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Although the experiment at NIF did achieve "ignition", IMO we are still a long way from achieving any form of commercial power production. Here's quote from an article in Science, which is a bit more of a mainstream science source: If gain meant producing more output energy than input electricity, however, NIF fell far short. Its lasers are inefficient, requiring hundreds of megajoules of electricity to produce the 2 MJ of laser light and 3 MJ of fusion energy. Moreover, a power plant based on NIF would need to raise the repetition rate from one shot per day to about 10 per second. One million capsules a day would need to be made, filled, positioned, blasted, and cleared away—a huge engineering challenge. Here's a link to the full article: https://www.science.org/content/article/historic-explosion-long-sought-fusion-breakthrough In 1942 Fermi demonstrated the first controlled nuclear fission reaction at the U of Chicago. The first reactor on the power grid was brought online at Shippingport PA in 1958. Commercial nuclear power was rushed into commercial use by the Atomic Energy Commission which was both the developer of the technology and its marketing agent--a bad combination. If those first generation reactors had been run through a full life cycle, many of the technology problems that were subsequently experienced could have been found and solutions developed. Instead, the first generation nuclear power plants were rushed online and became known for their unreliable performance. Even before Three Mile Island or Chernobyl or Fukishima nuclear power was judged to be "problematic" at best. Hopefully, we will have learned from this and will allow fusion power plants to develop in accordance with normal engineering practice. Unfortunately, that may not be fast enough for those who see fusion as a path to great wealth. Even though few remember them today, hucksters have been part of the fusion community since the beginning. In many respects the inertial confinement fusion program owes its existence to one such huckster, "Kip" Segal who founded KMS Fusion in Ann Arbor and promised Congress that commercial fusion power was "just around the corner" if only he was given a bit more money. This was in the mid-70's and Segal was able to bank several years posthumous funding after dropping dead while testifying to Congress about the funding he needed. (not a joke, this really happened). The inertial confinement fusion program, the "owners" of today's NIF, got its initial funding from the nuclear weapons program at AEC/ERDA/Dept of Energy which realized that Segal wasn't just a huckster. That was the period in which I was involved in the program. The inertial confinement program at Lawrence Livermore Lab grew through the management of yet another huckster by the name of Emmett who promised Congress that he could achieve ignition if he was given "just a bit bigger laser!" From those promises came the Shiva laser system, followed by the NOVA system, followed by NIF. Emmett didn't die while testifying, but he was just as good at getting funding! I agree with RV that fusion could well be the energy source of the future, but I caution that achieving safe, commercial power production will turn out to be significantly more difficult than it might seem to some. For example, claims that fusion is free of radioactivity are false, when, in fact, the fusion reaction itself releases 10 MeV neutrons which are the "energy" of the process. Those neutrons are powerful enough to induce radioactivity in many of the materials we might use to build a fusion reactor. How to create a reactor that, itself, doesn't become highly radioactive will be one of the major engineering challenges we will face. I'm sure we will discover other problems to solve that we haven't yet thought about. I'm not sure my grandchildren will see wide-spread fusion power in their lifetimes, but maybe the next generation will. JMO.

This article is a couple of years old, but it addresses this issue and states that non-commercial RVs re exempt which is what I've been reading for years on this subject. https://www.rvtravel.com/will-californias-diesel-law-affect-you-as-an-rver/#:~:text=that operate in California.” Broken,than 2010 is likewise grounded.

The difference between the US debt and the debt of any kind of business is the assumption that the government will always be there to pay its obligations. A company that couldn't meet its bond payments might try to float some additional securities but there would probably be few takers. As long as the US federal debt is considered 100% secure there are plenty of people who will buy it, even if the government is simply more money to pay its bills. That's because there are two underlying assumptions--1. A 100% expectation that the debt will get paid; 2. That the US economy will continue to grow to support increased tax revenues which will enable such repayment. If either f these underlying assumptions fail then there will be fewer people (or countries) willing to invest in US securities which is why uncertainty over the debt ceiling can have significant consequences.

Over the past 9 years, we have purchased two vehicles in TX and have had them registered in SD. In neither case did the dealer issue us a TX title, but in both cases the TX dealers were totally incompetent with respect to the transaction. In 2014 when we bought our CR-V the dealer finally agreed to return the registration package to me so I could sent it to our SD mail forwarding service so that the care could get titled. The dealer had had us pay for what he thought was the cost of the SD registration but he had miscalculated by ~$100 which I had to forward to our mail service. The dealer issued me a second set of TX temporary plates so we would be legal to drive (even though that itself wasn't legal). In 2020 when we bought our Outback, a similar snafu ensued. As I recall, someone at SD motor vehicles called me on her own initiative to help resolve the mess. The bottom line is that States has full reciprocity on this; for years we lived in the DC suburbs and no one thought twice about buying a vehicle in VA and having it registered in MD or the reverse. There it was commonplace; TX dealers appear to be less cosmopolitan.

Here's a basic level article on the nature of the Federal deficit and corresponding debt. GDP growth is tightly tied to deficit spending; managing a country's economy is a lot more complicated than balancing your family's checkbook. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/10/national-debt.asp

In my most, I made it clear that in the particular case I was using as an example, installing a charging outlet in a person's reserved spot would be a non-trivial problem. Saying that "lots of people install them in their own spaces:" is a "whataboutism" that attempts to avoid dealing with an actual problem. Failing to acknowledge real infrastructure issues doesn't make them go away. Every new technology creates its own adoption issues; they need to be dealt with.

Putting aside all the issues relating to electrical infrastructure, etc., there are other significant infrastructure issues that need to be resolved before EV's become practical options for many people. Example: My son is on the board of directors of a townhome community that is part of a very large planned community in the Raleigh NC area. In his townhome community parking areas are separated from residence front yards by concrete sidewalks. Any resident who would want to charge his EV by parking in his assigned parking space would have to run a power cable from the outer wall off his townhome, through his yard and across the sidewalk to his vehicle. More than a year ago I challenged him to start thinking about how the community would accommodate homeowners who wanted to be able to charge their EVs. The problem I outlined is made even more complex because there is no 240V access in the area of the home adjoining the front yard. Therefore, 240V power would have to be brought around the entire row of townhomes from the distribution transformers behind the row of homes. This would be a non-trivial undertaking. Recently he told me that Duke Power was going to install (at its cost) a small number of charging stations in "unassigned" parking spaces in the community. Paying for charging would be via credit card. I complimented him for getting things started in the right direction but he agreed that this would not be a solution if significant numbers of homeowners decided to purchase EVs. I suggested to him that his townhome community should budget for a capital improvement fund to cover the cost of the major rewiring that would be required to provide a single charging station for every homeowner (each home has wo parking assigned parking spaces). I don't know if he will bring this up to his Board but it is definitely the sort of long term planning that lots of communities will need to do.

I doubt there's anything that my hearing aids do that couldn't be designed into a Bluetooth enabled headset, but at present my aids are much smaller than the Apple or similar headsets. Not that I care all that much about appearance, but the electronics package of mine is a very slender "pod" that is significantly smaller than on many less expensive hearing aid models. Furthermore, instead of a tube extending from the electronics to the "speaker" there is a thin wire that is usually mistaken for a hair. The speaker module is small enough to go into the ear canal far enough to be completely out of sight. Not that all this miniaturization couldn't be done by others but, at present, what I own is significantly less apparent than the Apple headset so many people walk around with.

So far I've not encountered a situation where i can't hear using just the microphones on the ear pieces. If I find I need a bit more amplification of the TV I just use the phone app to turn up the volume on the hearing aids.

All kidding aside, the higher frequencies associated with women's voices contribute to men's inability to hear them without hearing aids!

I was in a similar situation (minus the tinnitus). The audiologist described my chart as showing mild hearing loss in the lower frequencies and moderate loss in the higher frequencies (which is very normal for our ages). What he explained to me was that it is better to get the hearing aids sooner rather than later so that the "speech processing" part of the brain doesn't lose function. I didn't really understand what he meant until I got the hearing aids and started to "relearn" to hear again. Your brain does need to "remember" how to sift through the noise to extract the signals (usually speech) that you want to listen to. Hearing loss is so gradual that you don't realize how much you aren't hearing until after your hearing is "restored." In the evening when getting ready for bed, the world sounds soft, fuzzy, quiet without the devices yet that's what I've been listening to for who knows how long.

I have the best of Jabra's several models. The posted retail price is $1999 but I caught a $300-off special. You can either use Jabra's over the phone hearing test or submit a test from an audiologist. I went to Sam's Club and had the audiologist there do a free hearing test. Costo offers the same service. The selling price includes three years of over the phone and online support and a loss/damage policy with a relatively small deductible. Appearance-wise they are almost invisible. The "in the ear" element is tiny and disappears into the ear canal. It's less visible than many "in the ear canal" devices. And as I already mentioned the behind the ear electronics package is quite small.

I have behind the ear hearing aids marketed under the Jabra name (previously Lively) and made by Resound, one of the major hearing air manufacturers located in Denmark. These Jabra hearing aids are the "over-the-counter" versions of Resound aids marketed through audiologists and selling for >$5k. I've had the hearing aids for a couple of months and have been very pleased. The behind the ear electronics package is significantly smaller than on many other models and is nearly invisible. Furthermore, the behind the ear piece is connected to the in the ear piece via a very thin wire, rather than a tube. The wire on mine is gray and is nearly indistinguishable from my hairs. My hearing aids are rechargeable (I didn't even consider ones that weren't). After a full day or use they typically have 60% of their charge left. They connect to my Android's Bluetooth and have the ability to provide a microphone capability. So I don't need my phone at all when carrying on a conversation. They can also stream Pandor or other music from the phone; I gather than not all Bluetooth phones can do this. Some just use the Bluetooth for control of the phone. Lastly, my phone has an app that allows me to alter the aids' frequency response depending on the circumstances. Even though I don't do this a lot, it's nice to be able to switch to "speech clarity" mode when I'm in a crowd. That mode boosts the high frequency response in accordance with my hearing loss measured as submitted to Lively (Jabra) and hard coded into my aids' response. IMHO the strangest part of getting used to hearing aids is training your brain to ignore many of the sounds you are now hearing that you haven't heard in years! At first you can be sort of overwhelmed by all the sounds you suddenly are hearing! 😀

If you include both "card tap" and "pay with phone" in the category of digital pay those features are becoming increasingly accepted. Both use "virtual credit card numbers" so they should be equally secure. Here's what VISA says about the issue: Tapping to pay with your Visa contactless chip card or payment-enabled mobile/wearable device is a secure way to pay because each transaction generates a transaction-specific, one-time code, that is extremely effective in reducing counterfeit fraud. It might be worth noting that when using my phone for electronic transactions, the phone has to be "unlocked". Since both our phones have fingerprint and/or facial recognition enabled as a locking mechanism, that provides a reasonable deterrent for unauthorized use, even if the phone were to be lost. But as someone else already noted, it's far more likely that you'd notice a missing phone than you would a missing credit card. One thing I like about using digital payment is that I get an electronic "receipt" for every transaction which I find useful if I want to make a return. There's no longer a need to save paper receipts One thing that I didn't see mentioned in this thread is the use of "credit card alerts" to warn me of the use of my cards. I have the alerts set for a threshold of $1 so I am alerted to any use of any card (including our debit cards). I get a text message within seconds of making a transaction. Some people might get bothered by all those text messages, but I find them reassuring. Only once in my recent memory, did such a message alert me to an attempted fraudulent transaction, but that one time it allowed me to report the fraud to the credit card company long before the transaction had cleared. The card was immediately canceled and a new one was in my hands in a matter of days. I use a credit card for virtually everything we purchase; I detest getting change back from a transaction and then carrying it around in my pocket for days or weeks until I make another cash transaction.

I have literally thousands of photos stored in one of the Cloud storage drives. Many of them were carefully sorted by child so that our children and grandchildren can find those of most interest o them. Until recently, I didn't think anyone had even bothered to look a them. However, in the past couple of months some of our grandchildren have commented on our long hair and clothes from the '70s. Maybe storing them online was worth it, after all! LOL

Just updated two of our laptops. Thanks, RV

Plagiarism is passing off someone else's work as one's own. The quotation in Ray, IN's signature is given with quotes, attribution and a date. Not the slightest hint of plagiarism. Now if Ray had written "Just like I have always said, ask not what one's country can do for you....." now that would be plagiarism! 😀

I don't think either group here is going to convince members of the other group to change their enrollment. It boils down to how much risk avoidance one wishes to accept. After last year when we made an advantageous change of Medicare Plan F Supplement, I am quite content to pay the premiums for that plan knowing that I won't have ANY other medical costs other than prescription drugs and eyeglasses. I bought my own hearing aids this year but I'm confident that what I purchased wouldn't have been allowable under most Advantage plans. The same is true of our eyeglasses, you're not going to find an Advantage plan that is going to fully cover progressive bifocals with high index Transitions photochromic lenses. The bottom line is that you can't get something for nothing. The managed care insurance industry lobbied Congress to create what we now call Plan C Medicare. But we all know that insurance companies aren't altruistic enterprises. They are in the business to make a profit, so don't think they really have your best interests at heart. It's all about the bottom line iMHO.

If you don't have a broadcast after doing all that, the rebuild kit is the logical next step. However, it is worth noting that you could, alternatively, upgrade to one of the newer Converge models since you have 12V power on the roof and don't need a cable to connect to another router inside the RV. If you were to consider going that route you should let the WiFiRanger staff know that you are upgrading from an existing installation and would want the power wires to exit the case from the bottom rather than the back. FWIW the Denali and Everest Converge models are more powerful than the Sky4 and the Everest has dual band WiFi (2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz) also.

I participate in a number of Facebook RV groups. I find it a good opportunity to "give back." The level of knowledge on many of those groups is well below what we're used to on forums such as this. I was rather blown away recently by a person who posted "what's the difference between my gray tank and my black one?" Quite a few of the people who participate in these groups are folks who live full-time in RVs without any intent at all to travel.

Sorry I am late coming to this discussion. One thing I want to verify is whether you are actually seeing a broadcast from the Ranger. If you are, then trying to perform a reset is the correct way to get the password set back to the default. I assume you are using a time or stopwatch to timed the reboots and are using the switch that controls power to the device. If you can't get the router to reset or you aren't seeing a WiFi broadcast at all, then the best option would be to purchase the upgrade kit hat will restores it and transform it into a Sky4. I'm not sure where you got the idea that the Sky4 wouldn't be supported; it's still one of the primary devices we sell for installation on new RVs. It can be ordered from our website: Sky series upgrade/repair kit

Google doesn't review "campgrounds" it reviews EVERTYHING! Seriously, there are Google reviews on pretty much anything you can find on Google Maps. And I have to admit that I use them quite often.

I hate to say it, but I bet that specialized review sites like Campendium and RVLife are getting overrun by Google which had over 1,100 reviews of this park, more than twice as many as were on the RVLife site. Personally, if I looked at the RVLife reviews they would bother me because there were more negative ones than I like to see. But I wonder how many people never get past the Google listing which didn't look nearly as bad. FWIW, many of the RVLife reviews were quite favorable, but others reflected what has been discussed here. Here's a review entitled "Grumpy Host": I needed propane and it was raining at the time. He said if it is raining, he wasnt going outside to pump propane. Host was grumpy and then attempted to explain that he just does things his way. If you don't like it, too bad.

The primary reason we don't use a Medicare Advantage plan is because we don't like having an insurance company dictate to us which doctors we can go to. My wife just had retinal surgery and we researched and found a doctor who we believe to be the most qualified retina surgeon in south TX. We didn't have to worry about whether or not he was "in network." Not all doctors have the same backgrounds or skill levels; that's just a fact of life.

Another vote for Miller. Roxanne is super!