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June 7, 2008 to June 13, 2008
We were expecting a visit from our good friends Gary and Terri Metz (see RV Friends) but, we didn’t know that they would be arriving today. We were expecting them to show up here sometime next week, when we received a call telling us that they were on their way. They had flown into Charlotte Airport a couple of days ago and had planned to visit the Asheville area as well as visit with family members to the north of us. We were to be their last stop before they headed back to Northern California via Charlotte. It turned out that their Asheville visit was abbreviated and their family members weren’t available, so they headed straight for our place.
Since we had just gotten home yesterday from four days in the RV, that didn’t leave us much time to straighten up the house and stock some food items before they would be arriving here.
One reason for their trip to North Carolina was to get a feel for what the state has to offer retirees. Gary is planning to retire soon and they have their California home on the market. Like many retirees, they want to move to a quieter and less expensive part of the country and North Carolina is very popular among retirees these days. Since hotels and motels are so expensive, we offered them the use of our spare bedroom while they were here and we gave them a garage door opener and a key to the house so that they could come and go as they pleased.
During the day they spent most of their time with a realtor checking out houses and trying to decide if the Pinehurst/Southern Pines area was to their liking. We guess it was because they made an offer on a place in nearby Aberdeen contingent upon the sale of their home.
We hadn’t seen the Metz’s in quite a while, so we spent much of our time together catching up on things and going out to eat. It’s always nice to visit with old friends and our seven days together gave us plenty of time for those activities.
When they left here on Friday morning, we told them that we would “hold down the fort” until they get back to the area. At this point all they need to do is sell their California home to make their North Carolina move a reality. We fear that won’t be an easy thing to do in today’s housing market but, we wish them luck.
June 15, 2008 - Father's Day
Here it is another Fathers Day. I’m not really into the “Hallmark Holidays” all that much but, it still means a lot to get a phone call from our two girls on any special occasion. Heather, the oldest, was calling from her home while the call from Jennifer was made from San Jose Int’l Airport where she was between flights. Thanks a lot for the calls girls!
And a special thanks goes out to Joe and Jonthea who live in Brighton, UK for their nice email. They are the first ones to notice that our website URL was inspired by a prop in a movie. Thanks again folks, and hope to see you visit the USA at some point in the future!
June 27, 2008
Earlier in the year we started to have problems with our computer. Its performance was very slow and there were other issues with it as well. We’ve had the computer, a desktop Compaq Presario, for quite a few years and it’s always worked okay but we felt that it might be nearing the end of its life. The obvious thing for us to do was to start shopping for a new one.
I have to say going in that I have a love/hate relationship with computers. The problem is that I don’t understand them and I have no desire to learn anything about them. I use this machine to send and receive emails, check the news, update the website and to play the occasional game. That’s it. I’ve never used a computer to actually “compute” anything and I probably never will. This is the “love” part of my relationship with computers.
The “hate” part involves the many problems that we’ve had with computers over the years. Like problems with hard drives, software, mice, monitors, keyboards, software and more. It’s enough to drive a person crazy. To illustrate, I once took the hard drive out of one of our old problematic computers and it beat it to a pulp with a two-pound hand sledgehammer. I really pounded the heck out of it and it felt great! I highly recommend this type of self-administered therapy because I know it works.
But getting back to our search for a new computer. We had heard good things about Dell computers so we took a look at the Dell website to see what they had to offer. They have a system where people can order computers with just about every bell and whistle available in the market place. Some of the computers we looked at were amazing but so was their price. We wanted something basic but we didn’t want to break the bank. We were also a little intimidated by the notion of having to learn the Windows Vista operating system regardless of which computer model we decided on.
That’s when we spotted a section of the Dell website offering a limited number of computer models available with the older Windows XP system. To our delight the computers that were offered with the XP system were also fairly basic and less money.
We placed our order for a Dell Inspiron (where do they get these names?) model 530S. We placed our order one day and to our utter amazement the computer showed up at our door the next morning. Just about the time that our old Compaq started to run better than ever I might add.
With the old Compaq running great for (no apparent reason), we decided to put the new Dell away until we had time to switch everything over. So there it sat in the closet for months gathering dust. We had never even turned it on to see if it worked. It just sat there while the old Compaq worked better then ever. It seemed that we didn’t really need a new computer after all.
But after a while our conscience got to us and we decided to fire up the new Dell and put it to work. So for the past week Margo has been transferring all of our files and data from the old computer to the new one. It’s a long, tedious job but we’re now up and running 100% with the new Dell.
As far as the old Compaq goes, I’ll spare it my sledgehammer technique. It’s been a pretty good computer and doesn’t deserve to be abused. We’ll be keeping it as a backup computer and we might even buy a cheap monitor for it.
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