Our RV Adventures

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Once again I was up and out the door by 9:30 this morning, on my way back down to my client in Clear Lake.

I’m still waiting for the new USB WiFi adapters to come in from Amazon, which should be here by Monday. Then I’ll reconfigure the entire network and get the server computers, including the mystery one, out of the small closet and into another room where I can more easily hook up monitors/keyboards/mouses to them.

So today I worked on a lot of little niggly bits, including repairing a couple of broken RJ-45 connectors with the new repair clips that came in this morning.

They just snap over the bad connector and lock right in place and seem to hold in the socket with no problems.

I’ve also been using my Ethernet cable tester to map out some of the many unidentified cables so I can tag them. Right now I’m using masking tape and a Sharpie, but I’ve ordered a set of these labels to make things permanent.

They’re tough, waterproof plastic and come in sheets that you can print on a laser printer. A set of 300 labels (10 sheets) is less than $10.

The cable tester I’m using is one I had for 20 years or more, and in fact, I’m sure it’s not even made any more.

It’s so old that it not only has the RJ-45 Ethernet connectors, but also the old coax cable connector which is what networks used before the Ethernet/RJ45 twisted pair standard came along, pretty much in the 1990’s. BTW the ‘RJ’ in RJ45 stands for ‘Registered Jack’ and was developed by AT&T for phone use long before it was appropriated for Ethernet use.

All I have to do is plug a cable connector into each unit and turn it on. The 4 lights on the smaller unit flash and tell me it’s the same cable and whether all the wire pairs are good or not.

Later in the afternoon I was able to make our reservation at the Hillcrest RV Park over in New Waverly, about 20 miles from here. We’ll use it for our week out (actually 11 days) and then come back to Lake Conroe on the first of October. This will put us back on our regular two week schedule, although right now we’re thinking about changing things around, so I’ll let you know.

Finally about 3:30 I headed up to Katy to pick up Jan at our daughter Brandi’s. Jan’s been Landon-sitting all week since his school’s been closed for the hurricane. Normally it’s a little over an hour trip, but again, due to all the extra traffic, it was about an hour and 45 minutes.

By the time we left Brandi’s it was after 5:30, and since I didn’t want to head home in all the rush hour traffic, I decided to celebrate seeing her for the first time since Monday by having dinner at the Katy Longhorn steak house, probably our overall favorite steak place, with Saltgrass a close 2nd.

After our salads, (yes, I like a lot of pepper on my salad)

Jan go her standard New York Strip Sirloin with Baked Potato,

while I went for the Ribeye Steak, also my usual.

One of the best steaks I’ve had in a while. I don’t think I’ve ever had so-so steak at Longhorn, much less a bad one. Just consistently good.

Though I will say our service wasn’t very good, extremely slow, with people who sat down after us, placing their orders and getting their salads before we even saw our waitress.

By the time we finished, the traffic had died down, so we headed west for a couple of miles to get on the Grand Parkway and went north to hit I-45 about 20 miles south of Conroe, with hardly any slowdowns. Nice.

Right now it looks like Miss Karma and I will be on our own again for a few more days next week. Brandi’s going out of town for a convention in San Diego and Lowell won’t get home in time to pick up Landon at school, so Jan’s on chauffeur duty for Monday through Wednesday.

Nick said I ought to be suspicious that Jan’s leaving me one babysitting job at a time.

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Sandy at the Colorado River TT called this morning to let me know that our upcoming reservation there, starting September 20th, had been cancelled because the park will not be open again until sometime in October, if then.

All this of course, due to the flooding from Hurricane Harvey. They even lost some more sites due to erosion along the river bank.

When we are due to leave here on the 20th, we will have been here for 34 days, a new record for us. So I don’t think they’re going to let us stay any longer. So what are our options?

We could make the 580 mile round-trip over to the Medina Lake TT the other side of San Antonio, and that would cost us about $180 in diesel, plus $88 in park fees, so about $270.

Next up would be the Lake Tawakoni TT up closer to Dallas, but it’s only about 40 miles closer, so not a lot of difference.

Or we could go to a Passport America park just 20 miles from here and stay  the 11 days for $160.

Guess which one we’re doing?

Our Mr. Coffee has been hissing and bubbling so much recently that I decided it was time to run the clean cycle on it to get the calcium out.

And on this model it’s really easy. You just pour 4 cups (real cups, not ‘coffee’ cups) of vinegar into the reservoir, put an empty coffee filter in the holder, put the pot on the warmer, and then press the Clean Cycle button.

The cycle takes about an hour and then it shuts off. The instructions say to do it once more, but I did it three times more. This is the calcium and sediment collected in the filter. Yuck!

Then you run regular water through a brew cycle for a couple of times. Again, I did it a total of four times.

Don’t want coffee smelling like vinegar.

I finally figured out why my normal hour and ten minute trip from Clear Lake back to Conroe took two hours and fifteen minutes yesterday, and I said it looked like there was just twice as much traffic on the road.

That’s because there was. Both the Sam Houston Tollway and the Grand Parkway are still closed in spots on the west side of town. So all the traffic coming from the north and heading west on I-10 has to come down I-45 and then get on 10 right of f the downtown. Hopefully they’ll have this cleared up soon.

Amazon lied.

They said the item I ordered Tuesday with 2 Day Prime was not going to be delivered until next Thursday, the 14th, due to Harvey. However it showed up today, right on schedule for the 2 Day delivery.

Nice work, Amazon.

Down at my client’s office I’ve found that a lot of the intermittent problems are caused by RJ-45 Ethernet connectors with the locking clips broken off. This means the connector will not lock in the socket and can pull back out. Here’s what I mean.

Now I have crimpers and could replace the connectors, but some of them are in tight places and would be hard to get to.

So that’s why I ordered these from Amazon.

RJ-45 Repair Clips

They slip over the broken connector and provide a firm locking connection. Easy Peezy.

As it stands right now I will detour over to Katy to pick up Jan at Brandi’s before we head home to Conroe.

Maybe. Apparently, plans are still up in the air.

As usual.

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