Our RV Adventures

Mostly today Jan and I just waited out the continuing nasty, wet, cold weather. But it now looks like the next four days should be pretty decent, as in no rain and temps in the high 40’s / low 50’s. That should be good enough to get some stuff done outside.

Later in the day, after doing some web work, I started setting up my client’s new computer. When I was finished with the basic startup stuff, I connected with our rig Wi-Fi network and started to download 964 MB of upgrades and updates. Luckily I have an unlimited 3G Verizon air card, and there’s a good 3G signal here at the park so it only took a little over an hour to get them all pulled down and installed.

Next up I wanted to create the Recovery DVD’s, which according the program, would require 6 DVD’s. Unfortunately, as it turned out, I only had 3, so I’ll have to get some more tomorrow. The program doesn’t allow you to start and stop the DVD writing process so I’ll just wait until tomorrow when I have enough to finish the job in one sweep.

I also took some time to check out the client’s old computer as far as the hard drive goes. It certainly is bad, as with the side of the computer off, you can hear the drive spin up and then start ‘clicking’ and not initializing as it should. I won’t try the ‘freezer trick’ until everything else is set up on the new machine. But the fact that it is spinning, and not completely dead, is encouraging. But we’ll see.

In the afternoon, wanting a snack, I got a chance to try another of my Christmas gifts, the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Caramel Candy, that my son-in-law Lowell got for me at iBurn.

Trinidad Moruga Scorpion peppers were acknowledged as the hottest pepper in the world until recently when it was surpassed by the Carolina Reaper.

While both the Scorpion and the Reaper look pretty much the same, with a average rating of 1.2 million Scoville units, the Scorpion is about 60 times hotter than a Habanero, while the Reaper is about 80 times hotter. I found it funny that the Carolina Reaper was developed in South Carolina by Ed Currie, owner of the Pucker Butt Pepper Co, the perfect name for a hot pepper company.

As far as the hottness of the candy, it was hotter than the Mango Habanero sauce at Buffalo Wild Wings, but not quite as hot as their Blazin’ sauce.

All in all, very good.

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Thought for the Day:

The only thing worse than a man you can’t control is a man you can.

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Jan and I headed out about 9:15 this morning for a day of fun and folic. Well, more like errands and eating.

Our first stop was in Pasadena to pick up a client’s computer. The hard drive in her several-years-old one had died, and rather than just  replace the bad drive, she decided that this was a good time to upgrade to a newer, better computer. So I was picking up her old one to see if I can pull anything off her hard drive using the ‘freezer trick’.

The ‘freezer trick’ sometimes lets you pull data off a supposedly dead hard drive by putting it in the freezer in a Ziplock bag for a few hours, Then you reinstall it in the computer ASAP and see if you can get data off of it before it warms up. In the past I’ve done this over and over on a drive to get everything needed off of it.

Of course, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t . We’ll see.

Then it was on to our son Chris’ to meet up with him and Linda for lunch. After a little discussion we ended up at a nearby Cheddar’s. Jan loves their Chicken Pot Pie so she was happy with the choice. And we all had a great meal, too.

After lunch we stopped off at our former storeroom to make the final payment to close out our 20 year long rental. The end of an era.

Back at the house we said our goodbyes and then headed back out. First up was a haircut. I’ve gone to this same barber for about 20 years, so I always come back here when we’re in town. My last haircut was in October up in Bryan/College Station while we were gate guarding in the area. Before that, it was back here last August.

Hey, when you don’t have much hair, you only need a haircut every 3 or 4 months.

Our next destination was the new Marina Bay Lake Cove RV Resort down in Dickinson. Although it’s looking more and more like we’ll get down Galveston Bay RV Resort in the next couple of weeks, we wanted to check out this park as a backup.

What we found though, is that, although the park’s 96 sites are nicely laid out around a man-made lake,

it’s mostly occupied by small campers and 5th wheels of the type used by workers. There is a nice office and a smallish pool, and the sites are nicely landscaped, but the overall feeling is of a trailer park.

There were only about 10 sites open, and I don’t think I saw more than 4 or 5 Class A’s. Of course there was this one.

The sites on either side of it were empty and I saw no evidence of burn damage there, so maybe they got moved out in time. It was hot enough to melt their satellite dish about six feet away.

After looking the place over, we both agreed that, with the rates about the same as Galveston Bay, it really wasn’t someplace we wanted to stay.

Next up was a stop at Kroger’s for gas, and then on to Harbor Freight Tools for some goodies that I really didn’t need, but couldn’t resist.

Finishing up there, we finally headed toward our daughter Brandi’s, but only after a Starbuck’s stop, since we didn’t have time for coffee this morning. Getting there, I found that my client’s new computer had been delivered, so I can start setting it up. So after checking out  Landon’s new room, we all drove over to Brandi and Lowell’s favorite burger joint, J-Dub’s Burger Barn over in downtown Katy.

And it was easy to see why they like it so much. J-Dub’s mixes their hamburger meat in a 75 – 25 ratio of beef and brisket, and hand-cut their fries every day.

They also have their buns specially baked to their specifications, including this jalapeno bun on the Jalapeno Burger that I ordered.

Really, really good

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Thought for the Day:

The truth is more important than the facts. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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