Our RV Adventures

Well, another day of setting up my new computer, loading software and optimizing the machine.

The new one has 12 GB of DDR3 RAM, but has room for 16 GB, so I took a 4 GB stick from the old machine and maxed out the new one. Within limits, the more RAM, the faster your computer will run. In fact, it can be one of the cheapest ways to speed a computer up if it only has 4 or 8 GB to start with.

The reason for this is that as the computer computes, it uses up memory (RAM) as it runs programs. And if you’re running a lot of different programs at one time, or have a lot of tabs open on your browser, you can reach a point where you essentially run out of memory.

And when this happens, things really slow down. So to keep running, the computer starts paging data out to the hard drive. Now hard drives are fast, but compared to RAM, they’re snail slow. So everything slows to a crawl.

And, even worse, you don’t have to have a lot of programs running at one time to have this problem. You can also run into this by running a lot of different programs one at a time.

A lot of software is not very well written , and has ‘memory leaks’. When a program runs it is allocated a certain amount of memory in a specific area of RAM. And when you quit the program, that memory is supposed to be released and available for other programs. But many times this doesn’t happen correctly and all of the memory area is not released. So over a period of time, the system has less and less memory available for use. One quick fix for this is to just reboot your computer once a day, and get a fresh start on memory usage.

So the more RAM you have, the longer this slowdown is delayed.

One of the problems I’ve run into setting up the new computer is that I can’t get the HDMI port to work. The computer monitor hooks up using a DVI cable, but I use the HDMI interface to connect up our 32” LCD TV at the front of the rig.

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My old computer output video on the VGA port and HDMI simultaneously, with no switching necessary. So we just use the TV remote to change the input from HDMI-1 to HDMI-2. But it doesn’t work on this new machine.

When I plugged the HDMI cable from the TV into the computer, it kills the DVI output to the monitor. And nothing shows up on the TV either. I tried a bunch of different things with no luck.

The computer does have a way to switch back and forth between outputs, like you can do on a laptop to output to a video projector. But this doesn’t work either.

So I’ve got some more research to do on this problem.

A little before 5, Jan and I headed out for dinner and Wal-Marting. Our dinner stop was a return to the Asian BBQ & Grill, a place we were first introduced to by Sherry and Clark Bennett back in February, and a return match with Brett and Frankie O’Neal a week later. And it was just as good this time.

We started out with our usual Shrimp and Pork Spring Rolls.

Then we moved on to Jan’s Lemon Grass Chicken

and my Beef Phở, which were both delicious.

Wish now we hadn’t waited so long to return, and we’ll definitely go back in a couple of weeks when we’re back in the area.

Then it was on to Target for a few things before finishing up at Wal-Mart. It was really noticeable how much busier Wal-Mart was compared to Target.

Tomorrow I’ll start prepping to get ready to travel on Sunday, checking tire pressures, putting away stuff, and running through my Checklist.

Thought for the Day:

Sarcasm: The ability to insult idiots without them realizing it.

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I spent most the day tracking down missing software and downloading needed programs from the Internet. One thing I’m doing is that I’m only reinstalling software as I need it, which should keep some of the clutter down.

:Later I also connected up my Backup Drive and started copying over data files, documents, pictures, videos, and music.All told, about 300 GB worth, including over 29,000 photos since 2006, two years before we started RV’ing.

This new computer is only about two years newer than my old one, but much, much faster. So in the end, this will all be worth it.

I was kind of surprised by this HD failure since I got no warning whatsoever from the motherboard’s S.M.A.R.T. monitoring (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART)

SMART is a system that monitors HD reliability and reports if there are any problems. Now it won’t catch everything, but it does give an indication on 60-70% of failures.

So I guess my HD was in that 30-40%

Something next week, after we’re at Medina Lake, I’ll do my freezer trick and see what I come up with.

Dennis and Carol Hill picked us up a little after 5pm and we headed off  north of Willis to have dinner at the Fish Pond Restaurant. We’ve eaten here a number of times, but it was a first for Dennis and Carol.

And everyone seemed to enjoy their meal, with Carol having Liver and Onions, Dennis having the Chicken Fried Steak, while Jan went with her favorite Chicken Fried Chicken. I tried something a little different, the Steak Fingers. I guess everyone liked what they had, since there were four clean plates at the end.

And as usual when RV’ers get together, we talked for longer than we ate. I know, I know,hard to believe, right. But we did. In fact, I don’t thint we’ve ever been out with a group of RV’ers where it didn’t take at least 3 hours.

I think it‘s a rule.

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Actually between the restaurant and the visiting in our rig afterwards, it was over 3 hours. But I think that was so Carol and Dennis could play with karma, who seemed to enjoy all the attention. I kind of figured she might run and hide, but she’s turned out to be a real people cat.

Thought for the Day:

I changed my password everywhere to ‘incorrect.’ That way when I forget it, it always reminds me, ‘Your password is incorrect’

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