Magnolia Beach

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Errand Day

I awoke to a very grey and heavy sky, a good day to go for a drive, even a short one into town, to charge the laptop in the truck. My PayPal transfer had finally landed in my inbox, so a Walmart run was definitely in order. The couple of times I’ve gone into town lately with L as well as with S&B, I was able to duck into Walmart for a few things, but I was due for a proper grocery.

Another thing on my Walmart list was motor oil, but I decided to wait to get some and just go get an oil change even though the budget is super tight. I forgot that US prices for such things are reasonable, so an oil change wound up being just $33. Woohoo! They even vacuumed the cab for that price, a nice perk.

I picked up something interesting in the produce aisle, so I now have to Google “How to cook cactus but first, how the hell do I get rid of the spines on the dang thing?!” I will report back on this.

The beach gang is heading down to the saloon for happy hour tonight, so that will be a fun mid-week activity. I may learn how to play shuffle board….

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A Useful Tool For Deep RV Compartments

I would like to introduce you to one of my favourite little gadgets, my Grabby Thingie:

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Officially, it’s a 36″ pick-up & reach tool.

I got this wonderful tool from Donna and Ken, whose RV should have really been named Ali Baba’s Cave.

As you can see, there is a handle at one end and a gripper at the other. You just squeeze the handle and the gripper closes to grab whatever you need to fetch that is beyond arm’s reach.

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This gripper is very strong. I have actually used it to pick up heavy tools like my hammer and drill from the main floor while working in the loft. The warning sticker that says to wear goggles while using it (LOL) puts its capacity is 2lbs. It also has teeth that actually grab the item.

I mostly use the gripper to grab things deep in my pass-through compartments so that I don’t have to empty everything out and then crawl in.

Donna claimed not have much use for it, so I don’t feel too guilty about having accepted the gift since I use it several times a week. 🙂

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O’Reilly Auto Parts WOW

I emailed O’Reilly Auto Parts to praise the weekend employees who made things right in the whole solenoid debacle.

A customer service rep emailed me back, thanked me for taking the time to say good things about their staff, and asked where they could send me a $50 gift card! WOW!!!!! Again, I did not email to complain, but to show appreciation, something I know customer service reps don’t get enough of.

The card’s in the mail and now I get to dream of what I can buy with all that cash.

Hmm… a socket wrench set? A case of oil for my truck? Ginormous crimpers if they carry such a thing? I wait a week for the truck AC repair and get the Freon? Ooh, they sell wiring! I’ve determined that my idea of using 4AWG is ridiculous and am going to use 10AWG; I can get a 75′ spool from them for $42.99.

It’s like I just won the lottery! 😀 Any other suggestions? 😉

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Two Good Electrical Days In a Row

Today is another day with more sun than expected. It’s chilly, but I’m not complaining!

I’m going to have the computer on charge all day since I’m in major backup mode. My MacBook Pro keeps crashing, so complete hard drive failure is imminent. I just need to decide on a new drive and order it; the choices are a little overwhelming. I want to make sure I have several recent Time Machine backups and two different bootable backups. It’s likely way more than I need, but with the current drive being only good for the dump, I want all the chances I can get to be up and running perfectly about four hours from the new drive making it here.

Power right now is at 88% and holding. I’m actually getting 7 to 8A in, so I’m breaking even. The more the batteries are depleted, the more efficiently the alternator charges them, so I’ll wait till about 4PM and then run the engine for a bit to make sure I’m at at least 90% capacity tonight and then I’ll aim for 100% tomorrow.

In other news, R and S from Colorado are back, so a beach party is imminent!

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Thoughts On Idling My Triton V-10 To Charge My RV Batteries

I don’t like to idle my vehicles, not even in cold weather. Idling my motorhome’s Triton V-10 engine for about an hour to charge my house batteries has just about been giving me hives, enthused as I am by this new-found charging ability.

Knowing that a little education goes a long way to calming my nerves, I did some research about the Triton V-10 engine and I now feel much, much better.

You can find Triton V-10s in buses, ambulances, and other service vehicles that frequently idle for long periods of time. I’m not saying that idling is good for the V-10, but it’s an engine that was built to withstand it.

Another thing that I should point out about my engine is that it has only 98,000KM on it (60,900 miles) and I have only put about 26,000KM (16,000 miles) on it in five years. There is no hope in hell that I will ever run see the end of the lifespan of that engine unless something really dramatic happens.

So the noise and the exhaust are going to still bug me, but I’m not going to let the alarmists freak me out anymore about idling my rig a few hours a week at about one gallon per hour.

As L said over lunch yesterday, that few hours a week won’t kill my engine and at about $3.50/gallon, I’d have to idle over 100 hours to get to the price of an additional solar panel. My stop gap measure to get the 5 to 15AH I’m missing on cloudy clouds  is just fine until I get a better and more efficient charging solution.

One thing I realised tonight, though, is that I can only use my engine to charge during the day because no one in the boondocks wants to be blinded by my running lights! I don’t even know if the running lights can be disabled and I wouldn’t want to anyway, for fear that I would forget to hook them up again.
Today wound up being a bigger power use day than I would have expected because of the computer kerfuffle. We wound up having a lot more sun than expected, too. So between the solar panels and about an hour of alternator charging total today, I’m at 93% battery capacity, which is just about where I was this morning.