WiFi Tips: USB and 'Repair'

Greetings from the beautiful high-desert town of Pahrump, Nevada. We are in the Terribles Lakeside Casino and RV Park giving WiFi seminars and helping RVers connect their laptops to the WiFi system here. Some recurring themes we are seeing have prompted me to write these tips. 1. USB adapters should match your USB port. I covered this in the "Get the right adapter" article, but it bears repeating. We highly recommend using the USB type of WiFi adapter rather than the cards or built-in type. But, that's not all. There are 2 different flavors of USB ports and your adapter should match your computer. USB ports started out with 1.1. Sometime in 2002 laptops started using USB 2.0, also known as 'high-speed USB'. Most USB adapters you will find today are designed for the newer, faster 2.0. If you install a high-speed USB adapter into a low-speed USB port, you may get a message something like "no high speed USB controller detected". However, it will install and it will work. The box may even claim that it is 'downward compatible' with the old 1.1 USB ports. Don't believe it! It has been our experience that USB 2.0 adapters plugged into a USB 1.1 port will work very poorly. Your connection will be slow, it will drop off, and generally be VERY frustrating. You need to either find a USB 1.1 adapter, or add a USB 2.0 port to your computer withe something like a cardbus. That's a PC card that plugs into your PCMCIA slot and then has USB ports on it. 2. Repairing your connection. WiFi connections can fluctuate in their signal and their speed. It's part of how the technology works. A very useful procedure you can do to get the best connection is to 'Repair'. If you have Windows XP, you can right-click on the little network icon - - in the lower right corner of your screen and choose the 'Repair' command. Essentially, this process 'reconnects' and almost always improves your signal and/or speed. It's like, when you're on the phone and you have a bad connection - lots of static or voices dropping off - you might say "Let's hang up and I'll try calling you again." Your phone call is almost always better the second time around. Same thing. If you have Windows 98, you will need to find the icon for your WiFi adapter and look for a command like 'rescan' or 'renew'. You can do this as often as necessary. It can't hurt, and it usually improves your connection substantially.

Our Brave Dog

I've called Odie our 'Smile Therapy' ever since we got him. You just can't look at him without smiling ... and you always feel happier for it. But, sometimes he gives us a real belly laugh. Today was one of those times. We're staying at a park called 'Terribles Lakeside' in Pahrump Nevada. It's a really nice place. There IS a lake - even though this is still the desert. Lots of grass and landscaping, and they have these horse statues. Actually quite lifelike, but they are some kind of plastic. The first time Odie saw one he ran right up to it's front legs and started growling and barking. When the horse didn't respond, he got even more ferocious - running around to the other side, rocking back and forth from his front legs to his back legs and bark, bark, bark. What a brave dog. Until Jim picked him up and held him closer to the horse - then he started vibrating with fear. Oh our poor, silly dog. Of course, by the time I could have gotten the camera he had stopped - and now he hardly even looks up when we walk by one of the horses. So, you'll just have to take my word for it. By the way ... anybody know what that white stuff is?

Letting Go

We've been in Arizona for almost 3 months! 6 weeks of that was in Quartzsite at Dick and Frankie's lot. We really like Arizona. And we just loved staying with Dick and Frankie. The best part was in December when Lynne and John were there too. But, as we stayed on quite a while after Lynne and John were gone - Dick and Frankie changed from being 'Lynne's folks' to being our friends. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! It was great! Now we're on the road again heading towards Nevada. This lifestyle gives you a lot of practice with 'Letting Go'. It may sound a little painful ... lots of goodbyes ... but as my favorite philosopher says "By letting go, it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go!" (Lao Tzu) 

 And then there's the deadlines. 

The 'cabin' at Quartzsite is the perfect place to get all those motorhome projects done. Well, the day before we're scheduled to leave, there were still projects unfinished. Nothing like a deadline to get things done! We really like a shiny, waxed motorhome. I worked all day and got it polished up. Jim had too many WiFi tech support calls to handle, so I actually did the whole thing myself! I'm so proud. Just look at that shine! It's like a mirror. 

 

 

 And then there's all the other cleaning projects. How DO you get those little mini-blinds clean anyway. I spray and wipe, and spray and wipe again. And I know I'm just pushing the dirt around. Well! Frankie knows all. You take the blinds out - they're held on by two brackets with little clips that swing out and let it go. I couldn't figure it out, but Jim got it done. Then you take the blinds to the shower and spray, scrub and rinse. Hang them on the line in this Arizona dry heat and they're done in 15 minutes.

Clean blinds. Really clean! Cool! Jim finished caulking every seam up on the roof. That's a constant maintenance project. We are ready. With our 6 new Toyo tires, the new front and rear swaybars, the clean, shiny and caulked coach and all the newly organized cupboards and work areas - it's like we have a brand new rig to continue our journey! And, the crowning touch ... 

  Jim got our 'Odie's Roadies' license plate put back together and attached to the bumper! This is the plate that Lynne and John gave us and that got damaged in our little fender bender in Wyoming last summer. We're truly ready to go now. Here's our campsite - we just pulled off the road a little north of Lake Havasu City and stayed on BLM land.

Somewhere over the Rainbow

Rainbow Acres that is. This is where we've been staying in Quartzsite. Here's a view of the community from atop our favorite hill: And, here's Jim on the top of our hill: What a great morning walk this is. Odie will miss it even more. So much open space to RUN. In a previous post, I showed you an 'ultralight' in flight and said that Jim wants to do that. Actually, this is the one he wants to fly: It's called a powered parachute and it's extremely easy to fly and very safe. We finally got our other swaybar installed on the motorhome yesterday at Eric's . So, we're ready to 'rock-and-roll'. Ooops, no, the swaybars will prevent that right? Anyway, we can leave anytime now, but it's hard - we're so comfortable here - obviously! Whether it's today or tomorrow depends on how many cleaning/organizing projects we try to accomplish this morning. We started waxing (actually we use dri-wash) yesterday and completed about 1/3 of the motorhome. Here's our travel plans for the next few months:

Spreading the Seeds of WiFi

WiFi evangelists. Is that what we are? hmmmm It seems so. We're still in Quartzsite because we so enjoy the site where we're staying thanx to the hospitality of Frankie and Dick. And, we're still waiting for another RV part to arrive and get installed .... no hurry. We try to give back with some computer support. Carol suggested that we might even want to offer computer classes. A little late for this season, but if we return to Quartzsite next year, we may try to set up classes in a community center or something. Meanwhile, I said, lets try one. You can be my guinea pigs. I figured I might give them a 'Using Windows XP' class, or a 'Sharing Digital Photos on the Web' or 'Safe Computing' or even Word, Excel or Powerpoint. But, what did I end up with? 'Using WiFi' My students were Frankie and Carol. Frankie has already been using WiFi provided by our Satellite dish, and Carol didn't have the equipment to use it, but that's the class I wanted to give, so I did. Well, Frankie was just a sponge wanting to understand all about this WiFi stuff that she has been using. And, Carol let me install an adapter on her computer and she was like a kid in a candy store exclaiming about how much faster this was than using her cell phone to connect to the Internet! I really had fun. They both ended up spending lots of time on www.jiwire.com looking for hotspots in all the other places they plan to stay throughout the year. Would you believe there's even a free hotspot in Mammoth Lakes! That's a little town way up in the mountains where Frankie will be this summer. Carol asked, if she would be able to use the WiFi back at her RV which is halfway down the block from ours. I said I wasn't sure, but let's try and see. It worked great. I'm a little surprised because we don't have any amplification on our system. The Access Point is inside our RV. And Carol's RV is about 400 feet away. The couple across the street also has a WiFi-enabled computer and have logged onto our system. Whaddaya know? We have a neighborhood hotspot. All from our mighty Motosat / Datastorm satellite dish. There's also a commercial WiFi hotspot here called RVLogon, but from where we are you need a powerful external antenna to be able to connect to it. We are able to connect to them with the antenna on the right in the photo above - but that's not something that everyone wants to buy. We're not the only Datastorm user providing a WiFi hotspot for neighbors. Check out Joline's weblog. She's on a caravan in Mexico and, with her Datastorm she is providing WiFi Internet access to anyone in the group who wants it. She's even enlisted some of them to be 'reporters' on her Blog. I can't wait till we go there. Thanx for the preview Joline! And, I understand that Gypsy John plans to do the same thing on his Alaska trip this summer. I'll be watching.