Convention Time

Last week Jim and I flew to Austin to help work the Coach Connect / Road Connect booth at the ARVC convention. The Phoenix airport is a ZOO!! We allowed 2 hours extra time before our flight and we needed every minute of it. Austin was a piece of cake. I didn't realize how big a city Phoenix is and how small Austin is. It's fun to see how a booth comes together for a trade show like this. You only do it once/year and in the meantime, everything has changed, so you can't just pull out what you did last year. We decided to use part of the booth to present a short seminar, but it needed to take up as small a space as possible. Our projector can do rear projection, but we needed a screen to project onto. Jim and I put our heads together and came up with a big black piece of foam core. We cut out the projection area. Then, Jim found some nice edging to finish it off and a piece of gauzy white material to stretch over the opening. We were quite proud of ourselves for having concocted this. And it did do the job ... but it still took up too much room and looked a little more like a Punch and Judy show than a high-tech presentation. So, at the 11th hour, Frank called around to rental centers and ordered a 60 inch TV with computer inputs. It was delivered at 9am when the show started at 10! Hey! Plenty of time! And, it looked great. The other thing that comes together for trade shows is people. It is so rare to have everyone involved in the company together. So, we did our share of partying! Whew! It's a good thing this only happens once a year. I'm exhausted. We're back in our cozy motorhome in Quartzsite, AZ now and I spent all day yesterday in bed, with a novel, nursing a cold. We get back on the road tomorrow.

Thanksgiving in Quartzsite

Back 'home' with the whole 'family'. This is where we spent Christmas last year. Such a great place - room for 3 motorhomes to park, and a 'cabin' where we can all gather for meals etc. Pretty good parallel parking job, doncha think? And, we get to take our morning walk with Lynne and John, letting the dogs run free in the desert and even getting a little exercise ourselves hiking up the hill. Gee, maybe we should set up a geocache here?! Then, on Saturday, we even got our kayaks in the water!! Yep, kayaking the might Colorado River. Yeah - I know, it's pretty tame here. We put in at Blythe, about 90 miles north of the Mexico border. I understand the Colorado is barely a trickle by the time it gets there. It was great to get outside and paddle ... even if we didn't have to paddle very hard! To see a picture of me, you gotta go to Lynne's blog! This is the second time she's beat me to the post! So, tomorrow we get on a plane to Austin to work the Coach Connect booth at the ARVC convention. We're leaving the motorhome and the dog with Dick, Frankie, Lynne and John. I probably won't post in here till we get back next weekend. Hope you all had as wonderful a Thanksgiving weekend a we did!

Geocache by the Saguaros

Lynne and John came and stayed in the site next to us for the weekend. She beat me to the punch, publishing it in her weblog! It didn't take long after they got here for Jim put John to work climbing up on a roof and repairing an antenna connection. But, they are so good at making it clear that all work and no play is no good! We had dinner together Friday and Saturday night and, we took a few hours off on Sunday and went geocaching. It was a short - but steep and challenging, walk. This was a quick find. Then, back home to Palm Creek. And, back to work. Here's how I scoot around this 2000 space park to help people with their Wi-Fi Internet connections. Tuesday morning we gave another seminar. This one was on 'Safe Computing'. Next, it's our turn to visit. We'll be headed to Quartzsite to stay with Lynne and John ... and Frankie and Dick ... For the Thanksgiving weekend.

Seminar Time

The other day, Jim and I did our Wi-Fi seminar. We had an audience of about 35 people. Some folks who had never tried it, some who tried it and liked it, and some who tried it and hated it. But we find that everyone appreciates some good, straight information. I get such a kick out of hearing Jim ramble on and on ... when I can hardly get him to say 3 words to me sometime! For example, there have been times that Jim will say something like, "I ran into Harry at Home Depot today." I'll say, "Cool, tell me about it." Jim, "I just did." But give him an audience ... on a topic he knows so much about ... and he can talk for hours! The next day, I made a lot of customer visits while Jim worked with the network engineers troubleshooting some issues. Ever have one of those days?

Busy, Busy

Sorry, I haven't had any time to post on this blog lately. I'm handling most of the visits to WiFi users in this park. Jim used to do most of that, but he's been busy doing other things: Yikes! I better make sure our health insurance is paid up huh?