Travels With Miranda

There hasn’t been much to report in the last few days. I’ve been continuing training to work remotely for a new client.

The most challenging part is not learning the job itself, but learning to work with Windows 7. I do have a bit of experience with Windows XP, but the last time I really worked with Windows day in and day out was on version 98. Windows 7 does have a lot of similarities with OS X, but they are mostly cosmetic. I don’t want to start a Windows vs. OS X debate in the comments, so that’s all I have to say about my experience with Windows.

Today, I set up my new printer. The physical setup was a breeze thanks to videos integrated in the control panel of the printer showing everything from how to install the duplexer to how to size the paper trays.

Getting the printer and scanner to actually work was a little more challenging until some research told me that the OS X drivers that come on the CD, and all accompanying software updates, are for Snow Leopard. So once I found, downloaded, and installed the Lion drivers, everything went smoothly. I even set up ePrint to work with my iPad!

I received a massive transcription project for the weekend (30 hours of work due 11PM Monday), the first serious transcription project in almost a month. I am rather relieved! It’ll be a busy weekend, but it’ll be nice to spend so much time on a non-frustrating computer. Okay, so that wasn’t all I had to say about working with Windows!

The weekend will be broken up tomorrow afternoon with the celebration of my niece’s second birthday. She has been visiting all week and I have really enjoyed getting to spend so much time with her. My eldest nephew spent a few days here, too, happily playing games on my mother’s spare laptop while she and I worked side by side. I’ll be babysitting him and his brother next week for the first time.

Tonight, I’m doing a serious cleanup of my Mac. It has been running a little sluggishly and inefficiently since I upgraded to Lion. I installed more RAM a couple of days ago (going from 4GB to 8GB) and the difference has been phenomenal! I didn’t expect to notice a difference, but it was $90 (including shipping) very well spent.

Now that the computer is running more smoothly, I decided it was time to start cleaning up folders and managing files more efficiently. I am test running Hazel, an app that creates automated processes for OS X. I am fairly certain I will be buying the app as it will save me tons of work. My next project is to master my inbox. I have been working with Apple Mail for nearly 10 years now and I still don’t use it efficiently.

Needless to say, if I have moved on to virtual organizing, my home must be running smoothly. Indeed!!! Tuesday, I did the first really big and proper grocery since the accident (yes, in four months) and I have been cooking nice dinners and experimenting with new recipes. This week, I mastered sushi rice! Will I start making sushi at home now? Hmm…

The battery bank project will hopefully happen next weekend. I really don’t want to delay it much more than that.

As for my leak, it has been raining something fierce the last few days and it looks like my leak repair is holding at last! Miranda is looking really, really good.

I can’t believe that tomorrow is September 1st. This is the last month that I can count on decent weather for exterior projects. I am hoping to be here through October to get in as much work training as possible and delay crossing the border, so the count down to departure isn’t on yet, but I am thinking about it.

As proof, look what came in the mail the other day:

I’m about to start yet another electrical upgrade to my RV’s 12V system. The main reason for this is that my office setup is using more power than I would have expected (mainly because the work I do keeps evolving) and I will need to start printing a lot while off shore power.

My current setup has:

-two 6V batteries offering me about 120 amp hours
-one 400W inverter
-one 150W solar panel
-one 15W solar panel

When I did the math to get my solar panel, I estimated that I use about 40A per day and that I’d ideally need 60A available to me. Those numbers still hold up; I have average 50A per day if I’m working and need to heat a little.

My unscientific experiment with the solar panel this spring told me that on a sunny day, my batteries are charged by noon regardless of how low they were in the evening. So that tells me that I have some wasted potential capacity and that I don’t need another solar panel right now. What I could use are more amp hours in the form of more batteries.

Because of weight and space considerations, I have decided to go from 2x6V batteries to 2x12V batteries. Assuming that my 12V batteries have a capacity of 180 amp hours and that I have access to 60% of that capacity (108 amp hours), I will have 216 amp hours available to me, for an increase of 96 amp hours.

I am also going to be adding a Xantrex LinkPRO Battery Monitor. There are monitors that are easier to install, but this one is available on Amazon and the entire cost was covered with two months’ worth of affiliate gift certificates. I should be getting it by August. Long time readers will know that I have been talking about a battery monitor for years and it’s finally going to happen! Thank you so much to everyone who buys products on Amazon through my links!

Next, I need a bigger capacity inverter to charge a laptop, run several external hard drives, and print. Oh, heck, and run the crock pot, too! I’ll check for sales and will be getting something in the 600W to 1000W range.

In terms of office equipment, my current Brother laser printer is woefully inadequate for my lifestyle. The power consumption of a laser printer is incompatible with life on an inverter unless you have a massive battery bank, a zillion watts in solar panels, and a generator as a backup. I am eying a multifunction HP inkjet printer with low power requirements and the cheapest operating cost in its class, but I won’t say anything more about the printer selection process until I buy one.

My mother and I are going to start doing some work on the rig this weekend and one of the projects will be to get 120V power on the passenger side of the rig in the front, right above the battery bank. What I am envisioning is a charging station there based on a power strip that I can plug into either my new 120V outlet or my new inverter. I will also be installing the battery monitor in that location. It will be much easier to get it there through the same hole used to run the inverter wiring than to run the monitor cabling to the location of the solar panel monitor.

What I like best about this plan is that it isn’t going to cost me a fortune. The most expensive component will be the batteries since I don’t have to put the monitor in the budget. I haven’t decided yet if I will be getting them here, in Canada, or in the US, but the latter is more likely. So I will probably hit the road with my monitor and new inverter installed, but won’t get to reap the benefits of my upgrades for a bit.

I picked up Miranda today and made a call to another nearby repair place. He told me that not only are they not equipped to stretch a frame, they are booked for the rest of the summer and that I should expect the same from any other RV repair place at this point. He was not surprised by how I was treated by They Who Shall Not Be Named Again.

He also told me that the major repair to be done is the frame, so I should start by calling Ford and finding a place to get that done; the rest would cascade from there. He told me to introduce myself as having an E450 chassis with a 32′ motorhome on it, not that I have a 32′ motorhome on an E450 chassis.

If I get lucky, I will be able to find a Ford place that will subcontract out the hitch and fiberglass work and give me a total price for the job, or I might end up having to find a hitch place and then a fiberglass place.

My adjuster at Aviva is away, so I called her replacement who was MUCH nicer. She said that she wished she could write out a cheque for all the repairs I want to have done because of what I’ve been through. A gal can dream. *wry grin* Anyway, I was told that, yes, I should wait for approval before going ahead with work, but that I can present the existing estimate and if the shop says they can work with those numbers, then approval is just a formality.

I am understandably feeling overwhelmed and discouraged at this point. I am going to make calls in the morning but I suspect that I might as well move back home because this won’t get resolved until September.

The good news is that yesterday I started paid training in a field that I dabble in but would never have expected to actually work in (it involves graphic design and programming). I love what I am doing so far; it’s creative and requires brain work. I’m really excited about doing this work, but the learning curve is really steep and I’m pretty sure I had smoke coming out of my ears tonight!

What’s awesome about this work is that I’m still an independent contractor. So I don’t have guaranteed work with this new client who will supplement, not replace, the transcription. This means that instead of earning, say, 90% of my income from transcription and 10% from writing and related activities, the 90% might become 75%, which will add a bit of much needed variety to my schedule.

Transcription is slow this month, so it’s the perfect time to start on the training since I don’t have to spread my attention span too far. Between Miranda and the training, I have enough on my plate.

My upgrade to OSX Lion did not go smoothly because Snow Leopard ate my internet connection. It came on and off until it finally decided to stay long enough for me to get the necessary software updates to download Lion overnight.

It took about an hour this morning to install Lion. Everything seemed fine until I tried to open Mail and I kept on getting error messages. I decided to trash the imported files and restore from my last Leopard backup, which worked. The new Mail looks weird and is taking some getting used to, but it now has threads, so I know I’m going to love it.

My only other complaint is that I had a dickens of a time with my transcription today. The file would stop and freeze periodically, like my foot pedal was jamming. If this had happened a couple of times, I would consider the behaviour coincidental to installing Lion, but the number of times it occurred is concerning me. It was a very frustrating transcription day.

Another thing I need to get used to is ‘reverse scrolling’ in that I have to roll the mouse wheel upwards to scroll down a page (or swipe upwards on the track pad). For some reason, this isn’t irking me at all and I think that I will get used to it quickly.

iCal has a pretty skin (looks like a physical desktop calendar), but I find the colours too muted. I put all my financial stuff in red and the bold red boxes were impossible to ignore while the meek pink ones kind of fade into the background.

I like the Address Book skin, too. It looks like the Address Book skin on the iPad, more like a real book.

The new Finder window is missing a crucial piece of information that I check all the time: the amount of space on my hard drive. I’ll have to get used to periodically getting the info from the hard drive icon on the desk top.

If I don’t have any transcription tomorrow, I’ll be taking the day off to explore some Lion financial apps. I’ve been wanting to move from my buggy free suite to bug-free paid software for some time. I also need to remove Office for Mac 2004 in such a way that I could restore it should I decide to go back to Leopard if Lion ever explodes in my face. Finally, I’m going to poke around iWork ’09 to see if it’s worth upgrading or not.

With Mountain Lion coming out shortly and so many apps now being updated for Lion only, it really was time to make the switch. The speed bumps aren’t much fun, but I’ll get through them. In the long run, upgrading to a new OS is almost as much fun as getting a new computer!

It’s a holiday in Canada today, but I’m treating it like a normal Monday. I neglected a lot of projects over the winter and have tons of stuff to catch up on. I am also sending out tons of bids on contracts. I have no intention of looking for a part-time job this summer. My budget is solid into August, especially since I won’t have the car and car insurance payments, so as long as I keep plugging away at whatever transcription comes in, I’ll be fine. This is definitely a more relaxed start to the summer than was last year!

I’ve started to do some online shopping for my new toad. I’ve decided that buying it in Alberta really does make the most sense so I’m just waiting on the insurance cheque to buy a plane ticket. What I want exists, but it soooooo rare. I’d definitely have more choice if I was going with an automatic, but a manual transmission is a non-negotiable. I’m looking at 1990s models only.

My first choice is a Nissan Frontier, then a Toyota Tacoma. I’ve heard mixed reviews of the Mazda B-series, but am not ruling it out. I’m considering American models (eg. Chevy Sonoma and Dodge Dakota) on a case-by-case basis and I’d prefer a truck that already has a canopy/topper. One thing I have accepted is that I won’t be getting power windows and doors as those options just weren’t available, but AC is not negotiable. The Nissan Frontier is 3,000lbs, just under three times what my toad weighed, and that’s as heavy as I want to go.

I also hope to time the trip with the motorhome repairs and other projects (I’d like to leave a few thousand of the car settlement money to do some work on Miranda). I got a lead from my younger sister, who just bought a travel trailer, on a good place close by that could go through my entire list:

-the repairs covered by the insurance, including the bumper and the tow hitch, and I want them to confirm that my suspension is okay;

-remove the over hang window and fiberglass the overhang seams;

-replace my propane regulator (have the part, just need a pro to get it in);

-replace the house door window frame;

-square and plumb the house door;

-repair the body damage to the metal portion at the bottom of the rig and repaint that part only (I doubt I’ll be able to afford this right now, but I’ll ask for a quote).

Well, I just found out that a big and messy project is incoming so I’m off to get ready for that. Definitely a better to start to the summer than last year!