Our RV Adventures

First off, Jan want to thank everyone for all the many Happy Birthday wishes. It meant a lot to her.

We were out the door a little before 10:30 heading up to Webster to meet Miss Piper at one of our favorite breakfast places, The Egg and I.

Jan tried the Avocado Toast with a side of Greens,

while I got my usual Two Egg Breakfast.

But what I want to know is how someone this slender,

can eat like this.

Piper’s working at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, where her Nana worked back in the early 80’s right after we moved out here from Alabama and I went to work for NASA..

She’s close to finishing up her B.A. in Psychology and then she’s going right into an MBA in Medical Administration, all while working full time. Pretty much like her Nana and PaPa did about 45 years ago.

While Jan and Piper went out to do the Mani-Pedi thing, I went by her apartment to pick up her bike and take in down to the Bike Barn to have a rear flat tire repaired. While I was there I told them to go ahead and do a Basic Tune-up while they’ve got it.

We all met up back at her apartment and got introduced to her new dog. Violet. Then Jan and I headed off to Sam’s for a prescription pickup and then WalMart for stuff. A lot of stuff, since we hadn’t really shopped since before we left for Florida on the 3rd of this month.

Finally heading home, we made a stop at the new Costco to fill up our Malibu. At $2.29/gal it’s the cheapest place around. But I ran into a problem. I couldn’t get the gas door open.

I first tried to push on one of the edges to ‘rock’ it open. No luck. Then I search all over inside for a remote release, checking in all the usual places, like beside the driver’s seat, inside the glove box, etc. Then I checked all the dash panels and hidden locations. Still no luck.

Then I double-checked the key fob. Also no.

Finally, and reluctantly, it was RTFM time. And . . . there was not one in the vehicle. So finally giving up, we headed on down to Dickinson for a storage room stop, before headed home for the night.

Tomorrow we’re going up to Brandi’s in Katy for an afternoon pool party/cookout. Miss Piper is coming up too,  but separately since she’ll probably have to come home earlier.

Really looking forward to some pool time, especially since Lowell is heating it up just for the occasion.

Brandi sent over a photo of Landon’s prize-winning Halloween costume.

And it lights up, too.

Later a little Googling told me the secret of the Malibu’s gas door. You have to push in on the left edge in just the right place and then immediately release it. And then that edge pops open.

If you don’t push in the right spot, or don’t release it quick enough, it won’t open. Live and Learn.

Thought for the Day: 

Words That Jan and I Have Take To Heart.

sdfgs

I heard back from Snider Transmission with so-so news about our Dodge Dakota. There’s nothing externally wrong with the transmission, so the next step is to take a look inside. And that will cost me $300.

That’s the charge for removing it, disassembling it, and diagnosing the problem. If at that point I do decide to repair it, the $300 will apply to the bill.

But that doesn’t include putting it back together afterwards if I decide not to get it repaired. And in fact due to all the O-rings and gaskets that would have to be replaced even without actually repairing, it wouldn’t be cost-effective anyway.

But I decided to roll the dice and hope I don’t Crap out.

For a while now I’ve been trying to get my client to take a look at how they do shipping. Numerically, our order totals are pretty much equally divided between USPS and UPS. We do ship a few orders via FedEx, but they’re mostly international shipments. But money-wise, the $ totals are about 3 to 1 for UPS.

But there can be a lot of difference in shipping cost between the various methods. For example, if we ship a 10# package to New York City, NY with USPS, check out the possible differences in cost.

Via standard Priority Mail (weight-based) it would be $28.45.

Via a Priority Mail Medium Flat Rate Box, it would $11.60.

And via a Priority Mail Regional Rate Box A, it would be only $9.70

That’s a big range!

To make things more confusing, there’s actually a fourth shipping method called Priority Mail Cubic, that’s only based on the size of the box.

And that’s not even bringing UPS into the mix.

The problem turns out to be how to quickly and easily figure out the cheapest way to ship a package. Your variables are package weight, shipping distance (Postal Zone), and package size. And the same weight package will ship cheaper either of 4 different ways, depending on how far away it’s going.

So what we need is a program that will take the weight and the destination zip code and tell you which way is the cheapest. There are a couple of online sites that purport to do this, but mostly seem to try and get you to ship through them.

So my new project is write a program that will take the shipping weight and the destination zip and tell you the cheapest way to ship it.

I’ll probably just do the first verison in Liberty BASIC since it’s quicker for prototyping, and then once the logic flow is nailed  down, I may move it into something like C+. But it may work just fine in Compiled BASIC. I’ll just have to see.

But at a quick glance, the first problem I see is that the USPS charts I need, like the Domestic Zone Chart that translates Zip Codes into Postal Zones, doesn’t seem be available in computer form, just printouts. But I’ll  keep looking.

Tomorrow we’re meeting up with Miss Piper for breakfast at The Egg and I, then she and Jan are going to get Mani-Pedi’s. Well, just a Pedi for Jan.

Then Sunday we’re going up to Brandi’s in Katy and lounge around their pool while Lowell grills something.

Really looking forward to it.

Thought for the Day: Irony

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