April 2016 – Page 13 – Our RV Adventures

Monthly Archives: April 2016

April 6, 2016 Uncategorized

Staying Alive!

Cue the BeeGee’s.

One thing I noticed about Verizon’s XLTE upgrade in this area it that it has apparently spilled over to my 3G aircard. Where normally I get around 1.5 Mbps day in, day out, now on XLTE, I’m pushing 3 Mbps, usually around 2.75 and up. Very Nice.

When I mentioned still having a 3G aircard, several readers wanted to know why I haven’t upgraded to a 4G model. The reason is simple.

My aircard, which dates back from 2007, still has unlimited data. And boy, do I need it.

Here’s my usage for this month.

Yes, that says 45.160 GB!

Now my usual usage is 25 to 30 GB for the month, but we’ve streamed 3 or 4 hour long TV shows this time, so it does add up. But I reset in 2 days, so it’s all good.

I came across an app a couple of days ago that solves a problem that has irritated me for a while on my Galaxy S5 and Tab 4. I hate it went I’m using an app, like Google Maps, and the screen shuts down on me. I’ll be using my phone to navigate somewhere and the screen goes black, so I have to reactivate it. Over and over.

Well, Stay Alive!, a free app, fixes that for you. Yes, you can just set your screen timeout for longer, but only up to 10 minutes, and then it stays on for everything whether you need it or not. Which doesn’t help your battery life.

But Stay Alive! takes care of that problem by letting you pick what apps you want to keep the screen on. For that me, that’s Maps (Google Maps), Sigalert, and Torque. And when you close the app, Stay Alive! turns off and goes to sleep.

Google Maps you know about, and Sigalert lets you check out the traffic data and cameras for major cities around the country, and Torque lets you monitor engine parameters using a Bluetooth interface like this one.

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Installing Stay Alive! is super easy, but the setup can be a little confusing. After you open the app initially, all settings are done from the Notification dropdown menu. Like this.

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Then when you tap on the Stay Alive! tab, it brings up this menu,

that lets you configure the app for the programs that you want to Stay Alive.

A great app.

Let me know if you have a problem setting it up.

Recently when we needed more laundry detergent, rather than getting our usual Tide, we decided to try Persil, the new one that’s being advertised. Actually though, it’s only new here in the US, and it’s been the #1 seller in England for a while.

And here in the US, it has dethroned Tide as the best liquid detergent, as determined by Consumer Reports. However I’m not sure we can really tell any difference, since we don’t really get that dirty, but give it a try and check it out for yourself.

Thought for the Day:

Check out this neat animation about how deep the ocean really is.

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April 5, 2016 Uncategorized

Buttoning Up . . .

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Well, it was almost a stay-at-the-rig-do-nothing day. I didn’t stay at home, and I didn’t do nothing. I went in to Columbus and I worked on my AC.

So a little after 1pm, I drove into town to for a couple of errands, First up was a stop at the hardware store for some – what else – hardware to finish putting our AC back to together and up in the ceiling again.

After the hardware store, I make a stop at Brookshire Bros. to pick up a few groceries that that we forgot last night at Wal-Mart.

Getting to the rig, I started out by making up a permanent jumper that connects the fan voltage to the compressor contact, going from this

to this.

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Then I re-installed the control box back up into the top of the unit. The white wire is the freeze sensor that’s mounting on the evaporator coil.

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And ended up with this. All neat and buttoned up.

I still want to follow up on finding the junction box, which based on the help from Jim S, on the Yahoo American Coach Group, is probably located behind my Control Panel. But right now I want to get everything back together before we head back to Conroe on Sunday.

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So sometime in the next week or so I’ll take the screws out of the the panel underneath my rig Control Panel and check it out.

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A number of readers have ask for more info on the Windows 10 download to either a DVD or a Flashdrive. So here’s the basic procedure.

Go to this URL:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Scroll down and click on the “Download tool now” to download the “Media Creation Tool”.

Then run the program, accept the License, and click on “Create Installation Media for another PC”.

Click Next on “Language, Edition, and Architecture”.

Select which media you want to download, and click Next.

If you use a flash drive, it will erase everything already on the drive.