docj

We replaced both our recliner and sofa with leather pieces from Ekornes Stressless. Yes, they were expensive but they're both in excellent condition after nearly 10 years of daily use. Furthermore, a spring broke in the recliner's seat and it was replaced at no cost to us even after nearly 10 years! To me that defines what it means to stand behind your product! As for the dining table it has gone through several iterations. At present we have a 5 foot counter height butcherblock as both a table and auxiliary work surface. We use fancy "bar stools" for sitting at the counter to eat.

If the counters are "solid surface" material similar to Corian they can be polished with this: Corian polishing and repair kit It's tedious and rather slow going if the scratches are at all deep, but you can restore some luster to the countertop.

Just a word of caution about Visible. Like every low-cost, prepaid plan it varies greatly by location and time of day. At my home location it is pretty poor. What may be of more significance for some people is that the latency (ping time) is rather high (hundreds of msec) because of something about how Visible's network is configured. This could be a problem with real time games, etc. I also think it tended to mess up my load balancing router. I had Visible for ~6 months and finally gave it up. I have two other unlimited connections (neither of which is currently available) and I'm backing them up with an extra phone line I added to my postpaid Verizon account for <$25/mo. I'm using an iPhone on this line and, if I have to, I can stream YouTube TV (and more) using a Lightning to HDMI adapter which gets around the 15GB hotspot limit on that line.

We, also, had our covers long before Fantastic made them. Fantastic went down the path of rain sensors, thermostats, reversible motors, and other stuff, when all we wanted was a fan that we could use when it was rainy and/or very windy. Personally, I think those claims about "problems" from using other brands of covers was purely an attempt to win back customers. If you think about it, the only part of the fan that is affected by the cover is the lift motor which doesn't have fixed endpoints to its travel. It opens until it meets resistance and it closes in the same manner. It's a small motor which is designed to be "stalled" without damage. It doesn't know how far the cover has been lifted; it simply stops when it meets resistancce. Therefore, IMHO the claim of possible damage from using a Max-Air cover is bogus.

I've had Max-Air covers on both of our Fantastic fans for ~10 years. The covers permit the fans to open plenty far as far as I can tell.

We dropped DirecTV a year ago and stream all the video we watch and the music we listen to. Even with the cost of multiple cellular internet connections plus YouTube TV we still pay less than we did with DirecTV and have more flexibility.

Something like this ought to work; there are a lot of them on the market. Finding one with good reviews isn't easy. Wireless HDMI

It could be a scene in the next "RV movie"; it would be hysterica!

Since you mention you have an iPhone, are you aware that you can get HDMI output from the phone's Lightning port? Apple sells an inexpensive Lightning to HDMI adapter and the data you use isn't counted as part of your hotspot limit. (Don't buy one of the unbranded copies of this adapter; it may fail the HDMI copyright protection rules.) In addition to my several low-cost internet connections I now have an iPhone that is dedicated to streaming video. I added it to our postpaid Verizon plan and it's only costing me ~$27/mo including taxes. I can use its 15GB of hot spot data and when that runs out I can connect it to the living area TV with an HDMI cable. If I really cared, I could use a wireless HDMI extender to eliminate the cable.

I think Kirk and I and others are talking about "total annual cost" which is the only thing that really matters. The tiers you are talking about are irrelevant--the only thing that matters is what your total costs are for a year including premiums and all co-pays.

In the past 10 years we have bought 3 cars in TX while being registered as SD residents. The results have been mixed. Car #1--After 60 days of asking the dealer about the status of my registration, they were forced to issue me another set of temporary tags. I eventually had my SD mail service person walk over to the County office and get things straightened out; including adding a necessary ~$100 to the check that the dealership had written to the State revenue office. Car #2--Bought another vehicle from the same dealership as #1; told the dealership that I wanted them to give me the titling package so I could send it directly to "our person" in SD. Had my registration materials back in a week. Car #3--Bought from a different dealership this past August; I tried to get them to release the package but they refused. The dealership started the transaction by sending the payoff check for my trade-in to the wrong financial institution! 😁 The SD revenue office then returned the package to the dealership because of a wording problem relative to SD law. At the 7 week point I got a call from County staff letting me know they had received my package and that there was a ~weeklong backlog and that I might want to get my mail service to hand carry it through the process. At that point I did get my SD mail service engaged but, fortunately, after having repeatedly bugged the dealership's GM about the problem, a person on his staff finally stepped up to the challenge and got the matter resolved on the 57th day of my temporary tags! Of course, the County staff managed to make matters even worse by sending the registration card without the necessary stickers to put on my license plates! I'm glad others have done this so easily. Looking back at these episodes they now appear comic but they were somewhat aggravating at the time! 😂

My wife and I are taking the COVID situation very seriously, but we have had to have some work done on our MH in the past couple of months. The tech who did the work both times wore a face shield while inside our MH. It wasn't a perfect solution, but at least it gave us some protection. The work needed to be done--one of our 20 year old A/Cs died and we had both of them replaced.

As a clarification, the COP of a heat pump will decrease as the outside temperature (thermal reservoir) falls and will reach 1.0 at roughly zero degrees F. However, as the temperature falls below 32F water vapor condensing out of the air will form ice on the outside coils and it will be necessary for the device to "reverse" itself to melt the accumulation or to derate itself. I believe some (all?) Dometic heat pumps reverse themselves like residential systems. From what I've read my new Coleman Mach8+ heat pumps derate themselves in some manner at temps below 40F. One thing that varies among heat pumps is the indoor coil temperature. A long time ago we had a residential heat pump which produced air on the indoor coil that felt cool to the touch (it was below skin temperature). It was dreadful. Our new Colemans produce air that feels warm! We've been using them at night for the past couple of weeks; we are very pleased.

I've stayed out of this discussion because I didn't want to be accused of making a commercial post, but if you're willing to go above $100 there are some much higher quality products available to you. The performance of router/repeater/amplifiers available today is far superior to what was available ~5 years ago.

That's what I am doing. Each year I use the analysis tool to calculate which plan has the lowest annual cost for me and my wife. These are stand-alone Part D Rx plans. I thought I had been clear. I have no interest in Advantage Plans.

For sure; fortunately we have access to a website that has a very good analysis tool. For example this coming year I'll be changing from one AARP United Healthcare plan to another to take advantage of slightly better pricing on my particular meds.

We're saying the same thing--what matters is the annual cost of the plan including premiums and the cost of Rx. All I was trying to say is that high premiums/lower drug cost isn't always the best decision. You have to look at the specific drugs being prescribed.

Since you're experienced at doing this, I assume you are considering "total annual cost" not just "out of pocket costs for Rx." All to many seniors, unfortunately, don't appear to evaluate the cost of their options on an annualized basis and the answers aren't always obvious. For example, expensive Part D plans may keep your Rx costs low but that might result in a participant remaining the Coverage Gap for the entire year rather than transitioning to the Catastrophic stage where the drug prices are quite low. Money spent on higher premiums doesn't change the out of pocket thresholds for transitioning from one stage to the next. One really arcane fact that I doubt many understand is that when you are in the Coverage Gap the price you actually pay for an name brand Rx is only a portion of the cost that gets credited to your out of pocket expenses for the year. For example, my wife is on several high-priced meds and when she is in the Coverage Gap the amount credited to her out of pocket costs is roughly twice what she actually pays. The net result is that she goes through the Gap much faster than might be expected and transitions to Catastrophic rather early in the year. If she was on a plan with higher premiums she would still get the same "discount" but her total out of pocket costs would be less and she might not get to the catastrophic stage until much later in the year.

When you blow past your hotspot data limit on Verizon you are limited to <600kpbs. Good luck watching much Netflix on that data stream.

I think you may be unaware that most of the current WiFi Ranger routers can accommodate integrated modems so they, in fact, can connect to the cellular networks. As I previously stated, WiFiRanger router/modems are currently certified to connect to the AT&T and T-Mobile networks. We are in the final stages of obtaining Verizon certification. WiFiRangers were originally exclusively wifi devices but we've been adding modems to them for a number of years.

I don't think I ever said it did. The Chromecast (or a Roku or Firestick) "facilitate" a connection between the internet source and the TV. Essentially, they pass along the URL so an internet connection can be made to the TV. No one ever said that the Chromecast "sends" the video from the hotspot to the TV. It occurred to me that you might be arguing that somehow the Chromecast uses twice as much data because there is an internet connection to your phone AND to the Chromecast, but that I think is an incorrect assumption. Once you have "cast" the video to the Chromecast there is no reason for it to continue to be displayed on your phone (or other device). Yes, you can control it from the device but in my experience you don't have to have it displayed. Therefore, I see no reason why it would use any more data than is required to display it on the TV.

To answer your specific WiFiRanger question--our routers/modems are currently certified for use on AT&T and T-Mobile. Verizon certification is expected "imminently" but we don't control the process. However, just because you have Verizon phones doesn't mean that you necessarily need or want to have a Verizon plan for your Ranger's modem. There are relatively low cost, high data limit plans available for both AT&T and T-Mobile from resellers such as Millenicom, OTRMobile, and others. As has already been suggested, take a look at the Mobile Internet Resource Center for more info on that topic. I usually connect my hotspots to my Ranger and keep all my laptops, phones, etc, connected to it. That way it's easy to change the entire network to a new source whether that is an RV park WiFi, another hotspot, or whatever. With all due respect, I think you were wrong with regard to your concerns about the data consumption when a hotspot is used as a router. You're only using network data when you are connecting to the internet. The files you shared between yourselves would not have resulted in network data usage. Furthermore, unless the files were truly enormous ones, even if you had been charged for the data, the amount would have been trivial. More likely, your computers were "catching up" on updates and other housekeeping things. If you had multiple tabs open on your browsers while connected there can be substantial data usage without you knowing it.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/10/spacex-starlink-bringing-free-internet-to-some-texas-kids-in-early-2021/

Starlink has begun allowing people to actually sign up for its service at a cost of $99/mo plus a payment of $500 for the receiver. Promised speeds are 50-150Mbps with some periods of "no service". The no service issue probably arises because there may be times when the satellites will not be in position above your location. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/27/spacex-starlink-service-priced-at-99-a-month-public-beta-test-begins.html

We have a pair of lower-end Dahons. They're not as easy to ride as full size bikes. JMO