Flood Relief and Thunderstorms

During the Safari rally last week I mentioned that they were taking up a collection for flood relief for the nearby city of Cedar Rapids. There were about 180 rigs here. If you figured $20 each, that would be $3600 . Then, Safari International promised to match whatever was collected. Well, the final count, last I heard was $4,100 collected. That meant a donation of $8,200!

Wow ... I was impressed.

Then, this week the Country Coach rally was challenged to beat that. Country Coach corporate promised to donate $2,000 for every coach sold this week. They sold 8! (at approx. $650,000 each) They had several other group donations as well, for a final donation of $27,000.

That is so awesome. But, unfortunately, it's just a drop in the bucket for what this community needs. The floods last month we devastating. And, it's *still* raining.

We've actually had very nice weather. In the 60s at night. Pretty hot and sunny during the day. But, for the last few nights we've had thunderstorms overnight. It wakes me up and makes me think we're in a hurricane when I can see the trees outside bent over in the wind. I can see them clearly in the shocking bright light of the lightning! It's nervewracking for me ... I can't imagine what it must feel like to people who are already bone-weary of cleaning up flood debris in their homes.

I caught a picture of the gathering storm at sunset time the other night. It almost looks like a nuclear blast, mushroom cloud doesn't it?

Tomorrow we're off to St. Paul, Minnesota. About 300 miles away. We'll be at the FMCA International Convention. We're schedule for 2 seminars each day for four days! Is St. Paul outside of 'Tornado Alley'? I hope!

Further your computer education **Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**

GPS navigation - 1,000th post

When we started RVing in 2003, our guesstimate was that, of all the RVs we saw in any given park, 50% of them had a computer inside. Now, five years later, our guesstimate is closer to 90%. And, half of them have TWO computers inside!

This is a substantial market for our computer education. We teach RVers how to get connected to the Internet as they travel. We teach them how to manage their digital photos, how to make a blog, and how to properly maintain their computers.

One thing we don't teach is how to use GPS navigation on your computer to keep you on the right road. We use GPS navigation, and we love it. It's a major reason for using computers for taveling. We want to teach it, but but haven't found a good way to do it. The critical things to learn are how to manipulate the program as you travel down the road. How do you simulate that in a seminar setting?

It occurred to me that I could at least take a bunch of screen shots of our GPS navigation program as we're traveling down the road. Maybe I could put them into some kind of show, to give an idea of what it is like to use GPS navigation while traveling. So, I took screen shots when we were traveling to Hannibal, Missouri last week. Using Photo Story 3, I turned it into a movie and used it for my weekly post on RV.net's blog. We don't have enough material to make a seminar, but the little movie is a start.

Rather than post a copy of the movie here, I'd rather you viewed it on the RV.net post. Check it out and leave a comment if you have any experience with GPS navigation. The blog at RV.net is amazing. They set it up as a group blog and found 30 or so of us writers to contribute articles regularly. Within 6 months I think they've developed the greatest accumulation of RVing information to be found on the Internet.

p.s. This is my 1,000th Blog Post! I've often said I'd like to write a book. .... I think I have! If someone wanted to, they could start with the first post on April 5, 2003 and keep clicking on the link to 'newer post' at the bottom to turn the page. It would take many hours, maybe days, to read the whole thing!

Further your computer education **Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**

2 for 1 rally

The Safari rally is over, leaving us mostly alone in our field of clover.

Now the Country Coaches are rolling in! These guys are BIG. We didn't have to move, and we're going to a new rally! For this rally, we are strictly seminar presenters and vendors. We are giving one seminar each day for the next 4 days, and we have a booth to sell our CDs. The last rally didn't have booths. It was more of a big party. Every one is a little bit different.

Further your computer education **Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**

GPS without the Satellites?

You gotta watch this video by my favorite geek, David Pogue (well, ok, *second* favorite :-) He shows how your camera can know exactly where you took every photo. NOT because there's GPS built in to the camera but because 'Skyhook' is built into that itsy bitsy camera card.

Further your computer education **Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**

Geeks get Married

Ten years ago, Jim and I said 'I Do.' Or at least, I think that's what we said! We had an unconventional wedding. It was his second wedding - my first, but I was 45 years old and had never had the desire for a big, regular wedding. We just wanted to have fun. Our first kiss was on a water taxi in our home town of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, so it seemed appropriate to get married on a water taxi. We got all decked out in our finest geekwear ... hawaiian shirts and propeller beanies - 'propeller-head' is another term for 'geek.' During the ceremony, the patches 'Bride' and 'Groom' got ripped off to reveal 'Wife' and 'Husband.' Cute huh? A notary public friend led us through our homemade vows. Then we partied! And we haven't stopped!

Further your computer education **Subscribe to the Free Geeks on Tour Newsletter**