Thursday, September 27, 2012

MOC Fall Rally 2012 is Over, SIGH

Copyright 2012, CABS for Reflections From the Fence 

I did not take a lot of photos, I did not blog much, but, I had a good time.  Of course, a few disappointments, and some very nice surprises.

One of the last activities is a Wine and Cheese party, Man and I rarely go, and had not intended on doing so this year, but, at the last minute, and I do MEAN the last minute he changed his mind.  He hurried into Tana to find me, sitting at the computer (OF COURSE) and blerted out, "You have some cheese cubes right, I know there is no wine, but, we are going."  I calmly reached into the bottom cabinet, pulled out the last bottle of wine in Tana, a nice bottle we picked up in Amana Iowa last year, and said, "I have wine!"    And, off we went.

This year, the manufacturers of our RV decided at the last minute to have a hat contest as part of our Wine and Cheese party.  They gave away 3 cash prizes, $100.00 for the winner.  Many MOCers ran off to their rigs and/or a second hand store and found hats.  They are a creative batch, here is our winner, and yes, that IS a pot of fall mums on his head, held on with bungee cords (no RVer goes RVing without a good collection of bungee cords, eh??)


One of the nice little surprises of the Rally was to be the recipient of our first "traveling" geocache.  Here is Captain Hook guarding it for me.  This cache needed to be handed off to another geocacher in person, NOT hidden in a cache.  So, I registered the handoff to me and by that evening had passed it off to another MOCer that I know does caching! Well, that was fun!


And, last but surely not least, here are (from the left), Big Butt 2 and HoboBob; Big Butt 4, aka Jolly, and Man; and Big Butt 3 and his proud daddy, Ray.  Friends Bob and Mina own BB2, friends Ray and Coleen own BB3.  As RVers with homes on wheels we don't get to all be together in one place at the same time very often, so,  I just had to have a photo!  Aren't the dudes cute??  And, the trucks too!


And, so ends another Fall Rally. Next year is the 10th anniversary of MOC Fall Rallies.  We already have a Wagon Master, and the manufacturer is promising special stuff.  I guess that means Man and I will have to have finished THE Trip, THE Encore' by then.  Ah, the pressure!

Safe rides to all MOCers departing from the Rally, will see some of you on the road, soon we hope!

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Rally On - -

Copyright 2012, CABS for Reflections From the Fence 

I know, I have been MIA, no Rally reports.  I have posted a few tidbits on social media.  Cause I have another busy day today, I am going to do the copy/paste of some of those tidbits.

Wednesday:

Almost time for Meet N Greet,

Let the Rally begin!

Thursday:

Nice breakfast catch up with friends Mina Wells Greenlee and hubby Bob, and Coleen Murray Lustick and hubby Ray. Now, time to Rally on - - -

Next up, the gals will have a get together, the boys will go learn about Blue Oxs

(It's a hitch sorta thing for the boys and just plain ole fun for the girls. Works for me! LOL)

And:

So ends the first full day of the Rally. Photos taken - - NONE!

Had a nice breakfast with friends, nice gals introductory meeting, lots of new gals, some with some great stories, great to add new friends.

Waiting for friends Ron Ames and his beautiful bride Terrie Johnson Ames coming all the way today from Little Rock Arkansas, going directly to Lippert for appt. They are going to be soooooooooo tired. We are sending them energy.

The dinner at Tiara RV in Elkhart was nice, always is.

Man and I looked at a lot of new RV's, Montanas and other brands, we still love our floor plan even though it is 9 plus years old. There is NOTHING like it made today that we have found. I have my desk, the telie is clean across the room, we love the storage, we just love our Tana. Good thing, cause as Man points out, we really don't have the $$ to make payment$ on a new one, and mmmm, we don't see anyone offering to buy and pay for a new one! LOL

Friday:

Plant tour, always interesting. Late for the 1 seminars and still have errand to run.

Later

And:

Raining. Poor Ron and Terri Ames will be setting up in the rain, I am so sorry for them, they have had ENOUGH bad luck to last 10 or 20 years.

Anyway, raining, and I may take a nap with the fur kids and spoil them a bit.

Plant tour was nice, lunch was good, I had my handouts printed for both classes right here at the fairgrounds office, CHEAP, fast and I did not have to start Jolly up and move him at all! WOOT!

I hope the rain stops by 10 AM tomorrow. I know, I want, I want, I want!

And:

When we last met, I believe it was raining. Yes, it must have been, cause it rained a little here and there, on and off, most of the evening. Some of the guys went out for beer and food, the gals went over to the Mennonite Relief sale and tried to NOT drool over the quilts. Will NOT be bidding on any tomorrow, they are way outta my price range, but, we oooohhed and ahhhhed until we got hungry, 

Then we went back out in the rain and got a bit wet and found great pulled pork. The lines for the apple fritters and donuts were BLOCKS long, so, it was decided to come back here and have hot cocoa loaded with some more of that butterscotch schnapps. Medicinal purposes, we were cold by then. Meds worked! LOL

Saturday:

Rain, coolish, icky. Breakfast was good the MOC has great cooks. YUMMMY

Needed more coffee. Missed my German coffee this AM and jumped directly to MOC coffee, good, but, hheeee heeeee, sorry, not German coffee.

Taught the class. it was so damp in the tent I could barely get my mouse to work. Tripin over my own mouse. SIGHH

Tonight is the Amish Dinner, too much great food, WHHOOOPPPIEEEEE.

And:

Rain stopped for the time being

sun out

WAHOOOOo sun

off to Amish dinner, if you are not there with us, you cannot possibly be having as great a dinner as I am! nnnaaaa naaaa naaaa naaa

sorry!

Nomma nomma here I come!

If you doubt me, visit Reflections and look at blog posts from years past, catch the ice cream they serve. catch the pies.

See ya, I will be ROLLING back in here later - - -

And:

A little campfire chatting. The end of another Rally day. We wait anxiously all year and then this week just flies by. Not sure if I should :-) or :-(

Just one graphic, believe it or not, I have taken less than 20 photos this Rally.  But, this sign did catch my attention, if you happen to own an RV and happen to have ever gone on a plant tour, you will get this.





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Tuesday, September 18, 2012

It's Gonna Be A Rally

Copyright 2012, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

The sign says so, MOC Rally:


Soon, there will be a HUGE tent where all that grass is:


See, a few hours later, up goes the tent:





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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Let's Have a Name Game

Copyright 2012, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

Son # 1, his lovely bride and the Grandtwins have new babies in their lives, kitty babies.

Here they are, cute as can be.


So, they are both little girls, the orange baby is 7 weeks old right now, and the little calico is 6 weeks.  They have one parent in common, the father.  The orange baby is a bit more dominant, the calico is very curious and if you make a noise she wants to know just what it is making the racket.

They need names, so, we are going to have a little naming contest here on Reflections.

Rule # 1, NO human names.  Son # 1 insists!

Disclaimer # 1, NO prizes, just braggin rights.  Sorry, this is just for simple fun.

Leave your suggestions here on Reflections and if that old nasty Captcha gives you issues you can email me, Facebook suggest or Google Plus suggest.

Ready, set - - the NAME game is on!





* The usual disclaimer about web sites and me apply here.  I just use FB and G+ folks, believe me, I get nothing in exchange for my mentions of them, EVER.
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Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Eleven Years, and Still Man's Birthday

Copyright 2012, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

This is a repost of last year's 9/11 post, with a few edits to bring it up to date.

9-11, Ten,  Eleven Years Later, We Remember, Two Opposing Emotions


Has it really been 10 , 11 years?  Hard to believe, but true.

Yes, we all know and remember where we were on that crisp, sunny, bright, September morn 10 , 11 years ago.  As family historians have you recorded your thoughts, your view points, your fears, your concerns?  I did, in an abbreviated form and it is recorded in my data base.  Pretty much this is what it says:

Man's birthday, I had cooked him a large breakfast, eggs, meat, french toast. At some point, I walked into the front room to glance at Good Morning America (who knows why, I just did) and at that very moment the second plane flew into the World Trade Tower. I saw it hit. And we spent a good part of his birthday watching the television reports. Later that evening, our boys came to celebrate their father's birthday. We called around and found a restaurant open, we went there. Business was very slow. The world surely changed that day, freedoms limited, security increased.

Man had retired just 9 months prior, on January 1, 2001.  We were adjusting to retirement, reasonably healthy.  We were having a birthday celebration, and in just moments, our lives and those of everyone we knew, of the entire world, changed.  Really changed.

And, never again, would Man's birthday be the same, because it was now linked in some weird way to the events of 9-11.  Each September 11th is now bitter sweet, his birthday and the memories, always the memories.

Lest we forget - - - those lost on that horrific day.

And, Happy Birthday Man!






* Photo of Mt. Rushmore taken July 3, 2011.  Photo of Man taken in Arches National Park.
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Monday, September 10, 2012

And, Poof There Went The Backups, Four Years of Backups, Do Believe We Have a Total FAIL Houston

Copyright 2012, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

I have been pushing hard the last month, I finished the "Rome wasn't built in a day, but, may be the ruin of me yet" book.  I have done a bit of cemetery stomping.  I have been fighting Yahoo and making changes in my dependence on them after the hacking I experienced.  We are less than 8 weeks from departure date for THE Trip, THE Encore, there are doctor and dentist appointments, things to clean, things to fix, things to do.  We have been packing in some grandtwins and family time.  The days are getting shorter (as in it gets dark earlier, hard on a gal who suffers SADS).  We have a RV Rally next week in Goshen Indiana, I am teaching 2 classes, and you got it, they have not been written.  We fear we are facing the last days for our beloved Mr. G.  He has gone blind and deaf since our return to Michigan in late April, making life harder for him.  He has days of confusion and days of "nothing wrong with me mom, I am puppylike".  Yep, lots of stress.  But, Carol t'ain't bored!  WOOT!

My next book project was delivered to me in Excel format.  Not my fav piece of software, when I opened the file, there are about 197 pages and over 3600 rows of information, and it needs a bit of editing, and worse yet, all dates of day-month-year type where the year is before 1900, opened as #####.  Oh, voy!  After long and very information discussions with the couple that produced the Excel data base and my son and his very smart wife, I made the decision to install LibreOffice.

Here is where the trouble began.  Man and I have been known to have a difference of opinion when it comes to some things computer.  (See my eyes roll heavenward?)  We surely have boundary issues, so we each have our own computers.  He knows things and does things with computers that are foreign to me, and I use software that he can barely open.   He loves image backups of the computers, I could care less about image backups.  I don't care for them for one reason, that being that any issues I have with the computer, a corrupt file, etc., will just be carried forward if we find it necessary to install that image backup.  He likes them because if we find it necessary to install that backup it can be accomplished in a matter of hours instead of the days it takes to start from scratch re-installing all my software.

FYI, I do keep just about all my files/data on my computer, there may be a few files that were not transferred to this computer since I have had it, I have no idea which ones, I have an old leaky memory.  I do NOT use cloud storage for many reasons, primarily, because it would take me about a year to get just my photos online and stay within the restrictions of my 20 gig a month limit for my internet connection, with NO surfing for either Man and I for that full year, just uploading data.

I have, now had, 1.)  a terabyte external hard drive, and 2.)  a 500 Gig external hard drive.  I have had the terabyte for a few years, it was a MyBook hard drive.  The 500 gig, I have had for less than 2 years and it is a Seagate model.

The 500 gig external hard drive has became my every day unit.  I keep it attached to the computer and I over write any file I use during the day.  The last thing I do at night is to over write all files that change during the day.  The MyBook terabyte is where I save and never replace the files.  About every month, or maybe even every 2 months (OK, maybe every 3 or 4 months since the 500 Gig came into my life, every day backups changed me.) I would backup every single data file I had,  EVERY ONE!  Then, I never overwrote that file.  Next time I hooked up the MyBook I would back up every single data file, but in a new directory with the current date.

The beauty of this set up is that I was able to maintain old files from 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 on the MyBook.  If I needed to look at a photo or any file for that matter, from 2009, I could do that.  This is particularly useful with word processing files.  And, yes, I have gone digging for old word processing files more than once.

SO, Man did not feel comfortable installing LibreOffice without a brand spanking new image file.  I was never comfy with those image files being on the same hard drive as my data files.  I have worn out his ears explaining, I don't care one bit about anything but my data files, IF I have those, I can recover from almost anything.

Yep, I love my data files.  And, yep, you know just where this is going.

He decided to do an image file backup on the MyBook external hard drive.  And, it bricked my external hard drive.  ALL, and I do mean ALL my old data files are GONE.  Poof, never to be retrieved again.  We took the drive to that blue box store that has a geek squad.  They could not do a thing for us.  My data is now extinct.

I knew it was a lost cause when the computer would not recognize the MyBook, and said, the drive needed to be formatted.  I realized that at 3 AM.  Needless to say, I did not sleep real well the rest of the night, by morning, I was just a bit snarly, OK, I was in a royal snit!  I snarled and growled at Man, moaning, groaning, whining, and more.  Goodness it was a tense cup of coffee.

So, now, what??  Well, I have two, yes TWO, new 1.5 terabyte external hard drives, I will come up with some saving scheme/schedule.  I will resume my backups of all data files.  If Man wants to do a image file backup, well, he probably is going to have to find some other hard drive to do so on.  He is not coming near my THREE external hard drives ever again!  My boundary issues just went over the moon.

It has been a long stressful day.  I am not proof reading this post.  I am just posting it.  I have two new external hard drives.  I am over the shock, and am pretty sure that I did not loose more than 2 to 4 % of any of my data.  What I did loose that distresses me is the access to the files from years past, I only have the current versions, which may or may not have changed.

And, LibreOffice is still waiting to be installed. 





* Graphic courtesy of freeclipartnow.com.

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Sunday, September 9, 2012

Mobile Change on Reflections

Copyright 2012, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

It was recently brought to my attention that on some mobile devices Reflections could not be read.  All fonts were black on dark navy blue background.  Something changed in the world of Opera and who knows what other operating systems on mobile devices.  I used to be able to read Reflections on my phone, and then, poof, black and dark navy blue and I cannot read my own blog on my own phone.

SOOO, this morning, I went into the settings and changed the design for mobile devices.  Well, that is what I think I did.  LOL  I checked it out on my phone and the background is now white and the fonts are black, and the photos are visible.  There appears to be a link near the bottom that will take you back to the "web version" of Reflections.  I have not clicked on that yet.

Gotta say, that white with black font is a BUNCH easier to read on my own phone!  On my iPad since I access blogs and such with Safari, it seems the web version is what I will see.

Well, let's see how this works out.   Always tweakin' - -





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Friday, September 7, 2012

Rome, Wasn't Built In A Day, But, It WAS Built

Copyright 2012, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

It has been a LONG LONG summer, hot in more ways than one.

And, the results, my working printed copy:


After a slow turning of pages, checking for errors, a joining of the many files into on mega PDF file, it will be off to the printers for a proof copy!

Rome Burials will be for sale at the Lenawee County Family Researchers publication page.  It has about 290 pages, 5 cemeteries and 3 cemetery sites (now vacated).  There is a township map showing where all the cemeteries are located.  For the 5 active cemeteries there is a location map, a site map, a short history and some photos, the interment list by sections and rows, a index and a maiden name index.  For the 3 sites we have some history, a few names, perhaps maps, whatever we could find.  (As of this moment, I have not added the book to the web site, it will be listed soon.)

Rome wasn't built in a day, but, Rome WAS built!



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Thursday, September 6, 2012

Thursday Tech Report :: Protopage, My New Home Page

Copyright 2012, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

My new home page, the one that opens when I click on the Chrome browser icon, when it is time to get on the net in the AM is for now:  Protopage.  I had a iGoogle home page, but, iGoogle is going to Google heaven in November 2013, so they say.  I hear there is a movement on to have Google back off of that decision, but, I am moving on now.  I wanted to have something in place before THE Trip, THE Encore begins in November 2012.   So here it is:



Yep, purple!  LOL  There are many widgets you can add, for now I have the Virtual Puppy, Lifehacker, a calendar, a weather widget, Dilbert to make me smile and shake my head, and several email widgets.  I love the email widgets, no more signing on and off the several Gmail accounts to check on them, if there is something new it shows up on my Protopage.  Very helpful.

There are lots and lots of widgets, add a photo, add a map, add video and audio podcasts, even twitter feeds.  If you had unlimited speedy connectivity you could have a blast!  With our air card and sometimes questionable connectivity I am keeping my home page free of many of the widgets which slow down load times and suck up band width.

For now, I am quite pleased with Protopage and the flexibility it gives me.  I am OVER the top happy with the email widgets, oh, by the way, Yahoo email will NOT work with a widget.  Not a win there Yahoo.  After the hacking of my Yahoo email a few weeks ago and this not sharing issue (unless I pay), I am reducing my dependence and usage of Yahoo.  Yep, I guess I could pay, but, nope, I am not going to.  There are other methods.

Protopage, just one choice of several for home pages, or as some call them, front pages.  Enjoy, I do!




* The Disclaimers:  Protopage, iGoogle, Google, Yahoo, all own the copyrights to their names and products.  I use them, or not, sometimes with delight, other times with painful results.  I have not been asked to chat about them, nor even use them.  I do so, as do you, at my own risk.  I receive nothing from any vendor for chatting about their products, except maybe, now and then, a thank you.  And, that is rare!

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Monday, September 3, 2012

How They Celebrated, Adrian Evening Telegram, September 5, 1893

Copyright 2012, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

The Adrian Evening Telegram, "A Newsy, Progressive Paper for the People", was published in Adrian, Lenawee County, Michigan.

They sure celebrated in a big way across the state of Michigan in 1893.  There were additional reports on the celebration in Grand Rapids, Battle Creek and Bay City (all Michigan cities).  First from Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan:



Not to be outdone, Jackson's party was substantial as well. (Jackson, Jackson County, Michigan).


In remembrance of the real meaning of Labor Day.




* Both articles from the same newspaper, page 2.
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