Our RV Adventures

Today started wet and dreary and then went downhill from there. It was raining when I got up at 11 and that continued all the rest of time until we left for Clear Lake around 2pm.

And then as soon as we got out on I-10 it just POURED down, slowing everyone until we were doing about 25 mph, in a 75 mph area. And then one person,  just one, decided to put their emergency flashers on. And then almost everyone else did.

And suddenly, what had been a easy to track and separate group of vehicles in front of us became a swirling, flashing mass of orange and red lights, with no way to really tell who was stopped and who was moving. A bunch of maroons.

We made a pit stop at Brandi’s, and also picked up a couple of packages waiting for us. Then it was back on the road to Clear Lake. And then the real slow down began to appear.

Based on the live traffic data on our Garmin GPS, our 1 hour trip down to League City was going to take an additional 2 hours and 59 minutes, for a total of 4 hours. Bummer. But as we slowly got closer, the delay  whittled down until the trip only took 2 and a half hours. Better than 4 hours, I guess.

We had originally planned to drop off my client’s laptop at their home in the Brittany Bay area of League City, but due to our delay, we didn’t have time before we had to meet our friends for dinner at 6pm. So our first stop was at our son Chris’ for a potty break, as well as to pick up our mail and drop off one of our Captain’s Chair’s armrests. Or rather just the insides without the foam or the leather cover.

I wanted to see if he could make me six new armrests to replace the ones I have now,. The original ones were made from two different pieces of OSB (Oriented Strand Board), or particle board. These two pieces were glued together around a steel armature that mounted the pivot rod at one end.

But over the years the glue has deteriorated and the arms have started to come apart. I put a couple of them of them back together using screws, but the screws just wallowed and came loose after a while.

So my idea is to see if Chris can cut six new armrest wooden frames out of 2×4’s. Then I’ll install the armatures in each new frame and mount them back on the chairs. BTW if you wondered how to get the armrests off the chairs, it’s really pretty easy.

Fold the armrest up until it’s vertical and parallel to the chair back. Then push in on the arm pivot point and rotate the arm on further back until it is again horizontal. At this point pull out on the arm as you rotate it back and forth slightly. Then just pull it completely free. Easy Peezy.

We meet our friends, Bob & Beth Young at Barcenas Mexican Restaurant. Right outside our subdivision, we eaten here for 20 years or more, and it’s always great.

We’ve known Bob and Beth for a long time, and have watched their five kids grow up, and we always have great time catching up.

Good food and great friends. It doesn’t get much better.

Finally saying our goodbyes a little after 7:30 we heading down to League City to drop the client’s laptop before turning around and heading back to Columbus. And after a pit stop at the Flying J in Brookshire, we finally got home about 10:30pm.

And although we didn’t see any problems when we came through, we did see three cars parked back up the hill from the low-lying bridge at the park entrance.

Don’t know if it was this bad,

or even this bad.

But I’m glad we weren’t trapped outside the park and had to wade in.]

I got an email a couple of days ago that really gave me a start. It was from a friend of ours . . .  a dead friend of ours.

Our long-time friend Gina Ellis died a little over 3 years ago, and the SPAM email I received had the right (kind of unusual) name, but not the right ISP address. It was obviously one of those emails that want you to click the enclosed link, but strangely, it referred to me as ‘Greg’, while most of these are to ‘Gregory’.

Gina, we miss you.

And finishing up on a departed friends note, this past Wednesday we lost two more long-time friends, Richard Horner and Ron Walters.

They too will be missed.

Thought for the Day:
No matter how serious life gets, you’ve still got to have that one person you can be completely stupid with. That’s why Jan has a shirt that says, “I’m with Stupid”.

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I finished up the Dell laptop repair/OS-reinstall last night, after getting the last of the Win10 updates downloaded. After replacing the hard drive, I had to first reinstall Win7 since that’s what was on the computer originally. Next using the Product Key on the bottom tag, I activated Win7 and downloaded 1.2 GB of updates. FWIW you can not install Win10 over a non-activated Win7, 8, or 8.1. It just won’t let you do it.

Next up, because the client wanted Win10, I installed it and then downloaded 500 Mb of Win10 updates, and that finally wrapped it up. I’ll drop it off while we’re down in Clear Lake tomorrow afternoon.

On the subject of Windows 10, for those of you still resisting Microsoft forcing it down your throat, or in your computer anyway,  just remember Windows 10 upgrades are essentially the date rape of the computer world. You wake up and realize what has happened when you were asleep.

Many people have reported stepping away from their computer for a few minutes only to come back to find it in the middle of a Win10 install.

If this happens to you, after it’s finished installing, it asks you to agree to the Terms and Conditions. If you click “don’t agree”, it undoes the install, putting everything back the way it was.

But if you want to put a stop to this before it all starts, here’s some help. Check out Never10.

It blocks any further attempts to install Win10, and if the files have already been download to your computer, it will delete them. And if you ever decide you do want to install Win10, just run the program again. So check it out. Never10

What’s up with the commercials when we’re streaming network TV shows?

Occasionally we will stream a network show that we missed for some reason, either bad weather knocking out the satellite, or we can only record two shows at a time, so couldn’t  record the third one, etc.

Last night we were catching on an episode of Once Upon A Time that we missed a while back. We have three later episodes on the DVR, so we needed to watch this one first to keep them in order. But as happened previously when we’ve streamed network shows, the commercials are unwatchable.

The show itself streams without a glitch, but when the commercial break starts it all grinds to a halt. First there’s 15-20 seconds of just black, then the ad starts, but usually stutters, starting and stopping, and usually freezing at some point. Then another 10-15 seconds of black, and it all starts over again. For 6 long commercials.

And 10 minutes later, it does it all over again. And again.

So if they can stream the show with no problems, why not the commercials?

Last night I finally remembered to bring my Garmin GPS in from the truck so I could update the maps and software to the latest versions. It seems like I always think about doing this when we’re in Conroe, but the speed and reliability of the 3G (or 4G, for that matter) there just isn’t up to downloading 2+ GB of data.

But with the 2.75 – 3.00 Mbps I’m getting on 3G  (and 25 Mbps on 4G) here at Colorado River, this is the time to do it.  So I got out my laptop, hooked up the GPS to it, and started the download. And eight hours later, at 3am when I went to bed, it had just finished up. So now I’m good for another year.

Recently while I looking for something on the Home Depot site I can across a post about a couple’s DIY paint job on their 1992 camper.

They started out with this:

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And ended up with this.

You can check it here at DIY Camper Paint Job. And if you keep scrolling down, they detail the interior upgrades they did. Nice.

Thought for the Day:

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” – H. L. Mencken

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