Senior Pass & Bad Computers

Good news first. Yesterday I drove to Rocky Mountain National Park and obtained a Senior Pass. I’ve been waiting a long time to be able to do this because this is one of the few great deal left. For $10, I received a lifetime pass to all National Parks, National Monuments, National Historic Sites and several national sites run by the federal government. Entrance fees to these types of sites range anywhere from $7-$10 and I have probably spent over $100 this year on entrance fees. For my $10, I now have a lifetime of free entry, not only for myself but up to three more adults as well!

The good news doesn’t stop there either. I will also get a 50% discount on camping fees in National Parks/Monuments, Forest Service and BLM campgrounds. These fees can run anywhere from $9-$30 so I can really save a bundle here too.

My intention yesterday was to drive to the park and do a little hiking before returning home. I got a bit of a late start leaving home and didn’t get to the park (a two hour drive) until 11 am. Even in mid week during July and August, the park is crammed with visitors and I couldn’t find a relatively short hike that wasn’t like walking on a crowded street so I opted to drive Fall River Road and Trail Ridge Road instead. Even with numerous cars in front of and behind me, this drive is so beautiful that it made me smile. I brought along a lunch of canned salmon and some cheese crackers and was able to find a nice place to eat lunch without throngs of other people (see pic to left).

All in all it was a great day. I got a mountain fix and a great deal. Life is good.

Life can be bad too and I discovered that Monday morning when I returned home from my trip to California. The Emmer had reported that the internet had been down all weekend and upon investigation I found that my wireless router had quit on me. Simple enough, I thought. Just replace it….That part wasn’t too hard but then my wireless printer, that I just bought two weeks ago, wouldn’t work. Six hours later, and two hours on the phone with the help desk and I finally had things running smoothly again.

I’m thinking about taking a fishing trip next week up into the mountains so stay tuned for complete plans.

Thanks for visiting.

When It Rains It Pours

This will describe the weather here for the last few days….heavy thunderstorms in the afternoon. This is not what this post is about however. It seems as if all the good times and good living is catching up to me. The Gods are throwing some bad luck my way to atone for all the good stuff that’s happened lately.

The first bit of bad luck concerns my 1999 Suzuki Grand Vitara. I’ve had it in the shop several times over the last few months for a variety of items that have put a dent in my wallet. I thought I had worked through all of the problems until this past Friday. An intermittent problem struck again. I hate intermittent problems! They are the toughest to find and fix and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that when my mechanic looks at the car, the problem won’t be there. The problem involves a very rough running engine that almost feels like one cylinder is not firing properly. It occurs at start up and will last for varying lengths of time….but it doesn’t happen at every start up. The check engine light illuminates but a diagnostic check shows nothing. So, tomorrow morning I guess I’ll have to take the car and leave it for a day or two at the garage and cross my fingers.

The second problem involves my desktop computer. We have both a desktop and a laptop computer in the house. I guess I should have said “We had….” Yesterday when The Bride tried to access the internet all hell broke loose with the computer. All kinds of error messages popped up continually and porn sites kept popping up on Internet Explorer even though my default browser is Firefox. I tried to run a McAfee scan in between pop ups and then even tried to run a restore program but most of the files had been corrupted by that time…….Trojan horse!

I have no idea how I became infected because I am very security conscious about my computers and never open unknown files. However it happened, it pretty well trashed the 4 year old desktop. Because it was four years old I decided to not even try to to have a computer whiz put everything back together again. For the price of a couple of hours of computer whiz, I could just buy a new computer….which I did. I am now the owner of two laptops. It didn’t make much sense to buy another desktop when today’s laptops have the same amount of memory and storage as a desktop, for about the same price.

So as I sit here typing this post I’m also trying to install all the programs on the new computer. It seems as if I might have a problem with some of the older printers I have. Everything nowadays is configured for wireless connection but I have three older printers and a scanner that do not have USB connections so this switch of computers might cost me the price of an all in one wireless printer in addition to the cost of the computer itself. I hate it when I get surprised like that!

It better stop pouring by Thursday of this week because The Bride and I are scheduled to fly to the left coast for a visit with my daughter CaJenn and her hubby of just one year…CaJon. We haven’t seen them since the wedding last year so we are looking forward to the trip.

Thanks for visiting.

Will The Chickens Dance In The Snow?

Another weather flag is up for this weekend! I know we need the moisture but can I get a break here? I have been patiently working my way through the last month of weekends of snow and missed forecasts of snow but it’s now starting to grate on me. Especially this weekend, when The Bride and I, and Guitar and Pic-E are scheduled to travel to the SE Colorado plains to view the Lesser Prairie Chickens do their annual mating dance. A weird thing to do you say? Well, it may be but this bird puts on a terrific show, so I’m told. It may also be that in just a few years these birds will be extinct so this trip does have some urgency to it.

The forecast is not much help…even though we’re only 2 days away from whatever happens. The good news is that the forecast is pretty definite for Sunday and Monday. Both of those days bounce back into the 60s and 70s. Right now there is a 50/50 chance for heavy snow along the front range that will make travel pretty risky. I was going to bring the RV here to the house to start preparations for the trip and to work on the graphics but I think I’ll wait and see what tomorrow brings.

On the blogging front, I’m creating this post using MS Live Writer. For all you non-techies what this means is that I can do a post without being hooked up to the internet. I can do both the text and pictures and even preview what the post will look like and then save it on my computer. When I get access to the internet I just upload the post.

I haven’t been able to try out this software before this because I had two big computer roadblocks…Windows Vista operating system and I used Firefox as a web browser. The Windows Vista conflict was solved some time ago but in Microsoft’s inimitable manner they engineered the software so that it would only work with a Microsoft browser…Internet Explorer. For a number of reasons I have refused to use that browser for years.

At any rate the roadblocks have been removed and I am now trying this software out. I do like the fact that I can compose a post, complete with pictures and links and be able to see the post in a WYSIWYG format on my computer without an internet connection. This will allow a bit more authenticity to posts I compose while on some of my trips. In the past I have either had to wait until I was somewhere that had an internet connection to do posts or I had to write the text in a word processing format, without pictures and links, save it, and then when I had internet connection, import the text and then insert the pictures. So far I’m pleasantly pleased with this Microsoft product.

While I’m doing a computer post I’ll also mention that I have been disenchanted with the Microsoft Office suite of products for some years as well. I didn’t like the way Microsoft made it difficult for any other software to interact with their products and I didn’t like the cost of their products. About a year and a half ago I decided to give Open Office a try. This is a free open source suite of products that includes word processing, spread sheet, data base, presentation, graphics and calculator modules and it is every bit as good as MS Office. It even allows you to make pdf files. I can recommend this as a professional grade, low cost solution for those of you that don’t want to spend the money on a Microsoft product.

I was bummed over the past few months when it looked like Microsoft would purchase Sun Microsystems who is the creator of Open Office. I was concerned that if the purchase went through that they, Microsoft, would make this great, free product disappear. I was happy to see that the deal fell through.

Thanks for visiting.

Bad Computers and Good Computers

It's amazing how much computers influence our lives. Today I'm dealing with two very different computer issues.

The first issue (Bad Computer) is one that I fear will send me the last little bit of the way to a babbling, spittle drooling, eye twitching, neurotic foot tapping, simpering, whimpering.....well, you get the idea. This computer issue involves the engine computer in my 1999 Suzuki, Grand Vitara. It's an issue that has been going on for about four months now and may just continue until this vehicle ends up on the scrap pile.

About four months ago after driving to a nearby store, I returned to the car and started it up. The engine started but ran like it was missing one cylinder. The engine shook coughed and had almost no power at all. I had a sinking feeling but thought if I could only get back home I could deal with the problem more easily. I made it home but the whole way the "Service Engine Soon!!!" light flashed in my face and I had visions of the engine either exploding or dropping out of the car onto the highway. After getting home I considered my options and just to be sure I really had a problem I went out to the garage and restarted the car. The "Service Engine Soon !!!" light was still on but the engine ran close to normal so I decided to take it to my local mechanic. The mechanic did a diagnostic check (That will be $60.00 please) and found nothing. When they started the engine prior to the check the service light was NOT on.

To sooth the pain they said if I could get it over to them the next time this happened and the engine was still running like it was missing a cylinder they would do another diagnostic check and not charge me for it.....You know where I'm going with this don't you? The problem repeated itself two more times over a period of about 3 months. Each time I struggled to get the car to my mechanic only to find that the diagnostic test revealed nothing. The local mechanic finally said that I would be best in taking it to the Suzuki dealer (In other words, get lost!) as it was almost certainly an engine computer problem. Since the problem always corrected itself in a relatively short period of time I just lived with it until last week. The Bride was driving the car when it had one of these seizures. By the time she got back home she had the look about her that I described in the second paragraph of this post and suggested, strongly, that I find some way to resolve the problem.

This morning I took the vehicle to the Suzuki dealership and explained the problem hoping they would say, "Oh yeah, we know about that. It's the fritzle fratzle and it will cost you about 5 cents to fix." Instead they told me that if the "Service Engine Soon You Idiot!!) light was not on and the problem wasn't actually occurring when they inspected the engine, they really couldn't do anything. They would be glad to run a $110 diagnostic test (Note to His-self: Thank the local mechanic for not gouging you another $50 for the test) but they could categorically say that it would show nothing and it probably was a engine computer problem of some sort.

So.....I guess I'll have to live with this problem until something breaks so bad that they will be able to figure out what the problem is....Problem is for me, that probably means the engine will have to quit completely somewhere and with my luck it will be in a VERY inconvenient place. BAAAAD Computer.

To balance things off here's a Good Computer issue. I have two computers that I use both of which are pretty important to me. I have a laptop that I use everyday and that I take with me on my trips. I also have a desktop that The Bride uses on a regular basis and that runs our home finance program. I have been living ever so on the edge because I have never backed up either computer. I have backed up the data for the home finance program but that is the only backup I have ever done. I know, I know, that is a very dangerous thing and I have been extremely lucky. Well, today I decided to buy and external hard drive and do the right thing by backing up both computers.

Most of the office supply stores were advertising a 500GB external hard drive this week for $99. That's large enough to back up both of my computers on the same drive and at $99 it's a deal. Everything is plug and play and very easy. So, in the time it has taken me to write this post, I have backed up both computers and now I have eliminated one of those nagging fears I've been carrying around for quite a while........had to make room for the Bad Computer, car blowing up fear.

Thanks for visiting.

Arrgh, Computers

Computers are like women…can’t live with them and can’t live without them. What’s a fellow supposed to do?

Having REALLY, SERIOUSLY, ABSOLUTELY gotten everyone’s attention and probably ensured that I will not have a peaceful weekend as well, I will now “touch” on a subject that both men and women will most likely agree on.

My number one computer rant is Passwords! Passwords work. They do keep my data secure. If I can’t get to the data it is secure because I can’t screw it up or leave it unprotected so someone else can screw it up, and I can’t get to it because it is humanly impossible to remember all the damn passwords that are required in our computer age!

Let’s see, I have passwords for:

Banking account
Credit union account
Insurance account
Retirement fund
Trailer forum
Metal detecting forum
College classmates forum
Yahoo
Google
Sitemeter
Adsense
Blogger
Orbitz
Cheap Tickets
eBay
Amazon
National parks reservations
State parks reservations
Computer network at work
Computer at home
3 different outside sites I use at work
Probably 5 other miscellaneous sites that require “protection”

That’s 28 passwords. Now, I’m no fool. I’m a college graduate. In grade school I memorized all the state names and capitols in alphabetical order. Yeah, yeah I know there were only 48 states then.

I memorized all of the presidents in chronological order and the periodic element chart and the Hail Mary and the Pledge of Allegiance and all kinds of dirty limericks. I can recite the Table of Organization and Equipment of a combat Infantry Brigade.

I CANNOT, however, keep up with 28 passwords. Even my well tuned ability to “cheat the system” doesn’t work because the rules for passwords are different and no matter how I try, I can’t find one password to cover to cover everything.

My brain has more important things to do than try to keep these 28 things burned indelibly on a few of it’s cells. It has to remember what I had for dinner last night. It better damn well remember my wife’s birthday or I won’t need the computer anyhow. It has to remember what pills I need to take in the morning and which ones I need to take at night. It needs to remind me to check the position of the toilet seat when I go to the bathroom at 2 am in the dark….THIS is where I need to be protected.

Thanks for visiting!