Our RV Adventures

It looks like once again Summer is hanging on by its fingernails.

We’re supposed to have low 90’s for the next 5 days or so before a front finally comes through on Friday leaving a Sunny and 71 degree day, with a long string of low-80° days following.

We’re still in a holding pattern waiting to hear from SiteWatch on Monday. Or we hope to hear from them by then.

While I was looking at RV parks in the Kenedy / Karnes City area in case we do end up down there, I discovered that RV Park Reviews, my go-to website to check out RV parks, now has a Android app available. You can can find it here – RV Park Reviews app. There’s also an Apple version if you lean that way.

On another note, today is National I Love Lucy Day. I Love Lucy, which was the first scripted television program to be shot on 35 mm film, premiered 65 years ago today.

The show was also the first episodic one to be shot in front of a studio audience. In fact the studio had to knock down a concrete wall on one side of the studio to have a place for the audience to sit. And even the set had to be reconfigured to allow the audience to be able to view the action.

The individual sets were even redecorated to represent Fred and Ethel’s apartment as needed.

The fact that the show was done on film, the $500 a week cost paid out of Desi’s pocket, is one of the main reasons the show still looks so good today.

Oh, like the fact that Captain Kirk never actually says, “Beam me up, Scotty”, Dr. McCoy never says, “He’s dead, Jim”, and Humphrey Bogart never says, “Play it again, Sam”, Ricky Ricardo never says, “Lucy, you got some ‘splaining’ to do.”

Brandi and Lowell’s sister Sherry did the Annual MS Society Muckfest Run over in Baytown this morning. It’s a 5K obstacle course, with all of the 18 obstacles involving mud. Lots and lots of mud.

But it looks like they had fun.

About 3:15pm Jan and I headed into Katy to get together with Brandi, Lowell, and Landon, as well as friend’s Chantelle, Eric and Max.

But we made a first stop at Harbor Freight Tools to look for a couple of things. I was looking for a small jigsaw and a right angle polisher for the rig’s aluminum wheels.

After looking over what they had, I ended up with an air-powered polisher, since I can tap into the rig’s compressor, or use my Sear’s standalone model. And with no electric motor, it was cheaper too.

But the only jigsaws they had was an expensive cordless model, for more than I wanted to pay. So maybe a Home Depot sale.

By then it was time to meet up with everyone at a favorite new burger place. And by ‘new’, I mean it opened just a few days ago.

It’s Willy Burger. And of course they say it’s willy, willy good. And it was.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos.

Jan had the #47 burger, a double cheeseburger with mushrooms, grilled onions, and tomatoes, while I had the Hee Haw burger, a double with homemade pimento cheese, a fried green tomato, lettuce, and 3 strips of bacon. And it’s all topped off with a large dollop of red pepper jelly.

Along with orders of Parmesan Garlic Fries and Sweet Potato Fries, it was, as they say, Willy, Willy good!

Brandi had a couple of things for us that came in the mail recently. The first package was the engraved sunglasses that Greg Gray, owner of Eyes Of Texas Sunglasses, sent to Brandi and Jan.

Brandi loves hers, and Jan loves hers, especially the Breast Cancer Awareness one.

And you’ll love yours. Order yours today.

From Amazon, I got a new hard drive for my 4 year old ASUS laptop. When I shut it off after we made our move from Lake Conroe to Colorado River this past Thursday, I got my second warning from the S.M. A. R. T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) software on the laptop, warning me that my hard drive was sickly and fading fast.

So I’ll make a .iso copy of the old one, put in the new one, and then copy everything back. And I’ll do this hopefully before it fails.

My second package was a new Otterbox Belt Clip for my Otterbox-encased Samsung Galaxy S5. The Otterbox case seems to be pretty bullet-proof, and has protected my S5 several times as it bounced down the rig stairs and on to the concrete with no problems.

But after three years one of the corners broke off the belt clip part so I ordered a new one.

Leaving on a high note, high as in rig count, the sign that we pass coming into Katy gave the US Rig Count as 539 (+15). When we came by on Thursday, it was at  524 (+2). So that means the count is +17 for the last two weeks.

So it certainly looks like the oil industry is coming back.

“The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly 
surprised.” — George Will, columnist

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After our move yesterday, today was a rest up / goof off / wait to hear from SiteWatch day.

Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

We did rest up. We did goof off. But we didn’t hear from the SiteWatch guy.

But in fairness, we were told it might be Monday, anyway.

One thing we’re going to have to do is to get our Level II Security Guard Licenses redone/renewed or whatever. We both first applied for them in April 2012 when we first started working for Gate Guard Services.

What was kind of strange about this is that my physical license came back very quickly, being issued on 5/1/12, just a couple of weeks after my application went in.

I don’t know if it had anything to do with how quick it came back, but I wondered if that was because of all the security clearances I’ve had with the DOD and NASA over the years.

But Jan’s license was a whole ‘nother story. First off, she had to have her fingerprint card done twice more after the original one. And all three were done by the police. But finally, 17 months after her original application in April 2012, her license finally came through on Sept 9, 2013.

So while my license expired two years later in May 2014, Jan’s expired in Sept 2015. But back in 2014 when I talked with the Gate Guard Service office in Whitsett, TX, I was told that since we would still be working for them, they would take care of renewing them when the time came. But that didn’t happen.

When Mike Crosby, the SiteWatch guy, ask about them, I told him GGS said they would renew them, he kind of laughed. Apparently he’d seen this before.

And when I went here:

https://tops.portal.texas.gov/psp-self-service/search/index

and checked the status of our licenses, I found both of them had expired and had not been renewed. Oh, well.

And from what Mike says, it looks like we’ll have to start all over with it. Oh, well.

So it looks like we’ve been UN-Licensed Level II Security Guards for the last couple of years.

But then no one has ever ask to see them in the entire 5 years.

The more Jan and I hear about the guard shack deal, the more we like the idea of it. Of course that may be because we haven’t done it yet. But after going through a 25 degree sleet and ice storm down there in 2013, a heated and cooled guard shack, with a microwave and a refrigerator sounds kind of nice.

I spent the morning and early afternoon working with an old client, and a website I last worked on for him in 2010. But now when you Google his site you get this.

And when I logged in to his account, I found his site HAD been hacked, with some malware files left on there. But there was no sign that they had been, or could be, activated. So I cleaned everything out, double-checking any possible access openings, and then I changed the master password.

Later, as the client and talked things over, he decided that now would be a good time to redo the site, since it was actually about 8 years old and looked pretty dated.

So we’ll be talking that over the next couple of days.

About 4pm Jan and I headed up US 71 to Ellinger to have the Friday buffet at Peter’s BBQ. But before we left I got our South Dakota Absentee Ballot Request Forms ready to mail off. That way we can drop them off at the Ellinger PO on our way.

Ever notice that anyone going slower than you is an idiot, but anyone going faster is a maniac? — George Carlin

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