apparently our account has always been listed as a business account, which keeps us from doing certain upgrades.
What we were really trying to do is upgrade Jan’s phone (really downgrade) from a smartphone to a basic phone. She has my old Palm Treo 700p which is classified as smartphone, which means it has to have a data plan on the phone for $30 a month. But Jan never uses any data service. She makes a few phone calls a month, and plays Solitaire. That’s it.
So since the contract is up on that one, we’re getting her an LG Revere flip phone
Since we ordered it online, it’s free, and we’ll save $30 a month since it won’t need a data plan. They’re sending it out Fedex and it should be here Thursday.
On another note, I’ve seen a lot of different pets traveling in RV’s. Dogs, cats, ferrets, turtles, tortoises, lizards, fish, even a couple with five Saint Bernards, all cramped into a small camper. But never a monkey.
Until now.
This is Lacey, a 15 month old Spider Monkey.
She’s really cute,
really friendly,
and really, really curious.
Lacey’s family says they been on the road with her for about two months with no problems.
Better than five Saint Bernards, I guess.
About 4:30 Jan and I headed about 30 miles in toward Cincinnati to have dinner at a Texas Roadhouse clone, Logan’s Roadhouse.
Actually as it turns out, Texas Roadhouse is a clone of Logan’s, since Logan’s started in 1991, and Texas Roadhouse didn’t come along until 1993.
But there was obviously some copying going on. since both places have a similar look, and a similar menu, right down to the bucket of peanuts on the table, and then letting you throw the shells on the floor.
Overall, our steaks were about equal to our steaks at Texas Roadhouse this past Sunday, but Logan’s prices were 2 to 3 dollars higher for the same steak, so not so good.
But on the other hand, I really enjoyed the Grilled Vegetable Skewers I had for one of my sides. With tomatoes, zucchini, red onions, and mushrooms, it was very, very good, almost worth the extra couple of bucks.
While we were eating, Nick Russell called, but I decided to wait and call him back after we left the restaurant since it was so noisy.
Leaving Logan’s I called Nick back to find out that, once again he broke something. Apparently his engine is not longer charging the house batteries when he’s on the road, but running the generator or plugging into shore power will charge them. And the engine is charging the engine batteries.
I’m going to have to think on this one for a while.
And, No, Nick, I will not fly down to Titusville, FL to fix it for you.
Coming back to the park after dinner, we couldn’t get through the entrance gate to the park. Unlike most TT parks where they give you a 4 digit code to punch in on a keypad, this park gives you a small piece of cardboard about 2” x 4” with a barcode on it. You swipe the barcode through a slot like a credit card and the gate opens.
Well, at least it did the other day.
Tonight, not so much.
Looking around, I saw the area I needed to get past the gate was blocked off with large boulders and a fence made from heavy rope stretched between posts.
The boulders weren’t going anywhere so I checked out the rope, hoping I could untie it at one end and get through. But it wasn’t tied, but passed through a hole in the post and spliced back into itself.
Not wanting to cut it, and having worked on my father’s shrimp boats as a kid, I know how to unsplice and resplice rope. So using my Swiss Army tool as a fid, I unspliced the rope, drove the truck through, and then spliced the rope back.
And of course, just as I finished, someone came through the gate with no problems. So just to double-check, I tried my barcode again, and again, no luck.
I assume the barcode is coded to govern how long you can access the park, and they made a mistake on ours, since we’re not supposed to leave until next Monday. I’ll have to check with the office tomorrow when someone’s there.
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Thought for the Day:
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule it." – H. L. Mencken
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