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.

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The title of today’s blog says it all. That’s how I feel sometimes, including right now. About the time I think I have a good handle on something, some unforeseen and unexplainable problem shows up.

After a couple of years of experimenting, we launched our digital edition of the Gypsy Journal several issues back, and after a lesson from my friend Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour and a short learning curve, I managed to upload the digital issues to the web with no problems.

But yesterday, when I tried to upload the new issue, it wouldn’t go. The Ipswitch file transfer program kept asking me for the user name and password to our FTP site, and when I entered it, I got an error message telling me to re-enter the information again. I could log directly onto our FTP site with my user name and password, so I knew it was correct, but it just wouldn’t work using the file transfer program.

After hours of frustration, just about the time I was going to call Chris Guld and ask for help, the darn thing logged right on and worked just fine. I didn’t do anything different, and it was the same user name and password I’d been entering all along. Go figure.

I know that computers are wonderful tools, and I wouldn’t want to go back to the old days before we had great things like websites and internet access. I just wish the darned gremlins would stay out of them!

We got our bus conversion winterized Wednesday, and yesterday morning we dropped it off at the building where we’re going to store it this winter. Even though it is going to be inside, out of the winter weather, we drained the water heater and all of the lines and filled them with RV antifreeze, just in case of a power failure or something like that. We probably overdid it, since we had never winterized an RV before, but we wanted to be safe, rather than sorry.

We had hoped to have the bus sold by now, and have several people who are interested, but we’re just about out of time and don’t plan to hang around here much longer. One gentleman asked if we would delay our departure until November 1^st, which is the earliest he can get here, and if he confirms he’s coming for sure, we’ll wait. But Elkhart Campground is closing in just a few days, so that’s about as long as we can stretch it.

Subscribers Greg and Jan White are parked behind us here at Elkhart Campground, and Greg has been helping me with a couple of last minute projects I wanted to get done on our motorhome before we hit the road for our winter travels. I sure appreciate your help, Greg!

We picked up the new issue of the Gypsy Journal at our printer yesterday, so the next few days will be a mad rush to get all of the envelopes stuffed and mailed out. As we were driving up to Michigan to get it and back, Miss Terry commented that we are very lucky. Even though we don’t like the cold weather, we get to see some spectacular fall colors, and then we can leave before the snow starts piling up.

Yeah, even with contrary computer programs and other little problems, I guess life is pretty good after all.

Thought For The Day – I believe in sharing the road with other drivers. They can have the part behind me.

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

We really needed some down time to catch our breath and rest up after our trip from Arizona and then vending at Escapade. The only problem with down time is that it doesn’t take too much of it before I get bored. As much as I try to shed my Type A habits (and I’m a lot better than I used to be), I am what I am.

Yesterday I spent some time logging in new subscriptions for our new Digital Edition of the Gypsy Journal and watching a small cardinal or scarlet tanager or some other type of red bird that was perched on the driver’s side mirror of our van, attacking its own reflection in the door glass. It would puff up its feathers to make itself seem larger, and then begin pecking at its reflection while wildly flapping its wings. This would last a few seconds and then it would fly away, only to come back a few minutes later and repeat the process over and over again.

While I was doing that, Miss Terry filled some orders that came in, and then we drove fifteen miles or so to Monroe City, Missouri to the post office, and then stopped at store so Terry could get some DayQuil. She is feeling a little better than she did a couple of days ago, but she’s still a bit under the weather.

During the afternoon Ron and Brenda Speidel came over and we visited for an hour or so, and then went out for dinner. We always have fun with this couple wherever we have gotten together with them, from Elkhart Campground in Indiana, to our Eastern Gypsy Gathering in Ohio, to Mission, Texas in the Rio Grande Valley.

The weather report has called for thunderstorms the last two days, and warned that some might be severe, but all we had seen were some clouds until yesterday evening, when it rained for a while. The temperatures have been in the 80s, but today is supposed to be down in the mid-60s. I’m hoping the weather stabilizes soon, because my friend Bob Pinner wants to try out our kayaks to see if that is something he might enjoy. Molly has a sit-in kayak, but Bob is more interested in the sit on top models like we have. With all of this water around us, it would be fun to get some paddling done before we move on.

We plan to leave this area this weekend and head for Indiana. We’ll be vending and I’ll be presenting my Highway History and Back Road Mystery seminar at the Heartland Owners Rally in Goshen next week, and we’re looking forward to getting back to the Elkhart area and seeing our friends Bob and Gita Patel and the rest of the gang at Elkhart Campground.

Thought For The Day – Don’t tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon!

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally