richard5933

Regardless of whether or not you have location services turned on, the systems can determine pretty accurate location by triangulating the cell towers your phone connects to. License plate readers are in use in most parts of the country. Cars are tracked regularly. We are already being tracked. It's nearly impossible to avoid. As more and more technology comes online such as face recognition it will become even more difficult. To me the question isn't whether or not the information is out there, it's who has access to it and what are they able to do with it.

This is not news, other than the fact that it's in connection with the current health crisis. Law enforcement has been using aggregated data from cell phones for some time, and in some instances have been requesting more detailed information through the carriers when they are investigating specific crimes. They also use a device called a 'stinger' in some areas that basically intercepts connections to a cell phone tower to extract information. Use of stingers has been challenged in court, but the technology is out there and you can bet it's being used. In other countries they've taken it much further, tracking individuals via their cell phones. In Israel they approved on an emergency basis Shin Bet doing this to track who has contact with someone known to be infected. If the system says you have had contact, you get a text message telling you you're restricted to your house. I can only imagine how China has been using it. Same for many other countries. Maybe one thing positive coming out of all this is getting people to realize programs like this are in use. Fiction writers from decades ago could never have imagined that not only we there be surveillance like this but that we'd be willingly carry the devices used for the government to do the tracking. Of course, if you don't want to be tracked there is an easy answer. Turn off your phone and wear big sunglasses. I know, better would be to restrict the government from doing this, but I'm afraid that cat is already out of the bag.

They do, but the elastic is not the best. I've gone through a few sets of these on our home mattress. Not sure if the suspenders are any better. There are also various types of clips out there, but every one I've tried proved to be more trouble than it was worth. In the end, I found that getting better sheets with heavier elastic all the way around the bottom was a better solution. And, as I type this I'm wondering if it would be possible to sew a channel/pocket all the way around the perimeter of the fitted sheet, and in that channel/pocket run a drawstring that could be tightened underneath the mattress (similar to what holds the ironing board cover on an ironing board.)

The batteries should be okay for 3-4 weeks if you were able to totally disconnect them from the loads. Some of those little kits don't put out enough power to keep up with the phantom loads which will be on the batteries if they are connected. If this were my coach I'd just disconnect the battery bank. Rather than having to pull cables each time, maybe you can get a manual battery disconnect mounted in the battery bay.

Does Montana not have a sales tax?

Where are you getting 10% interest? Finding that out would make all the rest of this less important.

Glad I kept this mask when I closed my wood shop. Might scare the little ones, but if I have to go to a crowded area I'll be okay as long as the batteries hold out in the powered air unit.

Don - Also look at the amount of time it's taken for this thing to grow to where it is already. Just a couple of months. How long has it been since the first flu case this year? Also, the news does regularly cover the seasonal flu. At least the local news around here, as they often show the maps with the current hot spots and outbreaks. Lots of PSAs to encourage people to get their vaccine. National news also covers it regularly, or I should say they did till this story took over.

My new GS card is in today's mail. If something is closing, they didn't know a week ago when that was sent. I am assuming that this 'pause' has something to do with the current situation.

Guess we would need to know what their definition of "pause" is before anyone can have a full understanding of this. They didn't say close, cancel, termination, etc. They said pause.

On the positive side, traffic's been really light recently. 😁

What's the problem that's making the inside duals hard to air up? On my first coach the valve stems in the inside duals just needed to be tweaked a bit to get them in the center of the hand holes, and then I was able to get the air chuck on easily. Took the tire shop about 5 minutes to get them in the correct position. On our current coach the problem was that I needed to swap out the air chuck for one with a different angle. Not all problems require changing the valve stems. If you do need them, here's one source: https://www.zoro.com/tire-valves-valve-caps/c/10671/ Obviously there are many other places to get them, and you'll need to be sure to pick one with the correct length AND the correct angle. Seems like it would be easier to find a tire shop that can do the swap and that has a selection of tire valves on hand, otherwise you might have to guess which one would be correct.

What is Good Sam getting out of this? If the discount is strictly to benefit us, then I don't see why they would care if we're able to get a better discount from TSD. My thought is that the contract they have with PFJ benefits GS somehow. Not sure how, but there has got to be some reason it matters to them. I don't want to accuse anyone of anything, but something feels wrong about this type of contract. GS needs to know that the result of them enforcing this exclusive contract is going to result in a net loss, and then perhaps things will change. In the end, neither GS or PFJ are in charge - the customers are.

Sounds like GS needs to hear from every one of us that have a TSD card just how unhappy we are. Maybe if they see thousands of RV owners send back their GS cards they'll start getting the message. Maybe. Now that we know it's possible for Pilot/Flying J to offer a discount larger than 8 cents a gallon to RV owners, we should demand that either GS gets us the same discount or that they get out of the way. My belief is that the genie is out of the bottle on this one - we all know what's possible here and should demand that GS step up or step out of the way.

Most multi-stage chargers will vary the voltage output as they roll through the different charge levels, not the amp output. The batteries will "pull" amps from the charger as they need. The charger "pushes" with voltage. One of the ways the old, single stage, chargers damaged batteries was by charging at too high a voltage level after the batteries were fully charged. For example, my charger starts at 14.6v for a few hours, then moves to 13.6v for the majority of the remaining time. As the batteries get near completely charged, the charger moves to the maintenance voltage of 13.2v. At this level, the batteries can be maintained with little to no out-gassing (they won't lose much water.) If your coach is set up with a charger that charges both the house and the coach batteries, the simplest answer is to just plug it in, turn on the chargers, and let them do their thing. However, some chargers will not charge batteries that are fully discharged. So, if you find that the chargers are not doing anything you might need to use an inexpensive 'dumb' charger to bring the voltage level in the batteries up to the minimum level for your smart chargers to begin working again. This feature is for safety, so that if you have a failed battery the charger won't continue to charge it and cause a fire or other damage.

This conversation seems to be one of those eternal ones on RV sites. It's my understanding that the chlorine used to sanitize water has a limited useful life, and it's used to initially sanitize and not to protect the water from future contamination. The only thing that will remain for a long time seems to be the odor from the chlorine. Well water is no more a problem than city water, if the well is maintained and tested according to the recommended schedule. There may be some sediment in well water, but I've also encountered it in city water - especially when they do line flushing in the area. Many people have sediment in the water which is actually rust particles from older iron/steel water pipes. Not dangerous but certainly something I'd filter out with a simple water filter.

Agree. My coach has a CB. It's always on while traveling, and it's usually dead silent 98% of the time. However, whenever there is a slowdown or traffic incident ahead it suddenly perks up as drivers try to figure out what's happening. I've been spared from more than one panic stop by knowing that the road ahead was stopped or severely congested before I could see the problem myself. I also think that the use of CBs on the highway is somewhat regional in nature, with more activity in some areas than others. Back to the OP's question though, there are multiple options for communicating with other drivers driving together. I'd suggest that the CB will provide additional benefits in the long run over a hand-held walkie-talkie.

Unless you happen to pull up next to an officer with a VERY keen sense of dimension, it is unlikely that a few feet would be noticed. But, if you were to be pulled over for a minor infraction like a tail light, it could become a problem. Once you're pulled over, seems that little things start to get noticed that otherwise would make a difference.

My presumption is that the thermostat has to be in direct contact with the tank in order to function. Just a guess on the cold water heating, but if you got the water that hot perhaps it built pressure. With the extra pressure the path of least resistance might have been back into the cold water circuit.

Glad that you're at least making a little progress with the GFCI. Hopefully the rest will be as simple.

Does that router (or ones like it) require a SIM card of their own or can they be used with your phone's hotspot providing the data link?

I wasn't even thinking about grandfathered plans since no one can go sign up for one today. Certainly there are some still out there with those, but it's not a fair comparison if someone is looking to sign up for something now. Even Visible by Verizon has its limitations. While they don't have a hard cap, they state " Heads up: when the network gets congested your data could slow down for a bit (it’s normal)". I've experienced that with plans in the past, and it's no fun. Typically it happens when a tower gets congested, such as if you're at a busy campground with lots of people trying to access the one nearby tower. Seems that Visible is also limited to streaming at 480p - good enough for a smartphone but typically not what people expect when being played on a larger TV. It's certainly workable, but it's not HD. Question - Could you please explain what you mean by "load balance mode" on your router?

If you're using 200 GB a month, it's going to be really tough to find a plan to provide that on an unlimited basis. You might find one, but after a certain point the speeds get throttled, from what I've seen. Have you checked to see if the shows you're watching on streaming can be downloaded while you have wifi and then played back later?

I'm with you on this. We have an OTA antenna on the roof, and can usually get a good number of channels of HD television where ever we camp. If I know that I'm going to be away from a good reception area, or if I'm just not sure, I will download a bunch of episodes of our favorite shows or a few good movies and then watch those. I download while on wifi, and then I don't have to rely on mobile data for watching TV.

Lots of generators have 120/240 output. Not sure of the make/model of the coach or of the generator. It would help to have that information if possible, or maybe I missed it somewhere.