Model Trains of Foley, AL

 Today was boys' day-out and girls' day-out.  While the ladies (Donna, Judy, & Terry) went to Fairhope, AL for shopping, the guys (David, Greg, & Mike) ate, talked trucks & trailers and went to to the Model Train Museum in Foley, AL.  I think everyone had a great time, and we all got together for dinner at Lambert's Cafe to celebrate Mike's birthday.

 I don't have any pictures from the ladies, but you know we got pics of the model trains!  Hope you enjoy them!

Until next week, everyone stay warm & dry. David

Cold!

We've been fortunate this season staying fairly warm & dry, but the "Siberian Express" finally got to us with the cold weather.   Not too cold, but the last couple of days are the coldest we've experienced so far this season with morning temps dipping to around 27* F or so.  Suppose to get warmer tomorrow with some rain over the weekend.

Friends Mike & Terry (& Ike) have arrived at the park.  We met these guys while at the Buffalo Roundup in Custer State Park (South Dakota) several years ago.  They were at Santee State Park (outside San Diego) when we were there and also dropped by last November at Stone Mountain State Park (Georgia) a day or so before we left to head to Alabama.  We haven't actually set eyes on them just yet, but we know their truck & trailer are here.  Hopefully get to see them at lunch tomorrow.  And we have to figure out a way to not be meeting in such cold temperatures!

Donna's new computer seems to still be working, so we may be OK there.  Unfortunately, this week's adventure is a missing package of  two 1139 LED light bulbs I was going to experiment with in the reading lights.  Current status is that they tried to delivery them and no one was here to receive them.  Reasonable status until you see the date & time and realize that the time they say they tried to deliver them was exactly the date & time I was outside recharging our portable soft water unit.  And there's definitely no "sticky" with the info I need to go find them or properly fill out a "redirect" for delivery.

Adding insult to injury, when I ordered these light bulbs, I couldn't have them shipped to a US Post Office box. (We rent a Post Office box every season when we're down here.)  Now guess who the company shipped the bulbs via?  You got it - US Post Office.  We've already had the discussion  on why the US Post Office couldn't deliver to a US Post Office Box.  Latest status is that the bulbs are still in "redelivery".  I'm betting we never see them.

In other news, water pump still works - I was the problem as I was moving the wiring around & losing it up by covering it up with a towel when I changed out the water filter.  Also figured out what was clogging out the water filter every two weeks.  I thought it was the rust in the water down here (rust from our site's city water pump handle), but the salt we're using was clumping & clogging the water filter (we use 0.5 micron filters).  A good shake of the salt container before adding to the water softener unit seems to have solved that problem.  We're back to changing a filter every month while we're down here as we've done in the past.  I'm sure the water pump wiring appreciates that!

Anyway, that's it from here.  Everyone stay warm!  Later, David

Ghosts of NMCI Return

Time flies when you're having fun.  Another week is gone by quickly.  Donna continues her long bike rides with the Folks-on Spokes group.  Long walks for me.  We haven't been all that cold this season, but that looks like it's going to change over the next week or so.  And we got a surprise visit from Steve & Susan yesterday and had a great dinner at Mikee's.  (We all had gift certificates, so the choice was easy.)  Ate too much, but enjoyed every bite of it.  Told Weight Watchers to "stick it" and got all-you-can-eat grilled shrimp.  It's only points, anyway.

Donna's decided to get a new computer, and she got a Windows 8.1 one.  Hence the title of this week's post.  For those of you unfamiliar with NMCI, it stands for Navy Marine Corps Intranet.  In the name of security, it created a system that required a hacker to use.  At one point before I retired, I was convinced that my sole purpose as a navy civil servant was to report the daily issues that I was having with my computer.  It was so bad that people started buying their own computer and bring them to work & travel in order to get things done.   Then I retired.  I understand NextGen has taken its place.

Getting back to Donna's new computer, after a weekend of it trying to shut down we finally let the battery run down, took it back and exchanged it for a new one.  (FWIW:  when we did a "hard" shutdown, it would just restart & say it was shutting down.)  During our first trip there, we'd learned that one of the ladies who worked on the Geek Squad had worked on NMCI.  I politely informed her that I didn't have much patience, and NMCI took what little I had for IT away.  Hence this week's title.  So this was our second trip to the Best Guy/Geek Squad to get it fixed in a week.  Plus we'd used all our 15GB/month of data just uploading updates and other software we wanted on the new computer, so we had them load all the updates on the new one.

So we get the new one home Monday evening with all the updates and within an hour, we got what I've nicked named "the purple screen of leave-me-on-and-check-back-tomorrow".  It had taken an hour for us to get this new computer in the condition that took us a week with the previous one.  After a couple of hours of me getting angrier & angrier with it, Donna went to bed and I contemplated how good it would feel to just take it outside, place it in the middle of the road & take our hammer to it.

About midnight I took a chance & tried to see if I could get task manager to come up and it did.  Turns out a mistaken download of an unwanted software program (when we had tried to download Malwarebytes) had installed itself and was scanning the computer every time we restarted it.  I disabled it in the Startup Menu, but the computer couldn't get past the unwanted program's report window.  Tried to reset the program's setting, but I had to finally buy the program's license to get to the program's settings and set it not to run at boot up.  Once that was settled, we got back to the purple "check me tomorrow" screen.  It wasn't trying to shut down - all we got was that purple screen and some "bubbles" twirling around.  Plugged it in and went to bed.

Woke up about 3:30 AM and decided to get up and check on it.  There it was, the start screen.  Decided it was fibbin' and did a restart.  Surprised me that it worked, but it did.  Took that opportunity to uninstall everything that we'd installed after loading our antivirus software and shut the computer off.   And back to bed.

Got up early and turned it on.  All seemed to be OK with it.  We loaded Malwarebytes as planned and it's been fine every since.  I've long believed and told people that Bill Gates made himself a billionaire selling us unfinished products that didn't work & about which he said they'd eventually fix, but never would.  Apparently, that's a core value of Microsoft.

Stay warm.  David

Hey, another weekly update!

We're still here!  Still out enjoying the weather, long walks & long bike rides...and eating out.

Donna's still getting use to her new computer.  However, I think she's decided she likes another one better.  We've got until Feb 11th to make that decision and exchange them.  In the meantime, we've been loading, refreshing and reloading software & windows updates so much that we've almost gone through our 15GB data allotment for the month.  If we do exchange the computers, we're going to leave it with the store and have them load all the window updates before we bring it home.  They have a better (faster?) internet connection, anyway, so we should take advantage of it.

We're still planning our "Exodus" from the gulf shores area.   Still getting "adjusted" to all the RV parks pricing themselves like Fort Wilderness at Disney World.  I guess the economy is getting better.  Back to the topic - today's plan still has us leaving March 10th & going to B'ham, AL & then to Stone Mountain, GA.  After that it's a weekend at High Point, NC; two weeks at Charleston, SC, then up to Cape Hatteras, NC for a week before arriving in Fredericksburg, VA.  Anyway, that's the plan so far.

Well, we're off to lunch tomorrow, groceries and possibly a stop at the post office.  Everyone have a great weekend.  Later, David