Trip to Texas

Our trip was delayed for a couple of days when we got colds. But we finally got away on Monday, April 26. We dropped Grace and George off at the vet’s office – very sad to be leaving our precious kitties. Then we started for Texas.

Monday: The first day we drove through Georgia and Mississippi and stayed at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, MS. The Air Force Inn was beautiful – and we saw them turning away other people – so we felt really lucky to have a room there. Just a block or two outside of the gate was the Gulf of Mexico. We drove down there and saw that Katrina had torn down most of the buildings – but it has all been cleaned up so you see beautiful beaches on one side of the road, and nice empty lots on the other side. We drove all of the way to Gulfport – seeing a number of hotels – one gas station right on the beach (amazing use of prime land!), the Jefferson Davis House (with many buildings gone and lot of remodeling done). But in all of Biloxi, we saw only one restaurant – a nice looking seafood restaurant right on the beach. So we stopped there. We sat on the porch overlooking the beach – and Denny had a seafood platter – and I had buffalo shrimp. It’s been two days and I still cannot get the taste of that shrimp out of my mouth – it was so wonderful.

Tuesday: On Tuesday morning, William called Denny and seemed to be saying he would not see us in Houston. We had been in contact with Keith’s wife Julie – with plans to meet her and the three month old baby (Isabelle) at a restaurant in Houston. So we got in the car and started driving towards Houston. Along the way, William called again and said he would meet us at the restaurant – and he would bring along his girlfriend, his girlfriend’s mother, the four day old baby Ari, and the two year old little girl Devon. So Denny would get to meet all three of his granddaughters for the first time!

We checked in at the Extended Stay America in Houston and went to the Café Express to meet everyone. Julie (Keith’s wife) brought her mother and Isabelle. Isabelle was adorable – dressed in a precious dress and even black patent leather shoes. Her grandmother was an elegant looking lady – and seemed really nice – but her English skills are not strong so communication was not easy. I did understand that she was insisting that we stay at her house the next time we come. She was wonderful with Isabelle – and said that her husband loves to take care of her too.

William, his fiancé Courtney, William’s two year old daughter Devon (a different mother), their four day old daughter Ari, and Courtney’s mother Lorrie arrived next. Devon was very shy. Ari was tiny (four days old) and really cute. Lorrie looked a bit like Marie – and seemed about Marie’s age – was very nice and sweet with both little girls. Courtney is 19. Her parents were transferred to Ohio nine months ago and she stayed in Houston – working at Best Buy – having a baby nine months later. Her parents came – and her mother was staying to help for three weeks.

We were at the restaurant for several hours and amazingly – there was no crying. All three little girls were so good! Denny got to hold them all (I did not because of my cold).

Grandmother Delores and baby Isabelle, Grandfather Denny, Grandmother Lorrie and baby Ari

Wednesday: We left Houston Wednesday morning headed towards San Antonio. We passed a sign that said “Bastrop” – which was where Denny lived when he was in first grade. I asked if he wanted to go there (thinking it was right off the interstate) and he said yes. It turned out that it took more than an hour to get there. But wow – it was worth it! I felt like we were in a movie set for a Western. The buildings were all really quaint and interesting. We ate at a little diner in the middle of it – and you felt like you were in the 1950s – or earlier. Country fried steak (okay, we abandoned our diets for this meal…). Amazingly, Denny walked up and down the street! We tried really hard to find the house he lived in – saw all kinds of beautiful old houses – but did not find it. Several hours later we left for Lackland Air Force Base.

After numerous calls, the only room they could give us was in visiting student quarters with a shared bath. We decided to take it – and I am shocked to see another really nice room. No crown molding or beautiful wallpaper – but still great and in a very nice setting. The room we are sharing a bathroom with seems to be unoccupied. We do have our own sink, two closets, dressing room separate from the bedroom.

Thursday: We spent Thursday in San Antonio. In the morning, we visited the Alamo. Then we went to the Riverwalk. We had a nice lunch at Dick's Last Resort. Then we took the riverboat cruise. It was really beautiful! We picked Keith up at Fort Sam Houston and took him to Rudy's for barbecue.

Friday: We did our laundry - then drove down to Mi Tierra's Mexican restaurant. Wow! Fabulous atmosphere and food.

Then we went outside and caught a trolley tour of San Antonio. We had a colorful bus driver named Leroy Johnson who played bassoon in an armed forces band for 31 years in Washington DC for presidents and such. We went to the San Jose Mission - and saw a lot of San Antonio. It was boiling hot for April - but a great day other than that!

Saturday: We drove to Baton Rouge, LA and spent the night in a hotel there.

Sunday: We drove to Fort Benning, GA. Wow - what a beautiful huge base! Big old trees, beautiful buildings, really nice... We're staying on base in a beautiful suite - mohagany cabinets in the kitchen - soft bed - beautiful wide porch. I wish we could stay here for three days!

Monday: We drove home in the rain - but got here in time to retrieve Grace and George from the kitty hotel! It was a great trip!

To see all of the pictures from our trip, click here.

Netbook and Win CE 6

I had the terrible idea of buying a $125 7" netbook for my son who is mentally ill and homeless in California. It was advertised as working with Skype - so I thought we could communicate that way. I also wanted him to be able to do emails, web searches, some word documents (he likes to write), and YouTube - and save it all in a DropBox.

Well the cute little netbook arrived and immediately I discovered you could not install much of anything on it. There was no Skype (even though it was advertised as a part of the software), YouTube did not work, and it was painfully slow. The keyboard was tiny, the screen was tiny, and the battery did not last very long. With my son's poor vision and difficulty finding electricity I knew pretty quickly it was probably a bad choice.

After a few hours of working with it - using Internet Explorer and my home wireless - I got this nasty error message "IESAMPLE has encountered an error and must shut down" which made Internet Explorer impossible to use. If I clicked OK, it shut down IE. If I did not, the message covered the tiny screen. I researched high and low and could not find a way to get another browser on it.

Finally I contacted the Chinese company I bought it from. No one could speak much English so the only option was to mail it back to them. I did - asking to swap it for a Linux model - but they were "out" of them. It cost $30 to mail it to China! When it came back, it was the same netbook - but the IESAMPLE error was gone. About 3 hours later it was back!!! Grrrrrr...

I contacted them again and they wanted me to send it back again! This time I asked them to send me the files so I could reload the OS. They agreed - it took several tries over several days - but I finally got it.

But I could not get the darned thing to load. It kept erasing all of my programs and most of my settings. I figured out I could copy the folders back one at a time and get it going again (with the IESAMPLE error still there).

After many long impossible "chats" with Chinese tech support people named Lily and Sara (?) I started searching for a solution. Finally I found a Linux forum talking about the same subject on the same netbook - an ARM VT8500. I put the question of how to reload the OS there - and the next day had the answer!!! Hooray!!! Here was the trick:

Get a SD card and make a folder in the root of it named \script.
Put the autorun.exe and four other files in this folder
Put the \system disk folder in this folder
Turn the netbook off
Put in the SD card
Turn the netbook on

It booted to the SD card and installed the OS!! It's the best it's ever run - even better than when it first arrived!

I'm thinking of contacting the Chinese company and offering to rewrite their manual... It is completely butchered.

I ended up buying a different netbook for my son. He's not using Skype - but he's using email and enjoying the netbook.