Our RV Adventures

Today started with a heavy downpour that began during the night and continued into the late morning. When I talked to Nick Russell on the phone, I told him he was falling down on the job because he was supposed to be pulling all this bad weather out to Apache Junction instead of leaving it hanging around her. Get to work, Nick.

About 11:30 I headed into town on a bunch of errands. But my first stop was the RV park office so I could get our reservations set up for next year, and also to let them know when we would be leaving.

Then it was on to Fry’s Electronics to take back some bad RAM. It’s a very bad feeling when you take a client’s very expensive laptop apart to install new RAM and when you turn it on, it’s DEAD!

The procedure in this case is to reverse what you just did, so I installed the old RAM back in.

And it worked again. WHEW!

So now I put the new RAM back in . . . and it’s dead again. So then I took the other stick of new RAM that was in the second slot and put it in the the first slot. And it worked fine.

Again I put the first stick of new RAM back in, and it’s dead again.  So now I know for sure that one of the two new sticks is bad. So it’s back to Fry’s to swap it out.

This was Patriot RAM, one of the top names, and I’ve never gotten a bad stick before. But it sure gave me a fright this time.

My next stop was a quick one at a client’s to let them know I’d be in the office tonight working on some things.

Then it was on to Sam’s Club to try and get our prescriptions straightened out. It ended up taking me about 45 minutes, but I did make one big improvement. I got the $717 for a 3 month supply drug down to a $10 a month one.

Before leaving Sam’s I filled up with gas and then headed back to the rig to pick up Jan so we could turn back around and come back up to Brandi’s.

We’re Landon-sitting (well, Jan’s doing most of it) this weekend while Brandi and Lowell take the weekend off to celebrate his birthday out of town, so we had to stop off at their house to get the car seat so we could pick up Landon at his Day Care. He seemed really glad to see us which made Jan happy.

Getting him strapped in, we drove up to Sam’s Club again, this time to pick Jan’s new glasses that they’d called and said was ready. I know they said they’d expedite them, but we just turned the order in yesterday afternoon, so it was hard to believe they would be ready this soon.

And they weren’t. It was a false alarm, but they should be here in the next day or so. As long as they get here before we leave next Thursday, we’re fine.

Leaving Sam’s, we drove up I-45 to the Golden Corral Restaurant for dinner.

This is a good choice when we’ve got Landon because there’s plenty of choices for him. One thing he really, really liked was the chocolate syrup from the chocolate fountain. You might say he really got “into it”.

Landon fell asleep on the way back to Brandi’s, and it’s always amazing how, although he never opens his eyes or wakes up, he knows to pull his arms out of the straps and then hold them up for you to take him out.

When we got back to Brandi’s, Lowell’s sister Sherry was there to help Jan if she needed it getting Landon to bed, so I headed over to my client’s for a while.

I did manage to finally get the UPS software problem fixed so I’m glad that’s out of the way.

I finished up and headed back to the rig about 9 after a long day. Getting back to the park I did get this shot of the moon rising over the bayou.

Unfortunately the photo doesn’t do it justice.

Tomorrow I’ll head back over to Brandi’s about 10 am to pick up Jan and Landon for breakfast at the Egg and I, and then we may bring Landon back down to the rig to show him around and introduce him to Mister.

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Thought for the Day:

Everything we see is just a shadow cast by that we do not see.

asdfds

Today was pretty straight forward. Just errands and client stuff, so after morning coffee and some delicious apple-walnut muffins that a client gave me on Tuesday after I fixed her network.

So yes, I will work for food.

We left the rig a little after 9:30 heading for the Sam’s Club up in Webster. Jan had an appointment with the eye doctor at 10:15 to get new glasses. Then after that was finished we drove back out to our doctor’s office to try and get our prescriptions straightened out.

She added a couple of new ones to the mix without really checking with us. Normally the prescriptions for both of us run about $90 for a 3 month supply. Now with the two she changed, our total would be over $1500 for 3 months.

Uh-uh. Ain’t gonna happen.

Then the rest of the afternoon her nurse and I played phone tag trying to get it straightened out.

Leaving there, we headed over to King Food for lunch, trying to get in our last few meals here before we leave town. We’re really going to miss this place when we’re back on the road.

Then it was back to the Sam’s Club optical department so Jan could order her glasses. And on our way over there, I got a phone call saying my glasses that I ordered on Monday had come in. Great.

Saving a few bucks, Jan had an old pair of frames that she still really liked, so she was able to use those instead of buying a new pair. Hopefully her glasses will come in before we leave next week. They said they would expedite them.

And I was really happy to get my new glasses. The coating had started coming off the lens a few weeks ago and it was kind of like looking through Vaseline.

Finishing up with Sam’s Club, I dropped Jan off at Brandi’s while I ran by a client’s place. They wanted me to give their computer a general checkup, and also see if I could figure out why their Internet is so slow.

It was nice to see another older computer that I had built a while back, still running fine, this one dating back to January 2007. And after checking over the computer (no problems found), I figured out why their Internet is so slow.

Being out in the country they had a Hughesnet satellite system with a 1.5 Mbps download speed. The only problem is the data limit they have. They are only allowed 350 MB in any rolling 24 hour period, and then they get throttled way back. In fact according to Speedtest.net, they only get about .30 Mbps, one fifth of their rated speed.

And the reason they’re always so slow . . . their son keeps streaming movies. So they never ever really get out of the throttled period. One movie can easily be over several gigabytes, so that’s their problem. I suggested they get Netflix and get the DVD’s by mail.

Leaving the client’s, I got back to Brandi’s about 5:30, and then Jan and I headed over to the IHOP in Kemah for dinner, finally getting home about 7:15.

We’re in the home stretch now, hoping to leave a week from today, so I’m going through my checklist trying to get everything crossed off before we leave.

Stay tuned to see how it goes.

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Thought for the Day:

A rifle transforms one from a subject to a Citizen.

adfs