Our RV Adventures

Have you noticed that the “Can You Hear Me Now?†guy from the Verizon commercials a few years ago, is now doing commercials for Sprint, talking about how much better it is than Verizon? Some lawyer must have left a clause out of his contract.

A month ago when when we were here at Lake Conroe, I tried the new in-park Wi-Fi called Fast Wave, and was very disappointed in both the speed and the connection quality. Costing $14.95 for a week of service, at about 2.5 Mbps, it was not much faster than my Verizon 3G AirCard, but even worse, it was start/stop. We couldn’t even watch a 30 second Facebook video without it jerking on and off.

So when we got back here this time, I called their Tech Support to ask about the problems I found. Several people had told me they didn’t have any problems so I wanted to inquire further.

When Tech Support got back to me, they said I should have been getting better speeds than that, without the start/stop. They suggested I try it again and they would refund my full fee if I wasn’t satisfied. So last evening I signed up again.

And so far, so good.

I’m getting 3.0+ Mbps with no jerkiness, and a 8ms ping, which in itself is amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ping that low, even on cable or DSL. And FWIW I’m connected to the same access point I was last time, with 5 bars of signal strength.

Hope it holds out for the next week.

About the only thing I did do today was to replace the battery in my Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone. I try to do this about once a year, since my S5 starts to lose charge time, and a new one only costs about $8 and only takes about 5 minutes to swap out.

Right now the S5 is the last of the line with a replicable battery. And although the S5 is pretty waterproof, the S6 and S7 are even more so. And to that, the case has to be sealed such that it would be a lot more difficult to make one that could be opened and not lose its waterproofness.

And that’s about it for today.

Tomorrow we plan on heading down to The Woodlands to see a movie and then have dinner at Torchy’s Tacos. Really looking forward to it.

Thought for the Day:

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After our water outage the other day, I decided it was time to install the new water pump that I ordered from Amazon recently.

Shurflo 3.0 GPM  RV Water Pump

After opening up the panel and removing the screws holding the pump to the top of the compartment, I unplugged the connector that I had installed when I last replaced the pump back in 2008.

Then I unscrewed the In and Out connections and pulled the pump out. I immediately noticed that water was leaking out of the back of the pump, which probably has something to do with it dying. Next up was to unscrew and clean out the strainer/filter.

The filter was actually pretty clear, with only a little bit of the carbon granules from the water filter. All in all, pretty good.

I noticed that the directions with this pump that they say not to use Teflon tape or anything similar on the connections, so I cleaned any residue off the threads.

The instructions also said to use a 15amp inline fuse, but unlike last time they didn’t include a fuse with this one.so I cut the power leads so I could use the old one.

I used wire nuts to connect the leads and then I put a squirt urethane sealer into each one to seal them off. One thing I noticed is that entire black mounting base is made from heavy rubber, which should make it a lot quieter.

Then I put the pump back in place, connected the water lines and plugged the electrical connectors together. 

Since the shore water was still turned off, I hit the pump switch and listened to the pump start up and run until the system was pressurized. But I had to listen carefully, because as one reader mentioned, this pump is really quiet.

I’ll wait awhile before I button things back up to be sure everything is OK.

Since I was in the water bay, I decided to change out the filter in my EVQ canister. After always struggling to get the top off, I came up with a way to get it loose.

I have the wrench to hold the bottom, but it was always hard to hold the top to break it loose.

Then I noticed that the unused prongs on our Blue Ox baseplate was perfect for holding the top while I turned the bottom. Easy Peezy.

And this is what the old filter looks like after 5 months of use. Yuck!

Finishing up with water stuff, I went back up on the rig roof to check out how I’m going to clean my evaporator coil.

As you can see here, anything sprayed on the coil drips off and falls right through the filter and into the bedroom. Not a good thing.

So my idea now is to get a piece of sheet metal big enough to cover the opening. That way I can wash and rinse the coil without any dripping.

After cleaning up, Jan and I drove over to the ‘F’ section to meet up with our friend Randy so he could follow us to the Asian BBQ & Grill for dinner. He had read about how much we liked it and wanted to try it for himself.

We all got the Vermicelli Bowls, Jan’s with Lemon Grass Chicken, and mine and Randy’s with the Grilled Pork and Shrimp.

As always before, it was all delicious, and they have a new customer in Randy.

Not sure yet  what’s on tap for tomorrow, so we’ll just have to see.

Sometimes I have to keep reminding myself that I’m an adult . . . and will be charged as one.. 

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