Monthly Archives: November 2020
They Don’t Call It A Death Spiral For Nothing . . .
Jan just got in what she says is her last pair (RIGHT!) of Christmas Earrings for this year.
They’re Vintage Christmas Trees and they’re really cute.
Seems like even the CDC can’t make up their minds anymore about masks.
In a recent report in Emerging Infectious Diseases, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests what experts have stated all along: There is no conclusive evidence that cloth masks protects users from coronavirus, especially since most people do not use them correctly and do not keep them clean.
There is increasing evidence that cloth masks not only may be ineffective against stopping coronavirus transmission, but that they may actually increase the spread of the virus, as well as worsening other health conditions.
Likewise, the CDC’s October journal report references a 2015 study on cloth mask efficacy that found that rates of infection were “consistently higher” among those in the cloth mask group versus that of the medical mask and control groups. The authors of the study suggested it was likely that the cloth masks were problematic because they retained moisture and had poor filtration.
The CDC writes of that study, “This finding suggest that risk for infection was higher for those wearing cloth masks.”
“There is limited evidence for their [masks] effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission,” the studies found. This applied to masks “worn by the infected person for source control OR when worn by uninfected persons.” They concluded that there was “no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.”
And a recent study, highly-touted in the media when it seemed to show how great masks were at containing CoVid, had to be withdrawn when it was discovered that, Oops, they really don’t work that well, and it some instances, infections go up.
Even in other countries.
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A while back I mentioned how we had put our over 20+ year DirecTV account in suspension until December 31st and were now getting all of our TV service through YouTubeTV and other streaming services.
And really enjoying it. And at less than half the cost of DirecTV.
I also said that we would probably just cancel our DTV account at the end of the year.
Well, DTV just changed ‘probably’ into ‘absolutely’.
Already shedding subscribers like a sheepdog in the summertime, DTV has decided that this is a perfect time to raise their rates starting January 1st.
That means that someone, somewhere in the company looked at the books and said, “We’re not making as much money as we were. We need to raise our rates.”
In the business world, this is known as a Death Spiral. So when raising your rates makes you even less money, why, just raise them again.
And so on. And so on.
Somebody flunked Bus 101.
Thought for the Day:
Now that I’ve finally accepted that I’m having a bad hair life, I’m more at peace with the world.
November 20, 2009
Tallulah’s and Throwed Rolls…
Today we got a late start, leaving about noon to drive down toward Orange Beach and Tallulah’s, a must-stop gift shop there. It used to be called Tootie’s Yellow Broom and we’ve been going there for years.
Afterwards we drove down toward Alabama Point to check things out. While we were down there I got this great shot.
Leaving the Point we drove up to Foley to have a late lunch at one of our favorite places, Lambert’s Throwed Rolls. We both had the fried chicken and had plenty left over to take home.
After lunch I dropped Jan off to get a pedicure while I stopped off at Ace Hardware to get some hot glue sticks and a few other things.
Coming back toward Gulf Shores we took a detour down to our old house on the Bon Secour River. My parents built it in 1958 after they sold our motel on the beach at Gulf Shores. They sold it when we came back from Colombia, South America in 1963. It’s right on the river and was a really nice house.
On the way back to the rig we dropped by Books A Million to check out the new magazines, and then got cappuccinos at our favorite place.
Getting back home we sat out with the cats while enjoying the beautiful view right beside our rig.
Even Emma came out for a few minutes.
After sitting out a while we heading in for the night.
More tomorrow…
November 20, 2010
Good Soups and Great Pie . . .
We got our 1-1/2 mile walk this morning about 10:30, taking about 35 minutes for the walk. Hopefully not too shabby for us old folks.
Right after we got back, the RV park called and ask if we still wanted our old site, since the guy is finally leaving on the 24th. Jan said we’ve been here for over two months now, we might as well stay. So I guess we’re here for the duration.
About 1:30 we headed up the road to Webster to have lunch at King Food, our favorite Chinese restaurant for a big bowl of Hot & Sour Soup.
Then after dropping off some things at our storage room, and stopping off at the bank to make a deposit, we did some shopping at HEB, a great local supermarket.
Next, Jan wanted to stop at Carter’s, a baby clothes store, to pick up some new outfits for Landon, finally, we stopped by Half-Price Books where Jan was looking for some books by a new author she likes, but had no luck.
We got home a little after 5, and that was it for the day.
I did come across this great archive of color pictures. These are amazing. Check them out!
Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943
But in looking thru the photos I noticed a number of them taken in Pie Town, NM. This brought back memories of our stop in Pie Town this past June.
Apparently Pie Town was a lot bigger back in the 30’s and 40’s. Now there’s just a couple of stores there.
Thought you might want to check our visit there.
Long Goodbyes…
Posted on June 13, 2010
A little over an hour later we crossed into New Mexico, heading for Magdalena, about 115 miles away. This is kind of a short day for us, but I wanted to be able to stop and see the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope facility about 20 miles before Magdalena. Plus I knew we would lose an hour crossing into New Mexico because, even though Arizona and New Mexico are both in same time zone (Mountain), Arizona doesn’t observe Daylight Savings Time, so we still lose an hour.
Once again we were treated to some great scenery along the way. Rolling hills and sweeping vistas, punctuated by even larger hills jutting up from the terrain.
A little before 2 pm we started seeing signs for Pie Town, NM, and specifically The Pie-O-Neer pie place located there. So we decided we had to stop.
I mean it’s pie, right.
In a place called Pie Town.
It had to be good, right.
But it wasn’t just good, it was fantastic!
And it didn’t hurt that we we hungry.
And, although the place didn’t look like much on the outside, the inside was a complete surprise. It was bright, colorful, and tastefully decorated, with a lot of homespun touches.
The Pie-O-Neer got its start in 1995 when Kathy Knapp and her family drove 150 miles from Albuquerque to have pie in Pie Town.
What they found was The Old Thunderbird Trading Post..
Here’s what Kathy said about that visit. “Crossing the steps of the frontier-style porch we were anxious. “What kind of pie would they have?” Much to our dismay, NONE. The owners were old and tired and had a sign on the door that read “There used to be pie in Pie Town, but there ain’t no more — FOR SALE.”
So she bought it. She said a place called Pie Town should have PIE!
And it used to. Here’s a little bit of the history of Pie Town.
The small menu, which seems to only exist to give you an excuse to come there for pie, consists of two sandwiches, a Deli Sandwich and a Grilled Cheese with Tomatoes and Green Chiles, (sometimes three on BLT day. Don’t ask), a Spinach Quesadilla, and two soups, Green Chili Stew and the Soup of the Day.
And today the Soup of the Day was Carrot-Ginger. Huh?
Jan had to try a cup of the Carrot-Ginger and I got a cup of the Green Chili Stew. And we split the Grilled Cheese.
Our waitress told us to go up to the counter and pick out our pie now, because otherwise our selection might be gone. The pies are baked one at a time all day long, and are pretty much served warm from the oven, cause they don’t last long enough to get cold.
Jan picked a slice of Chocolate Cream pie and I got a slice of Pear-Pineapple-Ginger.
And everything was delicious. Who would have thought of Carrot-Ginger soup? And my Green Chili Stew was great, just full of chunks of chicken and potatoes.
Kathy, the owner, says she also uses turmeric, a ginger cousin, in her dishes, because it’s a little more spicy, and slightly bitter.
Jan said the pie crust on her Chocolate Cream was the best she’d ever eaten. Turns out that the secret is to use half butter and half lard in the crust. The butter gives it flavor and the lard makes it flaky. MMMM! Lard!
The crust on my Pear-Pineapple-Ginger was really good. It was like a Deep Dish Crumble crust, kind of crunchy, but melted in your mouth.
Jan ask Kathy if she had a cook book and she said yes. It was a compilation of pie recipes from people in the area, including Kathy, so Jan got one.
Hopefully that means more pie soon.
Leaving (reluctantly) Pie Town, we once again crossed the Continental Divide a few minutes later, this time at our highest point so far, 7796 feet.
No wonder our ears were popping.
About 20 miles out of Magdalena we got our first glimpse of the VLA.
From this distance it’s hard to tell how big the dishes are. Hint- They’re really big.
A sign told us the Visitor’s Center was open until sunset so we decided to go on into Magdalena and get set up.
Ding, Ding, Ding! We have a new winner!
The Western Motel and RV Park is now officially the worst park we’ve ever stayed in. The previous winner, the Casper East RV Park in Casper, WY, that we stayed at two years ago on our way to Alaska, has been soundly defeated.
The things wrong with this park are almost too numerous to mention.
1. They advertise 30 or 50 amp, but only have 30.
2. The hookups are at the front of the site, not the rear.
3. It is almost impossible to maneuver in the park. I hope the guy to my right leaves early, otherwise I might have to back out of here. So much for a pull-thru.
4. The place is a junkyard of old cars, refrigerators, and other miscellaneous stuff, all just scattered around.
5 The water doesn’t work, but there’s no discount for that,
6, Even with 25 ft of sewer hose I can’t hook up because the connection is too far forward. And there’s no discount for that either.
7. The place is Passport American and it’s still $20 blankety-blank dollars a night! So that means some people pay $40 a night? Yeah, right.
The problem is that there is no other RV parks in town. The other two are closed. And apparently you can’t park any where else either. As we were coming into town we saw a couple in at 5th wheel setting up in a wide open area beside the road. When we came back by about 30 minutes, they were almost finished packing back up.
And when we came back from the VLA about an hour later they were gone. We assume someone told them to move on.
About 5pm we headed out to the VLA in our truck to take a look. Turning off US 60 we crossed one of the railroad track arms of the array.
The radio telescope array consists of three arms made up of railroad tracks, each arm 13 miles long, like the letter ‘Y’, but each arm is the same length. The large telescopes are moved up and down the arms, depending on what they want to look at.
When the 27 dishes (9 on each arm) are spread out to the far ends, it’s like a camera lens zoomed in on an object.
When the dishes are brought in close like they are here, it’s like the wide-angle lens on camera, looking at the broad picture.
The dishes are moved around on a regular schedule during the year, from all the way out to all the way in.
Below you can see the tracks and the 90 degree sidings where the dishes are parked when in use. The track itself is kept open so that if a dish fails it can be brought back in for service and replaced with a spare.
The dishes are enormous. They are 96 feet high, 82 feet wide, and weigh 235 tons. Yet they can be positioned to a faction of an inch on the track, and aimed to a fraction of a degree in the sky.
Here’s a shot of the maintenance shed where the dishes can be repaired out of the weather, and a spare dish waiting to be needed.
We got back to the park about 6:45 pm and were in for the night. I didn’t even bother setting up the satellite dish, since nothing much was on tonight. So we just read, computered (Yes, I know that’s not a word, but it should be) and listened to music.
A little later Jan heated up our left-over wings from last night (Still great) and we topped it off with a sopapilla from a few nights ago.
Tomorrow we head out from Fort Sumner, NM, about 215 miles away, hopefully with a better RV park.
Thought For The Day:
Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you’re a consultant. – Scott Adams
November 20, 2014
Crème Brûlée . . .
About 3:30pm Jan and I headed down to Brandi, Lowell, and Landon’s in the Katy area. We were meeting them at Little V’s Vietnamese Bistro near their house at 5:30, and I wanted to allow plenty of time for the trip due to going-home traffic. Normally the trip only takes about an hour and 20 minutes, but heading out on I-10 from the Sam Houston Tollway is always an experience. And this time was no different. Our ‘hour and 20 minute’ trip took us an hour and 55 minutes, and the HOV lane was really no faster than the regular lanes.
We had our usual warm reception from the owner, and our usual great food, with Pork Spring Rolls, Shaking Beef Bowls (Chicken for Jan) and the Crème Brûlée spoons for dessert.
Delicious food, and the perfect amount of dessert.
Before heading home we went back over to Brandi and Lowell’s to check out their new Christmas Tree.
They don’t have it decorated yet, but it comes pre-lit. It’s 10-1/2 feet tall and really stands out in their high-ceiling living room. Can’t wait to see it decorated.
We headed back to Conroe a little before 8pm thinking we would have smooth sailing and no traffic. Yeah, right!
They had 4 lanes of I-45 narrowed down to one, with all the accompanying gridlock, and then when you get there, nothing was happening, just some guys standing around pickup trucks with flashing lights. No work trucks, no construction equipment, no nothing.
We finally got home about 9:30, done for the night. Tomorrow, about 10:30 we’ll move a couple of miles down the road to the Omega Farms RV Park. Then we’ll head down to the Clear Lake area so Jan can meet with her Dr. about her Tamoxifen side effects. The Dr. told Jan to stop taking it on Nov. 11th, and the bad side effects have pretty much disappeared. So we’ll see if the Dr. wants to decrease the dose or change drugs.
Then we’re going to have dinner with Chris, Linda, and Miss Piper, and we’re really looking forward to that.
Saturday morning we’ll be moving over to the Escapees Park in Livingston to get together with Chris and Charles Yust, and Dennis and Carol Hill., and we’re really looking forward to that too.
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Thought for the Day:
Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. — Will Durant
November 20, 2015
Winding Down The Gate . . .
It just gets better and better. Today our 10 hour gate, nee our 12 hour gate, became our 8 hour gate, with the Company Man the last one out at around 2:30.
Now exactly why couldn’t they have started this months ago, instead of our last few days on the gate?
In fact, between when I came out about 1pm, and when the CM left, I only had two vehicles come in. All the rest of the traffic was just heading out. But this worked out good for me, since it gave me plenty of time to work on my ‘Leaving the Gate’ list.
After our storm damage this past Tuesday when the squall line with 50 – 60mph gusts came through, it left us with this,
I was able to pop the frame back into shape, although now reinforced with some tie-wraps.
At first I had thought about just going ahead and taking the canopy down for this year and doing without it for our last few days, sitting out in the hot sun with no shade quickly disabused us of that idea. So I came up with this.
Rather than try to patch together the old main canopy, I just put the small tarp back up, along with the solar screens. That will work fine for our last few days, and won’t be as involved in taking down.
Ok, so I’m a little hypocritical. Today being Friday, and apparently officially now Whataburger day for us, I drove into Carthage to pick up lunch. Now all the other 10 times or so we’ve gotten food from here, it’s always been the same thing.
For Jan:
#6 Whataburger Jr. With Cheese – Large Combo
With only:
Ketchup
Mustard
Tomatoes
Grilled Onions
And For Me:
#6 Whataburger Jr. With Cheese
With only:
Bacon
Tomatoes
Pickles
Raw Onions
Mayo on both buns
Large Drink
And it would have been the same order for me again, except for the fact that the guy in front of me was picking up 6 Grilled Chicken Cranberry-Apple Salads to go. And I got an instant craving to graze on one.
As it turns out, it was as good as it looks.
I think one reason for that was the fact that I watched them make the salad. Not just the Grilled Chicken part, but the salad itself. Most fast food places assemble the salads ahead of time, if you’re lucky, that morning, or if you’re not, the day or night before. But they put together this one right then, so it was really fresh.
You have a choice of a number of different dressings, including a couple of vinaigrettes, but I went with the Jalapeno Ranch.
So yeah, after I chastised someone for ordering a Chicken Fajita Taco at Whataburger, I get a salad there, possibly an even bigger blasphemy. But what can I say, I succumbed to temptation, and strayed from the path of burger righteousness.
mea culpa, mea culpa,
mea máxima culpa
But at least I didn’t have to keep telling cashier, “No, I don’t want any lettuce.”
While we’re on the subject of food, I wanted to post a photo of the delicious Prime Rib I had last night at Longhorn Grille.
Thursday night is Prime Rib Night, which is served as a complete meal, including a piece of their great Strawberry Cheesecake, which we split. A really great meal.
We’ll miss this place.
While we were eating lunch, we had something come through our gate that we haven’t seen this year.
A load of drill pipe for the workover rig. Just one truckload, apparently.
I remember our first year gate guarding in south Texas, we might get 20 loads of pipe in at a time, lined up all way out to the highway. Because of limited space on the pad, we could only let 4 trucks go in at a time. Then when they unloaded, one at a time, and came back out, 4 more could go in.
Well, some of the drivers would get impatient and try to break ranks, or just drive by all the other trucks and come to the front of the line.
But they didn’t figure on my Jan, standing in the middle of the road, hands on her hips, mad as hell, yelling at them to get back in line and wait their turn like everyone else.
Now there was no way for them to turn around, so they’d have to slowly back all the way up along the long line of other trucks, with the drivers pointing and laughing at them, for being run off by a girl.
The rest of the afternoon was spent putting away everything that we wouldn’t really need again before we leave here on Sunday. I went ahead and topped off the big 500 gallon water tank for our replacements, and then disconnected and stowed away all our hoses, leaving us running on rig water for the next couple of days. Tomorrow I’ll go ahead and dump the waste tanks, disconnect us from the sewer system and put away that hose too.
Since we’re not expecting any wind for the next couple of days, I went ahead and dumped the water out the buckets we use to help hold down the canopy, and then rinsed and stowed them away too.
My goal is to get everything finished up tomorrow so that Sunday morning we’ll only need to unhook shore power and pull off onto the side road. This will allow our replacements to just pull into our spot and hook up.
At that point we’ll be able to just hook up the toad and we’ll be ready to roll.
At least that’s the plan. But you know what they say about plans.
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Thought for the Day:
November 20, 2016
And So It Continues . . .
Following up on yesterday’s blog, Are We Erasing Our Past?, the city of Louisville KY has started dismantling a 121 year old monument.
Located right outside the University of Louisville campus, the 70 foot tall statue was given to the city of Louisville in 1895 to commemorate the Kentuckians who fought and died in the 1861-1865 war.
The monument is being moved 40 miles away to Brandenburg KY where a Civil War re-enactment is held every two years. Another Out of Sight, Out of Mind thing, I guess.
Note that the monument honors Confederate dead, not the Confederacy or slavery. It’s a burial monument. So do we start digging up graves soon?
And that also applies to Arlington National Cemetery where there is also a Confederate Burial Monument.
Guess that one will have to go soon.
Well today was my last day for a while to be up at 4am and on the gate by 5am. At least I hope it’s the last time for a long time. Yesterday we had a total of 119 vehicles in and out of the gate. Today was a little less with only 96 in/out. So not bad at all.
Especially since we didn’t have to actually log them in or out. Just be sure they’re in the right place and tell them to stay on the road and don’t leave ruts in the landowner’s pasture. Then on the way out, it’s a Marathon rule that I have to ask if they were injured on the site.
Having worked 24/7 gates outside under a canopy when it’s 117 degrees, or when it’s 26 degrees and sleeting, makes me really appreciate working a 12 hour shift in a guard shack.
With AC and heat, and a microwave and fridge, it’s a home away from home.
Getting home about 5pm we headed back out to have dinner at Taqueria Jalisco, a Mexican place that we first ate at in 2012.
Jan had her favorite Beef Chile Relleno,
while I tried Gordo’s Plate, Beef Fajita Strips topped with Monterey Jack cheese and sprinkled with Chorizo, along with Rice, Pico de Gallo, and Charro Beans.
Both really good.
Tomorrow we’ve got a number of errands to do to get ready for our Thanksgiving trip back to Brandi’s in Katy. Really looking forward to it.
Thought for the Day:
Ever notice how when you look at an ad for something on one site, more ads for similar products following you around from site to site?
Well now there’s the story of the man who complained to Target because his high-school-age daughter was receiving promotions for baby clothes and cribs:
“Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”
Later he apologized. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August.”
November 20, 2017
A Mystery Solved . . .
I was very surprised, and happy, to find that the server ran all weekend with no more problems. I guess coming out of the closet was good for it.
Now that I’ve got the WebServer on my desk, I’ve started exploring the Zen Cart and the SQL database, trying to get a handle on copying the whole thing off and then up to Godaddy. But it’s slow going, trying to track it all down. But I’ll get it eventually.
I ordered my new tags, (well stickers, anyway) from South Dakota yesterday, and got an email today that they had been mailed out. Fast service.
I did note that my tag cost has almost doubled in the last 10 years, from about $250 for both our truck and rig in 2007, to almost $500 this time. Seems like we ought to get a discount since we only cause any wear and tear on their roadways every five years or so.
Several times over the years we’ve heard people right outside our RV talking about their RV. After listening in on a couple of these conversations, I noticed that it was always the same guys having the same conversation.
They were actually following me around, from park to park, just so they could talk right outside our rig. But I finally figured that that was a little paranoid, even for me. And believe me, that’s saying something.
So since it wasn’t outside, it must be inside. So I started digging through some storage areas, until finally I found this:
It’s Cousin Eddie’s RV from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
I don’t know that when we bought that we knew it talked. But every once in a while something would set it off. There’s a little button on top that gets it going.
Apparently they didn’t make a lot of them so it’s become something of a collector’s item. So it you want one of your very own, you can get one right here on Amazon.
Cousin Eddie’s RV from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
If you get your order in quick you can have it hanging from your tree this Christmas for only $575.00, plus $4.95 shipping, of course. Order now because they’ve only got 1 left.
So now that the mystery is solved, I don’t have to be paranoid anymore. At least not about that. But of course I still have plenty of other things to be paranoid about.
Like this.
The Word of the Day is: Wifty
Thought for the Day:
“Thoughts are like the precious moments that fly past; once gone they can never be caught again.” – Alexander Graham Bell
November 20, 2018
I Think I Figured It Out . . .
When I got up this morning I had no data service on my Samsung S8+ phone and only 1 tiny little bar of cell service, which was not enough to actually make a phone call.
I was more worried than I might have been normally because right before I went to bed about 1:30 this morning, I did a System Update on my phone. So I was a little concerned that the update might be the problem. But then I noticed that I had email coming In on the phone until about 8:50 am, so it had been working all night.
Finally, after waiting an hour or so with no change, I enabled WiFi Calling through the RV Park’s WiFi. All I really had to do was to turn it on and then give it a street address for the 911 system.
And it worked just fine to call Jan to say, “Good Morning!”
Then gradually as the day passed, everything slowly came back, with first 1X for a while, going in and out, then 3G most of the afternoon, although I didn’t seem to be able to get any data through it.
Then about 6pm I was back at 4G, with data, and my usual 3-4 bars of signal.
I spent most of the day playing with Zen Cart, working on figuring out how to load a new client’s data file into it and have it all come out in the right place. Not sure how it’s all going to fit., but I’ll shoehorn it all in somewhere.
I Think I Figured It Out.
Sunday afternoon I went online and signed us for the Movies Extra Package on DirecTV. It gives us 8 additional channels for $4.99/month, including a couple that I might like, C&I (Crime & Investigation) and Smithsonian. But the main reason we got it was because Jan wanted the Hallmark Movies and Mysteries Channel.
It said I should have the new channels, starting at 565 in just a few minutes. But they never did show up. In fact we have no channels at all there, not even on the Guide. And I even tried rebooting the receiver.
So yesterday morning I called DTV and they said I should have it, and they tried to turn it on again. No luck.
I even went online and found out about the ‘secret’ reboot command CLEANMYBOX. This is accessed by going to the Search function and typing in CLEANMYBOX. Then select ALL and hold down the RED button.
This will cause your DVR to do a full reboot, reloading both the Schedule and the Guide data. I was hopeful about this since it had fixed similar problems for several others. But again, no luck.
Then today while I was looking at the DTV site again, one of the new channel names jumped out at me – HDNet. And it looks like that is the problem.
Although we have an HD DVR, we got it for the increased storage space. We don’t actually have HD because our Winegard Carryout dome won’t support it. But what’s curious is that, unlike other packages of HD channels, the Movies Extra package is not flagged as HD.
Nor did the girl I talked to mention it, strange since our account is not marked for HD. So I guess I’ll have to call them back and cancel it. At least until we have to get a new dish for HD next year sometime since DTV will be doing away with all the SD channels.
Thought for the Day:
Sometimes the handwriting on the wall is in Bright, Bold letters.
November 20, 2019
Ouch !!!
Well, maybe. I don’t really know for sure yet.
After breakfast I put in a call to the parts department at the Cummins shop in north Houston. As in the past when I called them, I just got a voicemail prompt and left a message. And when I didn’t hear anything after 3 more tries, I decided to call the Cummins parts people out in Gillette, WY, a smaller shop where we’ve gotten parts several times in our past travels.
And this time I got right through to a nice young lady in the parts department who quickly gave me the ‘Ouch!!’ news.
A new air compressor for our Cummins 350 ISC is $1,297.44. As I said, OUCH!
A lot more than the $600-800 total that I found online yesterday. But then I don’t really yet know for sure if they had to replace the air compressor anyway. I can only hope not.
When we went by Dix’s this afternoon on our way out to dinner, I was told that they were still waiting on a new air dryer cartridge for the air system. Which should be in tomorrow I was told. So we’ll see.
I was happy to see that our refrigerator was still chugging along and didn’t need to be reset. Which means that Dix’s hadn’t turned off the Coach batteries during the repairs. Since if even they do turn them back on after they turn them off, the fridge has to be reset before it will restart on propane.
So hopefully it keeps on going.
After dinner this evening we scouted out a nearby RV park in case we need it. River Bend RV Park is just west of us at the next exit on I-10 and looks really nice.
This is my backup plan in case the rig is ready to go late in the afternoon. We don’t want to drive back home that late in the day, so we’ll just spend the night at River Bend until the next morning.
When we were up in Lockhart for dinner yesterday we took a detour past the beautiful Caldwell County Courthouse on the townsquare.
This historic building was constructed in 1894 to replace one that had been outgrown. Built from cream-colored limestone and red sandstone, it has a near identical twin in the Goliad County Courthouse since they were built from the same plans.
Thought for the Day:
I always wanted to be a procrastinator.
But I just never got around to it.
No Car Licking Allowed . . .
.Jan and I headed up to Webster about 2:30, first for lunch at East Star China Buffet once again.
Just as good as always.
Then it was on over to Sam’s Club to pick up a couple of prescriptions before we headed back down toward Santa Fe, with a stop at the local Jack’s to pick up some Christmas Antenna Balls for our truck and our Jeep. But we were quickly informed that they no longer do antenna balls, and haven’t for a while.
In fact, it looks like the last time they did any may have been back in 2014. At least that’s the last year shown for any at the AntennaBallStore website.
Oh, well.
Then we stopped off at the PO and found that the South Dakota tag renewal stickers for our truck and rig had come in. Now hopefully our new Jeep tags will come in next week some time.
Apparently, up in Alaska right now, car licking is a big problem. Well, a moose licking your car is the problem.
So much so that they’re even posting signs about it.
it seems the moose really like the taste of the road salt used to de-ice the highways up there. So to them your pickup is just one big salt lick.
Supposedly it draws the moose out into traffic where they get hit. But they already get hit a lot anyway.
Or maybe the moose get their tongue stuck to your car and can’t get loose.
Like in “A Christmas Story”.
November 19, 2009
Beach Party…
Since we wanted to get an early start this morning, I got the toad hooked up last night, and everything else stowed away.
We pulled out of my relative’s RV park about 8 am and headed down I-65 toward Gulf Shores about 380 miles away.
I-65 is in good shape and it was a smooth trip.
Jan hasn’t driven at all this year so she decided she wanted to drive for awhile. So a little south of Montgomery she took over. She drove about 125 miles until right before we got off the Interstate. At that point we were a little over 55 miles from our park.
We pulled into the Gulf State RV Park about 3:30, got parked and set up.
Getting to our site we passed one of my favorite signs.
What exactly ‘aggravates’ a gator? Maybe it’s not ‘feeding’ them. I would prefer to know.
We’re back in our favorite area along the bayou.
And of course Mister had to start checking things out. I think he’s hoping to catch himself a gator.
Thought for the Day:
Sometimes I just clap because it’s over, and not because I liked it.
November 19, 2012
1st Day Back in Texas . . .
Today is our first full day back in Texas, and it’s been interesting to see all the new restaurants that are opening in this area. We’ve got a P.F. Chang’s, a Cheesecake Factory, and a Longhorn Steakhouse, just to start. So it’s looking like some good eating’s in store.
Getting back here reminds us how much we enjoy being here. And one of the many reasons is this view out the front of our coach.
Jan and I headed out on some errands about 10:30, but our first stop was one of our local favorites, King Food. We been eating here for more than 30 years, and we’re actually on our 4th owner. But they still have some of the best Chinese food around, and in fact this past year, they were selected one of the top 100 Chinese restaurants in the U.S.
After a great lunch, we headed over to the Honey-Baked Ham store to pick up a ham and a roasted turkey breast for our Thanksgiving meal up in Marble Falls. Luckily for us the line getting into the store was only about 15 minutes so we were on our way again pretty quick.
After dropping the ham and turkey at our daughter Brandi’s, our next stop was Kroger’s to pick up a couple of things. Then it was on to our storage room at Challenger Storage to pick up Jan’s bird feeder. She really enjoys watching all the many types of birds we have in this area.
As you can see Jan has a very popular bird feeder.
Our next stop was at one of my clients to check in and see what he broke while I was gone, and how hard it’s going to be to fix.
Then it was back home for the rest of the afternoon, which let us just relax and enjoy being back in Texas. Then after a nice afternoon, and an even better nap, we headed out about 5:45 to first have supper at another local favorite of ours, Monterey’s Little Mexico, for what’s pretty much the best Chicken Tortilla Soup around.
Then it was on to our ultimate goal for the evening, our first chance to see our grandson Landon (and Brandi and Lowell,of course) in about six months. The last time was the end of May when we came back to Houston for our granddaughter Piper’s high school graduation.
We did get to Skype with them occasionally, but it’s not like being there.
When we got to Brandi and Lowell’s, Landon was a little shy at first, but quickly warmed up to us, and started calling us Nana and PaPa. We stayed about an hour before it was time for his bath and bed.
A visit with Landon, a great way to round out the day.
Thought for the Day:
A sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.” – Steve Rush
November 19, 2014
A FixIt Day . . .
And a somewhat expensive lesson.
As soon as I got up this morning I called Bob Parker to pass on some info I found out last night about his Intellitec 900 system. I came across several posts about this system, and they said that when these systems start acting funny, to completely reboot it. You do this by removing shore power and then disconnecting the coach battery for about 10 minutes. You want absolutely no power coming to the unit, and using the coach battery disconnect won’t always disconnect every last thing in the coach. I know it doesn’t on our coach.
When I talked to Bob, he and Donna were in Livingston, but he said he would try it when they got back. While I had him on the phone, I also told Bob I had his Wi-Fi router fixed and would drop it off when we got back to the park.
Next up was a couple of my own problems. I finally had the time and the decent weather to let me get back on my turn signal problem. And now I had a new problem to work on. Yesterday I noticed my brake lights weren’t working. So as a workaround, when we went out I would just turn on and off the headlights/taillights to simulate brake lights.
I decided the brake light problem was the most urgent so I started out at the brake light switch attached to the brake pedal under the dash. And I found no voltage there, so it was back to the fuse panel on the driver’s side edge of the dash. But there was no fuse for the brake lights here. And the owner’s manual was no help either.
So I was back to my Haynes manual, and that told me about a brake light fuse in the power distribution panel under the hood. Up till then I had always thought that everything in there was engine/transmission related. And most of it is. What I found it there was a bunch of these 1″ long cartridge fuses, a type I had never seen before.
Checking the specified fuse with an ohmmeter I found it was open. Eureka!
But what’s this? Five spaces down from the brake light fuse is one labeled ‘Turn Sig/Haz”. Could it be this simple for that problem too?
And that fuse was bad too. Just to be sure, I went back through all my books and manuals and nowhere was it mentioned that there was a fuse for the turn signals under the hood. They only mentioned the one in the dash fuse panel, and I had checked that one with no luck.
Blog readers will remember that a couple of weeks ago when I was working on this problem, I bought a $70 flasher control module to fix this problem because all the online stuff said this was the fix. But I was not able to pull the old one out from under the dash. I couldn’t get a grip on it, so I thought I’d let my son Chris try it when we get together Friday night.
Since I had never seen fuses like this before, I went back online for a little research. Found I could order the fuses online, but locally the Dodge dealer seem to be the only place that carried them. No luck with AutoZone, CarQuest, etc.
So, since it was now after 3pm Jan and I headed out for a couple of errands and then dinner. And my first stop was the Chrysler dealer in Conroe to get two of the fuses.
Coming back out to the truck with my $13 worth of fuses, I plugged them both in and, VOILA!, I had turn signals and brake lights again.
Of course I also have a $70 flasher control module just waiting to be used if my original one ever does go out. OUCH!
With that fixed, we were on our way to have dinner at Applebee’s, one of our favorite chains. And no matter what we order as an entrée, we always get the Green Bean Crispers appetizers.
These are lightly-breaded green beans, flash fried, and served with smoky bacon ranch and creamy horseradish dips. Really good, and well recommended.
Somewhere in here, I talked to Bob Parker who said that rebooting his panel fixed the problem with his Intellitec system. Great!
I love it when a plan comes together.
Finishing up our meal, our next stop was the Academy Sports & Outdoors for a bottle of the diesel biocide to be sure that the colder, wetter temps don’t cause algae growth and clogged fuel filters in our coach.
Next up was a quick stop at the Wal-Mart before we headed back to the park, and along the way I dropped off the router at Bob and Donna’s rig.
Some readers may wonder about the two fuses and why they would blow, and why I wasn’t worried about a short in the system causing the problem. And why I wasn’t too worried about the fact that I had two fuses blow.
Well, when I closely examined the fuses, there was no indication of a ‘hard’ blow. No burnt, smoky areas inside, no melted plastic. etc. In fact it was hard to tell the fuse WAS blown without testing it.
Fuses age, especially in an automotive environment with the heat and the vibration, so sometimes they just up and quit. And that seems to be what happened this time. And the coincidence of two fuses dying in a relative short time, well, as Sigmund Freud is reputed to have said,
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
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Thought for the Day:
“Trying to describe a building is like trying to describe a beautiful woman: the proper medium is a picture.” – Robert A. Heinlein
November 19, 2015
Sometimes A Coincidence . . .
is just a coincidence.
First up, a correction.
Yesterday I talked about the Power Tank Tire Inflator that I use, and I gave you an Amazon link and picture.. But blog reader Len Coffelt pointed out that that one probably wasn’t the one I was thinking about. And he’s right. That one now only goes to 60psi, not exactly useful for large RV tires.
The funny thing is that listing came directly from my past orders list on Amazon. And my Power Tank Inflator is labeled an TI-8200.
So I guess that sometime since 2009 when I bought mine, Power Tank changed the specifications on the 8200.
The one that you probably want is this one.
Power Tank TIG-8170 Tire Inflator
This one, like my old 8200, goes to 160psi. and should do the job.
Sorry about that.
The last couple of days we’ve had an invasion of the Asian Ladybugs, or Lady Beetles as they’re also called. And unlike our native species, the Asian ones bite.
And the other way to tell the difference is that the Asian ones are not just red, but a lot of different colors. And the Asian one s have more spots.
It’s been a real pain keeping them out of the rig when they’re swarming everywhere.
The next thing up on my chore list this morning was swap out my old, defective transfer switch for the new one I just received a few days ago. I didn’t expect it to be a big hassle, and it wasn’t.
It was an uber-hassle.
Over the surface it looked simple, and it was. Turn off the rig power at the 50 amp breaker on the generator and unplug the shore power cable, remove the 9 color-coded power wires and the 3 bare ground wires, pick up the old unit, put the new one in its place and reverse the wiring procedure.
Then came the test.
Regular readers will remember that my problem was that my transfer switch would only switch over to the rig’s generator as long as we were still running on shore power. But if we wanted to use the generator on the road, then I had to start the generator, go back and lift the bed, remove the compartment cover, and then use a large screwdriver to push down on the contactor until it locks in.
A real pain in the rear if you’re doing this on the side of the road because you decided you wanted run the house AC’s.
So after I got everything swapped out, the next thing was to start up the rig generator and see if it works. And it did.
Twenty seconds after I started it up, the new transfer switch clunked, and we had AC power in the rig.
The green LED shows that the switch is in generator mode.
Thinking the problem was fixed, I shut off the rig generator and went outside to plug back in and flip the breaker on. Note that I don’t depend on just the breaker to protect me.
I came back in the rig expecting power to be on, but had nothing. And back at the transfer switch with my voltmeter, I had nothing coming in there either. So at least it wasn’t another bad switch.
Back outside, there’s no way to measure or see the voltage at the generator while you’re plugged into it, so I again flipped the breaker, unplugged the power cable, flipped the breaker back on, and checked the voltage at the socket.
I had 122 volts on both legs. So plugging back in, I went over to my electrical bay and checked my Progressive EMS.
Aha!
I had 122 volts on L1 and 15 volts on L2. And with that low a voltage on L2, my EMS was not letting power into the coach.
Cycling the breaker again, I watch the EMS display as it went through its testing before putting power to the rig, and saw L1 at 122V and L2 at 122V
But as soon as the EMS tried to put power to the rig, it dropped right back out, showing 15 volts on L2.
WTH?
At this point the first I thought was that something was wrong in the coach, and it was pulling the L2 voltage down. But then everything was fine in the coach because the rig generator didn’t have any problems.
Again, WTH?
So turning the breaker back off, I unplugged the output of the EMS system from the coach at the main power feed.
And powering up, the EMS still showed L2 at 15volts.
So now it was a generator problem.
3 years ago when we were gate guarding down in south Texas, we had generator do something similar where one leg dropped to 75 volts. But it stayed at 75 volts. But here we were seeing 122 volts until we put a load on it, and then it dropped to 15 volts.
And that indicates a bad connection somewhere.
I put a call into Todd, our GGS service guy, and he said it was probably the 50 amp breaker, and that he’d already replaced two others this week. He said he was the other side of Bryan/College Station and it would between 7 and 8 pm before he could get here.
I told him no problem, and that we’d just run our rig generator if we needed.
Especially now that our transfer switch works.
We found out this afternoon that we don’t have a 12 hour gate. We have a 10 hour gate, with everyone coming in between 6:30 and 7am, and they’re all gone by 4:30pm. In fact they couldn’t work at night if they wanted to, because they no longer have any light towers. They took them all out today, I guess to save money on the rentals.
So Jan and I headed out about 5pm for one last steak dinner at Longhorn Grille, and it was as good as last time.
Todd showed up about 7:45pm and 15 minutes later we were back on shore power.
Great job, Todd.
This lesson here is that it’s easy to get led down the wrong path when you’re troubleshooting something. Most of the time it’s the last thing you fooled with that’s causing your new problem, but then other times, just enough to keep you on your toes, it’s just a coincidence.
Thought for the Day:
with Thanks to my Great-Niece Stahlie
I wrote this blog back in 2016, which at the time kind of went ‘mini-viral’ around the Net. And it’s amazing that it seems even more relevant today.
November 19, 2016
What If We Erase Our Past?
George Santayana famously said,“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Or maybe you like Mark Twain’s version better when he said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
But you can’t remember the past if it’s disappearing right before your eyes.
Stalin’s Communist regime was probably the first modern government to make a consistent effort to erase the photographic past, as seen in this famous comparison.
Makes you really appreciate how much harder this was in the pre-Photoshop days.
In Stalin’s case, whole Cabinets, as well as top generals, would just disappear from history. I guess this is what they mean by “Out of sight. Out of mind.” Poof! You’re gone.
And it wasn’t just the Russian Communists, but the Chinese Communists too.
Bo Gu, a protege and senior adviser to Mao Tse-tung, apparently got on Mao’s bad side, and Bo and bunch of other senior leaders died in a plane ‘crash’ in 1946. Almost immediately, Bo and the others, AND the plane crash pretty much disappeared from history.
Even Hitler got in on the act when he was mad at Joseph Goebbels about something. Goebbels also disappeared from official photographs for a while until he got the message.
At least Goebbels only disappeared from photographs, and not permanently as most did.
Even the ancient Egyptians were not above erasing a Pharaoh from history. Akhenaten, son of Amenhotep III, husband of Nefertiti, and father to King Tutankhamun, or King Tut, as Steve Martin calls him, tried to move the populous away from the many different gods they worshiped to a belief in only one supreme god, Aten, the sun god.
Akhenaten even built a great new city dedicated to Aten called Amarna. But it only lasted about 10 years until Akhenaten’s death. Then the people and the priests revolted, reinstalled their pantheon of gods, and did their best to rid history of any mention of Akhenaten and Aten. They tore down the temples to Aten, destroyed Amarna, and even removed Akhenaten from all official king lists, even going so far as to chisel his name from all monuments and stonework.
And we see the same thing happening in the same area today with ISIS, the Taliban, etc., destroying ancient Mesopotamian relics because they’re not mentioned in the Koran, so they can’t be allowed to exist.
And now we see this happening in America today.
There seems to be a concerted effort to erase the Confederacy, the South, and even the Civil War from present day knowledge, to the point of pulling down mountains. Or at least mountainsides.
There has been a call to remove this sculpture from the side of Stone Mountain outside Atlanta.
Depicting Confederate President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee and General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, at three acres it’s the largest high-relief sculpture in the world, even larger than Mount Rushmore. And some people want it dynamited or sandblasted to get rid of it.
And all over the South flags are coming down, and streets, parks, buildings, and even high school football teams are being renamed.
And on a somewhat more personal note, Vanderbilt University is spending $1.2 million to remove the word “Confederate” from “Confederate Memorial Hall” that’s on one of its buildings on the Peabody campus. I say ‘personal’, because I actually lived there for about six months.
In 1957 my mother went back to college to get her teaching degree, at the then Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, TN, one of the best schools in the south. At the time we lived down in Gulf Shores, AL, where my father was in the commercial shrimping business with seven of the big ocean-going shrimp boats.
So my mother and I moved to Nashville for her school. We were supposed to be in family housing, but there was a delay due to new construction. So my mother, with the help of some of her college friends, snuck me into Confederate Hall.
I say ‘snuck’ because I wasn’t supposed to be there. You see, Confederate Hall was the women’s dorm – single female coed women. I kind of became a mascot, and the girls would help sneak me in and out to avoid being seen by the resident dorm ‘mothers’. And yes, I do remember seeing coeds in the hall in various states of undress.
Unfortunately I was NINE! But I digress.
Confederate Memorial Hall was built in 1933 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and donated to Peabody with the stipulation that it always bear the name “Confederate Memorial Hall”. In fact early on it was reserved for the female descendants of Confederate veterans who were able to live there free.
Well, some years later Vanderbilt University took over Peabody, and since 2002 has been trying to change the name of Confederate Hall but that pesky ‘stipulation’ kept getting in the way.
But finally this past August Vanderbilt paid the United Daughters of the Confederacy $1.2 million (the equivalent of the $50,000 the UDC paid for its construction in 1933) and gained the right to remove the word ‘Confederate’ from the building and just call it ‘Memorial Hall’.
Ironically they had already been calling it that in all their literature for years. So they paid $1.2 million to chisel some stone off a building that didn’t really change anything.
Is it just me, or would it not have made more sense to use the $1.2 million for minority scholarships? Did they ask anybody, “Do you not want to see the word “Confederate” or would you like a free scholarship?” Seems a pretty easy choice to me.
Finally I’m now waiting for someone to call for the renaming of Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. You see, the name Arlington comes from the ‘Arlington House’ estate which passed down from George Washington’s family to the wife of Robert E. Lee. Yeah, that one.
So at the beginning of the Civil War, the estate of Arlington House, and the present location of Arlington National Cemetery, was owned by Robert E. Lee.
Rename it quick before it offends.
So, are we becoming too Politically Correct? If we erase all the bad things from our past, how will we know what to avoid next time.
Time will tell, I guess.
Thought for the Day:
In 1913 Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Josip Tito, and Sigmund Freud were all living in Vienna, Austria at the same time.
So maybe if Sigmund had been a better psychiatrist then, the world would be a better place now.
November 19, 2017
Fun On Ice . . .
After a quiet Sunday morning, Jan and I were on our way up to Sugar Land Ice a little before 12:30.
We were meeting Brandi, Lowell, and Landon at the rink for Landon’s Ice Hockey practice. Due to all the family stuff going on, he missed the first couple of practices, but he’s back on the ice, and you can certainly see the improvement from last year.
Landon and the girl on the team were two of the most aggressive players and often found themselves facing off over the puck.
And there they are again going after the puck in the corner.
And of course you know it’s all over when the Zamboni comes out.
After practice was over we all headed down to the nearby Floyd’s Cajun Seafood. It doesn’t make any difference which Floyd’s we go to, it’s always delicious.
Jan had her usual Chicken Fried Chicken with Sweet Potato Fries, while I got my usual bowl of Shrimp Gumbo, this time with a side of Fried Okra.
I don’t think you could cram any more shrimp in there if you tried.
Brandi says that Landon has gotten hooked on those brain teaser sites like Luminosity, and plays them all the time now.
She also says he’s better at them then she is.
Finishing up, I gave Jan a kiss and send her home with Brandi, Lowell, and Landon where she’ll be Landon-sitting until I pick her up Tuesday afternoon.
I mentioned yesterday all the old photos and slides we’d come across. Here’s one of Chris and Brandi with Jan’s father, probably at Disney World in about 1976-1977.
Finishing up, Brandi posted this photo of Landon in his elf costume.
She said this is probably the last year she’ll be able to get him in that outfit.
The Word of the Day is: Bombinate
Thought for the Day:
I used to have an invisibility cloak, but I set it down somewhere.
