Tag Archives: Linux

2014/07/05 (S) Re-Search

Contractors who do outside work, such as excavators, builders, and landscapers are at the mercy of the weather, so they work when they can, and when they can work, they often put in long hours.  For those of us who made our living doing “white collar” work for companies with paid holidays, the 4th of July often meant a 3- or 4-day weekend.  For other kinds of workers, the 4th of July is a day off; one day, and for yet others (think retail) it is just another workday.  It doesn’t matter that it fell on a Friday this year.  The landscapers couldn’t work on Thursday because of the overnight rain.  No work means no pay.  Saturday July 5th, however, was forecast to be great weather for working outside, and with sunny skies and no rain since Thursday, our job site had dried out sufficiently to allow people and machines to work.  Alas, the holiday spirit was with them and they did not show up first thing this morning like I thought they might.

Since grand-daughter Madeline spent her second night in a row with us last night she was still here this morning.  Consequently we did not go to our ham radio club breakfast in South Lyon like we usually do on Saturday morning.  Madeline woke up hungry and Grandma Linda had her bottle warmed up and ready to go.  She had also prepped all of the ingredients for her yummy vegan blueberry pancakes.  Madeline had a little banana and some fresh blueberries while grandma cooked the pancakes and I made the coffee.  We all enjoyed our breakfast.

Madeline Eloise sitting on our fake rock in our front yard (it's the cover for our well).

Madeline Eloise sitting on our fake rock in our front yard (it’s the cover for our well).

After breakfast we played and read and went outside to walk around in the driveway.  Our son called and we figured out who was going to travel where and when to get Madeline back home.  He was working on a project to rebuild their front porch/steps and was involved in painting wood pieces prior to assembling them, so we agreed to drive Madeline to their house in Ann Arbor in time for a light lunch before her usual nap time.  That also allowed us to stop at the Whole Foods market near their house on our way out of town.  A Whole Foods market is the only thing we do not have in the Brighton/Howell/Hartland area that we truly miss.  We would shop there several times a week if we had one nearby.

I managed to sneak away to the basement occasionally to do a load of laundry and install 126 updates on our Linux computer.  The updates involved file downloads totaling just over of 310+ MB so I started the process and let it run.  We get an effective download speed from our AT&T High Speed Internet (HSI) DSL connection of just over 1 Mb/sec or 64 Mb/min.  That is roughly 8 MB/min.  At that speed, 320 MB takes about 40 minutes to transfer, assuming AT&T doesn’t detect the amount of data being transferred and “throttle” (slow down) the speed.  Cell phone companies are known to do this but it is less clear whether AT&T does that sort of thing with their landline services.

We got back to the house at 2:15 PM.  Linda developed a headache while we were out, so she took some meds, put the groceries away, and laid down to rest.  There was no sign of the landscapers and no phone call, so there was no chance at that point that they would show up today.  That was OK with us; it is a holiday weekend and it was their idea to come work today, not ours; I just said it was OK if that’s what they wanted to do.  Apparently they didn’t.  The one thing I was looking forward to was having Steve show me how to operate the Kobelco sk35sr-3 excavator and then practicing operating it by removing concrete blocks, bricks, downed trees, and other detritus from the woods by the road southwest of our house.  Just behind these woods is where they are piling all of the construction debris anyway, so I would be able to position the excavator to allow me to grab most of the trash out of the woods and then swing it over and deposit it on the pile.  Maybe Monday?

Yesterday I posted a question to the WordPress.org support forum for the Jetpack plug-in and I got a reply a couple of hours later that directly answered my question.  I wanted to install/activate the Jetpack on more than one self-hosted website and needed to know if I could use a single WordPress.com account or if I needed a separate account for each site?  I was glad to find out that I only needed the one account that I already have.  The Jetpack plug-in is massive overkill for what I need to accomplish immediately, but some of the reviews suggested that it is so comprehensive it may be the last plug-in I ever have to install.  That is unlikely for a number of reasons, and a bit contrary to the open source nature of WordPress and the international community of developers that support it, but the plug-in does have 33 different “components.”  For most of those features there are other plug-ins available–in some cases lots of them—but this provides everything in a neat package with its own special place on the admin panel menu.

Linda was feeling better after a long, much-needed nap but did not feel like cooking.  She picked up ingredients at Whole Foods today to make mock beef stroganoff but decided to make it tomorrow.  Our go-to for no-prep meals are the various frozen products from Amy’s.  We try to always have a few in the freezer for occasions when Linda does not have the time or interest to prepare a meal from scratch.  Tonight we had the lasagna.  Linda wanted some fresh greens with dinner but did not feel like making a salad so she used a bed of mixed greens as a base for the lasagna.  If that sounds a bit strange, all I can say is that it was very nice for both taste and texture.

I spent more time this evening investigating the WordPress Jetpack plug-in, the result of which was that I deferred installing and activating it.  The attraction of this plug-in is that the Carousel feature works with the existing WP Gallery shortcode(s).  That means it works retroactively with every page and post containing a WP Gallery and that I would continue to create galleries they way I always have using the native WP Gallery functionality.  That sounds like exactly what I need, except that on further investigation I started seeing comments about banner ads, and a feature that allows website/blog visitors to comment on individual images with no easy way to disable it.  The workaround involves custom CSS code.  Ugh.

I kept looking and found a plug-in where the “author” had simply “forked” (extracted) the code for the Carousel function from the Jetpack plug-in and offered it as a separate plug-in.  Ignoring whether that was even ethical, some of the reviews suggested that it did not work correctly and that support issues were not being resolved.  I need something more reliable and better supported so I kept looking and found a very extensive plug-in that was free and had been downloaded over 1,000,000 times!  Now that has to be a great plug-in, right?  Maybe; maybe not.  The reviews were very mixed and many seemed to complain about the constant “tinkering” the author does with the plug-in, issuing updates every 3 – 4 days.

If I was willing to spend money for a plug-in my options would be greatly expanded, but I have looked at those as well and they all have mixed reviews.  The leading contender is the NextGEN Gallery plug-in, but the biggest downside with all of these gallery plug-ins is that they do not work with the native WP Gallery shortcodes which, in turn, would require me to rebuild existing galleries from within the plug-in. The ones that I find the most annoying are the ones with a free version that turns out to just be a teaser; the features I need are always in the “pro” or “premium” version.  An episode of Doc Martin gave me a needed and entertaining break from my research, which is appropriate in this situation as I have searched for a good image display plug-in before and now I am searching for one again.

 

2014/05/22 (R) Still Resting

I called Mike (W8XH) last night and we agreed that it would be better for him to wait until I was better to come over and help us with our computer issues.  I finally got up around 8 AM, having spent 11 hours in bed.  I took a nice, warm shower and felt almost human.  Not well by any means, but enough better to have some granola for breakfast and catch up on the blogs I follow in Feedly.  It was a spectacularly beautiful morning and I opened all of the doorwalls and some of the windows.

I planned to take it easy today and maybe just sit on the rear deck and enjoy the weather, the view, and the sounds of the birds.  It got cloudy as the morning wore on and never got as warm as I had hoped so I closed up the house.  I worked at my desk for a while and got badly chilled and started shivering uncontrollably.  I had forgotten to turn the basement furnace zone back on and the temperature had dropped to 65 degrees.  I made some hot tea and some hot soup for lunch, which helped a little, and finally wrapped myself in an afghan and lay down on the couch.  Around 3:00 PM I called Henry Ford Health System Columbus Center in Novi, Michigan to see if I could get an appointment with our internal medicine doctor.  She was off tomorrow and it was too late to book an appointment with anyone else.  I was told to call back at 6:30 AM tomorrow for a same-day appointment.  Duly noted.  I went back to sleep on the couch.  The chills and shakes had left me completely drained to the point where I could not sit up or read.

I was finally tired of lying down, so I examined the printer drivers for our HP CLJ 3600n network printer on Linda’s Samsung laptop to see what was installed.  There were 40 files listed!  Someone has got to be kidding.  A notice popped up on her screen that Windows 8.1 was available as a free download.  I checked with Linda (it’s her machine, after all) and she gave me the green light.  I let it install and then restarted the machine.  I sent a test MS Word document to the printer and it printed just fine.  Great, so the printer can be installed under Windows 8 and then the machine updated to Windows 8.1, put it cannot be installed directly into Windows 8.1.  Microsoft “blames” HP stating that printer manufacturers are solely responsible for their drivers.  Even if true it’s still lame, very lame and there’s plenty of shame to spread over both companies.  It’s a “business class printer” designed for high volume use.  Since our volume is not high, our (expected) use is obviously long.  It’s enough to make my next computer a Linux box or a Mac and my next printer anything but an HP.

Speaking of which, I signed up for a free Intro to Linux course from The Linux Foundation offered through edX.  It starts August 1st.  My friend Steve has been trying to get me interested in Linux for a long time.  My problem has never been a lack of interest but a lack of a good, organized approach into the subject.  There are books on the subject, but I am unlikely to just sit down and read one as an academic exercise.  I have Linux running on one of my old computers (a dual processor Dell Precision Workstation) and Steve has been helping me set it up as a local web-server that I can use to test my WordPress sites, so that provides the needed sense of purpose.

I spent a little time in the evening uploading blog posts and then went to bed.  I can’t remember the last time I felt this bad.

 

2013_11-16_12-06 Time Flies

It’s been three weeks since my last post.  We have been incredibly busy, but that doesn’t mean I have much to write about.  Sometimes busy is just busy.  For my part, I’ve been neglecting our website and this blog in favor of designing, testing, and vetting three other WordPress-based websites; two for RV clubs and one for our local ham radio club.  That has taken a lot of my time, but I don’t mind.  It’s very interesting work that I chose to take on, and I’m learning a lot, which I enjoy.  But it isn’t necessarily all that interesting to write about.

I continue to discover useful WordPress plug-ins and learn how to use them.  I am using Participants-Database to create online member directories, WP-Members to block them from public view and require a username and password to view them, and Exclude-Pages to create web-pages that do not appear anywhere in the WordPress menu structure.  I am also using Meteor-Slides to create automated slide shows.  After a long and frustrating search for a good photo album / image gallery plug-in, I finally figured out how to create galleries using the native WordPress gallery function.  That was a major victory and I was so glad I persisted in my search instead of buying one.  I have also installed WP-Backup-2-Dropbox, which is automatically doing a weekly backup of all four of the sites to my personal Dropbox account.

Steve was over several times to work on the Linux box and we finally got one of the WordPress websites ported over and working!  We had to edit a few pointers in the wp-config.php file and set the permalinks back to default, but that did the trick!  Porting over the other three sites will have to wait, but eventually I will be able to install and test new plug-ins on my own local web-server and even develop content which I can then upload to the live site.  Working on the local web-server instead of the live web-host has a number of advantages.  For one, the system will respond more quickly.  But most importantly I won’t inadvertently take down one of my live sites.

Bus Conversions Magazine ran another one of my articles in the December 2013 issue.  This one was on the construction and installation of the new auxiliary air panel.  You can read more about it on our BCM page.

The new owner of BCM, Gary Hall, has faced and met a whole string of challenges since buying the magazine, but I remain confident that he is on the path to saving the magazine and not just making it viable, but making it better than it has ever been.  BCM remains a unique resource for the non-commercial bus converter and I am doing what I can to help keep it in business by subscribing and submitting articles.  It’s pretty simple really; the magazine needs subscribers, authors, and advertisers.  The problem is that each one of those groups wants the other two groups to be in place before they make a commitment.  No one wants to read a magazine with no content (articles and advertisements).  Authors don’t want to write for a magazine that no one reads and advertisers don’t support.  And advertisers don’t want to spend money placing ads in magazines with no content that no one reads.  Fortunately BCM has advertisers, authors, and subscribers, but they could use more of each.

If you are reading this blog post and you own a converted bus, are converting a bus, are thinking about converting a bus, or have a business that sells things that might be useful to people with converted buses, please consider subscribing to or advertising in Bus Conversions Magazine.  And if you are specifically converting a bus or working on one that is already converted, please consider writing one or more articles about the work you are doing, and take a lot of pictures to go with it.  You do not have to be a great writer or photographer.  If you provide them with a starting point the folks at BCM will work with you to turn it into a nice article.  And I can tell you from personal experience this past year that it is fun to see your articles in print.  In fact, your bus could be the “cover” and “centerfold.”  Now really, haven’t you always dreamed of that?  🙂

Starting with the January 2014 issue of BCM there will be another staffing change.  It appears that they are going to use my article on the FMCA GLAMARAMA 2013 rally that was held in Goshen, Indiana back in September 2013.  While the article is specifically about that rally, it is more generally about the experience of attending an RV rally put on by one of the large RV organizations.  Assuming the article runs, it will be my seventh article in 12 months and my third cover article.  Not bad for a beginner.  I have also agreed to “cover” the Arcadia 2014 Rally in Arcadia, Florida December 29-31.  It’s called the 2014 rally because it runs through New Year’s Eve with everyone departing on New Year’s Day.  This is one of the largest gatherings of converted buses currently taking place in the country, and it will be the first time Linda and I have attended.

Applying putty to base of Searchlight

Applying putty to base of Searchlight

The 19th, 20th, and 21st of November saw me back at Phoenix Paint in Edwardsburg, Michigan working on the bus and consulting with Michele Henry on the repair of the body panels and rear bumper fascia.  I was invited to spend the night at the house of fellow GLCC members Pat & Vickie’s nearby which saved me the cost of a motel and provide dinner and conversation.  Thank you both.

 

WiFiRanger MT permanent mount

WiFiRanger MT permanent mount

We We managed to fix the front roof-mounted remote-controlled searchlight and get it re-attached to the roof.  We also undid the temporary mounting (zip ties) of the WiFiRanger-MT (mobile titanium) and mounted it behind the front TV antenna to the driver’s side using the permanent roof-mount bracketing.  I removed the covers from the front and rear over-the-air TV antennas and was finally able to determine and map the direction they point to the numbers on the controller box.  That will finally allow us to know where we are aiming the antennas.

 

 

 

Access hole in utility bay floor

Access hole in utility bay floor

My last little project was to install the Critter-Guard.  There is a hole in the floor of the utility bay with a ring installed around it that is threaded to accept a screw-in cover.  The Critter-Guard consists of a circular piece of high-density foam, a two-piece plastic cover, and small latches to hold the cover in place.  I was not able to remove the old screws that secure the ring, so I drilled holes for new ones halfway in-between the old ones.  The product came with two sets of slightly different latches to accommodate just this situation.

Critter-Guard parts and instructions

Critter-Guard parts and instructions

Critter-Guard installed

Critter-Guard installed

With the latches installed, the electrical shoreline and fresh water hose were routed into the bay through the hole in the floor.  The foam is split along most of a diameter and has two holes in it (along the diameter line), one for the electrical shoreline, and the other for the fresh water hose.  The foam fits snuggly around these lines and into the hole in the floor.  The two-piece Critter-Guard cover plate is also split along a diameter and has two holes to match the holes in the foam.  The plate has a tongue on one piece and a groove on the other.  It is fitted around the shorelines on top of the foam and the latches are turned to hold it in place.  The net result is that “critters” cannot get into the bay through the utility line access hole.  I plan to submit this little project to Bus Conversions Magazine as a short article / product review.

As long as I’m talking about buses, I found a major air leak in Chuck’s Prevost H3-40 Liberty conversion.  As with all older buses, he has been plagued with air leaks.  Our mobile mechanic, Joe Cannarozzi, has fixed a lot of them by replacing air valves and tightening air lines, but leaks remain, and Chuck’s auxiliary air compressor was still running more often than it should while parked.  I was poking around in the bay under the driver’s seat—looking for the check valve that is usually installed in the air line from the auxiliary air compressor to the air system—when I heard a distinct hissing noise.  I heard it clearly, but it was at a frequency that Chuck did not hear.  He had a plastic tube stethoscope and I used it to clearly locate the leak as coming from the pressure control switch.  This switch (also known as a well pump switch when used in a water system) monitors the pressure in the auxiliary air system and turns the auxiliary air compressor on and off as needed to maintain the pressure between two set point limits.  Once I was able to place the stethoscope at the loudest point, Chuck was also able to hear it clearly.  He removed the old pressure switch, got the specs off of it, and I found an exact replacement in stock at Northwest Plumping Supply in Howell, not far from my house.  Chuck picked it up, installed it, and … no more air leak, at least not there.  The auxiliary air pressure is holding much better than it was before so the auxiliary air compressor is running much less frequently and Chuck (and Barbara) are much happier.  They things that make “bus people” happy are different from what makes most people happy.  You would probably have to try living in an RV to fully understand.

When Linda went in for her annual physical exam in early November she was able to talk to the nurse and find an opening for me.  I was able to get my lab work done a few days in advance, and the results were available in the Henry Ford Health System MyChart website that same afternoon.  I like having the lab work done in advance so that I can discuss the results with our doctor.  Everything was within the normal range, so I was pleased.  I got a new prescription for my nasal allergy medication and had to mail it in to our mail order pharmacy provider as this was the first prescription either of us has had filled since we switched our health coverage  to the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System on July 1st.

The Thanksgiving Spread

The Thanksgiving Spread

We went to our daughter’s house for Thanksgiving with family.  Linda and the two kids did all the cooking and we had a nice assortment of dishes, many vegan-friendly.  We got a Tofurkey for the two of us and it was very good.  (Everyone else had real turkey; boo.)  We had fresh grapes, fresh cranberry-orange salad, roasted Brussels sprouts, candied sweet potatoes, regular mashed potatoes, home make Parker House rolls (thanks Meghan!), some yummy cookies, some nice wine, and other things I can’t remember.  Both of our grand-daughters were there.  It was nice.

My friend and former co-worker, Kate, got back from a week+ trip to Berlin, Germany just in time for us to take her out for a birthday dinner; not exactly on her birthday, but close.  We went to Nirmal in Ypsilanti, an Indian restaurant with a health conscious attitude.  They had a buffet style setup designed for carryout, but you could also have it dine-in, which is what we did.  Linda and I got two vegan entrees (green beans and okra), yellow rice, garlic naan bread, and a small dessert for $5 each plus tea.  Kate ordered Makhani with chicken off the menu.  We adjourned to the closest Starbucks for coffee, photo viewing (on an iPad, of course), and conversation.  Kate had selected 30 photographs to show us, and they were wonderful, as usual.

 

2013_11_01-07 (F-R)A Busy Week

The first week of November was very busy, enough so that I was unable (unwilling) to do daily blog posts.  Covering the whole week in one post makes for a longer post, but probably shorter than seven separate ones.

2013-11-01 (F)

We were supposed to get our bus back from the shop on Friday, November 1.  We didn’t.  That meant I could not take it to Phoenix Paint in Edwardsburg, Michigan on Monday the 4th.  I was reminded yet again that a true traveler has no fixed plan.  With that off the table temporarily, we turned out attention to other things; Ham Radio Breakfast on Saturday, for instance.  It was good conversation, as usual, and we finally arranged to have one couple over for dinner in a few weeks.

2013_11_02 (S)

Saturday afternoon Steve and Karen came over to visit and have dinner.  They were not able to attend our open house/warming because they were in Arizona where Steve had made arrangements to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon from the south rim and back up to the north rim.  Alas, the park was closed and they had to adjust their plans and find other things to do; which they did (true travelers have no fixed plan).  We don’t see them very often, so when we do we have a great, long visit.  We had a wonderful dinner of enchiladas and Mexican rice, finished off by chocolate cake with raspberry topping made from raspberries that Linda and I picked ourselves at the Middleton Berry Farm back in September.  All vegan, of course.

After dinner we looked at some of their photographs (digital) and they looked at some of ours (also digital).  Steve brought along a Raspberry Pi computer.  It was slightly larger than a deck of cards and had a 16 GB SD Card that served as its solid state hard drive.  It had a couple of USB ports, an HDMI port, and some other connections.  Steve had a wireless network adapter in one of the USB ports and a wireless keyboard transceiver (Bluetooth, I presume) in the other.  We already had an HDMI cable on the TV so he hooked up to that and voila, pictures.  He was even able to control the Raspberry Pi using our TV remote!  Now you have to admit, that’s pretty cool.  We were also delighted to find out that they have spent part of the last few winters in the Venice, Florida area and are returning again this year.  We shared our Florida plans and agreed that we would get together.

2013_11_03 (N)

Sunday we worked around the house and on our computers until late in the afternoon when Chuck and Barbara, our friends and fellow Prevost H3-40 converted coach owners, showed up to visit and have dinner.  Although they did make it to our open house/warming we did not get to visit with them very much that day.  We talked buses, of course, but we discussed a lot of other things too, including Florida, where they have spent the last six or seven winters, most recently in the Naples area.  Again, plans were made to meet while there.

As long as I am on the subject of Florida, we started thinking about extending our stay for at least another month because of potential problems with “seasonal weight restrictions” on the roads around our house.  I found out from Phil (of the pull-though driveway) that the restrictions usually go up March 1 and stay up until April 15.  Most of the roads in our county, and all of the roads we would have to use to get to our house, are subject to these seasonal weight restrictions but the signs never say what that means.  As it turns out, it means a weight limit of 8,400 pounds per axle.  Our drive axle (four tires) weighs 20,000 pounds and we have over 7,000 pounds on each of the front/steer tires, so there’s actually no legal way for us to get the bus to our house during that 45-day window.  What to do?  Stay in Florida for another month!  Problem solved.  New problem: where to stay?  New solution: the same place we are already staying, if they will let us extend our reservation.

2013_11_04 (M)

Monday came and went without the bus being ready.  While this delayed my plans yet again, it also provided more time to work on WordPress projects.  I checked on the WordPress Backup To Dropbox (wpb2d) plug-in and it appeared to be correctly backing up all four of the sites I am working on to our personal Dropbox account.  That was good to see.  I also started soliciting “beta testers” for each of the sites.  I continued working with the WP-Members plug-in and it appeared to be functioning correctly to block access to selected pages/posts behind a user login.  Given that, I started generating user lists for each of the sites to generate usernames and passwords and keep track of when I have created those in WP and provided them to each user.

2013_11_05 (T)

On Tuesday Linda was able to extend our stay at Williston Crossings RV Resort until April 1st (no fooling).  We will figure out later how to manage our trip back to Michigan so that we do not arrive before April 16.  Sometime during the week I received an e-mail from the Prevost Owners Group, to which we belong, that the Prevost Motorcoach Show would take place in Tampa, Florida on January 13 and 14, with a reception hosted by Prevost Car Inc. the evening of the 13th.  That sounded like an opportunity to finally meet some folks from Prevost in person, and to admire brand new conversions (that we will never buy) from the likes of Marathon, Millennium, Liberty, Parliament, and Vantare.  Sometime during the week it also came to our attention that the Prevost Community group we belong to is planning a rally for the first week of April 2014 at LazyDays RV Dealership in Seffner, Florida!  Well Bob’s your uncle.  It looks like delaying our return until at least April 16 won’t be that difficult at all.

I needed to make an appointment for my annual physical, so I got on the Henry Ford Health System website.  They have a new “feature” called MyChart.  When fully functional, which it is not yet, you are supposed to be able to directly book an appointment, and see all of your lab results.  But first you have to set up your account.  I called the number and got an activation code which I then used to create a Username and Password, and was finally able to log in.  The direct scheduling feature wasn’t available for my primary care physician, but there was a “Request An Appointment” page.  So I did.  I asked for an Adult Physical on Mon., Tue., Wed., or Thu. afternoon between Monday November 25, 2013 and Friday December 6, 2013.  Less than 24 hours later I received an e-mail informing me that I had been scheduled for a 1:00 PM appointment for an Office Visit on January 15, 2014.  Huh???

I used to program computers for a living, and I used to do systems engineering, and I used to do sales and marketing of these things, and I ended my career as a consultant.  This didn’t strike me as bad programming; it struck me as bad policy that got translated into a bad systems specification.  So I wrote back to HFHS customer service and told them, as politely as I could, that their system was stupid, that is to say, the policies behind the implementation of their system were not “customer-centric.”  If I had wanted an appointment in mid-January I would have requested one.  So as of now, I do not have said appointment.

The bus was ready to pick up on Tuesday, so Chuck drove me down to W. W. Williams to get it.  I took care of the paperwork and left with Chuck following me in his truck.  I no sooner hit the highway than I got a Check Engine Light.  It came on and stayed on, so I phoned Chuck and let him know that I needed to turn around and take it back if he was willing to follow me and take me back home.  He was, so this we did; my plans further delayed.  There are worse things that can happen on this bus; the Stop Engine Light, for instance.  This light means exactly what it says, the engine is going to stop and you need to get to the side of the road, now, before it does.  I’ve only seen that once, shortly after we bought it.  We took care of some key maintenance issues and have never seen it again (and I hope that we never do).  I figured I wouldn’t get the bus back from W. W. Williams until Wednesday afternoon at best, so any trip to Edwardsburg was now delayed until Thursday.  I called Michele to let her know.  She had Pato and Tommy lined up to look at it on Friday, so I was getting anxious to get it down there.  But there’s nothing you can do until the mechanics (they are now called technicians) are ready to give it back to you.  And frankly, you really don’t want it back until they are sure it is fixed.

While I was gone dealing with the bus, we got a call from Steve (mentioned earlier) wondering if he had left his Raspberry Pi computer here on Saturday.  We checked.  Yup, it was here.  Rather than meet him somewhere, we agreed that he would come back to the house on Wednesday to get it and do some work on our computers while he was here.

2013_11_06 (W)

Steve arrived late Wednesday morning, Linux “tools” in hand.  The principle target of the work was to install Linux on one of our machines and then install/configure the Apache web-server program.  This would allow us to have a “virtual web-server” that I could use to build duplicate installations of my WordPress sites, allowing me to develop and test them before making the same changes to the live sites.  That sounded cool.  Steve has been trying to get me interested in Linux for 10 years but I never saw a real need for it until now.  It turned in to an all-day project (of course, don’t they all?) due to the age of the machine we decided to use, but that was the machine I wasn’t using for much of anything else, so that’s where it needed to go.  Steve got Linux installed and then installed Apache2.  We ran out of time to configure the Apache2 program, but that was OK as it will give Steve a reason to come back.

While we were working on the computers we talked some more about Florida.  It turns out that the Capitol Steps are scheduled to appear at the Venice Stage Theater in Venice, Florida at the end of January.  Our annual get-together with Steve and Karen has often involved dinner and a performance by this group, which specializes in political satire, much of it musical.  They said we could stay overnight at the place they rent for winter in Venice if we wanted to go to the performance, which is at 8:00 PM on a Monday evening.  The nice thing about traveling with cats is that you can leave them for 24 hours and they are fine.  They sleep for 20 of those anyway.

I checked Wednesday afternoon and the bus was reported as “ready to go.”  I decided to pick it up early Thursday morning and head directly to Edwardsburg.  That meant towing the car so I had a way home, but it also meant that Linda did not have to drive me to W. W. Williams.  That worked out well as she had to head in to the bakery on Thursday anyway.

I sometimes get a bit anxious the night before I am going to drive the bus as I don’t drive it every day and we are still finding a fixing “issues.”  I used to experience the same thing when we would book one of the Southgate Flying Club airplanes and go flying.  Again, I didn’t fly every day.  Does this ever happen to you?  As I was drifting off to sleep I suddenly remembered that I had planned to fill the fuel tank at the Mobil Truck Stop on I-96 between Howell and Lansing.  But that was based on leaving from home.  Now wide awake, I got my iPad, pulled up the map application, and zoomed in on the I-94 Baker Road interchange west of Ann Arbor.  There are three truck stops there, two Pilots and one Travel America.  I was able to examine each one carefully, checking in/out access and pump locations.  I decided the Pilot station on the north side of the highway was my best option.  I knew I had enough fuel in the tank to get that far easily, so I was then able to go back to bed and finally fall asleep.

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I must have been sleeping lightly because around 4 AM I was awakened by the faint sound of running water.  That’s another one of those sounds that will jolt you awake once you become aware of it.  The new flapper in the master bedroom toilet wasn’t quite sealed and the water was running ever so slowly trying to keep the tank full.  I was finally able to adjust the flapper a couple of days later and get it to seal, but between the truck stop research and the running water, it turned out to be a short, fitful night’s sleep.  Not good preparation for a long day of driving.

I would like to say that the trip from W. W. Williams to Phoenix Paint was uneventful, but Check Engine Lights are definitely an event, and I saw ours come on four times.  It eventually went off each time, finally staying off after the 4th time; once it’s come on I tend to be a bit on edge wondering when I will see it again (or worse).

I stopped for fuel at the aforementioned Pilot truck stop on the north side of I-94 at Baker Road and pulled in behind a truck at the last pump, or so I thought.  I sat there for a while until the driver came out and moved it, at which point I pulled up only to discover that there wasn’t a pump at that position.  So I pulled out of the truck stop onto Baker Road, came back in the entrance, and got in line behind a truck that was putting fuel in its tanks.  That truck finally moved and I was able to pull up to the pump.

Getting fuel at a truck stop isn’t like putting fuel in your car.  The gallons and dollars involved are usually an order of magnitude larger and you usually cannot run a credit card at the pump.  I went inside, waited in line, and was finally waited on by a nice woman.  I told her I probably needed 150 gallons and I failed to recognize that she ran my credit card for $150.  I was only half done washing the windshields (the bus has four) when the pump shut off.  It had put in 37.9 gallons for exactly $150.  So I went back inside, stood in line again, and had her run the card for another $350.  Back outside, I restarted the pump, waited for it to finish, then went back inside, got back in line, and got not one, but two, receipts with the dollars and gallons on them.  By the time I got back on the highway the fuel stop had taken about one hour.  More delay.

No sooner was I on the road then I got a call from Chuck checking on how my trip was going.  That was both thoughtful and reassuring; it’s comforting to know folks are aware of you and concerned for your well-being.  In some ways, owning a converted coach makes you part of a “fraternity”, if you care to join.  While we were on the phone the Check Engine Light came on for the 3rd time since I had left W. W. Williams.  It went off and came on again.  I discussed it with Chuck and decided to pull off at MY FAVORITE REST AREA to check the coolant level in the overflow reservoir.  (I talked about this rest area in my article in the February 2013 issue of Bus Conversions Magazine.  This is the same rest area where I was stranded while Linda and I repaired the patio awning that came loose a few miles earlier on westbound I-94.  Ironically, I was on my way to Phoenix Paint at that time as well.  I’m not superstitious, but I don’t like unlikely coincidences.)

The rest stop in question is near Grass Lake, Michigan, about 12 miles east of Jackson, Michigan.  It’s a very nice rest stop; I just seem to end up stopping here for less than nice reasons.  I popped the rear engine hatch, improvised a dip stick, and checked the level in the overflow reservoir.  It was up to the bottom edge of the filler tube, so no obvious problem there.  I looked around the engine bay for any sign of a coolant leak, but everything looked dry.  I took some comfort in the fact that Bob, the service manager at W. W. Williams (Dearborn) had told me that he and the technicians were very impressed with the condition of our engine; that it sounded good and ran well.  They’re real experts, so that’s no small thing.

The rest of the trip really was uneventful.  The Check Engine Light did not come on again, the transmission shifted well, the cruise control worked properly (as it always has), the engine coolant and oil temperatures ran normal, and the speedometer suddenly decided to work again!  I took I-94 W to I-69 S to M-60 W to M-40 S to US-12 W to M-205 W and pulled into Phoenix Paint just a mile north of the Indiana border around 1:00 PM.  I’ve done this trip many times, but it was a very pleasant drive with fall colors still in evidence, light traffic, and nice weather.

Michele got me into the building and parked and had me air up the suspension so they could have easier access to the inside of the wheel wells.  She and Pato got right to work removing the damaged panels while I hooked up the electrical shoreline, got the house battery charger turned back on, and activated some circuits for the inside of the bus including the auxiliary air compressor.  I stopped to look at things and answer questions as I unloaded some items from the car, and then moved stuff from the bus to car that had to return home with me.  What started out as a trip to have paint scratches buffed out had become a trip to also find and seal roof leaks and repair/repaint damaged body panels, so Michele and I looked the coach over and discussed the work to be done. I was there about 90 minutes—a really short visit for me and Michele—and got back on the road for home around 2:30 PM.

I had originally planned to spend a few days at her shop working on some small projects of my own, but that was based on a Monday arrival.  We had plans to meet up with our friend Kate in Ypsilanti on Thursday evening to see Roy Blount, Jr. at Eastern Michigan University’s Pease Auditorium.  I made it home with just enough time to change clothes, but not to eat, and we headed off to Ypsi.  We got there just as Kate and her friend Teresa were arriving and got four seats together.  RBJr was very interesting to listen too when we could hear him and understand what he was saying.  He speaks somewhat softly, and the PA system for the auditorium was not adjusted properly to compensate for that.

After the event we headed over to the Sweetwater Café, just a short walk from the auditorium, for coffee.  They had some nice looking veggie rollup sandwiches, so Linda and I had a late/light dinner.  We finally got home around 11 PM, a long day for me.

Although my health is better than it has been for the last couple of decades, I do not pretend that I am not in my 6th decade.  I can still do the all-day-drive thing, but I am much more tired at the end of it, and it takes me multiple days to recover from it.