Our RV Adventures

When I got up about 10:30 am, I found that ‘Billy’ Claus had delivered my packages from Amazon. So, resisting the temptation to open the box that contained my new Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ70 camera (easy to tell which one it was because it had a big ‘Lithium-Ion Battery’ warning label on it), I opened the one with my replacement Mighty Mule Driveway Alarm in it first. Then it was off down the road to get it installed.

It only took about 5 minutes to change out the sensor and the transmitter, but I just reused the mounting poles. Getting it all squared away, I came back to the rig and plugged in the new receiver and power supply. But then in hurry up and wait mode, it was almost 15 minutes before a vehicle came past that showed it was now working. Hopefully that’ll be it for a while.

Today being Friday, it was another Wal-Mart/Lunch day. Before I went in to sleep at 7am, Jan had said she wanted a Sonic Chili Cheese Coney and an order of Ched’R Peppers for lunch, but by the time I was ready to head into Carthage about 11:15, the call of the burger was just too strong, so it was off to Whataburger instead.

The Wal-Mart here in Carthage is one of those ‘mini’ SuperCenters, so it’s laid out kind of weird, but now that I’ve finally got the hang of the place I can get in and out pretty quickly now. So I was at Whataburger by a little after noon.

But this time, for the first time, they completely screwed up our order. Jan and I each order a #6 Double Meat Whataburger Jr. w/Cheese, and I add Bacon to mine. But what we got wasn’t that.

Jan got a big Whataburger (Sr.??), but a single meat, and with no cheese. I got my Whataburger Jr., but also a single with no cheese. So, a disappointment, but still delicious.

Later in the afternoon, I finally had a chance to open the new camera box. As I mentioned before, it’s a Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ70 like this.

The first thing I did was to get the battery charging while I threaded the strap and the lens cap onto the camera. Then I perused the manual for a while, waiting to get enough charge on the battery to try it out.

And I found a lot of neat, new features, like a built-in Panorama function with a guide line to help you keep the camera level as you pan it. And I’m sure you’ve seen those ‘artsy’ shots where the subject is in sharp focus in front of a blurred background. Well without getting into a bunch technical stuff about aperture and depth of field, the FZ70 has a quick and simple way to do this on the fly. Neat.

One thing I hope they’ve improved is a better (easier) manual focus. Manual focus is usually needed when you’re trying to take picture of an animal behind cage bars or a chain link fence. The camera generally tries focus on the fence, and not on the animal. But with manual focus you can almost make the bars or fence fade out.

But the one on my old FZ28 was kind of clumsy to use. So hopefully this FZ70 will be better.

By now I had enough charge on the battery to check things out, so inserting my new 128GB memory card and the battery, I gave it a try. And I was VERY impressed.

The lens on here is really good, and the image stabilization is fantastic. I’ll have some shots in the next few days showing the difference between my old Lumix and my new one.

One thing I noticed was that the camera says that my 128GB card will hold 19,803 pictures. WOW! This is almost as many photos as we took in the entire seven years we had the FZ28 Lumix.

With that one we’ve taken 23,629 photos in that time, averaging a little more than 9 per day. Of course that’s more like 150 one day, and then none for the next week.

But it’s still a lot.

Jan had been taking a few pictures recently, some with the old camera, and some with the new one.

Here’s a sunset  she took with the old camera about a week ago.

And here’s a few she took with the new one this evening when some visitors passed by. The landowner had released some cows and donkeys out into our pasture area, and Jan got a few shots as they came by the canopy. One thing to note is that it was after 7pm when these were taken with the new camera.

And a couple of donkey’s wandered by too.

The landowner’s son said the gray one is almost 45 years old. He said they bought it when he was 15, and the donkey was 21 years old. Now Billy’s in his late 30’s, and the donkey’s still going strong, although he had lost all his teeth. He looks like he’s still eating pretty good, though.

I didn’t realize donkey’s could live that long, but Google says 30 to 50 years. Who knew.

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Thought for the Day:

If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting. – General Curtis LeMay

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Well, all my stuff was delivered here in town, but as I figured, Billy, the landowner’s son, who is also a Deputy Constable, won’t bring them by until tomorrow sometime. So I’ve got one more day of ‘Antici . . . pation!’

Well, it did make it up to 98°, our hottest day here so far, but since the humidity was so low, it wasn’t too bad.  And tomorrow’s high is forecast for 86, with a 79 on Saturday. A lot nicer.

We still don’t have a firm handle on how much longer we’ll be here. Depending on who we talk to, it’s two more days, two more weeks, or two more months. I figure the ‘two week’ figure is probably closer than the first or last ones. But we’ll just have to see how it goes.

A couple of days ago I mentioned the LED strip lights that I used to replace the small fluorescent tubes in our rig, and a blog reader asked for more info. So I thought I do a refresher course.

The LED Strip Lights I used are actually automobile accent lights, so they’re heavy-duty and waterproof.

Here’s my previous blog on how I changed them out. Just scroll down toward the bottom.

https://ourrvadventures.com/2014/12/batteries-and-balls/

Although the lights look yellow, they glow white, and are brighter than the standard fluorescent tube. And at $7 a pair, they cost less than the price of one new fluorescent tube, much less two. And they’re certainly cheaper than some of those commercial LED replacement tubes I’ve seen. Here’s what the final product looks like.

The remaining two fixtures in the bedroom are next when those tubes go out. I’ve already got two sets of strips ready to go. And when the 4 foot tubes in our two kitchen/living room fixtures finally go out, I’ll probably replace them with 4 sets of the strips. 3 sets would about equal the lumen output of the old tubes, but 4 would probably be better.

I’m sitting here watching the ‘Failed Login Attempts’ counter ratchet up, with more than 20 attempts in the last 15 minutes. One thing funny though, are the login names they’re trying to use. Besides OurRVAdventures, Administrator, Admin, and even occasionally the real one, there are also some very strange ones that I have no idea where they came from.

The blacked-out one is the real login name.

To see if it helps, I just went in and changed the number of ‘Allowable Retries’ from 2 to 1.

You really don’t want to set it to 0 because then if you make a mistake logging in, you’ve just locked yourself out for 4 hours. So I guess if the blog is very late one day, you’ll know what happened.

Just check back in 4 hours.

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Thought for the Day:

“Science is an ongoing race between our inventing ways to fool ourselves, and our inventing ways to avoid fooling ourselves.” – Saul Perlmutter

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