Back at the Coast Yes, I'm behind, I know. Sorry. We've been workin'! Yes, today was actually a FULL workday. I haven't had one of those in years! I just don't know how to react. We presented two seminars today. You can see our complete schedule here. The first one was the basic 'How to use Wi-Fi' that we've presented a couple times already. Jim presents that one while I 'drive' the computer. We have the material down, but there was this slight little problem that the Internet connection happened to be down for the entire park today! Hey, if you have any experience with computer presentations, you're accustomed to having a 'backup' plan. Meaning you have a slide show with screen shots of 'what it's supposed to look like'! We had a good crowd too. Then the second seminar was mine, 'Know your Computer'. This is a very basic seminar for users of Windows XP. It's the first time I gave the seminar and I was up half the night preparing the material. An interesting twist ... since most RVers have laptop computers, they go ahead and bring the computers along when they attend a seminar. This can turn it into a 'hands-on' class. Much like I taught for 14 years at Computer Savvy. Hands-on takes a LOT longer, and it's a lot more work than a presentation ... we might have to rethink this one. People loved it though, they paid $30 each for this seminar and walked away saying "I sure got my money's worth." Cool! Oh, have I mentioned that we're on the Oregon Coast? A town called Newport. We haven't traveled too far lately. We were in Tillamook, then went to Salem where we spent a week, then drove here to Newport where we expect to spend another week. It's COLD here! This morning was the worst, in the 50s with rain and wind!! Reminds me of the Mark Twain quote, "The coldest winter I ever spent was one summer in San Francisco." I know we're not in San Francisco, but it's this Pacific fog that does the trick. It was a beautiful drive here yesterday thru the coastal mountain range and the beautiful forests. You know what forests mean? Logging trucks. Then we arrived at Pacific Shores RV Resort. Fancy place! Beautiful views of the ocean!

More Seminars Yesterday was pretty uneventful. We're still at Phoenix RV Park in Salem, Oregon. We prepared and presented another seminar yesterday on using the Wi-Fi system here at the park. Oh Boy .. it is so fast. We're using it and I feel that I'm being disloyal to our wonderful Datastorm system because every few minutes I'm saying - wow! this is so fast! you mean those web pages are uploaded already?!?! Today we're giving a seminar that we wish EVERY computer user would take. We call it "Practice Safe Computing": Basic maintenance techniques that will keep your computer running smooth and virus-free. Tomorrow we leave for the coast. We'll be at Pacific Shores RV park for about a week. They are also a new Coach Connect park and we will be helping them use the system and offering all of our seminars. The last few days will be a Prevost rally! In case you don't know, Prevost motorhomes are probably the most expensive ones on the road ... it should be interesting! Odie says Hi! He likes the grass here.

Datastorm Users I understand there are a few thousand Datastorm users out there, but we seldom run into them at all. When we do, there's rarely more than one other in the same campground. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, the Datastorm is the name I use to refer to the satellite dish on the roof of our motorhome that allows us to get Internet wherever we are. The dish is made by Motosat, the satellite Internet service is from Ground Control, the satellite is Hughes/Direcway. There's lots of names attached to this thing but Datastorm is the software that allows us to click on a button when we've parked, and the dish raises and locks on to the satellite automatically. We could not be living this lifestyle without it - so we love it! Even tho Datastorm users are spread all over the country, it feels like a close-knit little club. There's this cool map (Thanx to Don B) that, as a Datastorm user, you can have a marker indicating where you are. We are number 787. One of the first things we do whenever we get parked is to upload our current latitude and longitude, so our marker shows the correct location. Then we look to see if there are any other datastormers nearby. We did that when we got to Salem and saw that #24 was also in Salem so I sent them an email (that's linked to the map). How Cool! #24 is Bill and Janet Adams who we met briefly at the Datastorm user's rally in Tampa last year. They are dealers for Datastorm. We ended up having a very nice time going out to dinner and swapping stories about customer support - them with satellite Internet and us with wi-fi Internet. They also told us their cool story of installing a Datastorm system on Willie Nelson's coach! They ended up staying in our same park last night and I snapped a photo before they left. It was really fun watching the Datastorm users' map around March and April. In February ALL the little markers were in the very southern part of the country, then slowly, day by day, you could watch them start to spread out to the north. Snowbird migration!

That was fun! This entry was made during our "Sharing Digital Photos" class! After showing them how to properly size photos and embed them in an email, we demonstrated setting up a photo album on free web sites, then the ultimate ... Weblogs! We had 4 appreciative students ... Donna kept saying, "I wish I had known this a year ago when we started our road trip ... If I had only known ..."

Traveling Trainers Boy, isn't it funny how life tends to go round in circles? From '83 to '96 computer training was my life - and Jim shared that with me from '93 on. Now, 3,000 miles away from where we started, and teaching stuff that didn't exist back then, we're training again. Pretty cool. Here's Jim teaching a 'what's it all about' class for people interested in using the new Wi-Fi system here at Phoenix RV Park. We had about a dozen people. Today's my turn. I'll be teaching a "Sharing Digital Photos with Email and Websites". Jim also spent much of Friday and Saturday helping Justin with the Wi-Fi installation. Here's Justin showing off his own Wi-Fi toys!