RV Nomads

Well I moved the rvnomads.us web site from my previous web host to my own space on the internet. This computer is a virtual one that I have full control over, unlike with my old provider. There are good and bad things about this arrangement. The good is that I have total control here including setting up of the web server and what software I want to run. This is something that does not happen in a hosted site. The bad thing is that I have total control over this. I am not totally on my own there is support provided but this machine is really my responsiblity. I think that all things will work out fine though.

Well yesterday we went to visit my daughter and son-in-law. They live in the Chicago suburbs. Mike and Tracy went along with and we all had a nice visit. Both of them are looking a bit better. Chris seems more healthy than she has been lately and Rob seems like he can move a bit better. Both still have major medical problems though and I hope that they remain in as good of health as possible for them. Oh, while we visited I worked on getting rid of malware that had gotten onto my daughter's computer. Nothing but computer issues. There are times that I wish we could go back to pencils.

After our visit with them we went to a Frys Electronics, which is a bit south of my daughters, and I purchased a new computer. Found out today that maybe I didn't get the right one for what I wanted to do. I got one with an Intel CPU (a Q8300) that I thought would have hardware virtual computer technology. I found that it did not. I probably should have purchased the one with the Phenom AMD CPU that I was looking at instead because all of those AMD chips supposedly have the technology that I want. I am going to see if I can get this computer to do what I want it to do though which is to run my Clarion programming language which is a 16 bit program. Vista 32 bit will run it but the computer that I have is running Vista 64 bit. I also heard from some of my tech friends that Windows 7 has a virtual capability that will allow me to run XP so I may be able to work with the 16 bit programming. The other thing that I could do is to upgrade to the latest Clarion program which I think is 32 bit and I do own it. I am just not quite ready to do that yet though. Even if I do my compiled software program will not run in a 64 bit system, even though it compiles as 32 bit, because of one of the library DLLs that it uses needs to be 64 bit to work and my 32 bit program will not talk to the 64 bit driver. Nothing but problems.

Visited my son and his family today. His job is changing a bit. He gets to keep what he has but now has more work to do, I think a lot more, and will not be home near enough to be with his wife and son. This is due to the Rockford IL area economy. I just looked up the unemployment rates and the raw data shows the rate at about 15%.

President Bush sure did leave us with a legacy. Some people are now starting to blame Obama for this but he is not the one that got us into all of this. The blame lands squarely on Bush's shoulders. I really do not understand how people felt that he could run this country when he couldn't run any of the businesses he ever had and the country is a lot harder to deal with. I am not so sure that Obama can clean up the mess that Bush left us in. Then again I am not sure that anyone can really clean up his mess.

Been having an issue with my desktop computer that I thought I may have fixed by reseating all of the cards and memory, apparently I did not. Without warning the computer will just stop as though someone just pulled the power plug. Thought that it might be a overheating problem but even when the computer has not been running it will sometimes not even make it past the boot process. Sometimes it will run for hours and then others it is just minutes. Found that part of the problem might be memory. Also thought of maybe a bad power supply or wireless network card, which is new. Decided that since the computer is about 3 years old and has been bouncing down the road with us that instead of spending a lot of money replacing parts in the hope of fixing it that it is now time to replace the computer. Between this and the truck money this is becoming a very expensive month.

Took the truck in for repairs. There is an oil leak someplace that my mechanic thought they had fixed when we were in this are in June. Well they did fix that leak but there is another. Apparently the oil pan has some soft rust spots in it and the oil is seeping from them. So the oil pan needs to be replaced. Problem with that is that the first instruction for replacing the oil pan on this truck is to pull the engine out. This is what the Ford dealer in Sevierville wanted to do so apparently they may have gotten the diagnosis correct when I took it to them in March. The thing is though that they wanted to charge about $2800 to fix it and Auto Clinic, who I totally trust, is going to charge about $1500. When they ordered the new oil pan they found out that this is a fairly common problem for this particular truck, a 2002 Ford F350 7.3 diesel. That is probably why the Ford dealer caught the problem right away, they were inclined to think rusty oil pan and the Auto Clinic didn't think that way. Interesting thing is though that if I did have the Ford dealer fix it in March I would still have been leaking oil from the oil seals by the turbo which they did not catch and Auto Clinic did. The Ford dealer was not inclined to look further than the oil pan to find the leak on the upper part of the engine.