Computer Stuff

It was another VERY warm day here in Florida. The thermometer was showing in the mid-90s before noon today. I turned on the air conditioning and we spent most of the day inside. I took advantage of the Camplink WiFi service here at Mouse Mountain RV Park to do some major down-loads. It cost me $10 to buy three days of the park's service.

My iPhone which is an iPhone 3 had a software upgrade (5.1) available, so I got that downloaded and also upgraded my version of iTunes software on the computer. That took three hours.

I also took advantage of Blog2Print's 15% discount this week to prepare my 2011 blogs and get them ready for printing in book form. That used up a couple of hours of fairly heavy-duty internet usage as well.

While we have an AT&T aircard that we use with our Cradlepoint router and a Verizon Hotspot, I am hesitant to use up our allotted gigabytes downloading software. With judicious use of the two of them, I am usually able to get through the month uploading my blog and playing Frontierville without going over our data allowance and having to pay extra. And it seems that in parks where we have trouble receiving AT&T, the Verizon coverage is usually good and where the Verizon service is lousy, the AT&T is usually good. And of course, when at an RV park that has free wifi, we take full advantage of it! Except for banking or bill paying which we are careful to do with our locked and encrypted service...

Finally -- RAIN!

It has been so dry in eastern Washington -- and then we've had those awful dust storms. The weather forecast said we would get rain today and we did wake to overcast skies. As the afternoon progressed it started to sprinkle. By the time we had everything buttoned up on Auntie Violet and were ready to go, there was actually drips of water coming off her sides. When Forry turned on the windshield wipers, the first few swipes were actually muddy!

The rain was sort of behind us all the way and it was dry when we arrived at Ponderosa Falls RV Park a little after five PM. But it started to drizzle when we went over to the Iron Skillet for dinner and now I can hear it on Auntie Violet's roof. I sure hope it settles in and rains steadily for a couple of days at least!

We are settled in at Site 6B and will be here for the next three weeks at least. I've spent the last hour or two catching up on reading all of the blogs that I missed while we were without wifi and while we were in Sundance. AND catching up with my Facebook farming!

Our New Cradlepoint 350CTR WiFi System

Our new Cradlepoint wifi system is up and running and we are both wondering why we didn't think to get one sooner! It's very small -- about the size of a deck of cards (I was going to say "a pack of cigarettes," but haven't seen any of those in a long time...!). It has a three hundred-fifty foot range and since Auntie Violet is only 37 feet long, we should be able to use it anywhere in the rig -- or outside. Our AT&T USB aircard plugs into it. Forry bought a six foot extension USB cord for it yesterday so that we could move it over to the window sill totally away from the computer area. We shouldn't have to worry about accidently bumping it and breaking ANOTHER very fragile antenna connection on the aircard. As long as we have a connection with the trucker antenna and aircard to AT&T we should do well.

It was very nice today to be able to spend the 4-5 hours necessary to download the upgrade to 3.0 for my iPhone without the usual erratic connection that often timed out in the middle of the download. And while I was doing that, Forry was able to get onto the internet at the same time with his computer!