Tag Archives: Household Stuff

I hate plastic…

A few days ago our door latch on the screen door stopped working, I assumed the “spring” broke so we ordered a new door latch.

While ordering a new one, we discovered there are “left handed” and “right handed” door latches. The latch is on the right side of the door, but the handle is left of the latch so we ordered a left handed latch.

We received the new latch today and thinking I could put this on in 1 minute or less, I braved the cold winds coming from the Southeast and went outside to install this… and spent about 35 minutes messing with this piece of plastic. I even cut a finger for extra bonus!

Of course the screw holes where just far enough away from the original holes that I had to mess with that, and when I finally got it on and tested it, it worked locking into the main door, but when we tried to have the screen door by itself, it would not lock into the latch at all, so it was just flopping in the wind.

Grrrrrrr…….

I moved the latch around, tried this, tried that, nothing would work and the damn wind so was NOT helping so I said screw it, let’s deal with this later.

I came back inside with the new latch and the old latch when I came up with the idea of just swapping out the “spring” of the new one into the old one. Once I did that, I put it back on the door and boom. Done.

And then I saw what the issue was…

We should have ordered the “right handed” latch.

There is even a large “R” on the old latch, but of course, not in a spot anyone would notice it.

*sigh.

$15 for a “spring” and I also have a few spare parts of plastic.

Yeah… plastic on a metal box… What could go wrong?

And as a side note, it has been too damn warm the last few weeks to have this freaking cold wind hitting us from the Southeast. Yesterday the wind was from the Northwest and twice as strong but much warmer.

Brrr. I am so over this cold wind crap.

Busy, Busy

Damn, time is flying by even quicker then ever.

Before we left AZ, I needed something to make it easier for planning our trip and my to dos……I need something that I can see one week at a time and also month at a time. Found this assignment planner at an office store that has been a huge help since.

I love it! With the month view, I could put in where we were going to be on what date and the how much each place would cost for our budgeting. With the week view, it gave me enough room on the days to list what I needed to get done.

I have no idea why I didn’t think about one of these kind of planners before…..Purdue had one called the Mortar Board that I loved using when I was there.

Every weekend, I start laying out what I need to get done. I have a list for work, our personal stuff and our things around here. I have been totally utilizing this more then ever. Especially since I’ve been able to get focused finally.

With using my planner, I’ve been trying to get some of our spring cleaning done, little at a time. Totally attacked the bathroom the other day, love going in there and seeing how clean it is, I’ve attacked some of our windows, and got the rig vacuumed (got our dyson back…yes!). Still need to finish cleaning the vacuum, because it looks like it was use on wet stuff. But we got a good part of it cleaned. Been trying to reorganize stuff…it is a constant battle when you live in a box, we are always trying to improve it.

Because we live the full time rv life, unless a place has wifi….which is very unusual and not dependable….we have to use MiFi hotspots. Those are bandwidth limited, which is why I don’t put even one cam on anymore.

We have one 20GB one that works on Verizon and one that is 10GB that is on ATT. Wellll…we totally blew through our 20GB this month =( I think it was doing our taxes online with turbo tax. The only good thing is that the ATT reset the next day after the 20GB closed down. The problem with ATT is that if you go over the 10GB, it is $15 a GB and that can get very expensive, very fast.

We had been planning on getting another 20GB Verizon one anyway and with everything timing itself, we ended up getting it. They were suppose to prorate the remaining month, but since we ordered it so late in the month and they weren’t sure when we would get it, they didn’t charge us. Which is sweet. We got 20GB to use until the 1st for free….grin Very helpful.

And now we are giving ATT a break. I normally use that for work stuff only. But for now, with 20GB free, I just using that one and going from there.

That 20GB timed itself very well. Saw that Mac was offering a free operating system update…..unlike windows, I don’t feel the pressure to update because it works so well…..so forgot that it has been offered for awhile. The update was a 5GB download, so I took it. I kind of like it once I got around some bugs.

The first bug was that it wasn’t recognizing my second monitor. Now I use this for my book keeping and support, doesn’t need to be fancy or very high def. So I have a simple AOC E1649FWU 16″ USB-Powered Portable LED Monitor….just a plug and play. After googling, I hit up apple chat support and they were extremely helpful and gave me the link for the software updated I needed. I was very relieved to have that working.

There is no way I can work very well without it anymore, I have no idea how I did it before.

The next bug was my notes in my mail client disappeared…icks!!!

Hit up support, we were going to do a call today, but I finally found that they took the notes out of the mail client and they are their own separate app. With all my work notes on there, I was very, very happy to find them.

Due to that, I’ve found a new app called SimpleNote that is much easier to use, I can use on my Mac, iPad and iPhone without accidentally deleting one with a sync. Spent the day cleaning out my notes and copying them over, so now I have them in two spots….but I love getting things more organized.

The Maverick update helped get some of the bugs out of my mail client that I have when I try I use my work email that uses MS Exchange. There are little changes that I can’t pinpoint, but I do like. I seem to be running faster and smoother now.

That is how I’ve spent my weekend. =)

Gallery

Cool Binoculars, Hair Issues & Pictures

This gallery contains 13 photos.

We finally got our own binoculars. Larry from Paton’s Bird House has Vortex 10x42mm Diamondback Binoculars let us check them out when we were there and recommended them. These are sweet. We are very impressed with them. I’m having an … Continue reading

Gallery

We are once again living life on solid ground

This gallery contains 3 photos.

Oy. What a week we have had. First we had our adventure up into the mountains where we somehow took a wrong turn and got into a bad bad bad spot. Lucky we was able to get out of it. … Continue reading

Gallery

Critters, Preserve & Satellite

After a few exciting weeks of big critter spotting, it has slowed down, other then seeing a lot of deer (some are starting their antlers) and some javelinas. Even though it is still cool at 6:30am, I haven’t seen any … Continue reading