Our RV Adventures

I spent the morning fighting with our backup UPS label printer. As I mentioned the other day, after I successfully replaced the thermal printhead on our main printer, I discovered a second printer squirreled away that had the same problem.

So, since the new printhead came in yesterday, and I’d already done one, I thought I’d wrap this one up pretty quickly.

Wrong.

On the first printer the two data cables that feed the printhead didn’t have a lot of slack, but enough to get the cables connected with a little fiddling. But this one, a slightly different model, didn’t have any slack. The only thing I could figure is that the entire head mechanism was put in place and then the case was assembled and riveted around it.

But rather than try to drill out the small rivets, I just cut a couple of slots into the plastic case to give me the slack I needed. The slots are on the inside of the case and can’t be seen once the head bracket is reinstalled.

Once that was done and it was all back together, I plugged in in place of the other one. and checked it out. Even though both printers are 2844’s, the main one is a CTP and spare is an LP, so they require two different drivers. But switching over, the new one worked just fine. So reinstalling the original one, I was done.

At least until the office manager tried to print a label. Turns out the bottom part of the two piece label wasn’t printing out.

The bottom part is peeled off and stuck on our copy of the customer invoice so we have a copy of the tracking number and the other relevant order information.

So now I got on the phone with UPS Tech Support, which was obviously not located in the US. I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t have a guy doing tech support for your Fortune 50 company who’s lack of English and heavy accent make him pretty much unintelligible And he had no idea what I was talking about..

Since it was time for me to head home, I decided to do some research on my own tonight. And it only took me about 15 minutes to Google what I needed to know. It’s called the Extended Area or Document Area and required a different setting in the printer driver setup.

So I was able to remote in to the Shipping computer and set it from here at home. Of course I can’t be sure it now works, but it should.

I love Google.

I finally heard back from the Swinging Bridges RV Park outside Jackson, MS and was able to make the last reservation for our upcoming trip, so that’s out of the way.

Tomorrow I’ll make another run at power washing the rig. We’ll see how that goes.

Thought for the Day: 

Welcome to my mind . . .

Please fasten your seatbelts and keep your arms and legs inside at all times. Don’t feed the animals, drink the water, or talk to the voices.

Enjoy the ride!

gsdfgs

First up, I want to thank everyone for the your kind words about yesterday’s blog on Statistics, Lying with Statistics, and Damned Statistics. I really appreciate it.

I had originally planned to power wash the rig this morning, but it just didn’t work out. I guess my get-up-and-go just didn’t get up.

I’ll try again Saturday morning.

I want to get it done before we leave on our upcoming trip on the 21st. Besides the normal grime, I want to get all the oil off the rear of the coach and also the Blue Ox tow bar that was left over from our hydraulic fluid fan motor leak.

I also want to get some more Busch Aluminum Wheel Wash to clean up our rig’s wheels like I did last March. The front wheels went from this

to this.

And the rear wheels went from this

to this.

And the stuff is really easy to use. No scrubbing or polishing. Just spray it on, let it sit, and then rinse it off. It did take a couple of spray, sit, rinse iterations because the wheels were pretty dirty, but they came out great.

Jan and I headed up to Webster to have lunch at our now-favorite Chinese buffet, East Star. Then after our usual delicious meal, we made a stop at my client’s office to pick the Learning Remote for our new TV SoundBar that came in yesterday.

Then it was on over the El Dorado WalMart to drop off a prescription and getting some groceries. After that it was home about 5pm.

After we got settled in, I unwrapped our new Learning Remote and got it set up. And that only took a couple of minutes. I had ordered it so both of us would have remote to control the volume of the SoundBar that we got to increase the volume from our TV.

All it takes to program it is to just press the SET button until the red light comes on and then point the two remotes at each other about an inch apart. Then press and hold the function button you want to copy, and press the corresponding button on the new remote. Easy Peezy.

I programmed the Mute and Volume buttons for the SoundBar, the Power button for the TV, and the A/V button for the TV Input to switch between the DVR and the Computer. As of yet I haven’t decided what if anything I’m going to do with the CH Up and CH Down buttons, since they won’t really work with our DirecTV DVR.

I think the real problem with it is going to be keeping track of it.

I’ve got another new toy coming in either tomorrow or Saturday. It’s a new Wyze Cam, but this is the new Pan Cam.

Not only can it be set to automatically pan back and forth, and tilt, it can be programmed with multiple detection hotspots. Even better it will pan to track any action that enters its field of vision. And all this at 1080p and for only $30.

You can check out the video here.

I mentioned before that I’ve not real happy with Godaddy’s Website Builder programs, both the old one and the new one. So I’ve started looking at other programs.

I started this afternoon with WIX’s version, and so far I like it. It’s easy, intuitive, and pretty powerful. But before I switch anything over, I want to look at a couple of other programs first.

Thought for the Day: 

I saw a guy at Starbucks today.
No iPhone, no tablet, no laptop.
He just sat there.
Drinking coffee.
Like a psychopath.

asdfdf