Monthly Archives: August 2016
I Triple Dog Dare You . . .
And there’s not a frozen flagpole in sight.
Well, we lucked up today with the scheduled rain not showing up. And even with the sun out, it only made it up to 90 degrees. Nice.
After our coffee this morning, I spent most of the early afternoon looking at a DirecTV problem that started a week or so ago with a couple of symptoms.
The first problem was that sometimes it wouldn’t record two problems at one time. One of them would just be blank. And the other thing was that every few hours we would get an on-screen message saying that the DVR had not received any guide updates for 1, 2, or even 10 hours. I had already tried a power-down reboot with no luck.
My first thought was that one of the twin RG-6 cables running from the satellite dish to the receiver was bad. But replacing the cables with a spare set didn’t fix the problem.
Next I wondered if there was a reason that someone threw away this Winegard CarryOut Dome. Regular blog readers will remember that back in May while we were staying at the Lake Conroe TT, I found a Winegard CarryOut dome on the ground outside one of the dumpsters at the park.
Superficially it looked OK so I grabbed it and threw it in the backseat. Jan just shook her head, since she’s used to my dumpster diving. But as it turned out, when I got around to checking it out it worked perfectly. So since I had swapped it out with my original one, I just started using the new one as a long-term test.
So maybe it was possible that one of the two outputs on the CarryOut was flakey, and that’s why someone threw it away. So I tested each output separately and both were working fine.
Now the only thing left was the DVR receiver itself. So I pulled both cables off the DVR and then plugged one into the Tuner 1 input . . . and got nothing. So I plugged it into Tuner 2, and got a good signal. Back to Tuner 1, and nothing.
Next I went into the DVR’s Setup menu to check the actual signal levels, and I was showing 95% on Tuner 2, but nothing on Tuner 1 when I plugged in the that one. So it was definitely a Tuner 1 problem.
But as I was stepping through the menu, I noticed something else. The DVR’s system software had been updated on July 27th. That’s about the time that the problem started.
Hmmm!
I guess I could call DirecTV, but I doubt they could get me a new DVR before we leave here on Tuesday morning. So I decided to check the Satellite Dish Setup on the receiver. It was set to 18” LNB, MultiSwitch, and Dual Tuners just as it should be.
Hmmm!
I wonder what would happen if I set it to Single Tuner, which should make it only operate on Turner 1. And since Tuner 1 wasn’t working, what would happen? So I changed it to Single, and then rebooted the DVR.
And when I tried plugging into Tuner 1 this time, it now worked. So that means the circuitry itself is working. Of course this leaves me right where I started – with a single Tuner input. So now I reset it back to Dual Tuners and again rebooted.
And this time both Tuner inputs now work fine.
So the only I thing I can figure is that something glitched during the system software update, and setting it to Single Tuner and then back to Dual fixed the problem.
This taken care of, about 4pm Jan and I headed out for dinner. As we talked over where to go, Jan mentioned how much she enjoyed her Chicken Sandwich at Hooter’s the other night, so back we went.
I of course went right back with my 10 wings, naked, all drums, but this time I bumped the sauce up to Triple Dog Dare, their hottest sauce, from last time’s 911. I got the feeling not many people order this, because our waitress looked at me with wide eyes and said, “It’s really hot!” and I said, “I hope so.”
The sauce on the plate is a side of their Chipotle Honey, since I like a little sweetness with the heat.
Triple Dog Dare is hotter than 911, but I’ve had hotter, like Buffalo Wild Wings, Blazin’ sauce, or the several places that I had Ghost Pepper wings. But they were good.
And even Jan liked it since she kept rubbing her sandwich in the Triple Dog Dare drippings on my plate.
Later in the evening, about 7pm, Jan and I drove down to the main intersection and walked out on the beach with our chairs to watch the sunset. And it was certainly worth it.
I’m constantly amazed at the light-gathering capacity of this Panasonic Lumix FZ270. When I took the photo below it was so dark that we could hardly see this kayakers as they paddled in.
Got to talking with them, and they started about a mile west of here and then the wind kicked up and they got blown down the coast. Since they weren’t where they were supposed to be, they borrowed my cell phone to call their wifes to let them know where to pick them up.
Thought for the Day:
“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” — Thomas Jefferson
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"Vague but exciting"
Another nice, quiet day here at Gulf Shores. We had a respite from the thunderstorms today, but they’re coming back with a vengeance the next few days, including 100% chance of Heavy Thunderstorms on Tuesday when we supposed to leave for north Alabama.
They have Wi-Fi here at Gulf State Park, and it appears to cover the entire area using repeater relays. In fact we have a repeater pole right outside our rig. Too bad it doesn’t work.
And it didn’t work last year either. When I ask then about the problem, I was only told they have Wi-Fi at the Activity Center. Well, to start with, I’m not parked by the Activity Center.
But what’s strange is that they’ve got the hard part done. I have 4 bars of signal here, and my systems will connect and then try to get an IP address. Which it where all it fails. It hangs there until it gives up and times out.
Which pretty much means that the system is not connected to the internet. So I don’t know if they put the system in and then decided that it was too expensive to pay for sufficient bandwidth to cover the park or what. Since we’re talking about the State Government running things, who knows.
About 2pm Jan and I did our yearly Pensacola run, mainly for two things. Sonny’s BBQ and Artesana Imports.
Sonny’s is one of our three favorite BBQ places – Rudy’s BBQ, Famous Dave’s BBQ, and Sonny’s BBQ, . Between the 3, we’ve got most of the US covered for good BBQ.
Rudy’s covers Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, and we’ve eaten at a number of locations in Texas, and as far west as Phoenix. Good Texas BBQ, Brisket, and Ribs.
Famous Dave’s covers much of the US, with locations in 36 states, as far west as California, as far north as North Dakota, Montana, and Illinois, and as far east as New York. Good Ribs, Brisket, and Hot Links. We first ate at a Famous Dave’s in Billings, MT with Mike and Janna Clark, and have eaten at a number of them around the country since then.
Sonny’s covers a large part of the south and the southeast, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and we’ve been eating at various locations since the 70’s.
We always tried to eat at the Sonny’s in Pensacola when we’re in the area, so today was our chance.
The first thing we noticed was that since we were here two years ago, they’ve done a major remodeling, inside and out, really updating the look.
But the BBQ is as good as ever. Jan got her usual Sliced Pork Sandwich with Fries and BBQ Beans, and I got my usual Pork 3 Ways Platter.
With Ribs, Sliced Pork, and Pulled Pork, it covers all the bases. I got the BBQ Beans, and the Corn on the Cob. One thing I like about their Corn on the Cob is that it’s cooked in foil, and not boiled and then left in hot water so that it gets soggy.
Besides the great BBQ, another thing I like about Sonny’s is no wimpy iced tea glasses.
No, these are big, double-handed 32oz glasses, so I’m not constantly having them refilled.
After our great meal, we drove on in toward downtown Pensacola to visit Artesana Imports, a gift shop that we’ve been visiting since the 70’s. Jan always finds something she likes, and today’s find was a new seashell-based dish towel.
Always a great place to visit.
“Vague but exciting”.
This is what Mike Sendall, Tim Berners-Lee’s boss at CERN in Switzerland wrote on Lee’s proposal giving him permission to develop what we know today as the World Wide Web.
So, yes, one guy invented the Web, and, no, it wasn’t Al Gore.
It was Tim Berners-Lee.
“He wrote the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which outlined how information would travel between computers, and HyperText Markup Language (HTML), which was used to create the first web pages. “
And today, August 6th, is the 25th anniversary of when the very first website went live.
And you can still see the page here at its original address.
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
And here’s the very first web server sitting on Lee’s desk,
It was a NexT computer which had a note taped to the front that said: “This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER DOWN”.
And it was almost a year later when the very first picture was published on the Web.
It’s a photo of a parody rock band made up of CERN employees.
I figure the 2nd photo was probably porn.
I got in this early enough that I remember when there was only about a dozen websites in the entire world, all of the them at universities and research facilities.
One thing to remember is that the Internet and the Web are not the same thing. The Web runs on the Internet.
The Internet came first, with the first commercial ISP’s coming online in the late 80’s, and consisted of Email, Newsgroups, and IRC Chat.
Of course direct dial-up services like CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL, etc., had been around since the late 60’s, but there was little or no connectivity between them.
Email was pretty much what it is today, while Newsgroups were gathering areas for people to trade info on pretty much every hobby, interest, and perversion you can imagine. IRC Chat was the early version of today’s Instant Messaging.
There’s more info here:
So if it wasn’t for what happened 25 years ago, you wouldn’t be reading this.
Thought for the Day:
Life always offers a second chance. It’s called tomorrow.
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