Our RV Adventures

Sandy at the Colorado River TT called this morning to let me know that our upcoming reservation there, starting September 20th, had been cancelled because the park will not be open again until sometime in October, if then.

All this of course, due to the flooding from Hurricane Harvey. They even lost some more sites due to erosion along the river bank.

When we are due to leave here on the 20th, we will have been here for 34 days, a new record for us. So I don’t think they’re going to let us stay any longer. So what are our options?

We could make the 580 mile round-trip over to the Medina Lake TT the other side of San Antonio, and that would cost us about $180 in diesel, plus $88 in park fees, so about $270.

Next up would be the Lake Tawakoni TT up closer to Dallas, but it’s only about 40 miles closer, so not a lot of difference.

Or we could go to a Passport America park just 20 miles from here and stay  the 11 days for $160.

Guess which one we’re doing?

Our Mr. Coffee has been hissing and bubbling so much recently that I decided it was time to run the clean cycle on it to get the calcium out.

And on this model it’s really easy. You just pour 4 cups (real cups, not ‘coffee’ cups) of vinegar into the reservoir, put an empty coffee filter in the holder, put the pot on the warmer, and then press the Clean Cycle button.

The cycle takes about an hour and then it shuts off. The instructions say to do it once more, but I did it three times more. This is the calcium and sediment collected in the filter. Yuck!

Then you run regular water through a brew cycle for a couple of times. Again, I did it a total of four times.

Don’t want coffee smelling like vinegar.

I finally figured out why my normal hour and ten minute trip from Clear Lake back to Conroe took two hours and fifteen minutes yesterday, and I said it looked like there was just twice as much traffic on the road.

That’s because there was. Both the Sam Houston Tollway and the Grand Parkway are still closed in spots on the west side of town. So all the traffic coming from the north and heading west on I-10 has to come down I-45 and then get on 10 right of f the downtown. Hopefully they’ll have this cleared up soon.

Amazon lied.

They said the item I ordered Tuesday with 2 Day Prime was not going to be delivered until next Thursday, the 14th, due to Harvey. However it showed up today, right on schedule for the 2 Day delivery.

Nice work, Amazon.

Down at my client’s office I’ve found that a lot of the intermittent problems are caused by RJ-45 Ethernet connectors with the locking clips broken off. This means the connector will not lock in the socket and can pull back out. Here’s what I mean.

Now I have crimpers and could replace the connectors, but some of them are in tight places and would be hard to get to.

So that’s why I ordered these from Amazon.

RJ-45 Repair Clips

They slip over the broken connector and provide a firm locking connection. Easy Peezy.

As it stands right now I will detour over to Katy to pick up Jan at Brandi’s before we head home to Conroe.

Maybe. Apparently, plans are still up in the air.

As usual.

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Not wanting to get bit again by Miss Karma due to not feeding her at the accustomed time, I was up about 8:30 this morning.

But I also needed to be on the road to Clear Lake by about 9:45 to get down there for another client visit. But first I had to check out of the park here and then check back in for our next 11 day stay, ending on the 17th. Of course that’s only 11 days so we can extend another 3 if we have to. But sometime in there we’re going to have to move I imagine, since we will have been here over 30 days. All of course due to Harvey.

But I guess it’s still up in the air if we’re going to be able to move over to Colorado River as scheduled due to the severe damage they had from the flooding. So we’ll see.

My next stop was the Kroger’s over in Willis for gas. Found no lines and a $0.20 per gallon discount with my Kroger card, leaving it at $2.19 a gallon. Not bad under the circumstances.

Somewhere along i-45 south, near the Dairy Ashford exit, I saw this place.

Headstone World

I figure it must be new, otherwise I’m sure I would have noticed it before. But maybe not.

So what’s next? Drive-by Cremations?

Don’t know what was going on today, but the traffic going through downtown Houston and out the other side was really terrible. Almost like suddenly there were twice as many cars on the road as before.

Didn’t any accidents or breakdowns. Just solid traffic.

Getting to the client’s, I started trying to diagram out the hardware to get an idea of what’s what. I’m pretty much just going to wire everything up from scratch since I can really trust anything done by my predecessor. Right now I’ve got cables running down the hall keeping things going.

I keep finding hidden routers and switches, wires that he pulled that seem to have no purpose and don’t really go anywhere, and a server that is online and flowing data, but does not show up on the office network. That’s the one labeled ??? on the diagram.

It’s up on a top shelf in a closet with no monitor or keyboard/mouse connected to it. Of course it could be the almost-mythical porn collection that I’ve always suspected was around here somewhere. It is possible to to ‘hide’ a server so that it’s only accessible if you know its name. Otherwise you can’t see it.

This is kind of like on a WiFi signal you can set it not to broadcast the SSID, the name that people see when they scan for signals in an area, i.e  Gerald4269 or Jabba 162. Or my favorite, FBI Surveillance Van No. 7. And the only way to connect to one of these WiFi signals is to know the name and type it in.

After about all the frustration I could take for the day, I headed back for Conroe a little before 4pm. Now normally heading north that early it’s not too bad. But this afternoon was just like this morning, but on steroids.

No accidents or breakdowns on the road along the way, but just bumper to bumper traffic, even in places where it normally moves right along at this time of the day.

As usual, coming north like this, I took 610 east and got on the Hardy Toll Road. Of course right now it’s just the Hardy Road since they’ve waived all tolls because of the Harvey recovery. Don’t know how long it will last, but it’s nice while it does.

One of the things Jan and I have always notice as we take the Hardy is a huge parking area where the new cars are unloaded from the incoming train cars. Now normally that lot seems to be only half full, or even less. But today it was jam-packed to the fences with no visible open spaces, and the long line of train cars parked there were full too.

Looks like the car dealers are getting ready for the insurance checks to start flowing and people replacing their flooded-out vehicles.

And of course up north, they can expect an influx of late-model, low-mileage used cars and trucks in perfect condition with prices that can’t be beat.

Just ignore the slight musty smell.

Hang one of those little greens trees from your visor and you’ll be fine.

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