Our RV Adventures

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It’s still going down into the mid-30’s here at night, with high-60’s in the daytime. But they’re promising warner weather next week. We’ll see.

Our Hermiston friends, Dave and Joanne, came by this afternoon to say ‘HI’ and set up a dinner tomorrow night at Buffalo Wild Wings. And it turns out we’ve both been in the computer industry since the very early days, so we’ll have a lot to talk about tomorrow.

Catching up on some products we use:

Our Zero G RV and Marine Hose is still doing great.

We’ve been using it for about a year with no problems. You don’t even have to roll it up, just wad it up and throw it in the storage bay. And it’s especially nice when I’m packing up to leave on a 35° morning and I don’t have to wrestle with a stiff hose.

We’re also really enjoying our Amazon Dot, the Amazon Echo’s little sister.

I used it a lot when we were gate guarding last year, and it’s really great when we’re traveling, either in the rig or the truck.I just hotspot my phone so it can connect with the Internet, and no more constantly changing stations as we travel.

The Dot will do everything that the full-size Amazon Echo will do. It just doesn’t have the bigger amplifier and speakers, but it can be powered from a USB plug so it’s really easy to use on the road. And in the confines of the truck it has plenty of volume.

We can listen to stations on iHeartRadio, talk radio, or any of our 8000 songs stored in the Amazon Cloud. And at only $50, it’s less than 1/3 the cost of an Amazon Echo.

A Great Deal.

Now that the holiday is pretty much over, we’ll get back to doing some touristy stuff.. Up toward the top of the list is a visit to Mt. Rushmore again. When we were here in 2008 we did both a day and a night visit, which we had planned to do this time too.

But according to some online reviews for the last few days, the fog has been so heavy that you couldn’t see the monument at night even when it was lit up. So we’ll see.

Thought for the Day:

The Heretic

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off.

So I ran over and said, “Stop! Don’t do it!”

“Why shouldn’t I?” he said.

I said, “Well, there’s so much to live for!”

He said, “Like what?” I said, “Well, are you religious or atheist?”

He said, “Religious.”

I said, “Me too! Are your Christian or Buddhist?”

He said, “Christian.”

I said, “Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?”

He said, “Protestant.”

I said, Me too! Are your Episcopalian or Baptist?

He said, “Baptist!”

I said, “Wow! Me too! Are your Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?

He said, Baptist Church of God!”

I said, “Me too! Are your Original Baptist Church of God or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?”

He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God!”

I said, “Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?”

He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915!”

I said, “Die, heretic scum!” and pushed him off.

gfgsfg

The last  time we were in Billings, MT a number of years ago, there were a small number of casinos/bars/restaurants around the town, but nothing of any size.

But this recent visit they were everywhere, and bigger and fancier.  And almost all of them out of business. So I don’t know if  they overbuilt too fast, or just had more casinos than they had people who wanted to gamble. But it’s strange.

A few days ago, after our Buffalo Wild Wings visit, we got our truck washed at the Parkway  Car Wash just off downtown RC. They did a great job of pre-spraying the front of the vehicle to get the fine spray of diesel oil off. We always get this blowby when we’re traveling in the mountains and using our Pacbrake a lot. But hopefully we’re pretty much out of the mountains for this year.

BTW I’ve found in talking to a number of people that they don’t think their Pacbrake does much, or even works at all. And, if they aren’t using it very often, and/or not performing the lubrication maintenance on the system, it’s very possible it has jammed up and it isn’t working. But there is a very easy way to check your Pacbrake.

In most cases, when your Pacbrake is turned on and you let off the gas, the system downshifts into 4th gear, and then engages the Pacbrake. So it can be hard to tell what part of the resulting slowdown is caused by the downshifting and what part is caused by the Pacbrake.

So on a hill of decent size, go ahead and downshift into 4th on your own. Then about 10 seconds later, turn on your Pacbrake and let off the gas. If you feel an additional slowdown, then your Pacbrake is working. If you feel nothing extra, then it’s probably not, and you need to have it checked out.

A few days ago I got an email hack I wanted to warn you about. It was supposedly from ‘USAA Bank alerts’ with the Subject ‘New banking autnification system’ And yes, that’s the way it was spelled. Bad grammar and typos are always a  good clue that an email is not authentic.

Note that the real From: address is ‘[email protected]’ and has nothing to do with USAA. And if you put your mouse on the ‘Click here to get started’ button or the ‘usaa.com/contact-us’ link at the bottom of the text,  it takes you to here:

www.birosagsec.webgrafika.hu/profiles/success/usaa-alerts

With a .hu country code for Hungary, it’s probably not from USAA.

So let’s be careful out there!

Wrapping up with the Jetpack MiFi data problem I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve got more info on the amount of data I’m supposedly using.

In the past, on my 3G aircard, I’ve consistently used 20 to 25 GB a month, very seldom varying more than a couple of GB’s. But the past two months since I got the MiFi, I used up 10GB in the first 7 seven days, and then was throttled back to 3G speeds.

So at that point, both last month and this, I switched over to hotspotting from my new Galaxy S8+. And in a little over two weeks I still haven’t quite used 10GB of 4G yet.

So explain to me why I use data more than twice as fast on my  MiFi as I do on my S8+? For the same stuff.

Seems kind of suspicious to me.

And of course there’s the problem of the fact that the 3G speeds I get throttled back to when I’ve  used up my 10GB of 4G, is slower than the 3G I can get on my aircard that I still have, 660 kbps vs. 1.1Mbps. And this is at the very same time from the same location.

I smell a rat!

Thought for the Day: 

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