Our RV Adventures

Originally I had planned to go down to my Clear Lake’s client’s today, but changed my mind when my  Amazon orders weren’t shown as out for delivery. So I decided to wait until tomorrow.

But then about 11am in came the text messages saying that my orders were out for delivery, so about 15 minutes later I was on the road south, getting to the office about 1pm.

And of course, my orders didn’t actually show up until about 3, but I got some other stuff done in the meantime.

I finally found the location of the InDesign catalog files so I could make product and price changes and then generate a new PDF file to send to customers. Boy, the ex-guy hid things sure hid things in squirrely places.

When the WiFi adapters finally showed up, I installed the first one on the Shipping computer in the back office.and it went really quickly. And in a first, they not only include a mini-CD for the drivers, but a 65 MB flash drive as well.

Which was a good thing since this computer doesn’t have a DVD player for some reason. Another weird choice from the ex-guy.

I plugged in the drive, selected Auto-Install and off it went. And a minute or so later, the computer rebooted,  I plugged in the USB WiFi adapter and we were on the air. Easy Peezy.

But the second one didn’t go quite so well. The first machine was Win10, but this one was a Win7 version. But the setup software, which is supposed to know what version it’s running on, again installed the Win10 drivers.

Since I was running out of time (I need to be on the road back to Conroe by 4, or the traffic is even more of a nightmare than usual), I re-ran the setup.exe and manually installed the Win7 drivers, plugged in the adapter . . .  and it didn’t work.

And I was out of time. When I come back Wednesday, I’ll delete all the drivers, including in the registry and try again. But just to be on the safe side, before I do anything, I’ll take the working adapter from the other computer and plug it into this one just to be sure it’s not the adapter itself.

Finally, if I needed a lawyer, I’d certainly want a Dick.

Thought for the Day: 

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Today was another drop-off day for me, taking Jan back down to our daughter Brandi’s in Katy so she can drop off and pick up our grandson Landon at school until Wednesday when I’ll pick her up on my way back from Clear Lake.

Brandi is at a work conference in San Diego (notice how these ‘work conferences’ are never in Des Moines or Little Rock, but in Miami, Las Vegas or San Diego) and our son-in-law Lowell’s working late at the office this week, so Jan is once again Landon-sitting. Kind of like throwing Brer Rabbit in the Briar Patch.

Leaving about 2pm, our first stop was the Kroger’s over in Willis for gas. No problems and I only had to wait for one car. Unleaded was $2.39 a gallon.

Our next stop was the IHOP about 10 miles south for brunch. before heading on to Katy. Jan got her favorite omelet, cheddar and mushroom, and said it was just stuffed full inside.

I decided to try their new Stuffed Donut French Toast, topped with Bacon and Maple Syrup.

It’s a donut filled with Bavarian cream, dipped in vanilla French toast batter, grilled, and then topped with crispy bacon pieces and maple glaze. Artery-clogging good.

Jan and I both ordered a side of bacon with our entrees. Unfortunately I got Jan’s bacon.

Well, not Jan’s exactly. It’s just that mine was prepared exactly like Jan’s.

Jan basically likes her bacon ‘burnt’, or as a waitress put it one time, ‘Glass Bacon’. You know, where you just touch it and it shatters into small pieces.

I like mine regular crispy, but more often than not, mine shows burnt just like Jan’s. And today was one of those days.

Taking the 99 Grand Parkway, the trip down to Katy was smooth with little traffic, so nice. But we had a couple of more stops before getting to Brandi’s. First up was the new Buc-ee’s that pretty much opened in the middle of hurricane Harvey.

We wanted to get some kolaches and muffins, but also wanted to check out their new car wash. At 255 feet long, it’s one of the longest ones in the world. Only one in Germany is possibly longer. They also have 120 gas pumps here, and it you choose the $16 wash, you get 20 cents a gallon off.

The cost is $9, $12, or $16. Don’t know what you get extra the $16 one, because the $12 version was great.

It got off the residual hydraulic fluid leftover from our recent rig unpleasantness in Louisiana, cleaned the wheels, and left the truck shiny white. Couldn’t have been much better.

After making our pastry stop inside, we drove another exit down to check out the Hamilton Metals rig count sign, which showed 949 rigs, down 5 since last week.

This pretty much reinforces what I’ve seen in the gate guarding field, since the last rig count we saw the middle of July was 952. So things are pretty stagnant.

Our next stop was the nearby Kroger’s for a few things for Jan and a few things for me to bring home. And while we were there we ran into Lowell and Landon doing their shopping too.

Finally heading toward Brandi’s, we made a quick drive-by of Landon’s school to be sure that she knew where it was. And then later this afternoon Lowell going to give her an in-service on Brandi’s Lexus, which is what Jan will be chauffeuring Landon in.

After dropping Jan off, I reversed course back to Conroe, getting home a little before 7pm. Coming back into the park, I noticed that sometime today they reinstalled the entrance gates that they took down for the repaving.

It was nice to be able to just drive through for a while.

Thought for the Day:

Maybe people would  be more likely to evacuate from hurricanes if we didn’t give them wussy, non-scary names, like Harvey or Irma. I’ll bet if you called a hurricane Megatron Death 2000, they’d get the hell out of town as fast as they could. 

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