Daily Archives: April 3, 2016

April 3, 2016   Uncategorized

WOW! XLTE . . .

Jan and I pretty much took the day off today, and did pretty much nothing. All in all, a very nice day. I didn’t even work on my AC problem.

I did make a stop by Barbara’s, the park ranger who was looking for a new refrigerator. She found one at Lowe’s and it’s being delivered tomorrow. Unfortunately Jan and I will be in Pasadena while I take care of a couple of computer clients so I won’t be able to help out, but I told her I’d check in with her on Tuesday. And I still want to take a look at a taillight problem she’s having.

For the last couple of days I noticed that our usual 3 bars of Verizon 4G had been replaced by 2 bars of 3G. But then today it all changed.

Around noon I happened to look at the signal strength graphic on my Galaxy S5 and saw that I now had 5 bars of 4G. So to check out what I suspected, I ran the SpeedTest app on my phone and WOW!

SpeedTest Photo_thumb[2]

XLTE has now come to Columbus, TX, and the Colorado River Thousand Trails. At 48.51 Mbps, that’s over 5X the speed here the last time I checked. And the upload speed is about 10X before. Very Nice!

Recently whenever I tried to update programs on my Galaxy Tab 4, I would get a “Insufficient Storage Space” notice. I would go through and delete some seldom-used programs, and then finally I could get my updates. But it kept getting worse.

This was especially galling since when I looked at my memory, it showed I still had almost 750 MB of storage space. But then it was Google to the rescue.

Apparently the Android OS is a little weak on keeping a program’s cached data cleaned up. So the fix is to go through each program in the Application Manager and clear the cache.

Or, much easier, you can just download the App Cache Cleaner from the Play Store and let it take care of it for you. And even better, it’s free.

Check it out.

As we’ve traveled back and forth on I-10 just outside Katy for the last few years, we’ve always checked out the Hamilton Metals scrolling sign. 

For the last several years the sign has displayed the latest price of a barrel of oil, the latest price of a mBtu of natural gas, and the weekly rig count. And they’ve all been falling off a cliff. Among other things, Hamilton supplies drill pipe and casing to the oil industry, so they also have stake in the prices.

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Hamiliton Metals Sign_thumb[1]

I  remember a couple of years ago, the rig count was up over 2000, but the last time I saw the count it was 419.

How the mightily have fallen.

But somebody at Hamilton has a sense of humor. A sarcastic sense of humor, maybe. But a sense of humor, anyway.

When we were traveling here to Colorado River from Lake Conroe a week ago, the sign no longer listed any counts. It just said, “WE’LL START REPORTING AGAIN WHEN IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE!”

And yesterday, coming back from Brandi’s, it said, “WILL TRADE PIPE FOR FOOD!”

Like I said, a sarcastic sense of humor.

Thought for the Day:

Have you always seen how cute baby bear cubs are, and thought you might want to have one as a pet,

Bear Cubs 1_thumb[2]

and then you think about how they’ll grow up and eat your face?

Well then, check out one of these. Believe it or not, it’s a dog.

A Shepherd-Akita-Corgi Mix.

Shepherd-Akita-Corgi Mix_thumb[2]

And that’s full-grown so it probably won’t eat your face.

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