I was hoping that the cold weather here in northern Indiana may have forced the gremlins who inhabit my computer to follow the rest of the RV snowbirds south, but alas, the little buggers are still hanging on.

We use a commercial mail service for sending the Gypsy Journal to most of our subscribers, who chose the Standard Mail rate. But we also send out separate mailings to subscribers who use the Escapees Mail Service, FMCA mail service, and some of the commercial mail forwarding services such as Alternative Resources, as well as for our subscribers in Canada, and those who choose to pay an extra fee for First Class postage.

Yesterday as I was trying to print the mailing labels for those subscribers, I suddenly starting getting an error message and they would not print. This has happened before, for no apparent reason, and usually after a lot of frustration, whatever the problem is seems to clear up and they finally print. But yesterday I spent hours fighting with the mailing lists, with no success at all.

Our friends Rick Schafer and Marcia Gantz stopped over to see our new motorhome and tell us all about their summer travels in Alaska. Between the two of them, they have forgotten more about computers and computer programs than I’ll ever hope to learn, and when I mentioned the problems I was having with the mailing list, they put their heads together and tried to come up with a solution. Rick downloaded new drivers for our HP laser printer, which we hoped would do the job.

As it turns out, the problem still persisted, and I tried to get the mailing labels to print out all evening. Finally, about midnight, the gremlins must have fallen asleep, because suddenly the problem disappeared and the labels printed just fine. I didn’t do anything different, so what gives?

I think we have figured out a problem a few subscribers to the digital edition of the Gypsy Journal had with the current issue. In each case, they could not open the new issue, and by a process of elimination, I discovered that all of their computers had recently done an automatic update to Adobe Reader version 9.

Miss Terry experienced it with her laptop, which did the automatic update after she had already opened the new issue on the older version of Reader. She deleted the update and reinstalled the earlier version 8 of Reader and once again could open the file with no problems.

We have also had subscribers who use Firefox as their web browser report the same problem, but when they use , it works. Did I mention that sometimes I hate computers?

Even with all of the computer problems, it was nice to see Rick and Marcia again, and to hear about their travels since we last crossed paths. Terry and I have not made the Alaska trip yet, but it’s very high on our bucket list.

Quite a few Gypsy Journal subscribers were readers of a great little tabloid called Two Lane Roads that a fellow named Loren Eyrich published a few years back. I was a fan of Loren’s work, and when he was diagnosed with cancer and had to stop traveling and publishing, we took over the balance of his unfulfilled subscriptions.

Several people have asked me from time to time how Loren is doing, and I’m happy to report that I got an e-mail from him yesterday. Loren has been cancer free for seven years now, and he told me that while he has some long term effected from the chemo and/or radiation, he’s well and happy to be alive. Loren posts occasional updates on his website at http://www.two-lane.com/, and I know he’d be happy to have you log in and pay him a visit. 

Thought For The Day – Don’t assume malice for what stupidity can explain.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

Gee, I miss one day of watching the evening news and I miss everything! The war on terrorism is over, the economy is no longer in the toilet, fuel prices are down, stock prices are up, and all of the illegal aliens have gone back south of the border.  It must be true, because every newscast I have seen for two days now doesn’t talk about anything but the death of Michael Jackson.  

I find it interesting that while there is so much discussion of the singer’s grand career, in which they call him the King of Pop music, we hear very little about the other side of his life; the repeated accusations of child molestation, his bizarre behavior, his prescription drug use, and his financial troubles.

No, let’s just glorify the King. I’m sorry, he wasn’t a king to me, or even an interesting performer. He was just a freak wacko that had been idolized and coddled since he was a little boy, had been allowed to do things that society would not tolerate from the rest of us, and never had to live in the real world. All because he was an “artist.” Let’s get on with life.

I reported in yesterday’s blog that a couple of subscribers to our digital edition of the Gypsy Journal had to download a newer version of Adobe Reader to access the file. We have also discovered that some users of the Firefox web browser cannot access the file, unless they use Internet Explorer to do so.

While Terry was busy stuffing envelopes with the new issue of the Gypsy Journal yesterday, I spent the afternoon working on a new seminar called 100 Miles From Here for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering rally. The seminar will highlight dozens of interesting places to visit within a 100 mile drive of the rally site.

No matter where we go in this country, we find interesting places to explore, from historic sites, to oddball museums, to the homes and graves of notable people. I created this new seminar to illustrate how, wherever you are traveling, there is plenty to see and do.

Miss Terry has been dealing with computer problems for quite a while now, and yesterday evening her Compaq laptop died. When she turns it on, whether on battery power or plugged into an AC outlet, the power light comes on, but that’s it. No fan, no screen, it doesn’t even begin to boot up. We have taken the battery out and put it back in, it’s fully charged, and we’ve tried every fix we could find online.

The laptop is less than two years old, but these days the quality of HP and Compaq products seems to be pretty bad. We’ll give Jim from Geeks on Tour a call today to see if he has any ideas, but I think we should just buy her a Dell and be done with it.

Thought For The Day – Don’t be afraid to fail. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

It is still incredibly hot here in northern Indiana, and it looks like the heat wave will hang on for several more days, at least.

I love the classic looks of Airstream travel trailers, and even though one would not work for our lifestyle, I can’t pass one without giving it a second look. We enjoyed touring the Airstream factory in Jackson Center, Ohio last year after our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally with our friends Ron and Brenda Speidel, and we were impressed with the way they build them.

Ron is also a big fan of those shiny round topped trailers, and Miss Terry and Brenda kept a careful eye on us all the while we were there to be sure we didn’t sign any purchase contracts.

So when RV Hall of Fame Museum historian Al Hesselbart called yesterday to tell me that a vintage Airstream club had caravanned from the company headquarters in Jackson Center to the museum here in Elkhart, and suggested it might be a good photo opportunity for the Gypsy Journal, I jumped all over it.

The club had originally planned to dry camp overnight in the museum’s parking lot after their tour. But Airstreams do not come with generators to run their air conditioners, and with temperatures in the 90s again they changed their plans and came over to Elkhart Campground to have hookups. So I got to take some pictures of them at the museum and again at the campground.

We drove back up to Michigan to pick up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal yesterday, and the next few days we will be busy getting it stuffed into envelopes and mailed out.

Back at the bus, I kicked off my shoes and took a quick nap. Soon after I woke up, Frank and Debbie Likert from Searcy, Arkansas stopped in to say hello. Debbie is a dedicated blog reader, and it was nice to get to know them and visit for a while.

After our guests left, I sent out the link to the new digital edition of the Gypsy Journal to the folks who subscribed to it, and a couple of e-mails bounced back, so if you subscribed and did not get the link, please contact me. I did get several e-mails from digital subscribers, and they all were very pleased with the new issue. If you have not seen a sample of our digital edition, click this link and check it out http://gypsyjournal.net/blog/digital-edition/.

A couple of readers reported that they could not open the file, and we are working to resolve those issues. In one case it was because he was using an old version of Adobe Reader, and after downloading an updated version from www.adobe.com he had no further problems.

Thought For The Day – When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally

In yesterday’s blog, I offered a free sample of our test electronic edition, and by the time I turned on my computer in the morning I had 55 people asking for a sample! Another 25 or so e-mailed during the day asking for one too, so I spent a lot of time answering e-mails.

The response has been very positive overall. Almost everybody said it opened very quickly and they liked the format. A couple of people complained that the type was too small to read easily, but if you open it as a PDF file with Adobe Reader, which almost every computer has these days, you can click on the magnifying glass icon to zoom in.

More than half of the folks who got a sample said they would prefer it over the printed version of the Gypsy Journal. One person out of the 75 or so I sent a sample to said there is so much stuff that can be found free online that she could not see the value, but that is okay, we can’t please everybody.

I did find it interesting that she is one of the blog readers who has written several times to say that she would subscribe to an online version, but not a printed one, because of the mailing costs. Like I said, we can’t please everybody, and we don’t expect to. And nobody has to subscribe to either version. I still welcome you as a blog reader and look forward to being able to entertain and maybe even educate you a little bit from time to time. We still have some technical issues to address, but I think we’ll give this a try once those are remedied. Once I’m sure we can make this work on a long term basis, I’ll make a formal announcement here in the blog. Again, this is NOT a replacement for the printed version of the Gypsy Journal. That will continue as always. This is an option for those who, for whatever reason, don’t want a printed edition mailed to them. Okay, moving right along, my friend Dick Reed sent me an e-mail yesterday saying he was really upset when he called his insurance company (Good Sam) for a quote on a car, and discovered that he was talking to someone in the Philippines. Dick wondered why, with all of the unemployed people in this country, Good Sam felt the need to outsource their call center offshore.

Dick said he asked for a supervisor, who told him it was to make sure their customers had someone available 24/7 to answer their calls. Huh? I know a lot of Americans who would be happy for a job, even if it were on the second or third shift! Dick said that when his insurance comes up for renewal, he’ll be doing some shopping. I can’t say as I blame him.

I mentioned in yesterday’s blog that Ken Wiseman has been very helpful in working out a lot of the details of the digital edition of the Gypsy Journal. What I forgot to mention is that Ken and his wife Martha are the driving force behind the RV Navigator website, and for several years they have been providing audio reports, called podcasts, on a monthly basis, covering the RV lifestyle from an on the road perspective. I logged on and spent some time listening, and they are very good. But don’t take my word for it, check it out  for yourself at http://rvnavigator.com/RV_Navigator/RV_Navigator_Home.html.

Thought For The Day – If you can’t fix it with a hammer, you’ve got an electrical problem.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally