The UN-Bloggable Life

For the last few weeks we’ve been doing those mundane things that need to get done and are not very exciting.  We usually try to do something Blog-worthy at least once a week, but even that hasn’t happened this time. 

We’re ready to hit the road tomorrow, so here’s a recap of the past couple weeks.  On the way home, we had a flat tire on the RV and decided we needed 6 new tires – that was Jim’s job.  See our Geeks on Tour Newsletter for a little more detail on that!

Mom had several dentist/doctor appointments – that kept me busy several days.  Then Jim and I had our own dentist/doctor appointments to attend to.

We got a new car and gave the old one to Devon.  I think this is going to work out well.  We got another Honda CRV, since the old one worked so well.  We bought a 2007 from CarMax – same place we bought the last one.

New car color matches the RV much better!

 

We really enjoy attending our Toastmasters group when we’re in town. 

Jim and Chris at Earlybird Toastmasters in Fort Lauderdale

I took my camera to one meeting and ended up making this little movie using Picasa and Movie Maker:

I was hoping to get a lot of progress on updating our PicasaTutorials.com website since I had hired a web development firm the month before to take it over, put it on their servers and update it to a new design with all sorts of bells and whistles. 

Then I was going to start ringing those bells and blowing the whistles.  Instead I had to spend most of my time putting out fires because, in the process of transferring and updating, it was left vulnerable to hackers.  Instead of our readers being impressed with an updated system (for which I spent a lot of money) they were greeted with a Google warning that the site was filled with Malware.  What a nightmare!  To their credit, the developers and webhosts did do all the work to clean it up, but I spent all my time doing damage control and keeping tabs on it.  It is now all clean (I hope) and it’s working faster than ever.  But, I don’t have much heart anymore for ringing those bells and blowing the whistles! 

I spent as much time with Mom as possible.  Here’s a sweet picture of her getting her hair cut.

mom-haircut

Oh yeah, we spent some time with the grandkids too.  Here we were babysitting them at the pool.

Grandkids at the swimming pool

IMG_5509.JPG

And, here they are in the motorhome with their favorite babysitters … our tablet computers!  We don’t have to show them a thing … they really do know how to use them just intuitively.  In fact, I keep a close watch so I can learn something!

At home with the babysitters!

We were supposed to get on the road a few days ago, but we had to wait for an awning part to arrive.  The arm that holds the awning out just snapped and broke in a little bit of weather the other day.  That part arrived today and Jim took care of putting it all back together again.  He also worked with a repairman to fix our rear air conditioner unit while I did some laundry.

We’re both looking forward to hitting the road so we can relax a bit!

We’re headed to Colorado Springs, for the RVSEF conference.  After that, it will be Rapid City, SD and then Gillette, WY for lots more rallies.  See our calendar for all the details.

Roadtrek Technology and Camping Rally

When we were asked to present one of our seminars to the Roadtrek Technology and Camping Rally, we accepted just because it was on our route and scheduled at the end of the season after all our other obligations were over.  We knew it would be a small rally and didn’t expect it to be very memorable.  Little did we know that we were saving the best for last!  Outside of our own TechnoGeek Learning Rally, this group was the most eager for Geeks on Tour information!

Small but mighty Roadtreks

Roadtrek Rally

We were originally scheduled for 3 hours on the first morning of the rally, but they ended up giving us the floor both morning and afternoon of the second day as well.  We welcomed 10 new members to Geeks on Tour.  Out of a group of 24 rigs – I think that’s our highest percentage yet!

We handed out free trial copies of Streets & Trips and showed them how to use it along with the POI megafile.  We demonstrated Dropbox as an example of Cloud Computing.  We also demonstrated Google Drive where we could both edit one online document simultaneously.  We showed them smartphone and tablet apps like the free Google Translate, and how to scan Barcodes.  We just kept on showing them all our favorite stuff like face recognition in Picasa, making a blog with Blogger, and they ate it up.  Several of them wanted details when Jim showed off his new Microsoft Surface Pro.  The main selling point is that this is a tablet that is also a full-blown Windows computer so it can run programs like Quickbooks, Picasa, Streets & Trips etc..  It is Jim’s main computer now.  It’s a tiny tablet to grab and go, but when at his desk he uses an external monitor, keyboard and mouse for a full desktop experience. If you’re interested in buying one, there’s an Amazon ad at the bottom of this post.  If you click that and buy – we’ll get a few dollars.

Jim's Surface Pro (the little screen in the middle) with external monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

By the second afternoon, we didn’t even present any particular topic – we just opened it up for any and all questions.  Stump the Geeks!  They got us once, but Google came to our rescue and we gave them their answer after all!

The Roadtrek group playing Stump the Geeks!

Presenting our Smartphone Overview class to the Roadtrek Rally

They didn't let us go before we agreed to return for their Chapter rally in February 2014!  It’s on our calendar now.  It will be held at this same park – Tropical Palms in Orlando.

We really enjoyed these Roadtrekers!

We had a great time … Thanks to Dave Gottdiner for inviting us!

A Setting for Writing

My day to day reality is pretty cool.  But it's still my day to day reality and I look for opportunities to spend time doing something even cooler.

How about this?  We parked the RV at Alex's house in Melrose Florida.  Alex is an old high school friend that we have gotten reacquainted with in recent years precisely because she has space - and hookups - for us to park our RV!  It's a beautiful place don't you think?

We're here this time because of a writer's workshop that I'm taking.  Let me give you a little background.  There was a guy in my high school class (along with Alex) named Cary Tennis.  He went on to become a writer and has earned an enviable amount of fame as the advice columnist for Salon.com.  A quiet, quirky kid in high school, I am in awe of his words and wisdom in this column.  I noticed that he offers writing workshops near his home in San Francisco and dreamed of being able to attend one someday.  When I saw that he was going to be offering one of his workshops in Alex's town of Melrose, Florida ... and that we would still be in Florida at the time.  It took me 2 seconds to decide to attend.

I didn't even know about the best part ... the setting.  Alex found a house right on lake Santa Fe that was available to rent.  Most of the participants would be flying in and staying there.  I, of course, stayed in the RV in Alex's yard, but the workshop was held at the house, so I enjoyed it all day long.  What do you think?

The room where we wrote, talked, laughed and cried.

The morning view from the end of the dock

The sunset view from the end of the dock

Places for quiet contemplation

Time for private conversations

Cary Tennis - still the quiet, quirky kid I knew in High School

Our group.

The one who wasn't there for the group shot.

Inspiration

Cary leads these workshops according to the principles of the Amherst Writers and Artists method.  He doesn't teach so much as facilitate.  His personality is superbly adapted to making a group feel comfortable, safe, and free to explore their own voices.  And that's exactly what we did.  He would throw out 'prompts' to get us started writing.  One prompt was to pretend we were looking at photographs and start writing with the words, "In this one you ...."  Another was to write a thank you note to an every day object like your brush, or a door or ...
These got us going, and then we read aloud.  We all marveled at each others' creations.  We laughed, we cried, and we sat in silence.  It was quite an experience.  I am hoping I can hold on to that feeling of freedom to write ... about anything.  This blog is a great place to experiment.  Watch out!

After the workshop was over, we were invited to a local poetry reading group at the historic Bellamy Road. I even got up and read one piece that I had written over the weekend.  It was in response to Cary's prompt to tell a story using only nouns!  I think I liked this prompt best because it was OK if I didn't know how to put a proper sentence together!  The assignment was to not use sentences!

More photos here.

TechnoGeek Learning Rally

This is the third day.
Whew!
We're creating this blog post as part of our blogger class.  We're using Live Writer and showing how to insert a map, using Live Writer's tools.

Lots of fun with Line Dancing.  These videos comes from a Rally attendee's cell phone and she uploaded it to youtube.

Smartphone Class Pre-Rally

We arrived at Paradise Oaks RV park last Friday and spent Saturday preparing for our 2 day pre-rally Smartphone class.  Here's Jim in production mode for the class materials.

We were pleased with how it went - 14 people.  60% had iPhones, 40% Android.  And most brought tablets as well.  That was a bit surprising as we've had other groups that were overwhelmingly Android.  I think everyone learned a lot - our hope is that they now understand their phones enough to continue learning because it is a never ending process.  We also believe that the best way to learn is to teach, so we had several exercises where people paired up to work thru an assignment.  We always learn something new too! My favorite tidbit this time was about Evernote Hello, and how it can scan business cards and read the names and phone numbers for searching.  I've used many other systems for keeping and categorizing business cards and nothing has ever stuck.  This looks awesome.  And it's free.

Unfortunately, Jim and I have both been fighting colds and are not at 100%.  The main TechnoGeek Learning Rally starts this afternoon and we slept in late.

It's a beautiful, but cold day here in Bushnell.  That's our RV in the foreground, and Phil May's parked just 2 sites down.  Tracey isn't with him this time as she had to fly back to England to handle some medical issues.  We miss her terribly!  I'm afraid some people may have come just on the reputation of Tracey's famous cooking.  This time, we hired a local caterer to fill in.

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