SAFE AND SANE (almost) IN CASA GRANDE

Our drive east from Yuma was uneventful. It felt good to be on the road again even if we were not going very far. Of course, the way we travel, what else is new? Lots of sunshine but thankfully, for the most part, it was south and west of us—not in our eyes. Since we have seen this part of the state many times we listened to a book on tape as we rolled down the highway. The time passes very quickly when we do that so it seemed we arrived quicker than anticipated. Our new location is a privately owned lot we rented in Sunscape RV Resort just down the road from the Pinal County Fairground. The fairground is where the third western Gypsy Journal Rally will take place next week. We stopped to visit with Nick and Terry (the organizers—see link to Nick’s Blog in my sidebar) in their bus parked at the fairground late Friday afternoon and they told us they were on schedule and maybe even possibly a bit ahead this year. As they say, practice makes perfect!

On the fourth day of our “one-day” service, Fed Ex delivered Phil’s computer before noon last Monday. Of course, he turned it on and it would not work. So, another call to HP in India (!!) and then a conference call to our satellite IP in San Luis Obisbo, CA, where he was told to check the date. After resetting the clock … guess what? His sweet machine is working even better than when it was new. HP in Houston put in a new motherboard (covered by warranty) and Phil believes it had been going bad from day one.

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Of course, my computer was having its own problems and even after running some virus scans recommended by Microsoft the problem continued. Internet Explorer was barely working and I was relieved to have AOL (which seemed to be okay) as my backup. Best Buy ran a free virus scan on my external hard drive for us and gave it a clean bill of health which was a relief. We had several discussions about our options and Phil made some calls to several local computer repair shops. After being given a reasonable shop rate from one, we took my tower in yesterday and were not surprised when the technician knew exactly what was wrong. It should be ready to pick up on Tuesday. And as long as it is in the shop, we are having a DVD burner installed and also told them to double my RAM. Of course, my hard drive and motherboard are over four years old but we are trying not to think about that.

I am posting from Phil’s 7-year old Dell laptop after retrieving it from under the bed storage. We haven’t taken any pictures of anything lately so I found a couple pics on this computer I thought you might enjoy.