Our RV Adventures

First up, Piper had surgery on her recently-broken arm this morning, and everything went fine.

Don’t know yet how long she’ll have to have her cast on, but if it’s like it was when she broke it two years ago, she’s also looking at several months of physical therapy with it.

That hurts just looking at it.

I put in a call to Colaw RV Salvage outside Carthage, MO this morning trying to locate a new (used, but new to me) screen door latch for our rig. As I mentioned, American Coach no longer stocks them, so Colaw was my next bet.

The guy muttered for a few minutes and then said that he didn’t have them in stock. So I reminded him that out in his back lot, he has an American Eagle (like ours) and an American Dream, both of our vintage, and could he please have someone check to see if there is one still on the door jam of either coach.

He was kind of curious how I knew that they had those two, so I told we’d been there and bought parts off the Eagle, and that several body panels for our blowout repair last year came off it too. He said he’d have someone check it out and get back to me, but I haven’t heard anything yet.

My Plan B on this is to have my son Chris bend me one up out of aluminum stock and drill a couple of holes in it, but I’ll wait to hear from Colaw first.

If you haven’t been to Colaw’s, you need stop by if you’re in the neighborhood.

The rig’s out front are for sale, but in back are hundreds of wreck/burnt RV’s. They have golf carts for you to drive around back there, and maps to show you what rigs are where. Neat!

I’m really liking our new Samsung TV more and more, and I’m still discovering all the neat stuff it can do. I spent a while this morning playing around with it, trying different things, the first of which was the Screen Mirroring function.

Any it only took about 10 seconds to have my Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 displaying on the TV screen.

Not exactly sure what I’ll use it for, but it is neat.

Another neat thing is that you can never lose the manual. It’s built right into the TV. Just hit the ‘E-Manual’ button on the remote and there it is on the screen. You can search through it, scroll through it, however you want. Another neat.

Of course, you can also download a computer copy if you want, which brings me to my first peeve. When you download the manual file, this is what you get.

ENG-US-NMATSCJ-1.104-0410.pdf

Why in the He . . . Heck can’t what it’s for be in the file name? Not only can’t you tell what model of TV it’s for, you can’t even tell it’s FOR a TV, period.

I see this all time when downloading manuals and such, and there’s no excuse for it. Depending on your directory path length, you’ve got a couple of hundred characters to play with.

Why can’t it be something like –

SAMSUNG_SMART_TV_5200_ENG-US-NMATSCJ-1.104-0410.pdf?

That’s got something for everyone, and I don’t have to rename it. Otherwise I won’t remember what the file is for next week, much less in six months.

Now on to peeve two. The remote is too small for the number of buttons it has.

Count-wise it has a few more buttons than our DirecTV remote, but it’s a good bit smaller. Plus the up, down, right, left arrow function needs to be separated out somewhat so that it’s easier to find in dim light.

The buttons are just too small and too jammed together, so it’s not a very ergonomic design. They should have taken a cue from the DirecTV one. It’s much more user-friendly.

After two fairly busy days on the gate, today we only had 42 vehicles come through. So that was nice, but of course to balance it out, at 95 degrees it was kind of hot. It’s looks like our Fall weather that was forecast last week, with highs in the low 80’s and lows in the high 60’s went back into hiding, since we’re now looking at low to mid 90’s for the next 10 days or so.

But on the plus side, tomorrow’s Blue Moon BBQ day, so that makes it all better.

Thought for the Day:

The four most beautiful words in our common language: 
I told you so. – Gore Vidal

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First up, Jan and I want to wish our beautiful daughter Brandi a Happy Birthday! Sorry we couldn’t be there, but it looks like she had a nice lunch with some of her coworkers. That’s her on the left in both photos

Since I was not only getting groceries today, but also returning and then getting a new TV, I was out the door and on my way a little earlier this morning.

As usual Wal-Mart didn’t give me any problems returning the old one, giving me the money back on a gift card instead of cash. Cash didn’t make sense anyway since I was just going to give it right back to them.

Luckily the new one I wanted was right out on the shelf so I was in and out fairly quickly. I paid for it back in the TV department rather than taking up front, because then they have to put one of those ‘Spider Wraps’ (that’s what they call them) on the box. And in the past they’ve had problems getting them off up front.

Once again I anted up for the 3 year extended warranty, giving me a total of 4 years on the new one. Usually though, if electronics makes it past the “infant mortality’ stage, then it’s going to keep working. Of course there’s always just the luck of the draw, like the failure of our old one. You never know.

Finishing up with the groceries, I again headed across the parking lot to the Chick-fil-A for our lunch. One thing I sometimes wonder about is why people wait in long drive-thru lines?

I parked in the parking lot, and then was in and out in 8 minutes with my order. Meanwhile, a red Corvette had moved forward about 4 cars, and still had about 10 cars in front of  him. I was probably halfway back to the rig.before he got his order.

So are people just that lazy that they won’t walk 25 feet or what?

Back at the rig, we again enjoyed our Chick-fil-A lunch. While I stayed with my Spicy Chicken Deluxe Sandwich with Bacon, Jan tried out their Spicy Southwest Chicken Salad, that our daughter Brandi had recommended earlier. Jan said it was delicious, and one of those ‘get again’ meals.

Unlike yesterday when Jan stayed outside longer and got too hot while I set the new TV up, this time I made her go on inside, and said that I would set it up tonight. I told her she could just stare at the box in Antici . . . Pation. (some of you may get that.)

When I got up at 10pm, it only took me about 30 minutes to get our  new Samsung 40” TV up and running. Luckily this larger model comes with the pedestal base rather than the two widely spaced feet, so it’s much more stable in position.

Although mathematically it’s only 25% bigger, it looks a lot bigger than that. And the picture quality increase, with brighter colors and blacker blacks, is really noticeable.

And the new TV has Screen Mirroring, so our Samsung TV can connect with my Samsung Galaxy S5 phone and my Samsung Tab 4 tablet. Neat!

Now I just have to figure out how to dispose of our old one.

The rig completed their move to the next hole this afternoon, but as of midnight, they’re still not up and running yet.

Fine with us. The longer we’re here, the better.

Thought for the Day:

A watched pot never boils, but it does get paranoid.

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