Our RV Adventures

When I got to work this morning, I had a new toy waiting for me. A new (to me) Dell OptiPlex 9020 Tower Computer for the Shipping Department.

It’s an i7-4GHz with 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a DVD drive. Then before I started setting it up, I added another 16GB for a total of 32GB, and 1TB Hard Drive for daily internal backup of the SSD.

This computer, as well as all the other computers I’ve bought for work, and as my personal one at home, are Amazon Renewed, I.e. Refurbished with a 90 day full warranty. Then for $61 I add an additional 3-year warranty.

In pretty much every case these are computers that are surplused from business who often change out their computers every two years. Refurbishers buy these in bulk, check them out. and often upgrade them at the same time. Then they’re put up on Amazon.

Coming home I stopped off at the Verizon store at FM646 to see if they could figure out what was wrong with the text messaging on Jan’s phone. Or rather with Jan’s account.

We discovered this when we moved Jan over to my old S8+ and the text problem followed along. Then last week when the S8+ died and she moved back to the S5 the problem moved back too.

And after I finally convinced them it was not a phone problem, three techs spent about 20 minutes rummaging around in her account, using the phone, a computer, and a tablet before they finally found the weird setting that was causing the problem. And then after rebooting her phone, she has finally has texting.

Tomorrow we’re heading up to the Spring area to meet up with Debi and Ed Hurlburt for a our monthly get-together once again, this time at Razzoo’s Cajun Café. Then instead of coming straight home, we’ll detour back down SR99 to the Katy area where I’ll drop Jan off for a weekend of fun, frivolity, and dog-sitting while Brandi, Lowell, Landon, and Sophie head up to Lake Livingston for the weekend.

Finishing up, I thought this was a really neat shot of the Pharaoh Khufu’s intact Solar Boat being moved from the Great Pyramid, where it has rested for over 4,600 years, to its new home in Egypt’s new Grand Museum.

Solar boats were buried in pits next to royal burial chambers in the belief that they would transport the departed into the afterlife.

The boat was commissioned by Khufu, a Fourth Dynasty monarch who ruled during the Old Kingdom.

The ministry boasted that the 42-metre (138-foot) long and 20-ton solar boat is “the biggest and oldest organic artifact made of wood, in the history of humanity”.

Amazing!

I’ll come back and finished up our Museum tour in tomorrow night’s blog.

Thought For The Day:

The Power of Accurate Observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

Jan and I were on our way into Houston by 9:45 this morning, meeting Brandi, Landon, and Sophie at Cleburne Cafeteria. We got there a little before they opened at 11 to be sure that we didn’t have to wait in line.

Cleburne’s is fabled in the Houston area, having been around for over 80 years, and surviving two fires during that time.

This place is not your Luby’s or Piccadilly’s, but a high-end restaurant that’s also a cafeteria. You can even order a custom-cooked Ribeye or Prime Rib. All of their veggies and fruits are fresh, never frozen, and all the sauces and salad dressings are made from scratch. And they’re known city-wide for their desserts, with all the pies, cakes, and puddings made daily.

We did park Landon and Sophie in their own booth, just so we could have an actual conversation.

Getting to the Houston Museum of Natural Science we parked in the parking garage (worth the $20) and headed inside. For some reason when I bought the tickets online, I was only able to select Will Call and not Digital Tickets.

But there was no obvious Will Call booth, just a long line of people buying tickets. I thought that’s why I got my tickets online ahead of time. I even asked an employee, and was told that this was the line for Will Call.

Of course 20 minutes later, as we all walked down the long hallway to the actual entrance to the museum area, what do I see but this.

Well isn’t that special!

Inside we came across Victoria the T-Rex from the ads.

and also a T-Rex skull.

Finally in the Pompeii exhibit area, we found a lot of neat items, many demonstrating that there’s nothing new under the sun.

These are Roman keys from there.

And some of glassware looked like something you could buy at WalMart. Especially when you consider that the art of glassblowing had only been introduced to Roman culture in the last 50 years before.

The horn-shaped piece on the left is a wine glass.

But the cooking utensils were even more amazing.

The iron skillet looks like it could have been my grandmother’s.

And the two ladle-looking pieces are actually colanders.

I gonna wrap up tonight’s blog with Landon and Sophie watching the movie about the 79 A.D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii, on August 24-24. So an anniversary coming up.

It also destroyed nearby Herculaneum, but Pompeii gets all the press. Probably had a better agent.

I’ll finish up our fun day in tomorrow’s blog.

Thought For The Day:

Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?

GRANDPA: In my day we didn’t ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.

ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.

COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?