Reflecting…

Ronda and I arrived at the campground last night and dropped off the items to be auctioned off for a campground member who has stage 4 terminal cancer. I dropped off an HP Slate 500 and Ronda made a rainy day basket with games, candy and other goodies a family can use to keep the kids entertained when it’s raining. We’re hoping that all of these items people dropped off will help Ted and his wife stay above water. Ted’s prognosis isn’t good but hopefully he is able to beat this, he’s a great guy, always lending a helping hand.

My sister in law is also battling cancer, she has stage 1 bladder cancer and we pray for her continued improvement every day. My Aunt is recovering from cancer, as is her husband so it seems that cancer has become part of our lives the past 5 years.

Around 11pm last night emergency vehicles entered the campground, I think they were here to pick up a man named George who I learned had just started full time with his wife when they retired. His health wasn’t good when they started. I hope to find out how he’s doing this morning when we see other people for the auction. It’s taken us over a decade for us to learn together that life is more than work and accumulating stuff when my Mom died of Pancreatic cancer in 2009 that hit home.

Now, 4 years later we are spending our weekends at the camper, sure I still work while camping but we aren’t buying stuff anymore. When we see people taken to the hospital so soon into their retirement it makes me want to head to Congress and scream at the morons there who want to raise the retirement age because these halfwits burned through the SS retirement funds people have been funding for decades, this will never affect them of course but they can make us pay for their mistakes. Must be nice to have an un-ending checkbook, 16 trillion later they still believe it’s endless and instead of holding them all accountable we argue with each other because one side might be democrat and the other republican, seriously folks, neither side cares about anything but staying in office, if they had to walk over you to stay in office they would do it with a smile.

I’m not sure where I meant to go with this post, I’m reflecting on so many things in my mind I can’t get them onto the page so it makes sense. It’s time to start getting ready for the auction, if you’re still reading and this post made sense, great. Have a great weekend everybody.

When People Do The Right Thing…

We never hear about it right?

Read this article about 4 teenage football players who walk into a store that the owner thought he locked up. They bought batteries and headphones and left exact change including tax for their purchases. Very cool story.  Click this LINK for the story.

The Results Are In

Well, after the great blood pressure results the other shoe came down. Cholesterol is at 214, up from 174, Triglycerides is 240, up from 140, A1C is a 12 up from an 8.4. To top it off my white cell count / T cell counts were way off. So, time for a trip to the eye doctor, the Endocrinologist and Oncologist plus a trip to the Hospital for an MRI. Drat…

My blood sugar I knew was elevated, however the rest came as a complete shock. I wonder if working almost 3 days straight might have had an effect on the results? I’ll be taking this up with my doctor on the 10 of next month. My next A1C is in November so I’ll be working on trying to get them back to where they were 10 months ago.

Nurse Says “Wait, This Can’t Be Right”

So 3 men walk into a bar… you heard that one already… I digress, I went to my doctor yesterday for my usual A1C blood work and was handled by a new nurse. She sits me down and then gets out the blood pressure cuff and takes my blood pressure….

“Hmmm, let me do this again”, ok, sounds good, so she takes another reading… “Let me switch arms” she takes it again and then states  “wait, this can’t be right”… by now you can imagine the thoughts running through my head I’m thinking holy crow my blood pressure has gone through the roof and she doesn’t know how to tell me!

She looks at me and says I’m reading 106 over 62, that’s just not possible but the last reading was better at 110 over 70, well heck yeah it went up a bit, I was having a heart attack thinking what is freaking her out she has to keep taking a reading??

My response with a big fat grin on my face was “what, you never got a reading like that from a fat old diabetic before?” She laughed and said it just seemed really low for… and she paused and I said for a fat old diabetic, it’s ok, I get it. She was new, not just in the office but in the field so it was nice to show her something new and unexpected.

Then after that my doctor walks in and we talk and she brings up “hey, you’re going to be 50 in March, you know what that means right?” I said yep, the dreaded colonoscopy, do I really have to, I mean seriously, it’s not going anywhere or anything.

Hey, I’m here to entertain, I’ll be here all week. She just looks at me and smiles.. dagnabit can I just skip 50 and the colonoscopy and call it a day. Ick, no, not ick for me, for the poor saps who have to do it, just ICK!

She also is scheduling a new eye exam which is normal, an MRI for my back since she found a few bumps and because it’s been hurting more recently so I get to lay inside an MRI machine I will barely fit in, unless they have an open MRI where she’ll be sending me, I’ll cross my fingers.

The blood test results should be in tomorrow which I’m sure will trigger another trip to the Oncologist since I have higher indicators that never end up showing cancer, thank God, but they get flagged at least once a year. Doctor visits are so much fun, aren’t they? I can’t complain really, for being 49, still overweight, diabetic and working at a computer all day/night I could be doing much worse.

I take krill, cinnamon and have oatmeal everyday so it’s possible they are doing their job at keeping my blood pressure down, along with the walking to work which works out to about 4 or 5 miles per day all told. Now if only I could lose weight! I’ll post more if anything interesting turns up tomorrow.

Make Up Yer Mind Already

Next week is going to be a string of 90’s, no wait, a string of 70’s, no wait a string of sunshine, no I mean storms, oh heck who knows?!?!? I swear every time I check it’s either going to be in the 70’s next week or hell is boiling over.

Maybe if I stopped looking at the weather 5+ days out, yeah that’s the ticket… but no, yep, just checked again… good grief, three sources all different forecasts, from the same page!

Look at the 5th, for the same zip code from 3 sources have a difference of up to 6f and or sunny or storming! OY!

Weekend Mouse Report + This & That

The good news is, there is nothing to report! WooHoo! We came up here last night and it was refreshing not to have to pick up after unwanted guests. The temperature outside was perfect for a long walk, a lot of people had fires going so the campground smelled fantastic, the stars were out you couldn’t ask for a better night.

Going to the RV each weekend and relaxing, including the yard work and remote IT working when I have to instead of spending that time at home in the basement is awesome. Ronda and I have such a good time here, hopefully we can continue this for decades to come, minus the mice!

I have talked to people who don’t understand these weekend runs to the RV or even RV’ing in general. That’s ok because if every body did it, it wouldn’t be fun anymore, it would be crowded! Stay home I say and leave the wonderful outdoors, forests, great people and campfires to those of us who get it and long for it. For so many years I forgot about how much I enjoyed getting out like this, ok maybe back then it was in a tent but the feeling is almost the same.

It’s going to be a hot one for sure, time to break out the UNO cards and enjoy a card game at the picnic table! Have a great weekend everybody!

Ever Have One Of Those…

Projects that refused to cooperate? Last May I started on a SQL Server migration from SQL2000 to SQL2012 and it has been kicking my rear end because the software that connects to it is as old as SQL2000 and migrating database software that far apart in age isn’t recommended.

November of last year after getting all of our ducks in a row, I built the server, got the OS and SQL all set up but that was the easy part. We made the first attempt and nothing seemed to work, we kept getting errors and huge CPU spikes that didn’t make sense. Then each month thereafter we made new attempts, this drove my boss batchit and frustrated, you can imagine how it made me feel.

I refused to move forward unless certain issues could be over-come, it either works like it should or we can’t move forward. Finally while working on another project which happened to include the very person who wrote the software we were using (not SQL) I asked him for help and he thankfully said yes. The problem wasn’t in the migration, itself complicated enough for sure, nope, the problem was with the license files the equipment uses to make sure these systems are paid for and it turns out we had some with faulty code in the license files.  

Considering the newest server I built with these license files is now going on 7 years old who would have thunk it would be a license file?? Sure enough he found the problem and fixed it and today after working an all nighter and now on my 2nd pot of coffee we are almost done with the migration. There are several jobs that have to be modified to work with the new DB but we’ll get there…

Finally… the monkey is off my back, irritating little bugger….

10 Years

Goes by so fast… 10 years ago we had finally gotten broadband from AT&T via DSL and it was a whopping 768/128 connection which I thought was the cats meow. It was buggy and frequently went down. Online video at the time was horrible, Internet TV and even Google was just a year away from going public.

10 years ago I was able to get my boss wireless access via a PCMCIA card at dial up speeds if he was lucky. He was able to use it to remote into our network slowly but he was able to work. Today we can bring our Internet connection with us, on our phone even and we’re spoiled by it. I frequently work from the RV, friends or family’s house using my Verizon MiFi saving me from working in my basement for so many years.

Tonight via my 100Mbps Comcast connection I’m watching The Blaze TV in HD on my computer via the Internet on a 27” monitor while watching networking class video on another 27” monitor while working on a Visio document on another 24” monitor while using email on yet another 24” monitor. Maybe that’s why my neck hurts so much?

I digress, I think we have seen more technical progress the past 10 years than the previous 10 years and it will probably continue at yet an even more accelerated rate the next 10. The silicon limit they thought would kill CPU advancement increases (very un-technical term) was figured out and now they have processes being researched that will bring unreal levels of performance, whether it’s on a desktop is another question. I believe it will be but what we consider a desktop will be much changed.

I’m a tech geek, I don’t blog about it much but while working on 4 monitors doing many things at the same time which my wife gets a good laugh at I was thinking about how much has changed in just 10 years.

Here’s looking forward to the next 10 years!

Is Google AdSense Worth It?

A lot of bloggers use it to supplement their income and I have thought about adding it as well. Is it worth it? I don’t know, I do know that it can be distracting on some blogs.

I have read blogs that brag about making thousands per month or year but their blogs are almost all ads. I almost never clicked on the ads until I realized why not, if I need something from Amazon I will visit a blog I know has a link and I’ll click that to get to Amazon.

So, that helps somebody else, not sure if I’m on board with adding it to my blog. Something to think about, let me know what you think.

Have a great week!

Perfect Weekend

We left the slides out for the week, no mice to report, woohoo!

I finished the path yesterday, this took 12 bags of river rock, I love the way it turned out. I’ll be finishing the other side of the deck next year when we decide what to do with it. That white Rubbermaid step will be replaced with a wooden one when I get the supplies to do it.

I took my back out a bit but sometimes pain is good, it reminds you of the work you did. Aleve time! 

I cleaned up the sewer area as well, while there I discovered the hydraulic ram has a leak. I reported it to the dealer and then re-ran the auto-level system, it stated no changed needed so the level hasn’t changed. I also plugged in an electronic mouse repeller under the RV in the middle by the tires, we’ll see how it looks next weekend. The slides are in for this next week.

On August 31st there is an auction at the campground for a long time camper there, his name is Ted and he has stage 4 aggressive prostate cancer. Ronda will be putting together a basket to auction off to help pay for the treatment his insurance refuses to pay for because it’s experimental. We don’t have a lot of money so we are using items we have like a TeleNav WorldNav GPS I received from my job 3 years ago to put in the basket. It’s giving me trouble so we may have to change to something else if I can’t find the parts to fix this one, we’ll see.

Sunsets, I take plenty of pictures of them but forget to post them. Not this time, my cell phone doesn’t do justice to this but it’s not too shabby.

Have a great week everybody!

FMCA Video – Old Motorhomes

Very cool video of pictures taken over the years.

Planning Halloween RV Trip To Geneseo

Time goes by so fast! Each year we have gone to the Geneseo campground to celebrate Halloween and to enter plus hopefully win the decoration contest. So far we are three seasons running getting first place. We hope to make it an even four!

I wrote Collier RV and asked them if it’s possible to rent our old coach if it’s still around in October, how cool would that be! They know I will return it cleaner than I got it so we’ll see, my guess is they’ll say no and refer us back to their rentals since they cost a boatload more.

This is their rental, a Thor ACE however their pricing shows a $500.00 deposit, plus a $1,000 damage deposit plus you have to pay for the “Quick start package” and as of right now I have no clue how much the actual rental would be, the Class C’s would be a little cheaper so I’m calling them shortly to find out.

We could also rent one of the cabins in the campground for $55.00 per day so we have options. My back dictates stay away from the cabin because there won’t be a recliner and because it’s basically a square room, no facilities or kitchen. However this would be awesome to decorate, I could plug in my monster sound system for scary music and sounds! Something to ponder for sure, so nothing has been finalized but we have some time!

Evil Shilo & Family Gathering

I told Ronda the dog was evil, did she listen to me? Nope! Here is Shilo showing her true colors! Be afraid, be very afraid!

Here is the new path to the storage bin, it used to be the path to the door in the Endeavor. I’m putting down rock and stone pavers but ran out so need a few more bags.

Preparing for guests, I was hoping they were bringing their own chairs! I started the fire 3 hours early since last time it refused to really get going until later in the evening due to humidity and drizzling rain. This time I over compensated…. see below.

I couldn’t get everybody sitting down at the same time, Ronda’s brother and brood couldn’t make it.

Everybody was having fun, Ronda was so busy I could never catch her sitting down! Here Ronda’s Dad and Mom are busted smoking… I’m so bad…

Nick, playing on his cell phone…

Here is Ronda in the dark so I’m allowed to show her but look on her lap, there is EVIL Shilo with her devil eyes again! Be afraid be very afraid!!!!

Everybody had a fun time, Ronda made some incredible beef and chicken to be put on rolls, people cooked their hot dogs on a blazing fire, if they didn’t cook themselves that is, the fire was blazing and even when it came down a bit it was over powering from the coals. Awesome!! No complaints about not enough fire, no sir! 

We’re going to have a few quiet weekends up at the campground finishing up the rock path, adjusting for the mice… speaking of which!!! We had to leave the slides out because it was raining, didn’t make sense to bring them in and all the water that was on them so I put three repellers in the main room and we’ll see what happens by next weekend!

Have a great week everybody!

Saturday Mouse Report

It’s Saturday, we got here last night annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd….. poop… yep… poop, 4 pretty large ones so Pappa mouse must have stopped by.. but it was only in one small spot in the kitchen. As I started writing this I realized that the area this time is under the slide when the slide is in so they never really came inside all the way. Last time they got into the drawers in the kitchen as well so this is a huge step in the right direction.

I checked the large storage bin and no poop anywhere, it’s as clean as it was when we left. So today I’m getting two more repellers and putting them under the coach so hopefully that takes care of the mouse problem.

We’re leaving shortly to pick up supplies for the stairs and for the gathering tonight. Have a great weekend everybody!

Building Stairs

Family is coming over this weekend for a hot dog roast and I’m promising my father in law he won’t die on the stairs. This means I need to build a stair case leading into the RV, since Keystone added a 4th step making it easier to get into and out of the rig when there is no deck they clearly gave no thought to the fact many people will be in fact in a campground with a deck making the last step un-usable. When we bought the rig I thought we could un-pin the last step, I was wrong.

See how the last step is folder over? I’m going to try and build a small two step stair case that will slip over that bottom folded over step so the top wooden step is even with the metal step above the folded one so that step is pretty long making it very stable to stand on. This will also help when Ronda and I are handing things to each other. I can’t imagine it’s going to be pretty but it should work if I do it right! More pictures to come this weekend!

It’s nice having a place family can come to where we can have a fire going and everybody is around it enjoying themselves. Good times!

JACK, MICE and DECK… A Great Weekend Anyway!

Well, on Saturday morning I installed the new JACK HD antenna, good news and bad. The good news is signals that were showing 50% now show 100% but we get no more stations than before and now MeTV doesn’t come in at all where before it would once in a while. This means when we are out of the valley we will get a lot of stations but it’s clear that channels in the 3 to 13 range will not work in the valley, nuts. Hey, I tried right?

Next up, we bought… let me see now, 3 of the large Rid Rite Deluxe rodent repeller’s and 2 of the small versions. People complained of how loud they are but I plan on unplugging them when we are at the rig. I did notice after they were on for about 20 minutes they would drive me completely insane so I hope they have the same effect on the mice. I placed a large one in the kitchen, the bedroom and in the large storage compartment they had already spent considerable time in pooping and peeing. I cleaned out the storage compartment so we can see if they return. I also installed a small version in the bathroom and bedroom closet. Oh, I also disconnected the sewer hose and put mouse repellent powder on the water hoses that go into the compartment next to the storage compartment. So we’re crossing our fingers, toes and eyes that this works.

One last comment, every single person we talked to except one claims they never have mice in their rigs. I spoke to the gentlemen who bought a new Redwood yesterday and asked him if he ever gets mice, his response everybody here gets mice and I mean everybody. If they say they don’t they’re lying! He did say that because of the electronic repellers he has not had any in this new rig. I really really would love to get into a few of these rigs and I guarantee I find evidence of mice, I think people don’t look until they have done damage to something.

I removed two feet of the railing on the deck yesterday, it came out a bit crooked but we can now open the storage bin door, exactly one month to the day that we took delivery but hey at least I got it done!

Today I put down river rock and pavers but didn’t take pictures, I soaked through my clothing and my hands were black so I’ll take pictures of that next weekend but it’s turning out pretty nice.

Oh, I have to build stairs as well so hopefully I have that completed next weekend too! Have a great week everybody!

The Mice Approve

Well a mouse or mice has visited us and deposited his or hers or their crap in the kitchen and lower drawers in the kitchen. Brand new sealed RV with a special cover built underneath to keep them out. I of course realize they will get in, I had just hoped we could have gone a full month (tomorrow is a full month) before they did. I think they come up the sewer hose, so I will try a few things to keep them out including a sonar repeller.

Man I hate those things, seriously…

Hot Dog

When was the last time you saw this? I was walking to Union Station last night and the Oscar Meyer “Hot Dog Mobile” was parked on Randolph. How cool is that?