Our RV Adventures

This past Saturday evening SpaceX put another 52 Starlink satellites into orbit, less than the normal 60 since they had a couple of paying customer’s satellites onboard, taking up the space.

And I’m hoping that every launch puts us closer to getting our Starlink online. We’ve paid the $99 deposit, so now we’re just waiting for Starlink to tell us we’re ready to got in our area. Then we’ll pay the $499 for the equipment, and we’ll be ready to go.

And I’m really looking forward to getting speeds like this.

Yes, that’s over 300 Mbps, compared to what we have here at the RV park.

That’s a big difference!

And at my client’s up in the Clear Lake area, we get between 50 and 60 Mbps, so Starlink is even 6 times faster than that.

For now!

Elon Musk says that as they get more and more satellites on orbit, they hope to get speeds up around 1 Gbps. That’s 1000 Mbps.

Since all these launch from SpaceX’s facility down at Boca Chica, Jan suggested we might take a trip down that way to try and see a launch sometime. We saw a Shuttle launch from the Cape in 2009, and I was at the STS-3 Shuttle landing at White Sands in 1982.

So it would be nice to add another one to the scrapbook.

Boca Chica is about 20 miles northeast of Brownsville right out on the Gulf of Mexico, and just south of South Padre Island by about 5 miles.

So we’ll have to see what we can put together, but almost certainly after we get back from our June vacation to Illinois and Alabama.

And since we’re on the subject of rockets, here’s what’s going in the Gaza area of Israel right now.

On the right you can see the ballistic rockets that Hamas is launching into Israel. And on the left you can see the interceptor rockets that Israel’s Iron Dome defense system has launched maneuvering to intercept them.

The term ‘ballistic’ means that once launched, the rockets follow a predicable path and don’t maneuver, making it possible to know where each rocket is going to land.

The Iron Dome system quickly knows whether a incoming rocket is going to land in a field, or out in the desert, and ignores those, only going after ones that look to be headed for populated areas.

The interceptors are very smart, smart enough divide up the targets so they don’t all go after the same few rockets, and to re-target themselves to another rocket if necessary.

A really amazing system that’s said to stop over 90% of the incoming rockets.

Tomorrow we’re making the trip down to Galveston once again to meet up with Jim and Peri Dean for lunch at Sunflower Café, a really great breakfast/brunch/lunch place.

Really looking forward to seeing them again.

Thought For The Day:

Last Saturday week when Brandi, et. al, came down to our area for our Mother’s Day get-together, they dropped off Landon’s Lenovo laptop so I could replace the keyboard in it.

Landon had knocked over a small glass of water onto it, and a lot of keys in the center part stopped working, though the computer worked just fine with a external keyboard plugged in.

Looking on YouTube, it looked like a pretty simple job. Just remove the 9 T4 screws holding the back of the case in place, pop it off, and then remove 3 Phillips screws inside.

Finally pop out the keyboard from the front, unplug it, and reinstall the new keyboard.

The reverse the screw removal process and you’re done. Easy Peezy.

Maybe 45 minutes as most.

Well, NO!

But more on that later.

Since the new keyboard came in this past Friday, I figured I take care of the install Saturday afternoon and then take it back up to Brandi’s today.

So about lunch time we just headed back over to our new favorite place, Gator’s Bar & Grill. And after trying something different last time, we were back with our old favorites once again.

The Fried Chicken sandwich with Coleslaw, and Sweet Potato Waffle Fries for her,

and the Blackened Chicken Breast sandwich with the Sweet Potato Fries for me.

Of course, I have to add Texas Toothpicks and Bacon to it, too.

And we decided to again split one of their well-known desserts, this time the Hummingbird Cake.

It’s a spice cake made with bananas and pineapple, and a cream cheese frosting. Kind of carrot cakey, in a way.

We both agreed it was really good, but not quite as good as the Brown Butter Cake we had a couple of visits ago. I mean how can you go wrong with whisky-soaked peaches and Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream?

You can’t, right?

Back at the rig about 3:30 I dove into the keyboard replacement, thinking I’d be done in an hour and then I could take a nap.

But 6-1/2 hours later, about 10pm I was finally finished.

YouTube lied.

Yes, some models of Lenovo laptops only take about an hour, and some Lenovo laptops with the exact same model number of this one only take an hour. But with some Lenovo laptops with the exact same model number, but a different range of serial numbers, it’s an entirely different story.

I have never in my life worked on a laptop where I have had to completely dissembled it to repair something. And by ‘completely’, I mean completely.

As in every last part and component taken out and set aside leaving only the bare metal/plastic shell.

Starting with this –

And ending up with this –

That is the back of the keyboard in the bottom half of the photo. So now, finally, after 4 hours of carefully removed modules and boards, labeling everything, and collecting the many screws in 11 different envelopes,

I was finally ready for the 5 minute job of actually swapping out the old keyboard with the new one.

Then it was another 2-1/2 hours of carefully replacing all the parts, modules, and screws.

Then you take deep breath, hold it, and press the Power button.

Lo and behold, it booted up and everything worked fine. Lucky for me, otherwise I would have probably had to buy Landon a new laptop.

But, hey, I figured that if little kids working in Chinese sweat shops could build one of these to start with, I should be able to take one apart and put it back together.

It was pouring down rain all morning, but we still headed up to Brand’s a little after noon to have lunch and drop off Landon’s laptop.

We had placed an order online with the El Pollo Loco up in Katy, which is only a few miles from Brandi’s, which we picked up on the way.

After a great time together, but wanting to get back on the road ahead of all the rain coming our way, we were back on the road about 3:15, and, though it poured all the way, we were home by 4:30.

All in all, a nice weekend. Even considering.

Our daughter-in-law Linda said she’d been hinting to our son Chris that she’d wanted a miniature donkey for their property up in Kingsland.

So he made her one. Out of junk.

I think the butterfly is a nice touch.

Thought For The Day:

A husband and wife were having dinner at a very high-end restaurant one night when a stunning young blonde walked up to the husband, hugged and kissed him, and then whispered in his ear.

“I’ll see you later.”

Hearing this, the confused wife stuttered,

“Who was that?”

“That was my mistress.”, the husband replied calmly.

Outraged, the wife hissed,

“I want a divorce!”

“Fine.”, the husband said, “But remember our pre-nup. There will no more $10 million townhouse, no more vacation homes in Aspen and Majorca, no more weekend shopping trips to Paris on my jet, and no more Mercedes S-Class in the driveway.”

As the wife digested this new information, they both noticed a family friend walk into the restaurant with a beautiful redhead on his arm.

‘Who’s that with Jim?”, she asked.

“That’s Jim’s mistress.”

“Ours is prettier.” the wife said.

Jan said that the moral of this story is that if you going to have a mistress, always have the prettiest one.