Biloxi, Mississippi

When I finished El Reno, I hitched up and was ready to leave and discovered that the brakes weren't engaging on the trailer. So I pulled in to Happy Trails automotive: the same guys who installed the rear air-assisted springs on my van. They took the trailer wheels off and discovered that my brakes were completely Kaput. The new brake systems weren't in stock so I drove to OKC to buy four of them at $70 bucks apiece. It took nearly all day to install them. Then, we figured out also that the power wire on the trailer only works one side. The other side doesn't work. So I only have brakes on one side of the trailer. I told the guys that I can't afford any more labor so just install the wheels and I'll take care of the wiring when I get home. This week I need to run new wires over to the other side of the trailer.

I drove to Rob's house and did my laundry. I stole two things: my ceramic grease pot with the little mouse handle, and the feather mattress. I called Rob and told him what I stole and told him that if he wants the feather mattress back, it'll have to wait until Spring. Man, is it nice. It really helps when it's cold in here. He said I could keep it. Thanks, you may have saved my life with that one.

I loaded up equipment and drove down to Biloxi Mississippi. I was joined by Travis and we got the job knocked out in four days. Racks, power, ladder-rack, switchtails, MUXs, CSU/DSUs, PC, KVM switch, alarm monitoring panel and all peripherals. It looks great.

Well, I paid for a week at the RV park here, so I called Chad and he was free this weekend so I drove to Lafayette and picked him up. We are playing in Biloxi this weekend. We walked on the beach yesterday, ate breakfast in Waffle House, took a long nap, ate at the IP buffet for dinner, and watched "Inglourious Basterds" last night. Definitely Quentin Tarrantino's style - but not as much squirting blood as I expected: he typically uses gallons of fake blood, spraying everything red. The last scene is perfectly Quentin though... LOL.

It is now Sunday morning.
I got up early, the dogs were rattling their collars at me at 5:00 am to go potty, so I'm drinking coffee and blogging.
The weather is cool - a high of 55 degrees, but it's still nice. Chad's driveway is completely mudded up from all the rain they've had in the past week. I'm not sure where I can park when I get home. But I have to be off for the holidays, so I'll figure something out.
We still have one more day to play at the beach before I have to worry about that.

I bought a spare serpentine belt for the van. One less thing to worry about. I may put it on next week, when I wire up the brakes on the RV. Always something needing fixed, right?

You have a great day.
MsAmber

Leaving El Reno . . . again.

Yayyy. The job is done.
Wednesday, the mission was to install a T-1 card into the old switch and Ma-Bell was porting over all the phone numbers to the T-1.
Well, Ma-Bell ported the numbers at 2:00, but the T-1 card wouldn't come up in the old switch, so we made the decision to install the NEW switch. We set out all the sets, swung the customers over to the new cables and patched them over, and created the database and installed the new switch - in one night.
In order to get out of there early (2:00 am) we just installed the old voicemail on the new switch. Thursday morning we found a little problem with that solution. You couldn't leave any new voicemails. So the new voicemail was installed and the contents loaded over - presto, no missed messages. It sounds exactly like it did before. So that was accomplished Thursday morning at 8:30 am. Then Thursday evening we went back and finished the programming, brought up the last 20 phones, hung the backboard and mounted the paging equipment, cleaned up the old cabling and replaced the ceiling tile, then cleared out the room and swept up the mess. We were out of there at 7:30 pm on Thursday night.

Cutover wasn't actually scheduled until Friday night and Saturday.
So... what shall I do with myself today?

It's been freaking COLD here. Tuesday night the wind blew constantly at 40 mph, I thought the RV was going to blow away. My water froze up solid. Wednesday, I did what I could with my hair and went in for a 14 hour day at work. Then had to try to thaw some water out to clean myself up on Thursday to go back in to work in the morning, then I got to come home for a while and take a nap, then back to work that evening at 5 - but we got finished up at 7:30 last night.
Today I shall work on getting some water thawed out, take a shower, then hitch up, drain my tanks (if they're thawed), and drive to Norman. I may see about dropping by my ex's house to do some laundry.

Sunday morning at 8 I am going to the shop to load equipment then I'm heading SOUTH!
Biloxi Mississippi, to be exact. Near the beach in the dead of Winter! Woo Hoo!
I hope that job lasts a few weeks... I'm petrified that I'm going to wind up working in Erie Pennsylvania in January.

You have a great day.
MsAmber

Okay, I'm blogging one week at a time now.

On Monday, November 30th, I hitched up in Lafayette, Louisiana and drove to Tuscaloosa, Alabama (412 miles). On Tuesday I did the walk-through meeting at the VA. Wednesday morning I refilled a propane tank and got the oil-changed in the van and raised the hitch. Then I rigged up and drove to Norman, Oklahoma (738 miles). It rained nearly all the way to Little Rock, Arkansas. I pulled in to Norman at 2:30 this morning. It is now 9 a.m. and I just hooked up the water so I can have a shower and I'm drinking my coffee. I need to wake up just a little more so I can go in to work.
Man, am I tired. Pulling a trailer in the rain just drains me - plus I have a caffeine hangover. I drank black coffee all day long yesterday. It's cold here, there is frost on the ground. That's why I didn't hook up the water last night when I set up the camper. I didn't want my hose to freeze. It was 35 degrees inside the camper last night so I fired up the furnace and I'll bet it ran for two hours straight to get it up to 65. I didn't stay up to wait for it. I turned on my heating pad and curled up and went to sleep.
I DID learn something though. I had traded mattresses with Chad to see about making more room in the RV and lightening the load a little. We moved the Sealy Posturpedic into his house and I got his Tempurpedic. That Tempurpedic mattress is temperature sensitive. When it's cold, it's hard as a rock. The place where I turned on the heating pad sunk in nice and soft, but the rest of the bed was hard as a rock until it warmed up.
Spot wiggled himself under the covers last night to warm up. I think I shall prohibit this new activity - I don't want dog hair under my covers - but I understand it was cold so I let him snuggle for a little while.

I lack the imagination to make this blog entry interesting.
I'll write more later, I suppose.

Have a great day.
MsAmber