The Day After

We seem to always just hang out for a day after our big outing days. So after going to Mexico we just hung around. I went up to the new office here in the park to see what we had to do to check out on Sunday.

We arrived here on January 3rd. So we are paid thru the second of February. That would be Saturday night as the last night. Move on Sunday. Did anyone mention that Sunday is the Super Bowl? I made reservations up in Corpus Christi just by the numerical date, not checking on the day of the week. You snooze, you loose. So we will be on the road the day of the Super Bowl. If I go back to my post from last week when the game became all Eastern teams, I wasn't too enthused anyway.

But the office only opens up in the afternoon for a short period on Sundays. So I will have to check out and pay on Saturday afternoon. That means I will have to turn in the cable modem then as well. Saturday evening without a working internet connection? I will not live thru that.

As many of you know, we have a repeater router that we use for internet in the parks. We took a standard Linksys WRT 54GL router and reprogrammed the processor with the DD-WRT software. By using the very latest beta version of that software, one of the options is to place the router into repeater mode.

This allows the router to check into a wifi net as a client, and then repeat the net as an access point. So if you sign onto the parks wifi you then become a hot spot of your own. This effectively extends the parks system to another circle around our router. You can sign in with security if you need it, and then repeat it with or without security on your side. I rarely set security on my SSid side. I prefer to go fishing to see how many folks will see our hotspot, and sign on to us rather than the park. The router's antennas are much better at staying connected than a laptop, so it makes for a much more reliable connection.

These folks do not know that they are really signing onto the park system and our router will only be just a little slower than the base system. We do count the signons, and often enjoy the power that we have to allow these folks to continue, or end their fun at will. We don't do that, but we could.

Here at Llano Grande we are in the older section of the park. It does not have wifi. I said "but I must have internet no mater what". They gave me a cable modem to connect to the TV cable system. They also gave me an ethernet cable to connect my laptop. I did that for about a week, but tired of the tether.

So out came the router with DD-WRT. The ethernet cable was plugged into the router. I set it up as an access point with two SSids. One of which I called "Linksys". Before I could even get my own computer signed onto the router, I had three other folks that instantly connected. I assume their computers were set to automatically connect to "Linksys".

So even though the park doesn't officially have wifi in the old part, well by golly, they do! I have 11 folks connected. Only two of which are Loyce and Myself.

All of that explanation just to say that nine folks here at the park, are not going to be pleased when I turn in the cable modem next Saturday.

As I write this I am totally aware that the weather in the Midwest has declined to a new low. Single digit temperatures, and wind in excess of 30 MPH. Burrr! So I feel almost guilty to report that we were 88 degrees today. It was not so windy either.

So I went to wash the truck, at the quarter car wash. Mexico is very dirty and it all blows here in South Texas. When it rains, which it doesn't very much, everything turns into mud. The roads are blacktop but they turn muddy as they just do not get wet very often. $5 worth of quarters later, even using the foaming brush it didn't come out very well. But the mud is gone.

Over night it got much cooler as we are getting the tail of the weather from up North. The cool is not supposed to last very long as the warm from Mexico is beginning to take over. We are wagering that we have passed the dead of winter as we move North to Corpus Christi. We really do not want to chase the cold as we move back North, but that may be how it turns out.