Our RV Adventures

I wasn’t expecting that.

More headway at the client’s. 

I got the iDrive online backup going again today. It was working when I left, but somewhere along the line the IT guy disabled it. I’m not sure why since it was paid up and has been renewing automatically ever since. But it’s working now.

I made some more advances in hacking into the main webserver through the IT guy’s gaming machine. I still don’t have root access yet, but I’m getting there. In case you’re not familiar with the term, root access, or super user, or god, gives you total control over a Linux machine, which is what the webserver runs on.

Unlike Window’s machines, where many (most) people are logged in as Administrator, on a Linux machine you normally work at a lower permission level, because with root access, a couple of wrong keystrokes and you can erase EVERYTHING. So you generally don’t use it unless you absolutely have to.

We had already planned to eat at La Finca this evening so since I pass right by it after getting off the Westpark Tollway, I waited for everyone to show up, and was reading over the menu when a word caught my eye.

Picosa.   

As shown here

Fajitas a La Diabla
Beef or Chicken Fajita, Topped with Tangy Chipotle Sauce. Picosa.  (1) 15.99              (2) 28.99

And it was even in BOLD.

And it seems to be the only menu item where a Spanish word is thrown into the English description.

And it’s a word that I haven’t seen in a long time, and certainly not in this situation. I even had to check my phone for a translation to be sure. They were going for ‘spicy’, so I’m not sure why they didn’t use the more normal term for ‘spicy’, which is ‘picante’.

It would certainly have been a better choice, because when I was growing up in Colombia, South America, ‘picosa’ meant ‘riddled with, or having smallpox’. And a check of one online Spanish-English translation backs me up.

Probably not the meaning they were going for.

And a lot of other phrases don’t translate well. For example, everyone probably knows what Pico de Gallo is, chopped up little pieces of onion, tomato, and jalapenos, right?

But the literal translation is ‘beaks of a rooster’, or rooster beaks. Not so appetizing know, huh.

But my Fajita’s Poblonas was delicious, with Beef, Onions, Tomatoes, Mushrooms, and Jack Cheese. Really good.

Well, after calling Big Wheel RV again this morning, I finally got a call back about 4:30 this afternoon as I was on my way back from Clear Lake.

The coach is has been test driven and is ready to go. But the “OUCH’ part is that the total is $1902.32. Of course with Louisiana’s 10 percent sales tax, $173 of that is tax.

Based on what several other people said on RV.net about the same repair, I was expecting maybe $1200. According to Cummins, it’s a 2.5 to 3.0 repair, with Big Wheel’s shop rate being $125 an hour. So I was expecting about $375 for labor.

With the motor being $462 (Cummins told me $352) I was expecting around $900 or so for parts and labor, with new hydraulic fluid, etc. bringing it up to about $1000. So I’ll be interested to see what the itemized bill looks like.

This is why I do as much of my own work as possible. First off, I’m cheap. And secondly, I’m cheap. I hate to feel I’ve been screwed over for something I could have done myself.

This is why I was trying to limp back to Lake Conroe so I could fix myself. There’s two bolts holding the motor on, 8 bolts holding the fan on the motor shaft, and the two hydraulic lines. That’s it. I was figuring 4 to 5 hours, maybe 6 tops.

A GoFundMe account is starting to look interesting.

Thought for the Day: 

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Last week we were told that the rig would be ready Saturday at the earliest and Monday at the latest.

Well, it’s late now.

When I hadn’t heard from Big Wheel RV by 2pm, I put in a call to them and asked to speak to Gary, the service manager. I was told he was busy out in the yard and would call me back, but that he normally didn’t do call-backs until about 5pm.

Well, here it is going on 9pm and still no Gary. I get the feeling ole Gary ain’t going to be calling tonight.

Of course we’re certainly not uncomfortable here at Brandi’s beautiful home. How could anyone be uncomfortable here?

Even better with this meal she and Jan fixed tonight with a roasted pork loin, roasted carrots, potatoes, and onions, and zucchini pasta. Really, really good.

But as Jan says, ‘We just want back in our home’.

Plus I’m kind of worried about the refrigerator. We’ve been running it on gas since last Saturday, the 5th, so I’m not sure how much longer it will run, or that maybe it’s already run out. We had slightly under half a tank at that time, and I don’t have any idea how much gas it actually uses over a period of time. Hopefully we’ll know one way or the other pretty soon.

I made some more headway at the client’s today, finally getting control of the Godaddy account that holds all the company domain names, so now I can proceed with moving the website up to Godaddy’s servers, instead of the client’s backroom closet.

And on that note, the client got a good reason to regret having the webserver in-house when the Comcast internet was down for about an hour, and calls started coming in from customers wondering what happened to the website.

I’ve also been going through everything, changing passwords and looking for any possible ‘backdoors’ left in the system. And I’ve been changing all the ‘notification’ emails from the old IT guy’s address to mine.

Busy, busy, busy.

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