Monthly Archives: December 2022
Cracker Barrel Came Through . . .
Well, 3 weeks after I contacted them, Cracker Barrel finally came through.
NOT!
They sent me their sincere apologies and a digital gift card for an entrée. Not even a full meal.
An Entrée!
Not even enough to buy us a replacement pan of the dressing they left out of our Thanksgiving order.
Jan says they’re dead to her.
After staying home yesterday, Jan and I were on our way out this afternoon a little before 1pm with our first stop at our local Denny’s. We got our usual great Ultimate Omelets, and since our diets are in time-out for the holidays, we shared a two-stack order of their Salted Caramel and Banana Pancakes. YUMMM!
Talk about a Sweetness Overload. And we had half left over to bring home.
Then it was on across the street to the HEB for a few things, finishing up with a stop at the Santa Fe PO and our local park mailboxes for the last of the Christmas cards.
Master Landon’s going full bore with his new Ender 3D Printer. It’s amazing how fast he’s picking this stuff up on his own. He even figured out how to pause and resume a print. Which is how he ended up with this black and white dog when he ran out of white filament and had to switch over to black.
Next up was a dragon that took about 11 hours.
What’s really amazing about this one is that it’s segmented and flexible.
The only problem with this print is that the dragon came slightly loose from the bed and the print stopped at 97%. And that missing 3% was the dragon’s horns, as you can see below.
But Landon has already figured out how restart the print at the last 3% so it just prints out the horns. Then he’ll glue them on the head.
His printer will print out objects a little more than 8.6” x 8.6” square and 9.5” high. So I imagine we can expect some larger objects in the future.
Wrapping up, Jan’s sister Debbie sent over this photo of her Illinois bunch together for the holidays.
A great looking group.
Thought for the Day:
Doubt that the government is screwed up, no matter who’s in charge?
They already have proven they can’t even run a cat house. Remember the Mustang Ranch fiasco in Nevada after it was seized by the IRS? They couldn’t make a profit selling sex and liquor to a bunch of horny guys with cash in their pockets. But we trust them with running our lives.
December 27, 2010
Gulliver’s and Grandkids . . .
This morning started early (well, early for us) when we headed out about 10am to drop Jan off at Chris’ so she and Miss Piper could have a girl’s day out.
And they had a pretty full day planned. First up was a movie with the new Jack Black film Gulliver’s Travels in 3D on the schedule.
After that it was lunch at the Texas Tea Room, a place that our friend Barbara Cutsinger had recommended, but we had never tried.
After that it was shopping, shopping, shopping for the rest of the afternoon.
Jan was hardly home and in her jammies when our friend Maria called to see if we wanted to meet them in about 30 minutes right down the road at La Brisa.
Hey, it’s Mexican, we’re there.
Then later, our daughter Brandi called to catch us up on their trip to see Lowell’s family in Oklahoma. They had a great time and Mister Landon slept the whole trip back. We also made a date to meet them Wednesday night at Pappasito’s Cantina, another good local Mexican place.
And, of course, we’re meeting Maria tomorrow night at Monterey’s Little Mexico before she and Jan head down to La Marque for bingo. And Miss Piper might be going too. We’ll see.
Of course, that means we’ll be having Mexican 3 nights in a row. I don’t see a problem with that, do you?
In fact years ago, when the kids were little, we ate at the same Mexican restaurant every night for a week. What can I say, we liked the place.
Our friends George and Sandy Stoltz sent us this picture of their new grandson.
We have agreed that our grandsons are tied for The Best Looking Baby Boy of 2010.
And I have to take this opportunity to embarrass our granddaughter Piper, who I think won the title of The Best Looking Baby Girl of 1993. And she’s only gotten more lovely every since.
Of course she probably won’t be speaking to me for a while since I put these photos on the blog again.
Oh, and did I say she’s really smart, too.
And since I’m making family members mad at me, here’s a photo of our beautiful daughter Brandi, along with Miss Piper again. This was taken at Bubba Gump’s Seafood in Time Square last year when they both came up to visit us and see New York.
It’s easy to see why they’re often mistaken for sisters, even thought they’re aunt and niece.
Well, I’ve alienated enough family for one blog post, so that’s about it for today.
December 27, 2011
Tea Rooms and Toaster Ovens. . .
I was up about 9am this morning because Jan and I needed to head out about 10. She was meeting up with our granddaughter Piper to the spend the day together, and I had to drop a new laptop off at a clients.
I dropped Jan off at Piper’s about 10:30 and then headed over to my client’s. I had picked their new laptop before Christmas to get it configured with all the software they wanted on it. The problem started when I got there and they had a whole new list of software to install, and it had to be done today since they are flying to California tomorrow morning.
But the real problem was that almost all of this software needed to downloaded, and most of the files were really large. And their connection was really, really slow.
So 5 hours later I finally finished. But since I get paid by the hour, it was all good.
In the meantime Jan and Piper had headed out for their day together. Their first stop was the Texas Tea Room for lunch, our favorite tea room in this area for soup and sandwiches. Hopefully Jan and I will be able to eat there before we leave.
Their next stop was to do some shopping during the after-Christmas sales. Piper is a sharp shopper and they picked up some great bargains along the way.
Next up was a movie. They’d decided to see the new Matt Damon movie, “We Bought A Zoo”. Based on a true story, although in real life it happened in England, it tells of a family that bought and rehabilitated a small zoo. They both liked it and said it was ‘touching’.
By the time they were done with the movie I was finished also, so I met them back at Piper’s, and then Jan and I headed home with a stopover for dinner at Kelly’s Country Cookin’ in League City. Jan was hoping they would have Turkey and Dressing (cornbread, of course), but unfortunately they didn’t. They did, however, have the next best thing – Roasted Chicken Breast and Dressing.
She said it was really good, and being from Kelly’s, of course there were leftovers.
On another note, Jan is really enjoying the Christmas present I got her. A new Black & Decker Toaster/Convection Oven.
She had made a comment about how nice the one our daughter Brandi has, so I surprised her with this one.
It’s all digital and big enough to cook a 12” pizza or toast 6 slices of bread at one time.
As far as my Christmas present, my new Garmin nuvi 1490LMP GPS, goes, so far I really like it. I want to play with it for a while longer before I give a review.
It looks like tomorrow is when I’m going to try to reinstall the washer back in its cubbyhole. I’ll let you know how it goes.
December 27, 2012
It’s Dead, Jim . . .
Jan and our granddaughter Piper had scheduled a Girl’s Day Out with lunch, a movie, mani/pedi’s, and shopping, so they headed out a little before 11, with me about 15 minutes behind.
As for me, I was heading over to a client’s to earn some money to pay for lunch, a movie, mani . . . you get the picture.
I was going to finish the setup of the new computer that I started yesterday. But I should have known this machine was snake-bit right out of the box. In fact it crashed pretty much right out of the box.
The first odd thing was that it tried to turn on as soon as I plugged it into power. But powering down and back on brought it right up. Then, further into the initial setup, as I was entering the Account Name and the PC Name, the machine blue-screened, rebooted, scanned for HD errors, found none, and then settled down and worked fine.
I should have given up then, but it worked fine the rest of the afternoon as I installed more software. But then this morning right before I left the rig, one of the office people called and said they had been installing MS Office 2010 on it, and when they rebooted at the end of the installation, the machine would not come up. The power light was on but that was it.
And when I got to the office I found the same thing. I did unplugged it for about 5 minutes, but after I plugged it back in, the power light came back on and that was it. So I packed it back in the box and off to Fry’s Electronics I went.
Of course, when they booted it up at the store, it worked fine. Of course.
But after I explained all the problems I’d had, they quickly gave me a replacement machine and then it was back to the office. Back at the client’s office, I started the setup over, and this time everything went fine, with no problems.
Finally finishing up for the day, I stopped by another client’s to check in before heading over to the house to wait for Jan and Piper.
And as soon as they showed up, we said our goodbyes to Piper and then Jan and I headed toward home with a stopover at Monterey’s Little Mexico for dinner.
Chicken Tortilla Soup on a cold, wet evening. YUMMM!
December 27, 2013
Hot Coffee and Hot Peppers . . .
After last night’s checkout with a K-Cup, I did an 8 cup pot using our new Hamilton Beach Flex Brew 2-Way coffee maker.
Hamilton Beach 49980A 2-Way Single Serve Brewer and Coffee Maker
And it was just as good as last night. We’re really going to enjoy having the convenience of doing single cups or full pots.
We didn’t sit outside with our coffee and muffins this morning, because with no sun and 55°, it was cold so, we stayed inside.
A little later we checked out Jan’s Christmas gift that she’d been wanting – A FoodSaver Vacuum Sealer.
FoodSaver V2244 Vacuum Sealing System
She’d been wanting one for a while, and since she was on Santa’s very naughty list this year, he fulfilled her wish.
Although this is their smallest model, it does everything the bigger ones will, including sealing jars. We had a lot of fun fooling around with it, just sealing up different bags of chips and other stuff, and also watching some YouTube videos about it.
My present was something I’d also been wanting, a Chia Willie, And believe me, I need a plant that’s hard to kill.
Chia Willie Duck Dynasty Handmade Decorative Chia Pet Planter
Friend and Blog Reader George Stoltz sent over this article on the latest entry in the hot pepper wars.
This is the latest winner, the Carolina Reaper. They just look evil.
A batch of these clocked at 1,569,300 Scoville Heat Unit, with an individual pepper rated at over 2.2 million. SHU.
Sounds tasty to me.
Jan’s sister, Debbie, sent over this photo of her kids and grandkids.
From left to right, that’s daughter Tana, her boyfriend Curt. son Jason, his wife Laura, daughter Christina, and Tana’s daughter Gwen.
Down in front, it’s Ella, and Avery Jane, and Laura’s holding the newest addition, Annisten. A really cute group.
Wrapping up, for all of you complaining about your nasty weather this winter, check out Fairbanks. AK today. It was –49° this afternoon, and looked like this.
Now, stop your whining.
December 27, 2014
Chili and Fry’s . . .
A little before 10am Jan and I headed out to Clear Lake for the day. After an hour and 15 minute trip, our first stop was the Twin Peaks in Webster for lunch. Since we planned to have dinner with our son Chris and his family, we thought we’d just have soup. In my case it was a bowl of their delicious Venison Chili, and Jan is hooked on their Creamy Tomato Soup.
But since we hadn’t had coffee or muffins this morning, we also added a side salad, which for a simple $2.29 side salad, turned out to be really good, and really big. With croutons, grated cheese, and 5 or 6 kinds of lettuce and cabbage, it was a meal by itself. If we had known how big it was going to be, we would have gotten cups of soups, rather than bowls.
Leaving lunch, we drove over to the SuperCuts so Jan could get her haircut. While she was there, I went next door to the auto parts store from some fuses. Then when she was finished we headed over to our storeroom to meet our son Chris to try and finish up cleaning it out. But it quickly became evident that the on-and-off heavy rains were going complicate things, to the point that we weren’t going to be able to finish up today. With the rain we weren’t going to be able to take loads of stuff to Goodwill. So it looks like we’ll have the storeroom for another month.
Finishing up with what we could do today, we headed over to the Fry’s Electronics and then on to EPO, another local electronics place, before dropping off a letter at the PO.
Then it was on to Chris’ to spend some time before we went out to supper. Linda said she couldn’t print from her desktop computer to the Samsung Laser Printer, so I took a look at the problem.
Tried printing a test page from the printer driver itself with no luck, so deleted and reinstalled the printer driver, again with no luck. Even did it twice to be sure.
Finally deleted the driver once again, then went into the registry and deleted everything left that related to Samsung. Next I went to the Samsung website and let their Web-based installer install the latest drivers. And this fixed the problem.
This problem fixed, we headed over to Barcenas Mexican Restaurant about 5:30 for a great dinner with Chris and Linda. Unfortunately Piper was out with friends.
Finally got on the road home a little before 7pm, getting back to the rig a little after 8pm. Another really nice day, if not as productive as we’d hoped.
December 27, 2015
Really Lucky . . .
Well, after it rained (and poured) all day, the cold front showed up right on time, with the temperature dropping from 74 degrees to 49 degrees between 5pm and 7pm with a drop to 39 degrees scheduled before the night is over.
The weather was bad enough that we didn’t even think about walking this morning. In fact we never even left the rig at all, but just hunkered down and goofed off with reading, computing, and napping. So actually, a very nice day.
But our rain and cold front is nothing compared to the bad weather that hit areas around Dallas, especially the River Plantation RV Park.
According to reports, no one was killed at the RV park, although 11 were reportedly killed in other areas of Texas.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those who lost family or friends in these storms
One of Jan’s favorite gifts this Christmas was a two’fer. First Landon gave her a sample of his latest artwork from school.
I’m constantly amazed by his use of color and composition.
And his school is so hi-tech that even his artwork is bar-coded on the back
But Jan’s real gift was that Brandi took that artwork and turned it into a notebook for her.
She probably won’t even want to write in it, just to keep it longer.
For more on the family front, we got this photo of our great-nieces, great-nephews. and a . . . great-fawn?
We never know what’s going to show up with them. The last pictures of Darby and Stahlie came from the Great Wall of China.
Only Stahlie could get photo-bombed by a Chinese Communist soldier.
If you want to read more about their China trip, you can follow it up here:
Tomorrow about 9:30 Jan and I are driving down to our daughter Brandi’s in Katy to spend the day with Lendel and Sonja, our son-in-law Lowell’s parents, so we can take Landon out for some fun stuff.
Really looking forward to it.
December 27, 2016
I Spoke Too Soon . . .
Not about the Rattlesnakes, but about the Cell service here at this gate.
Last night and tonight, it’s been all over the map. Sometimes it works great, and then sometimes nothing. And pretty much everything in between.
Sometimes my AirCard shows that it has Internet Access but no data will flow. My laptop says it doesn’t have an Internet Connection. Then for a while it will work fine.
Later last night my S5 phone showed 3 bars of 4G and I got good data rates, but I couldn’t make phone calls. When I tried, all I got was dead silence, with no ringing.
Hopefully they’ll get it fixed soon.
I slept in until about 12:15 this afternoon, about an hour later than normal. I’ll keep pushing it back until I’m comfortable not taking a nap later in the afternoon before I go into work.
About 12:45 Jan and I headed off to Barth’s for their Fried Chicken and Roast Beef lunch.
Need I say more.
Hard to believe that food this good is only $6.50 for all you can eat. And this one plate was more than enough to fill me up.
Next up was a stop at the bank to pick up the checks ordered. While I was there I also ask them to check on a problem I’m having with my MasterCard Debit Card that I have for my account there.
Normally it works fine, but anytime I’m asked for my billing address zip code, like at a gas pump or sometimes online, it tells me the number is incorrect. My zip code on all my mail from them is correct, but maybe it’s screwed up on the debit card address somehow. But the cashier found nothing wrong with it.
On the way home I was mulling over the problem and remembered a similar occurrence at a client’s quite a few years ago. Their payroll system would not recognize an new employee’s SS number and kept saying it was invalid. But it looked fine on the screen.
So I went in and looked at the actual code of the file and instantly saw the problem. Somehow the secretary, when she entered the SS# originally, entered a non-printing character as the first entry in the SS# field. Probably she accidently hit the ALT key in combination with some other key which can cause the problem.
Non-Printing characters are ones that the computer sees but you don’t. An example some of you may be familiar with is the Show Non-Print Formatting Characters command in Microsoft Word. When you use this command you see Paragraph Markers, Manual Page Breaks, etc. Otherwise they’re invisible.
The secretary had deleted and reentered the number several times without fixing the problem because she just backspaced over the old number and just typed in the new one again. But in doing this she stopped backspacing at the first VISIBLE number in the field.
If she had just backspaced one more character, even though she couldn’t see it, or if she had clicked in the field and hit the Delete key, she would have fixed the problem herself.
So hopefully I’ll be able to talk to some of the computer people at the bank and have them look at the problem.
After a quick stop at the HEB it was back to the rig for the afternoon until I was on the gate at 5pm.
December 27, 2019
Loose Ends . . .
I got several blog comments about my problem getting my PC hooked up to our new Samsung TV.
First some basics.
The new TV has 3 HDMI inputs.
HDMI 1 is where our DirecTV DVR plugs in, and it works fine.
HDMI 2 is where I want to plug in the HDMI feed from my desktop computer.
HDMI 3 is presently not used.
Our old TV only had 2 HDMI inputs, and it worked fine hooked up like this for 4 years.
I’ve plugged in the DVR to each of the 3 inputs and they all work fine.
There is no need to switch video outputs like you have to on a laptop. The HDMI video output is always on, mirroring the DVI output that I use to connect to my computer monitor.
When it is working correctly, all I have to do to see my computer screen on the TV is just to select HDMI 2 on the TV remote, and it’s there. No fuss, no muss.
I know the computer HDMI is working since I can plug it into the HDMI input on my computer monitor and it works fine.
I have swapped the known-working HDMI cable from the DVR with the PC HDMI cable and the DVR works, so I know the PC works. And I’ve used the DVR cable on the PC side and it doesn’t work.
So everything points to a problem with the TV liking the video from the PC. It does identify the video signal as coming from a PC and labels it as coming from a PC.
It just won’t show it.
So tomorrow I’m going to hook up one of my laptops to the TV and see what happens.
Stay tuned.
December 27, 2020
Pizza, Pizza!
As I mentioned in earlier blogs, I was hoping to do a front brake pad replacement on the Jeep. and yesterday the weather and the time to do it coincided, so about 1pm I headed outside.
After loosening the lug nuts, I jacked up the Jeep using my floor jack and a platform to extend the height. And a jack stand for safety, of course. And getting the wheel off gave me this. Note the green smudge on the top lug bolt. That and a matching mark on the wheel lets me put the wheel back on exactly like it came off. This was more important back in the days when they often spin-balanced tires on the car, but they don’t seem to do that much anymore.
But old habits die hard, I guess.
I removed the two bolts holding the caliper on and hung it out of the way, leaving the pads exposed.
Removing them, I wire-brushed the pad guides and installed the new clips that came with the new set.
Putting some grease on the guide clips, I slid the pads into place, with no problems.
And after putting a little grease on the two caliper bolts, I mounted the caliper back in place. and I was done. Then, as usual, it took me longer to get the tire lifted into place and up on the lug bolts.
Then it was on to the passenger side, and it was a whole new deal. ]
First off, the bolts holding the caliper in place were 14mm instead of the 12mm on the drivers side. And they fairly shiny, much newer than than the other ones. And when I tried to install the new clips and the pads, nothing seemed fit quite right. Including the two caliper mounting bolts.
Although I wasn’t curious enough to take the other wheel back off to compare, I suspect that this caliper had been replaced somewhere along the line, and maybe by one that was close, but not an exact fit. And this is a no-no in itself.
You should never replace brake parts, any parts, on just one side of the vehicle. If you’re replacing pads, replace them on both sides. Same goes with calipers, rotors, etc.
So we’ll see how things hold up.
Now, on to today:
Jan had been wanting to make a Container Store visit for a couple of weeks, so I thought today would be a good time, especially if we combined it with lunch at the Grimaldi’s Pizzeria, right on the next street at Baybrook Mall.
And yes, Baybrook Mall has streets and parks and fountains, all outside. In fact the newer, outside part is bigger than the original mall.]
Our Grimaldi’s pizza was just as delicious as always, even with the 20 minutes wait while they finished restoking their coal-fired ovens. But we sat outside in the sun with a nice breeze and just people-watched.
This is a medium (16”) with Meatballs, Jalapenos, Italian Sausage, Mushrooms, Ham, and Bacon.
We normally get the Small House Salad, but I think we were still too full from Brandi’s Christmas dinner. And we still had pizza to take home with us for tomorrow night.
Jan wanted me to get a picture of her wearing her new peacock earrings,
but they didn’t show up very well, so you can see them better here.
They were a Christmas gift from Sherry, Lowell’s sister, and Jan just loves them.
December 27, 2021
Leftovers and Hot & Sour . . .
After finishing up with my yearly dermatologist checkup this afternoon, my next stop was King Food for some Hot & Sour Soup to have with our Chinese leftovers from our Christmas Eve dinner there.
Ever since I had to have a Squamous Cell Carcinoma removed from my head back in 2014, I get checked up every year to be on the safe side.
Yesterday I mentioned the Storyworth subscriptions that Brandi and Lowell gave Jan and I for Christmas. Every week they will send us a question about our lives and then at the end of a year all the stories will be complied into a book. So today we got our first questions.
Jan’s was “What was your Mom like when you were a child?”
Mine was “What was your first big trip?”
Jan has already written a lot on her question, and I’ll get started on mine tomorrow.
The missing Priority Mail envelope finally showed up in Athens, AL this morning, after circling around Florida for a few days. Better late than never, I guess.
When we spent the night at Brandi’s on Christmas Eve, they were nice enough to give Jan and I their downstairs bedroom so I didn’t have to hobble upstairs.
And I was amazed to see the size of her shoe rack.
And since it’s completely full, I’ve got to believe that there’s an shoe rack overflow annex somewhere.
I don’t know where she gets it from.
I own four pair of shoes, and one of those is a pair of Crocs .
Dog Gone Wrong . . .
Recapping yesterday:
We got to Brandi’s right on time at 9am, and very quickly gathered by the tree in the living room to open presents after Landon handed them out.
One of Jan’s favorite gifts was this flamingo that our son Chris carved and painted for her.
Really great!
Later Chris whipped up a big pot of his famous gumbo.
He spent some time working on off-shore oilrigs out of Louisiana and a Cajun taught him how to make a great roux, the secret to great gumbo.
And along with all the other delicious eats, we spent the afternoon munching and grazing.
As I said, my afternoon was spent assembling Landon’s big Christmas gift, an Ender 3 Pro 3D printer. And finally about 4pm I let Landon press the switch and we watch it boot up with no problems.
Whew!
After a couple of false starts due to the bed height not being correct, we start a 6 hour print of a piggy bank. When Jan and I left for home it looked like this.
And when they went to bed, it looked like this.
And when they checked it this morning, it looked like this.
But then this morning they started another print, a dog, and then left for lunch. But all did not go well while they were gone. And when they got back it looked like this.
From the look of things, and where the dog is positioned on the bed, it came unstuck from the bed and moved around. But when all the spaghetti was cleared away, it looked like this.
So it got pretty far along before it broke free.
Apparently this is a common problem with several different solutions.
More fun to follow.
Jan has had an ongoing battle with one of the three washers ( well, really two, since one’s already been dead for a while) in our park’s laundry. Every now and then it works just fine, I think just to keep her off balance, but mostly it lights and then just sits there and does nothing, until eventually just shutting off.
So this morning when she came back to the coach using some naughty language, I decided to take a look at it in person. And after putting another $4 ($2 x 2) I discovered that the real problem was that door lock solenoid seems to be out of alignment, and when door won’t lock, the washer won’t start. But if you wiggle the door handle just right, sometimes, sometimes it would start.
So I texted Rob, our park owner, to let him know, and he said he’s planning on replacing all three front loaders with top loaders this year due to all the problems he’s had with the front loading ones.
Jan’s 7” Kindle Fire up and died yesterday, so after checking it out and administering last rites today, I ordered her a new one about 1:45 this afternoon. And it showed up at 4:15pm. Now that’s service!
Looks like our cold snap is pretty much over with temps in the mid-70’s by Wednesday and lows in the 50’s, so I hooked us back tup to shore water this afternoon, until the next freeze.
Thought for the Day:
“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.” ― Christopher Hitchens
December 26, 2010
Happy Boxing Day * . . .
* In the U.K., Boxing Day is the day after Christmas. One of many ‘origin’ stories says that this is the day that merchants gave boxes of food and fruit to tradespeople and servants as a form of Yuletide tip.
___________________________________________
At 11 am it’s still 37 degrees here. It’s supposed to get all the way up to 46 today, and then back down to 31 tonight.
As an article in the New York Times said today, “Bundle up. It’s Global Warming.” Of course they blame the pretty much world-wide cold snap on the fact that it’s getting warmer.
Huh?
So, if it’s getting warmer, it’s global warming, and, if it’s getting colder, it’s global warming.
Yeah, right! Nothing like covering all your bases.
Jan and I never left the rig today. It was really nice to just sit around, read, nap, watch TV, enjoy the view, did I mention nap?
And as part of enjoying the view, our friend the Great Blue Heron was back,
along with another beautiful sunset.
That was about it for today. Looks like things will pick up again tomorrow. We’ll see.
December 26, 2011
A Glorious Day . . .
Today we never even left the rig.
We just did absolutely nothing all day.
It was glorious!
December 26, 2012
Happy Boxing Day . . .
After our morning coffee, I headed out to a client’s home office to set up the new computer that I got for her before Christmas. But I quickly ran into a problem when I tried to hook up her older model Sony LCD monitor.
The monitor only has a VGA input and the computer didn’t have one. Only HDMI and DVI. Or rather, it had both a VGA and HDMI output on the motherboard, but there were stickers on both ports saying “This Port Has Been Disabled”.
Instead of the motherboard ports, there was a separate video card with an HDMI and a DVI port. And of course, no VGA ports.
So it was off to Fry’s Electronics to pick up a new monitor so I could get back to work. I also picked up an HDMI cable since most monitors don’t include HDMI cables, though it did include a VGA cable. Lot of good that did me.
Then it was back to the client’s, and back to work. I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning off all the junk that comes on new machines, and then started installing support programs like AVG, ZoneAlarm, SuperAntiSpyware, etc.
Finally, a little after 4pm, I wrapped up for the day and headed back to the rig, where I picked up Jan and we headed back out to have dinner at the Chili’s up in Kemah.
Then it was off to Wal-Mart for some groceries before heading back to the rig for the night.
December 26, 2013
Happy Boxing Day, Again . . .
We started out this post-Christmas morning with a 3/4 mile walk around the park. Over the next week or so, we’ll work our way up to 2 miles every other day. The Runkeeper app on my phone makes it real easy to keep track of our walks. In fact, if you set a schedule of walking every other day and then you miss a day it nags you with a message that you missed your walk.
Before we left for our walk we let Mister outside on his lease, and he immediately found a nice spot in the sun and zoned out. Getting back, we joined Mister outside and had our coffee and muffins while we watched Mister and the birds at the feeder ignore each other.
About 1pm I drove down to the office to settle up on the next month’s rent, but found that they don’t open for the afternoon until 3:30 Wednesday through Friday, so I get to keep my money for a few hours longer.
Yesterday at Brandi’s, after all the presents were opened, and the wrapping paper cleaned up, I had a chance to play with a couple of my helicopters. First up was my new Invert X model. According to the box it will fly inverted.
What you don’t find out until you open the box is that unlike other, usually more expensive models, it will not go from normal flight to inverted flight and back to normal. Instead, when you want to fly inverted, you must remove all four blades and swap them around. And then back again to return to normal flight.
A real pain in the rear.
Even worse, it means that flying inverted, you cannot land it normally, but instead you have to grab it out of mid-air unless you want to try to land it on the spinning blades. Bummer.
But I decided to give it a try in normal flight mode. And it wouldn’t.
Fly, that is.
It would set there and the rotors would spin like crazy, but it would not lift off. So I put it aside and got out my Globe Helicopter and had some fun with it. And as it turned out, Miss Piper is pretty good pilot.
After a few minutes of practice she had no problem steering it around the room. The 16 foot ceilings in Brand’s living room makes for a real nice flight area. You just have remember to turn off the ceiling fan.
I have a 3rd one that I didn’t bring with me to Brandi’s. It’s a very nice quad copter, but with 4 exposed blades it’s probably not a good idea to fly it around a lot of people.
So back at the rig today, I got the Invert X back out to take a look at it and see if I could figure out why it wouldn’t fly. I had an idea and it turned out to right.
I can only assume that my helicopter had been bought by someone else and then return to Fry’s because it wouldn’t fly. And as I thought, the reason it wouldn’t fly is that someone had misconfigured the blades. The blades had been set so that they cancelled each other out, so it was generating no lift whatsoever. It would just sit there, whirling away.
Getting the blades set right revealed a very nicely flying machine, if only right side up. And I doubt I’ll ever fool with trying it inverted because there’s really no challenge if you can’t switch back and forth in flight.
About 4pm Jan and I headed out up to Webster to meet some friends for dinner. On the way, I stopped off at the office to settle up for our next month here. The park manager, Lauralee, said the 90 new sites should be up and running this coming March or April, depending on the weather. Should make it easy next year to get another good site here.
Before meeting our friends, we stopped off at Sam’s Club for a few things. And I got new toy. If you can call a coffee maker, a toy.
This is the Hamilton Beach FlexBrew 2 Way. It is both a standard 12 coffee maker. and a K-Cup single cup brewer.
And it was only $79.
And even better, it not only handles the K-Cup coffee cartridges, but comes with an adapter so you can use your own ground coffee in the single cup brewer.
Neat!
We met our friends at 5:30 at Barcenas Mexican Restaurant, one of our favorite local Mexican places. We used to eat here all the time because it was right outside our subdivision when we lived in our Sticks and Bricks before we started RV’ing. We had a great time catching up with Bob and Beth, and a great meal to boot.
On the way back to the rig, we made a stop at Wal-Mart for a few things, and I picked up a box of Folger’s Hazelnut K-Cup packs to give our new coffee maker a try when we got home.
Jan didn’t want any, but I fixed a cup of coffee and it was really good. As good as a full pot from our old Mr. Coffee.
I think we’re going to like this.
December 26, 2014
A Tale of Two Christmases . .
Christmas Recap:
We were up Christmas morning about 7am. Luckily for us Landon’s not really an early riser. Unlike Chris and Brandi who were up at 5am, or even earlier.
Brandi did such a great job decorating the tree, I had to get a closeup.
Landon was in charge of distributing the gifts to everyone.
And here’s Landon’s big gift, a Ninja Turtles bike. His first bike, too.
Chris, Linda and Nigel showed about 10 am to spend the rest of the day. Chris and Landon spent a lot of time checking out some of the online games.
Landon also got a Mousetrap game and he and Piper had a lot of fun playing with it.
And here’s Piper posing with her puppy, Nigel. Nigel is a Syorkie, a Shi Zhu/Yorkie cross, and a real cutie.
Later in the morning, the tree was reset with the presents for all the family and friends coming over for the big party in the afternoon.
We had about 30 people there, with a lot of great appetizers and snacks for everyone.
Later in the evening they put out a Taco Bar, with ground beef, grilled chicken, salmon, shrimp, pulled pork, and all the fixing’s All really, really good.
Then it was time for the second Christmas for all the kids.
Everyone had a great time getting together and exchanging gifts. And as usual everyone pitched in to help clean up, so Brandi wasn’t left with a messy house.
Jan and I hung until after 10pm, so we didn’t get home until almost midnight, a long but very fun day.
Today Jan and I headed out about 3:15 for lupper and some shopping. We were both hungry for a good burger, so we ended up at the nearby Culver’s. Jan got her usual cheddar mushroom burger, while I got the Double Pub Burger, and we both got a bowl of their delicious chili. But with a difference this time.
One of my Christmas gifts from Lowell and Brandi was some things from iBurn, a local store that specializes in ‘hot stuff’. And one of the items was this.
Here’s how it’s described on their website:
Tim’s 10 Pepper Flakes – This is pepper flakes on steroids containing; 3 variety of Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Pepper), 3 variety of 7-Pot, Moruga Scorpion, Fatali, Habanero and Scotch Bonnet. This stuff rocks and we know you will love it if you are missing that kick from your crushed pepper.
We both put some in our chili. I used about 4 sprinkles, which gave me about 5 or 6 particles of the peppers. Jan had a couple of sprinkles with about 2 or 3 particles making it into her chili.
Both of us agreed that based on a heat to particle ratio, this is the hottest stuff we’ve found so far. Tim’s 10 Pepper Flakes is now my ‘goto’ hot stuff. And with the size of the bottle vs. how much I’ll use each time, this is a lifetime supply. Thanks, Lowell.
Leaving Culvers, we drove across the road to brave Wal-Mart on the day after Christmas. But it really wasn’t that bad, with only the checkout taking a little longer than normal.
Next up was the Lowe’s right next door. I found that the stainless steel hose that allows us to pull out the faucet handle on our kitchen faucet and use it as a spray nozzle, had started to leak so I picked up new one.
Our last stop was at the Kroger’s across the Interstate to get gas for the truck. And I got it for 99 cents a gallon. Yep, 99 cents.
We recently bought a lot of Christmas gift cards from Kroger’s and got 4X the fuel points. This means that for the next 350 gallons or so, we get a $1 off each gallon we buy. And that goes for diesel too. Unfortunately you can only get 35 gallons at a time like this.
Tomorrow we head down to the Clear Lake area to try and finish up cleaning out our storeroom before the end of the year, then have dinner with Chris, Linda, and Piper tomorrow night.
December 26, 2015
Just in Time . . .
Jan and I did 1.03 miles today, staying just ahead of the rain. We’ll probably stay at this distance until we leave here and head back to Colorado River TT on Jan 3rd. Then we’ll bump it up, hopefully, to 2 miles or so over the next couple of months.
It was starting to mist when we headed out, but just as we getting back to the rig, it went from sprinkling to downright raining. So we timed that perfectly. Of course it only rained for about 10 minutes and then stopped.
It looks like the small heatwave we’ve been having the last few days is coming to a screeching halt. The high today was 77, and it’s going down to 71 tonight. But after a high of 73 tomorrow, the front comes through and it’s going down to 38 degrees tomorrow.
Then it’s low 50’s and low 30’s for the next 10 days or so. It’s going to be nice to actually have winter again.
Later, after our coffee and cranberry bread, I got back to work on re-installing Jan’s “Oh Sh$t Handle” right by her chair. If you missed the earlier posts. you can check it out here: Livingston Bound and BBQ
I first drilled pilot holes in each of the wooden dowel rods that I had glued in last week, but when I went to put the #14 x 2” wood screws in the handle so I could screw it in, I found a problem.
When I used a smaller screw to measure the length I would need, I apparently used the bottom hole in the handle. But as it turns out, the top hole in the handle doesn’t go into the wood as far as the bottom hole. So while the bottom screw extend out about 1”, the top screw only stuck out about 1/2”.
So while I went ahead and temporarily mounted the handle, I’m going to get a 2-1/2” screw to replace the 2” one.
When I get the larger screws, I’m also got to get a can of White Oak Pickling Stain to refinish all the handles.
But I was happy to see that the handle is now locked down very firmly with no movement at all. So once I replace the screw and re-stain the handle, I should be finished with this project and ready to move on to others.
There’s always others.
Before I finish this up, I thought I’d answer several inquiries where the handle’s name came from.
The actual name for the ‘Oh Sh$t Handle” came from a hilarious book called “Queen of the Road: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own” by Doreen Orion. Jan read this book about the time we started RV’ing and adopted this name for the handle that’s right by her chair at arm level.
It’s what she grabs when someone cuts us off, or pulls out in front of us and then stops. But over the years, after a lot of use, she finally broke it off completely. And when that happened, whatever held it in place fell down in the wall, so I had to come up with a new way of mounting it.
Wrapping up, regular readers will remember how in the past I’ve had trouble with multiple hacking attempts trying to log in to this blog. But in the last couple of months, the attempts had dwindled away to almost nothing.
And since most of the attempts came from Europe, and recently stopped, it may be that this is the reason why. – Botnet Attacking WordPress Sites
Hopefully this will eliminate the problem once and for all.
December 26, 2016
If It Weren’t For The Rattlesnakes . . .
This might turn out to be a pretty decent gate.
But then I’ve only been told about the snakes secondhand. But the scrub brush terrain is perfect for them, so it’s quite possible. I’ll definitely keep my eyes, and my ears, open.
This seems to be a new gate that’s just getting started up, and coincidently it’s only a couple of miles away from our very first Marathon drill rig gate back in 2012.
Besides the snakes, the only other problem is with the Verizon phone and data service. When I got here at 5 pm the guard I was relieving said that he had no service inside and sometimes a little outside. And my phone showed pretty much the same thing. And of course no signal on my AirCard. Bummer!
I did make a call to Jan from outside with some success, but the voices were crackly. But then about an hour later I looked at my phone and had 3 bars of 4G and good data service. But still nothing on my AirCard.
So then I moved my AirCard antenna to a different side of the shack, rebooted it, and now I have good 3G data.
So now I only have to worry about the rattlesnakes.
Jan and I are to the point in our lives where we really don’t need more ‘stuff’, especially living in an RV. So our Christmas presents are pretty laid back. Like for her birthday this past October I got her a new electric can opener because that’s what she wanted. She said she was giddy.
So for Christmas I got her one of these Silicone Non-Stick Baking Mats.
You bake right on it, it spreads the heat evenly, and channels away any grease from the food. Neat.
For lunch today we had the second half of our Barth’s Christmas Turkey & Dressing meal.
All delicious, especially the green beans like I said yesterday. You can tell that their cornmeal mix is only cornmeal and not this half cornmeal/half flour mix that a lot of places use. Their cornbread ends up having the texture of cake. No, this is good ole coarse-ground cornmeal.
And we’ve still got two more meals to go because of the large portions.
I mentioned last week that we used the RV park’s free laundry to do some heavy rugs, and while we were there I saw this notice.
I can only guess that when times are slow in the ‘patch’, people start taking in laundry to make ends meet?
December 26, 2017
Merry Boxing Day . . .
Jan and I really enjoyed our day at home, feasting on some of the Christmas dinner leftovers we had.
We caught up on some TV shows we’d recorded recently and also got in a nice nap somewhere in there. Really nice.
I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on with Social Security next year. According to the letter I got from them, we got a 2% increase this year, which for me should be about $30 per month. But on my checks next year I’m getting a $3 a month.
Now my first thought was, that as has happened in the past, the Medicare charge had increased. But according to the web, the Medicare Part D charge for 2018 is the same $134 it was in 2017.
So where’s my other $27?
Even stranger is the fact that Jan’s check, even with the 2% increase, will be exactly the same as last year.
What’s up with that?
Looks like the USPS is still working at their peak efficiency. Well, peak for them, anyway.
Last Monday I mailed off three Flat Rate Priority Mail envelopes; one to Athens, AL, one to Vernon, IL, and one to Ashville, NC. All three were supposed to be delivered by Friday, December 22.
But by the next day, tracking said the delivery date for all three had slipped to Saturday. And if that were how it turned out, it would have been OK. But no, that’s not what happen.
The two going to IL and NC did make it on Saturday, but the one going to the closest destination, Athens, AL, just disappeared for six days, somewhere between Houston, TX and Birmingham, AL, with no tracking whatsoever, only to show in Birmingham early this morning and to be delivered in Athens late this afternoon.
Great Service! /sarc
If you’re in the whole Alexa thing, you know, Alexa, Dot, Echo Show, etc., well you can now add a new device to that lineup – The Alexa Wand.
And even better, it’s free.
It’s pretty much a handheld Alexa, so you can ask it questions, interact with it, etc., just like its big brothers and sisters. But it’s optimized for adding things to your shopping list, and even ordering items directly from Amazon. It even has a built-in bar code scanner for that purpose,
It’s $20, but when you make your first order through it, no matter what, you get an instant $20 credit.
Check it out.
Jan and I have gotten to the point that we don’t give each other much in the way of physical things for Christmas, but instead, things like our Trans-Siberian Orchestra tickets a few days ago. But this year I got her a small item, almost a gag gift. But it turned out to be one of her all time favorites.
It’s a LumiLux 16 Color Motion Sensing Toilet Bowl Light.
When you walk into the bathroom in the middle of the night the light switches on for two minutes and starts cycling through the 16 colors. Or if you like you can set it for your favorite. And it makes it easier to find in the dark.
Jan says she likes all the colors, even the bright red that she says makes it looks like the Bowels of Hell. Bowels, get it. Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink.
December 26, 2019
Boxing Day Notes . . .
After a quiet post-Christmas (Boxing Day) morning I spent some time trying to figure out why our new Samsung TV won’t see my computer, since my old Samsung TV had no problems with it.
It has 3 HDMI ports and I can put my DirecTV DVR to any of the 3 ports and the TV recognizes the DVR and shows the video. So I know the ports are good.
But though the TV recognizes the PC as a PC on any of the 3 ports, it only shows a blank screen. I’ve swapped the cables around with no luck either.
The cable that works fine on the DVR still doesn’t work on the PC, and the HDMI cable that doesn’t work on the PC works fine on the DVR.
So I thought maybe there was a problem with the screen resolution I’m using on the PC. But, according to the 177 page for the TV, (Yes, a 177 page manual!) the 1920 x 1080 60Hz should be acceptable to the TV.
So I got on Samsung Support Chat and told them my problem. But as usually happens they had to read from their script, completely ignoring what I had already done. I don’t think they even read it.
But I finally ran out of time before we left for lunch, so I’ll try again later.
While we’re on the subject of Samsung, I’m thinking maybe it’s about time to think about upgrading my phone since I usually try to upgrade every 3 new models.
I got a Samsung S5 in 2014 while we were in Elkhart with Nick and Terry, and then upgraded to an S8+ when we were in Las Vegas in 2017. And now the S21 is coming out next February.
It seems to take at least 3 iterations before there’s enough improvements to make it worthwhile to spend the money to upgrade to a new phone. But this one has a lot of great new stuff.
Like:
- 5G Support
- A 108 megapixel camera
- A Ultra Wide Angle Lens
- A Telephoto Lens with 5X Optical Zoom
- A 120Hz AMOLED Screen
- And a Whopping Big 5000mAh Battery!
Sounds like it will be a worthy upgrade.
And Jan’s happy because she’ll get my hand-me-down S8+.
December 26, 2020
Christmas Day 2020 Catchup . . .
Jan and I left the rig about 8:45am Christmas morning on our way up to Brandi’s in Katy for our family Christmas
We were going up so early because Brandi had promised us a very special breakfast. And it was.
Challah Bread Crème Brûlée French Toast and
Maple-Infused Bacon, as well.
And continuing with the Maple theme, we had Bourbon Maple Syrup to put on the French Toast.
All well worth getting up that early.
As usual Brandi and Lowell had done their usual beautiful job of decorating the house. And it’s different every year.
And even outside.
But when Jan saw this Advent Calendar hanging on the wall between the kitchen and the living room, she teared up. And it has a lot of family history, over 50 years worth, in fact.
My mother gave this to Jan for our first or second Christmas together, and somewhere along the line it got passed on to Brandi, probably when we started RV’ing in 2007. But apparently it then got tucked away until this year, when Brandi rediscovered it and pulled it out.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, 4 of the little ornaments disappeared. So wanted to surprise Jan, Brandi asked her mother-in-law Sonja to make new ones. So the calendar is now a fusion of the White and Morrison families.
But what really made the calendar even more memorable was the fact that Jan remembered during the Christmas of 1974 when she was working on it, and she looked up to see Brandi stand up all on her own and walk for the first time, from one side of the living room to the other. Don’t think she’s slowed down since.
Memories!
We all sat down for Christmas dinner about 5:30, and as usual when Brandi cooks, it was not your typical ‘pedestrian’ meal.
We had Spare Ribs done in their smoker, BBQ’d Pork Belly chunks, an Asparagus and Cheese Casserole, and a Crawfish Etouffee Casserole, courtesy of Sherry and Steve. and Baked Beans from Jan.
If that doesn’t just scream ‘Christmas Dinner’, I don’t know what does.
From left to right, we’ve got Jan, Lowell, Brandi, Master Landon, Steve, Sherry,Lindell, and Sonja.
A really great meal.
And of course, Jack and Baxter didn’t want to be left out either.
Apparently not enough Christmas dinner found its way to the floor to satisfy them, so they came begging.
Finally heading home about 7, we did check out some more lights along the way.
Just beautiful.
Well, that about wraps up Christmas at the White/Morrison households, or at the Houston/Oklahoma part of it. Next weekend we’ll be getting together with the Texas Hill Country part of the White clan.
Can’t wait.
December 26, 2021
Happy Boxing Day 2021 . . .
With all the food we brought home yesterday, both from our meal at King Food Christmas Eve and leftovers from Christmas dinner, we decided to just hunker down at home today. So we never left the rig.
Nice and quiet.
Not only did we all get a lot of nice gifts yesterday, so did Brandi and Lowell’s dogs, Baxter and Jack. They got a Furbo Dog Treat Dispenser.
Furbo Dog Treat Tosser with Camera
Not only can you see your pets and toss them a treat, you can also heard them and talk back to them.
Online several people wanted to know if you could use it for cats. Some said that they had tried, but the cats tended to just eliminate the middleman by jumping up on the counter and knocking the Furbo off onto the floor, and wait for the treats for fall out.
Smart cats.
Several readers wanted to know what a hoverboard was, like the new one Landon got for Christmas. This is a hoverboard.
You balance on it and lean in the direction you want to go. You can go forward, backwards, and even turn in place. And Landon rolls around the house like he was born riding it.
Last Tuesday I put a couple of Priority Mail envelopes in the mail, one going to Athens, AL, and one to Vernon, IL. Containing gift cards for cousins and nieces, the one going to AL was supposed to arrive by Friday the 24th, and the IL one by Monday the 29th.
However the one going to IL made it early and arrived by Friday. But the AL bound one ended up in FL, orbiting around between Lakeland, Tallahassee, and Orlando for 3 days before finally heading back toward Athens.
It should be delivered tomorrow. But we’ll see.
This is post-Christmas day in Houston, TX.
