Saturday, January 21, 2012

Repairs, Adjustments and HIGH Data Usage!

Time for an update. We had a pleasant (except for Dallas traffic) and productive trip to Hickory Creek COE park. Camping World in Denton installed our new sleep number bed and we are both happy with it (still trying to find my number). We made it back to Barksdale AFB Famcamp (home base for now) on Monday afternoon. We have settled back into a routine of up early, off to work and then home around dark for dinner, maybe a tv show and bedtime. Oops forgot to mention, all the time counting down to the weekend!

We still love our new home on wheels, although we keep finding minor things to get repaired or adjusted. I discovered the fantastic fan in the front bathroom does not raise by the power button, only manually (probably a connection loose). The front heat pump seems to only put out cool air, no matter what the temps are outside (i.e.: above 45 degrees). One problem I found may not be so minor. Every time it rains there is water in the bottom of our door, the metal threshold part. I cannot find where it is coming from and the techs at Bayou Outdoor Service Center thought they had it solved and repaired, but the next rain has proved them wrong! It may be time to plan a trip to Red Bay.

We have not had satellite hooked up as of yet and I am still trying to decide which service to use. Dish has the “pay as you go” service. You buy the receiver then pay for 1 month at a time with no contract. I am leaning in that direction, but discovered the prices they quoted did not include “HD”.

Cheryl and I both love surfing the internet, so a good connection is important for us. I purchased a “cradle point” router, and plugged my AT&T air card into it. It is a good connection, good signal and we both surf with our laptops at the same time. Three weeks into using this setup I received a “high data usage” warning email from AT&T. Now we don’t watch a lot of streaming videos or movies, just facebook and blogs mostly. I am trying to determine how we used almost 5gigs of data! The new billing period began the 13th of January and on the 18th I received another warning ( I am at 3.5gigs)!! We have been watching our usage carefully and I just cannot figure out what is happening. Maybe I have been hacked! I am using WEP2 security with the default password (maybe I need to change that). The router stays on 24/7 also, wonder if it uses data by just being on? I need to figure this one out soon or change data plans to 10gigs.

Well that is our update for now. Hope to follow up again soon. GBY

6 comments:

Merikay said...

Please let us all know what is happening with our data plan. This is something we all need to know.

Doris Arnold said...

Hey Don! Glad to see you are getting settled into your new home. Hope you find that water problem. There is always an adjustment period in an RV. Just keep making adjustments and soon it will feel like you have always lived there!

Mike Mills said...

Oh yes, I forgot this tidbit: We have the AT&T five gig plan too, but with a 4G Mi-Fi router. We don't download music or videos either, but we're astonished at how much data we use with a relatively modest amount of surfing. They're gonna get in your pocketbook no matter what!

Mike Mills said...

Well, I don't know what happened to my first comment, but here it is again: You guys were just up the road a piece when you were in Denton. If you find yourselves in the DFW area again, look us up and we'll buy you an orange soda pop.

Speedy said...

Sherri and I are on the Verizon plan but never have maxed out on the usage. Not sure what is downloading but maybe something is downloading from Windows updates? Sure wish we could have met you in Hickory Creek. We love it there and especially if we can met you two there!

Joe and Sherri

Joel said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.