You are exactly where you need to be

Many times, I have pondered this phrase

"You are exactly where you need to be"

We often wonder - Where should I go? What should I do with my life?

Life has a way of changing your best thought out plans.

It's time once again to

 "go with the flow"

 " go where life leads you".

My blog has been dormant for awhile.

I have been traveling and working from my RV, but I lost my desire to blog.

I have not been using my laptop, I got hooked on using my iPhone for everything.

Now my iPhone is not working correctly. 2 years ago, it was a bargain to purchase with a loyalty program with Sprint ($279). I was hoping to keep this phone for many years. I refuse to pay an enormous amount of money for a new phone.

This is a blessing in disguise, I will start using my laptop more. 

Seems that the older iPhone stops working when a new one comes out.
Whats up with that???

I am hoping to improve my writing skills and write the blog on a regular schedule. Practice makes perfect, right. 

My posts will not be in chronological order. I am too far behind for that. 

I will write about things as they come to mind and as I get my photos in order.

Digital Clutter

S.O.S.

I'm drowning in digital clutter!

All this week, I have been sorting and categorizing photos on my computer. This all came about after moving the photos from my phone to my computer.

I found that most of the photos are grouped by date, some just have a file name created by the phone app.

I tend to stay in one place for several months at a time, so I have been creating folders with names/locations and moving the photos into these folders.

This is not fun, but necessary, especially if I am going to continue to update my blog. I've had this computer since October 2011 - so that is a lot of photos. 

After creating the named folders and reducing the number of folders, it will be time to go through and discard duplicate photos and the photos that are "not so good". 

Why did I wait so long to do this?  When the photos were stored by date and I was posting to the blog on a regular basis, it was easy to find the photos - but now, after 6 years, it's a mess and needs to be better organized.

The other clutter is email.  For some reason, I was not deleting emails on a daily basis.  I think it was because I was using my phone, so did not "see" how many emails were piling up. I am going through and marking a lot as spam and also deleting several thousand emails.  Such a waste of time.  

I've also deleted some apps from my phone - Facebook, Feedly and Amazon plus a few others.  I've kept RV related apps for now - for navigating, for finding RV spots and fuel, etc.

All of today's photos are from my 1st winter along the coast of Texas, 2011-2012

iPhone...5g and a busy week

I am now using my iPhone as a personal hotspot, I set this up with Sprint and I will get 5g per month for $29. It is on a month to month basis, I told them I did not want to be tied into any contracts, because I did not know if this would solve my problems. Is 5g enough???

Spruce Tree House

If this works out, I will cancel the Sprint Mobile Hotspot that I have.  The Mobile Hotspot is unlimited, as long as your are in a Sprint serviced area. The mobile hotspot  is more expensive per month and charges extra for roaming over a specified amount per month.  My iPhone is roaming at this location, but I was told that the iPhone plan does not charge anything extra for roaming. Sprint sends me an email when I have used up all of my free roaming on the hotspot, I would hope they do the same for the iPhone  if I am going to incur any additional charges. I can also check my account online and will do that at the end of this week.


It has been a busy week, but I am not working a full 40 hour week yet. My schedule shows 5 days a week, 8:30 to 5:00, with a mandatory 1/2 hour lunch break. I don't think there is enough work for me to work 40 hours each week, this is ok because it gives me more time to explore the area. My normal days off (after next week) will be on Friday and Saturday.


Last Thursday was a full day of Orientation. I started training in the Accounting office on Friday and then on Saturday I trained in the Lodge on the computer systems for the front desk and gift shops.  I will use reports from these systems in my job in the accounting office.


On Monday afternoon, we were treated to a 1/2 day tour of Mesa Verde National Park from Aramark, this tour usually costs around $45.00.  The bus driver/guide was excellent.  He knows a lot about the history of this area.

Cliff Palace

this photo is from my iPhone, I will need to get some

photos with my "zoom" lense camera

Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling in the park.

You can purchase a ticket for a

"ranger-led" tour to get closer to the dwelling.

Tuesday was my day off this week,  I rode the employee shuttle into town. They will drop you off and pick you up at any store.  Most of the employees just go to Walmart.  I asked to be dropped off at City Market, about a mile from Walmart, I told the driver he could pick me up at Walmart.  I was able to stop in a few stores and take a walk down the main street and see what type of shopping is available.


On Wednesday evening, we went to a food tasting in the Metate Room, a fine dining restaurant at the Lodge.  The Lodge and dining room is not open all year, today was "opening day" for this season.  All of the food was fabulous.  We had appetizers, shrimp, salads, chili, and several entrees of chicken, quail, beef medallions, elk, wild boar, pork tenderloin and trout and 2 different vegetarian entrees. Even though the portions were small for us (we divided a normal servings between 6 at our table).  It still works out to each of us eating more than 2 entrees.  After awhile, I was taking a very small sampling of each item. 

Square Tower House

A large multi-storied dwelling, built in the A.D. 1200's.

This 80 room complex was only accessible by

hand-and-toe-holds hammered into the rock.

Imagine carrying food and water up and down such a precarious

staircase or using hand-made ropes to lower materials to your cliff house.

My manager will be up at the Lodge for the next 5 days, training the Night Auditor, so I will be on my own for a few days.  There are reports that we work on in the morning that need to be sent to the managers of all the departments before 11am.  I have been doing these reports alongside my manager and hope that no problems come up over the next few days.



Today I finally received some passwords and access to the computer systems under my own "login", a key to the accounting office and an alarm code for the front door of the office building.


The work is different that what I did as a tax preparer.  Even though I did accounting work for a lot of small businesses, the forms and programs are different here.  In the end, it is still numbers and debits and credits and balancing. 


I have not worked on all of the systems yet because all of the different parts of the park are not open yet.  The campground opens in the middle of May.  With the Lodge and Restaurant opening today, I will have some different spreadsheets to work on tomorrow.  I am enjoying the work and my co-workers.  I am meeting many different people, some workampers and some single women without an RV that are staying in the women's dorm.  There are not a lot of really young workers, just a few that are under 20.  Most of the younger staff that are working in the dining room and bar are in their 30's.


Since the 3g service on my iPhone is unlimited, I will continue to use the iPhone, without my computer, to check email and blogs and search for things on the web.  It is sometimes difficult to comment on blogs, using the iPhone, and it's not easy to type on the small keypad.  I read some blogs on the Kindle Fire when it is linked to my iPhone hotspot, but it takes too long to open blogs that have a lot of photos.  So, I am still working through all of this, it is an adjustment not to have "instant" access to the internet. It's probably a good thing, it will get me away from the computer and I will spend more time outdoors.

Windows Movie Maker Program

Thanks to blogging friend "TexCyn" for her comment saying that she uses Windows Movie Maker for videos.

First off, I did not even know that the iPhone would take videos. Unknowingly, I hit the button to change from photo to video, I saw the red light and was wondering what was wrong.  Then I viewed the photos I took and saw that "arrow" in the middle of the screen.  Dah! Videos.

After reading the comment and looking at my laptop, I discover that Movie Maker is installed. I remember watching Stump do some of this stuff with his photos.  I opened the program and clicked on "add photos and videos" and added a video from "my documents".

I was able to turn the video around and add a title - WOW, this is great. I still don't know why these are upside down when I transfer them from my iPhone to my laptop. I contacted Apple yesterday and they emailed me a link to some instructions, but I have not read it yet.

Here are a few of the videos I took, don't be too critical. Remember, I didn't know I was taking videos at first and I also don't know a lot about the iPhone and computer programs. It's all trial and error.

Photo problems

When I plugged the iPhone into my laptop and transferred my photos and small video clips, most of them were upside down. I tried and could not change them.


I tried a 2nd time and clicked on the box to change them while transferring. Some of the photos changed but many were still upside down and the video clips were upside down.


If I plugged the iPhone into the laptop and used it like it was an external drive, the photos would transfer to the blog correctly.
I'm still having problems with the video clips. Do I have to upload them to "YouTube" first and then add them to the blog?
I do not have an account with YouTube yet - I guess I will have to set that up.


I was hoping to backup the photos to my laptop and then delete them from the phone so that I would have more space on the phone, I hope I can resolve this issue.


Another strange thing with the iPhone - I ordered an "Otter Box" cover for the phone from Amazon.com. The cover arrived today and I put in on the phone, I seemed to get better reception as soon as I did that. Is it just a coincidence or does it make a difference?


I figured the bad reception was because I've been traveling away from large cities. I have been looking at cell and Wi-fi boosters on Amazon and may order one after I check out all of the reviews. 

Today's Sunset