More Projects Completed!

I am finishing off projects here like crazy! My wife was away most of yesterday and today so that helped a lot. I already told you the inverter job is done so last night I tackled installing my new printer. It installed easily on the main computer but I still have to work on the wireless feature that allows the other computers to use it.

This morning I started on replacing the tail lights on the car dolly. One side had gone completely dead and the other side had lost the brake and signal lights. It was a combination of damaged wiring and burned out bulbs. The bulbs are inside a sealed unit so they are not replaceable on an individual basis but rather you have to replace the whole unit. Before we left the States I bought a kit containing two LED tail lights and all the wiring needed. The LED's are good for 10,000 hours so this will be a far better solution.

When I removed the old lights I found the cutouts in the fenders were too large for the new lights. I bought one of those white plastic cutting boards and used it to cut out two pieces to fill these holes and bolted them in place. The material and colour are very close to that of the fender and it will not be noticable. I drilled some holes for the new lights and connected the wire to the old harness after I cut off the damaged part. It looks very professional and, although I could not test it, I am confident it will work when I hook it up.

The Job Jar is almost empty and I an getting ready to watch Game Five of the Vancouver / Chicago series of the Stanly Cup semi finals. The series is tied 2 - 2 so this is an important game and the Canucks have home ice advantage! Life Is Good!

Inverter Job Finished

I completed the inverter re-wiring job today. I added a run of #6 cable to the existing #10 that was too light to prevent a large voltage drop when a load was applied. It was a pretty easy job but did involve crawling under the motorhome to run the cable along a frame member.

I used to be able to fit quite easily under large vehicles but this time I found some parts of my body squeezing against the running gear as I moved about. They must be using lower profile tires these days...

I put a fuse holder in the line and made the connections. The "at rest" voltage supplied to the inverter increased by about 0.2 volts so the connection is good. I will have to test the new arrangement to see if there is still a voltage drop when I turn on the TV, StarChoice and the computer.

Tomorrow I will install new taillights on the car dolly.

My New Monitor

In Mexico I thought I had a problem with the display on my laptop. It turned out that there was no problem and I don't want to talk about it.... Anyway, that is not important. What is important is that I bought a new 19" widescreen monitor down there. It is a Samsung T190 and is a thing of beauty. Yesterday I tried to hook it up to my computer here at home but had some problems. The driver Windows XP chose for it gave a funny perspective. It was like it was trying to stretch the image out to fill the wide screen. Tall things looked short, skinny people looked fat and I looked really fat! It would also not display in anything but the lowest resolution. I tried to load newer drivers from the CD that came with the monitor but it told me that my computer was not compatible.

I took it down to my favorite computer store where they told me there was no way that the onboard video card could run a wide screen monitor. Like I should have known this. They told me they could sell me a video card and install it for free. Free sounded like a good deal so they went ahead and did this. A couple of hours later They called to say it was finished so I went down to pick it up and pay the $110 bill. This store recycles old computer equipment so I dropped off my old 486 that I could not even give away to my grandchildren as well as an old printer that was taking up space under the desk for a couple of years.

On the way home I decided to replace the Lexmark printer that cost me a fortune for ink cartridges and was currently not working. I stopped at Staples and found an HP 3 in 1 network printer on sale for under $100. The salesman assured me the cartridges for this printer were less than the Lexmark so I bought it.

The monitor works very nicely with my computer and gives me a ton more real estate on the desktop to play on. I will have to fiddle a little with the Gamma setting and fine tuning the colour but my photos looked very nice on it when I opened PhotoShop. The colors are much nicer than on the old monitor. I have not set up the printer yet but when I do it should be accessable from all three of the computers (his, hers and the motorhome's laptop). That is a project for tomorrow when I have the house to myself as Norma is driving down to Victoria for a reunion of her former workmates at Forest Renewal BC. They shall be terrorizing one of the pubs in Victoria Friday night.

I still haven't done the rewiring job on the inverter but I am getting close.

Latest Project

When we bought the motorhome I installed a 400 Watt inverter in the front of the motorhome to run the TV, Starchoice, DVD player and computer when we are boondocking. I connected it to the batteries with about ten feet of #10 wire. Over the winter I discovered this was not working as it should. When I turned the TV and/or the computer on, the inverter would go into alarm and shut down. I would then have to restart the inverter with the load applied and after a couple of tries, it would stay on and carry the load with no problem. It just seems to be the initial startup of the equipment that causes the problem.

I suspect my problem is that the ten feet of #10 wire is simply too light for this application. The voltage drop created when the load is applied creates a situation where the inverter thinks it is drawing from a dead battery and shuts down (as it was designed to do). I am going to replace the #10 wire with #6 cable and hope this is sufficient to overcome the voltage drop. If this does not work I will relocate the inverter to the battery compartment under the stairs and run an extension cord under the motorhome to the TV area. This is the recommended way to do it but it means I would be unable to turn the inverter on and off without removing the stair to get into the battery compartment. The end result would be that the inverter would remain on for several months at a time creating a continuous small drain on the batteries.

My plan was to do this job today but it will not quit raining and the project involves crawling under the motorhome to run the cable. I may just sit in front of the computer and TV and think about it for another day... or two...

Life Is Good!

Equal = Equal

I am happy to see that the District of Columbia is joining other progressive and fair minded States and is finally going to allow Same Sex Marriage. This move is long overdue. I have listened to and attempted to understand the argument against Same Sex Marriage but cannot comprehend it. To my mind it is nothing but closed minded bigotry that is giving “religion” a bad name.

If you want to show your support, these shirts are available from Karel.

!Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

Happy Cinco de Mayo to all my Mexican friends! This is the day to be with your families, share a meal and celebrate the Mexican Army’s defeat of the French forces at Puebla on May 5, 1862.

On that day at Puebla’s Fort of Cerro de Guadalupe, Mexican General Ignacio de Zaragoza and his 2000 men defeated a frontal attack by 6000 French troops! This occasion has been celebrated ever since with the Mexican holiday, Cinco de Mayo.

In Mexico’s favour that day was the fact that the French invaders were not expecting an organized defence of the city plus many of the French troops were suffering from the common Mexican tourist’s malady, diarrhea and were probably more interested in finding the banos than they were in spreading French Imperialism. The French did however, return the following year to take the city which they occupied for four years.

The Battle of Puebla:

The Party:

Time to Replace the Cell Phone

My old Nokia clamshell is starting to act up. A couple of numbers are getting hard to press and the camera does not work all the time. It has served me well for about five years and has been abused something awful, having been dropped and left out in the rain more than once.

I carry prepaid SIM cards for Canada, USA and Mexico which I simply insert as I cross the borders. It is a handy system and avoids having to keep three phones.

My friend Don in Pahrump, NV just bought a couple of LG Shine phones which seem to work pretty well for him. They are tri-band phones that include the 1900 MHz band used in Mexico and can be used in Canada and the USA as well. We hardly ever use our cell phones when we travel. They are mainly for emergency and for our son to try to keep track of where we are. Because of this, $20 or $25 prepaid cards for each country last us for a year. In Canada we use the 7/11 Speakout service, in the USA, T-Mobile and in Mexico, the Telcel system. In Canada and the USA our cards last one year before expiring but in Mexico it is a little hard to tell. I think they last three months. We bought a $200 Peso card when we entered Mexico and when we had vehicle problems in Puebla we burned up a lot of time and actually ran out. We topped it up with a $100 Peso card and did not use it much after that. When we needed it near the end of the trip we found it to be empty again. This was probably three months since the top up. I still have not mastered the intricacies of making a phone call in Mexico. There are city codes to contend with and instead of simply dialing 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx you have to dial 01-xxx-xxx-xxxx or sometimes 001-xxx-xxx-xxxx, sometimes adding a city code. I know it is not all that complicated but I can never seem to make a successful call without having a helpful bystander help me. Thankfully there are always plenty of helpful bystanders in Mexico.

And A Good Time Was Had!

What a great 64th birthday! I wore my Zapatista shirt and Panama Hat and Linda made me a REAL chocolate cake with candles and sparklers! Everybody brought a snack so there was more food than we could eat. It rained all evening but everyone fit into the TV/family room.

The Canucks disappointed us by going to sleep half way through the game and letting Chicago win but there is always the next game...

Well, Sunday morning and the mess is cleaned up, leftovers have been frozen or eaten and Brooks and Linda have left. Time for me to stretch out in front of the TV and vegetate!

Party Time

My son Brooks and Linda, his SO, came up from Victoria for the weekend. It has been a long time since we have seen them and we are having a few friends over tonight for a belated Birthday and fortieth anniversary party, also belated.

There was some water damage in the MH where some trim had been damaged by the slideout leak so we bought some oak - $50 for a ten foot board! - and made some trim pieces from it. Linda stained it and Brooks and I nailed it up today. It looks pretty good although the stain is not a perfect match to the paper covered pressboard it sits beside.

The weather has been perfect here so we got the patio all ready and picked out some firewood for the outdoor fireplace. Brooks and Linda bought us an outdoor propane heater for the patio for a combined anniversary and birthday (the next ten birthdays Brooks says) so we were all ready to enjoy the evening outside. It is now about an hour before guests arrive in it is pouring rain! Not the kind of rain you people down south get where it rains for an hour and then everything dries out, but the BC West "Wet" Coast kind of rain where it starts today and ends in June! The party will be inside!

We will have the big screen on as the Vancouver Canucks are playing Chicago tonight in the second game of Round Two of the Stanly Cup. The Canucks are undefeated so far in the finals and there are tons of car flags around town (mine included). Everyone is a Canuck fan. Well, except for Linda who is still an Oilers fan. She hasn't been in BC long enough I guess. Other than that though she is a great person. She puts up with my son so that alone makes her a Saint!

Keep It Going....

My friend John Calypso has suggested I keep the Blog going. He thinks folks might be interested in our planning and preparations for the next adventure. I think I will give it a try and see what happens to the visitor numbers. I hate making a speech in an empty room but as long as there are people reading I will give it a go.

The Blog has developed a life of it’s own with well over 21,000 hits. This is an unbelievable number and if I am providing a little entertainment for some people, I can hardly pass up the chance to continue.

I have a list of projects to do to get ready for the next trip and will keep you up to date. There will not be daily postings but I will try to keep up.