After many hours of work, I have my new laptop ready to go. As I reported before, my old laptop had become unreliable. The problems began when Microsoft decided to push an Operating System (OS) update to it. The update software is flawed in my opinion. It had an incompatibility with an app or program I had on my computer. But rather than set an error message and identify the issue, it would just shut down the hard drive. I would have no choice but to force a complete shutdown, reboot and hope I hadn’t lost anything I was working on – in most cases, I lost my unsaved work.
Meanwhile, Donna was becoming increasingly frustrated with her phone. Our phones are several generations old – we had Samsung Galaxy S5s. So, we headed over to Best Buy and did some shopping. Donna ended up with a new Samsung Galaxy S10 while I picked up a new laptop – a 2-in-1 actually. This means it functions as a normal laptop or I can fold the screen 360 degrees and use it like a tablet. I don’t care much about that function, I only needed a laptop. I found an ASUS machine that seemed like a good deal – a lot of computer for the money.
It has two hard drives – one is a solid state drive that handles the OS and some file storage and the other is a conventional hard drive disk that has 1TB of storage space. It also has a Core i7 processor with 16GB RAM. This is a serious upgrade over my old unit. It’s fast and has better graphics and video than I had before. I still have to get a couple more programs on board.
One of the biggest hurdles we’ve faced in our time on the road as full-time RVers is high-speed internet access. With our Verizon Jetpack, we have onboard wifi, but high-speed access is limited. All of the carriers offer unlimited data plans, but none of them really mean unlimited. What they mean is, you’ll have high-speed access up to a certain point, then you become throttled. Once you meet the throttling threshold, other users may have higher priority than you and your connection speed will suffer. It depends on how many others are trying to use the cellular connection at the time and whether you are a lower priority user or not. Sometimes the speed can still be good while other times it’s almost like an old dial-up.
Our “unlimited” plan with Verizon gives us high-speed access through the Jetpack for 15GB of data usage before it throttles. Then we can switch to our phones and use them as hotspots. We can get an additional 15GB from each phone, giving us a total of 45GB unthrottled high-speed access. This has worked out well for the most part, but downloading program files eats up data pretty quickly.
We started last week with the Viewpoint Concert Band performance on Sunday. Donna had a few visitors in the audience. Our friend Stevie Ann came out to see the show as did Mike and Jodi Hall with their granddaughter Swayzie. The concert was great and enjoyed by all. I’m amazed at how well the band can perform together with limited practice time. They only play together five times before each performance date. Of course, they practice individually to learn their parts, but to hear it all come together is really something. Now Donna is working on the music for the next show.
Speaking of Mike Hall, I first met Mike back 2006. We met at Red, White and Brew – it used to be a favorite watering hole for us. There was a core group of guys that often met there for a cold one after work. One of the guys was Lindert Hartoog. Lindert is from The Netherlands and worked as an engineer at the Boeing helicopter plant in Mesa. He also owned a rental house nearby that Mike Hall lived in. This house has a large workshop in back. Mike is an expert body and paint guy and he often did side jobs in the shop and also worked on restoring a couple of his own cars.
Eventually Mike got married to Jodi. They later moved out of Lindert’s house and bought their own place a few miles away. Mike maintained a rental agreement with Lindert to occupy the workshop – about two-thirds of it really. Lindert kept about a third for some of his own stuff. Lindert came up with some shop equipment at some point, including a vertical mill and a lathe that he added to the shop.
As a body man, Mike is well-versed in working with sheet metal. Fabricating parts from billet on a mill or lathe would be a new experience though. Mike Hall and I thought it seemed simple enough and we decided to teach ourselves. Last Friday, we attempted to mill a pocket cut in a block of 7075-T6 aluminum. It was a humbling experience. We both had seen these operations performed many times and thought we had a basic understanding of the process. After breaking a couple of bits and fighting with the machine, we decided it was time to regroup.
I came home with my tail between my legs and did what I should have done from the start. I became a student and over the next few days, read everything I could find about milling aluminum and viewed YouTube tutorials. There are lots of things to be considered when milling metals – rotational speed, feed speed and depth of cut are just the beginning. There’s conventional milling and climb milling to consider – and on and on. I think I’m on the right path now and I’m anxious to try my hand at it again.
Donna was scheduled to play in a pickleball tournament – ladies only – on Saturday. But weather intervened. Rain moved in Friday night and continued off and on all day Saturday. We’d had great weather with the daily highs reaching the upper 70s and even 80 degrees all last week until the weekend – just the opposite of what went on the weeks before. Saturday and Sunday were much cooler, but today the sun is shining and the forecast calls for continued sunshine and temperatures back in the upper 70s for the rest of the week.
I’ll close this post with a few dinner photos from the past ten days or so.
First up was a new dish – garlic mushroom chicken thighs. It was quick and easy to prepare and delicious – a keeper for sure. Donna served it with black rice and steamed spinach with feta cheese.
Next up was another winner – spice rubbed pork chops cooked in the crockpot. Donna’s been using the crockpot every Wednesday so she doesn’t have to cook a meal after her two-hour band rehearsals. This was another very simple recipe with incredible flavor thanks to seven different herbs and spices. And it was perfect over a serving of garlic cauliflower mash and a side of steamed spinach.
Last but not least, we tried another crockpot recipe that turned out great – seafood cioppino. This dish required more preparation time than the other two, but the flavor was superb. She served ciabatta bread with my helping and served hers over roasted spaghetti squash. This was a surprisingly filling dish!
