Today marked the official end of support for Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system, and with it the end of an era.  Windows XP has been around for 12+ years, and one estimate is that it is still used on 30% of the Windows PCs worldwide.  That’s a lot of computers, but my techy friends have pointed out to me that it is simply obsolete and, as Microsoft has stated officially, it’s time for them to stop putting band-aids on it and devote their resources to their current generation of OS and development of new ones.  Somewhat ironically, I received notification that updates were available and one of them was a security update for Windows XP.  A last hoorah?  Perhaps support ends at midnight tonight, Pacific Daylight Time?  I plan to get a new laptop when we get home, although I am not looking forward to the time required to set up a new machine and learn to use it.  I’m very impressed with the quality of Linda’s Samsung and am waiting to see what new products they unveil this month.

We kept the coach closed up and ran two air conditioners overnight because of the elevated humidity and forecasted rain.  It was cool enough (not really) but stuffy compared to what we have been used to for the last four weeks, and the bedroom A/C is noisy, so we prefer not to run it unless we have to.  The rain started around 7:15 AM.  We were cozy inside our rig and had our usual coffee and juice to start the day.  We decided to have toast with jam and fresh fruit instead of our usual cereal.  I put my rain coat on at 8:30 AM and made the short walk to Suncoast Designer’s office to fill out some paperwork.

It continued to rain through the morning, becoming heavy at times.  Jim came out from the shop during a lull in the precipitation to see which windows we wanted repaired and mark them with tape.  The rain put them behind schedule and they were not able to remove our windows today.  I told them that we did not have to leave by any date certain, and we were OK with being here through the weekend if needed.  It is much more important that they repair these windows correctly than it is that they do them quickly.

I also asked if they would allow me to do a story for Bus Conversions Magazine [ http://www.busconversion.com ] and was told to check with the general manager, Jeff.  I took “before” photos of our windows and of a couple of the workers removing windows from other rigs and covering the openings.  What I want to do is follow our windows through the whole repair process as much as possible.  I will talk to Jeff tomorrow.

By the close of business they had 20 RVs on site; 14 motorhomes and two 5th wheels in the sites with hookups, one motorhome off to the side, and three motorhomes dry camped in the back lot.  Suncoast Designer’s is a busy place.

With so many other rigs here, most of them occupied, and with good area lighting and video surveillance cameras, we felt that the coach was perfectly safe if we left for a while and decided to explore the area south of here by car.  We drove down Little Road as far as FL-52 and then headed west to New Port Ritchey.  We found the old downtown area (along Main Street, of course) and looped through it.  It was not super upscale, like Venice, but it was nice.  We like the look and feel of these kinds of downtown areas.  We worked our way back to US-19 and headed north back to Hudson.  The drive down Little Road and through New Port Ritchey was nice.  US-19 is an endless strip mall with a 6 – 10 lane divided highway running down its middle with lots of construction.  It is not the sort of place to drive for fun, and most of the shopping areas did not make us want to stop and spend money.

When we got back to the coach the air temperature had dropped and the sun was mostly obscured by clouds.  The relative humidity was still relatively high, but we decided to turn the A/C units off, and open some windows and the ceiling vents.  For dinner Linda made a curry and garlic dish with red lentils, butternut squash, and spinach.  We finished the bottle of Barefoot Moscato we opened on Sunday and I found that the sweetness provided a nice counterpoint to the food.

My good friend and colleague from Wayne RESA, Kate de Fuccio, designed a logo for the SKP Photographers BOF so I would have something to upload to the RVillage Escapees BOF – Photographers group page.  I also e-mailed it to the Escapees RV Club and they are adding it to the BOF listing on their website.  Kate does great work.  Thanks Kate!

Chris from Geeks on Tour posted on the RVillage Bloggers group in the WordPress Plug-ins topic about a plug-in named Wordfence Security (WS).  The plug-in provides a variety of functions.  It performs a daily scan of a WordPress installation and compares the installed files to the versions in the “official” WordPress library.  It also looks for malware and other nasties.  It provides protection against repeated login attempts by hackers, and defends the site from denial of service (DOS) attracts and distributed DOS (DDOS) attacks.  This last feature is particularly interesting.  WS has been downloaded almost 1.5 million times.  Using U. S. based cloud servers, if a DOS attack is detected on any WordPress site running WS, it protects all sites where WS is installed and active, preventing the DOS from becoming a DDOS.  It also includes a caching system that can speed up WordPress sites by 30 – 50 times.  It has many other features, but those were the highlights for me on first look.

I installed Wordfence Security on all four of the WordPress websites I am working on and ran a scan on this website.  While I was at it, I installed the Imsanity plug-in on two of the three other sites (I had already installed it on this site and used it to bulk resize image files).

Bus Conversion Magazine publisher Gary Hall put a post on the BCM BBS/Forum about the April 2014 issue of the magazine and e-mailed those of us who had articles in the issue.  I adapted part of his post and posted it to appropriate topics in three different RVillage groups: Bus Conversions; FMCA GLCC; and Converted Coach Owners (CCO).  I also posted it on our home page.  I think that means the 32 people with whom we have Friend connections will see it on their home page.  I could not post it, however, on the BCM Fan Club group because the forum feature is not enabled.