Tech

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Still in Dallas

I can’t believe it’s already Friday. I thought I’d be on my way to Kansas by now! My host is in absolutely no hurry to get rid of me (thank you!) and the weather up north is so iffy. I might as well hang out a few more days. I have to say that I really like Dallas. It just feels like a more accessible city driving-wise than did San Antonio. Then again, I’m not doing any driving here. 🙂

Today is an at home day working on projects. Ms. Cinnamon has a tentative field trip planned for tomorrow.

I had to call the bank holding my RV mortgage to make some changes to my account. In the past, such changes have had to be made in person at a branch, but then they started to accept signed faxes. Today, they accepted a scanned document sent by email! It’s so nice to see business practices finally moving into the 21st century. I had tried the fax route using a free ‘fax from your computer’ service and the bank got the fax, but not the signature for some weird reason. I was able to use my wonderful printer to not only scan the signed document, but also email it.

For some reason, the address change I made last year didn’t stick, so they still had me living in Dawson City. The lady was delightfully confused about my Alberta mailing address and North Dakota telephone number. Ah, the life of a wandering nomad!

I checked the balance on the loan and it is more than half paid, which makes sense since I’m at about the halfway mark in payments. It’s really exciting to finally be on the right side of the loan. If a worst case scenario happened, I’d now be able to get out of this loan and have enough left over for a decent down payment on another used rig. Not that I would want this to happen!!!!!

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Breakfast With Half of San Antonio

Croft emailed this morning to ask if I wanted to join them for breakfast before going to Camping World. He had Googled best breakfast in San Antonio, or something along those lines, and got the Magnolia Pancake Haus. It was out in the middle of seemingly nowhere and half of San Antonio was waiting for a table. We had to wait just over an hour to be seated!

Norma went to the spa next door to try to get her eyebrows done, but others had had the same idea and that place was packed, too!

We ended up sitting outside and chatted with the other people waiting. Everyone said that we were lucky to have found the restaurant and that it would totally be worth the wait.

When we finally got a seat, I was pleased that it wasn’t in a super crowded and boisterous dining room. We started off with absolutely delicious coffee, which is always a good sign at a breakfast joint.

Since this was a German restaurant, I made sure to try their sausage, and wasn’t disappointed! My ‘short stack’ of pancakes was light and fluffy. Yum!

Norma had the bananas foster French toast, which ended up being dense slices of banana bread served French toast-style with strawberries and black berries. I had a bite and it was really good! The portion was ridiculous, though, so she brought a lot home. She also enjoyed her two poached eggs on the side.

Croft ordered the specialty, which I will not attempt to spell. It’s a thin pancake stuffed with apples and spices. Really good too (yes, I sampled some of his also!), but there’s no way I could have eaten all that. I’ve really cut back on how much sugar I eat and one bite was more than enough for me.

If you’re into breakfast food, you really need to try Magnolia Pancake Haus in San Antonio!

We headed to the Camping World after. It’s in New Braunfels, north of San Antonio. I have been looking for knobs for my Atwood stove for years and keep striking out. This parts guy was at least able to get me a SKU # for Camping World so I can try to find some at another store along my route. Every other Camping World I’ve stopped at I’ve been told that they don’t have those knobs and good luck finding them.

With breakfast taking so long, we only just got in, at 4PM! I don’t think any of us are going to be eating tonight!

I’m paid up here at the RV park up to and including tonight. I’m pulling out late morning and am expected in Dallas dinnertimeish.

I’ve enjoyed my stay in San Antonio except for one irksome detail that never ceases to surprise me: the internet connection SUCKS. I’ve got full bars on my phone and I have slower than dial up internet! This is surprising considering how close I am to a major city. I had high speed internet on the beach! The other night, I had to download a 200MB file and ended up having to try four McDonalds and a Starbucks in between them to find a connection stable enough to let me download the file, and it still took two hours! I’m trying to do some research right now and sites keep timing out. I am really tired of losing so much time because of a crappy internet connection. Hopefully Dallas will be better!

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Panera Morning

Gah, another heavy sky day ahead and I was down 45AH this morning. I ran the engine for an hour and gained 7AH, but that still put me at 38AH down and no charging in sight. It was definitely going to be a coffee shop kind of day.

I’d noticed a Panera Bread while running errands the other day, so I headed out there. It’s quiet, the food’s good, there’s power, and I’m even using the wifi since I am going through bandwidth like crazy this month and my cell connection is SUPER slow in Von Ormy (which is strange since I had high speed internet on the beach).

The only downside is that they don’t serve soup until lunch and I didn’t want to be here during the lunch rush, so I’m having to make due with a sandwich when I really wanted a bowl of their broccoli cheddar soup. I may end up taking some to go for my dinner! I did score a free brownie since I had my birthday recently. How lovely of them! It just came up when the gal scanned my card. This is the second or third time I’ve had a freebie in the short time I’ve had and used the card.

It is nice to get an excuse to go out like this, but, really, a little sun would be nice!

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An External Replacement For the MacBook Pro Superdrive

I would like to once again thank all my readers who shop through my Amazon link. It never ceases to amaze me how such a small thing that costs you nothing makes such a huge difference to my bottom line.

The SuperDrive (DVD/CD reader and writer) on my Macbook Pro has been increasingly fussy and it has finally decided to stop recognizing any of my DVDs. Replacing a SuperDrive is not really a DIY project and it is very expensive to have it done by Apple. The recommendation is to replace it with an external drive.

Thanks to my Amazon commissions this month, I was able to go ahead and order one this week without even having to debate with myself whether I can live without a DVD player for the foreseeable future.

My first choice was no longer available, so I bought a Samsung Ultra Portable Slim DVD+/-RW USB External Drive, Black SE-218BB/RSBS.

It is very small, barely bigger than a DVD and about as thick as a DVD case. Best of all, it is powered by USB only, so I don’t need to run the inverter to use it. Installation was easy. I just plugged it into the computer, popped in a disc, and started watching a movie. My SuperDrive has not recognized that disc in years!

Getting this replacement was perfect timing since the movie Lincoln just came out on DVD, too, so I picked that up as well. So you can all guess what I’m doing tonight. 🙂

You can buy just about anything on Amazon, like paint to refinish the new cubbies you bought for the office. My Amazon commissions free up so much of my budget for other things. Thank you again to everyone who shops through my link.

In other news, the weather I’ve been experiencing in San Antonio apparently isn’t typical for this time of year. All I can say is that it has pretty much sucked for solar charging. I’m doing fine, but the forecast doesn’t give me hope of a full charge any time soon.

I just renewed for another six nights, taking me to noonish on the 4th of April. The weather up north is crappy, rent here is cheap ($5 a night), and I’m waiting for mail to come from Canada. Six more nights puts me at two nights past my original plan of two weeks, so I’m still on track with the original schedule. I’ll reevaluate next week. This is just such a good location. I feel so far from anywhere, but I’m less than five minutes from I-35.

A weekend-long project came in, so I’ll be pretty busy for the next few days, which suits me just fine since I had so much time off this week. I’ll try to remember to pop in with a proof of life at some point. 😉

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A Maddening Wind

I was awakened at about 3:30 this morning by a loud gale. I stumbled out of bed to close all the windows and roof hatches, which effectively deadened the sound of the howling wind.

But was I able to get back to sleep? No. Why? My %@&%*@( air condition rattles like the dickens. I noticed it was bad on the beach, but it was never when I was trying to sleep.

Tabitha and I would just start drifting off and then, RATTLE, RATTLE, RAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTLLLLEEE, RATTLE. OMG.

Anyone have tips for a rattling AC?