Weather

I told you the weather has been unusually cool here. In the last 7 years there has only been snow on the mountains behind us three times and two of them have been this year.

This is what we woke up to this morning. You can see snow on the top of the mountains in the background.

Computer fixed

I may have fixed my computer without having to restore the whole system. It seems to be giving me the most problems when I was running my virus scanner. So I uninstalled the scanner and my system has not froze up since. Since yesterday was cold windy and just plane miserable I spent the day running down solutions for some other system errors that were showing up. I also uninstalled a few programs no longer used. Today was another miserable day with rain most of the day so I spent the day exercising my computer. It looks like my computer is clean and stable for now. I will give it a few days to make sure everything is stable then I will reinstall my virus scanner and see how that goes. In the mean time I will stick to websites I trust.

Cool windy winter

The weather here has just been miserable this winter. We have had very few good days. It is getting about time for some snowbirds to start heading back up north and they haven’t had a chance to enjoy the nice Arizona winter weather. The rain is supposed to come back in again this weekend. It seems to be worst on the weekends when most of the events are happening in town. Hopefully next weekend will be a good one because we are heading over to Las Vegas for the NASCAR race. Since this will probably the only one we will attend this year I hope it is a good one.

Lots going on here

There was a lot going on this weekend here in Havasu and more coming this weekend. Over the weekend we had our annual yard sale here in the resort. The problem is it poured rain the morning of the sale so we didn’t do too well. By noon the sale was over and so was the rain. The sun came out and the rest of the day was good. Also this weekend was the Annual Winter Blast Western Pyrotechnics Convention.

This is where pyrotechnics manufacturers from over the world come to show off their best fireworks. It was a 3 day show and was spectacular as you can imagine. The other event was the 3rd Annual Rockabilly Reunion featuring a car show and rockabilly music. Rockers from all around the country attended the weekend show. Next weekend is going to be the 2nd Annual HAVA BBQ London Bridge Style. There will be more than 80 competitors grilling for a $4,000 prize. This is a Kansas City Barbecue Society-sanctioned event so it should be YUM!

Check this out

I spotted this setup going through town the other day. You might want to click on the photo to enlarge it to get a better look but this guy is pulling a flatbed caring a boat, car, and an ATV with his sleeper cab. Obviously his toys are more important than his living accommodations. You get to see some interesting setups around here.

As I said before, I have been having computer problems. For the last couple of days I have been doing print screens of all my settings and program options in preparation for a system rebuild. I have scoured the internet to find the answers to my problems and error logs and have pretty much come to the conclusion that I will have to use my restore disk to rebuild the system. I used to do this every once in a while just to clean up things. It will probably take me a week to get everything back the way I like it again.

Today was another windy day. Today however the wind was out of the south so it was not the chilled wind that we usually get out of the north. Even so, I took the opportunity to do my taxes. If you remember the hassle I had with the IRS late last year because I haven’t filed in a couple of years, I decided to be sure and file this time. I have not owed taxes nor have they owed me in the last few years so I didn’t bother to file. They questioned why and it took more to convince them I didn’t need to than it would to just file. So this year I will file.

I thought I was in BIG trouble

Since we are heading for the Las Vegas NASCAR race the first weekend in March, and we are dry camping, I thought I would do a load test on the batteries to see how they will hold up. My method is to shut off the Charger/Converter and turn everything DC on in the motorhome and monitor the DC voltage. All was going well. After about 15 minutes the voltage had dropped to about 12 VDC and held there. Not bad I thought but then I realized I had one more load I hadn’t put on the system, the heater. The heater fan is quite a bit of a load. So I turned on the heater. After a couple of minutes, suddenly everything went dead. Including the AC power. Now I am in BIG trouble, I thought. What did I do! Loosing the DC made some sense but why the AC? I checked the batteries and they were OK. I was thinking, circuit breaker, but where? Then I remembered the Battery Control Center.

I popped the cover off and sure enough there was 2 30-amp circuit breakers. Both were tripped. After resetting them all was well, including the AC voltage. But why the AC I wondered. I got out the manuals and started looking at schematics. Oh Yeah! My motorhome has a Smart Energy Management System.

This unit monitors AC loads and will automatically switch off things like the microwave, air conditioners and other loads to attempt to keep everything within the current available to the motorhome. The loads are switched in and out by means of 12V relays. When I lost the 12 VDC the relays opened and removed the 120 VAC from all the appliances. Another learning experience.

Computer problems

I promised some pictures of the in-laws lot and 5th wheel. I have been slow at getting them because of computer problems. Anyway, here are a couple of photos

This one shows the nice yard they have with a big fountain. Unfortunately the owners didn’t disclose that the fountain leaks like a sieve. It’s an easy fix but I have been giving the realtor a hard time about it, just because.

This photo shows the position of the 5th wheel and why we needed the 5th wheel tug to get it in there. There was no way to drive it in with a truck unless you intended on not using the truck anymore. They have a nice big casita that is unfinished inside so they can finish it the way they want. They have decided to split it into 4 areas, a sitting room with TV, a nice bathroom, a utility room for washer, dryer, water softener, and water heater, and a shop. There is plenty of room for all.

Anyway back to the computer. I like to play around with settings and sometimes get myself into a fix. Usually it is no problem because if I screw everything up I simply use system restore to go back to a previous restore point. Well I did just that the other day and the system restore hung. It is very unadvised to shutdown the computer in the middle of a restore but I had no choice. Now I got some problems with missing or corrupt files. It still works but not quite right. I will get it fixed eventually.

Also, I just added photos to our photo site of the Big Boys Toy Show we went to last weekend here in Havasu.