DanZemke

Kirk, Not trying to disparage your grandson's opinion, but mine is somewhat different. I've never tried Brave. I've used Firefox with an extension named uBlock Origin for years along with Chrome for it's superior printing (to PDFs). I googled Brave vs Firefox. The first hit was: https://www.slant.co/versus/5226/16094/~mozilla-firefox_vs_brave I scanned this and found it to be disorganized and more difficult to parse than I was will to give it time for. There many, or may not, be valuable insights in this. The second link I looked at was: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browsers/compare/brave/ Based it's information, it's not clear to me why I would want to switch from Firefox to Brave. I'm open to a change to Brave. ---------------------- I ditched my personal printer many years ago. But I still "print to PDFs" fairly frequently, to preserve technical things like part numbers and procedures. As an aside, the Escapees forums present the least printer-friendly pages I've ever encountered.

I handle things similarly, but prefer good-enough, rather than thorough record keeping. I haven't used a checking register in over 3 decades. But have used Quicken for many years. I used it for a consolidated view of several accounts and to feed TurboTax each year. Never used it for expense tracking or budgeting. Every month, I scan all of my credit/debit/checking charges, to see if they seem reasonable. I only recall two instances of bogus debits. One was for a subscription to some kind of vitamin plan and the other was a subscription to a gaming service. My approach is better suited to me. Presumably, your approach is better suited to you. Different folks, different strokes 🙂

Reflectix also needs an air gap between it and the surface you're trying to insulate, otherwise the actual R value will be much less than that, prominently displayed in adds. Without an air gap, the reflecting foil does nothing - it's the same as bubble wrap. From many years ago, I also recall someone whose 12v heading pads melted the bottom of his tank, because it was empty. So enabling your self to camp in colder weather is doable, with some caveats.

If I were suffering from dust intrusion, I think I'd buy the Winix 5500-2. But I'm not at this time, so I haven't. I prefer it over other Winix models because of it's ratings and looks (I don't care about the remote control that comes with the 5500). The replacement filters are expensive, but I can afford $100 a year if they work well, and they seem to. https://www.amazon.com/Winix-5500-2-Purifier-PlasmaWave-Reducing/dp/B01D8DAYII/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?ie=UTF8&aaxitk=T3fknl1-7jneIMZcbNSj1g&hsa_cr_id=3671439830501&ref_=sbx_be_s_sparkle_mcd_asin_0

John, I seem to be less emotional than most, but the beauty of that performance, brought tears to my eyes. I forwarded your link to all of my relatives and best friends. Thank you! P.S. I found it best when listening with a good pair of head phones

My former employer (IBM), also stopped providing me with access to their self-funded heath care plan, and switched to a HRA (in effect, a $3K a year checking account for medical expenses - use it or lose it). But I think the motivation was cost cutting. The change happened 2 years before there was an ACA.

I agree, there would be. But the Yahoo Group was focused on TTN members. IMO, for those members, adding all membership camping alternatives would just add noise. I really didn't want to do this, but no one else stepped up to the plate. I'm trying to help migrate members of the largest (by far) membership camping organization to a new discussion home. You have better contacts than I, with the Escapee's organization. Can you set a 30 minute sniff test meeting for you and I with the right people? I'm OK with a conference call, or Zoom meeting. Let's take the next part of this off-line. Private messages will work initially.

Bill, I investigated the RVillage Thousand Trails group, based on your recommendation, a few months ago. It seems to have a wider focus than the old Yahoo Group. And it also seems to have a higher signal to noise ratio, for TTN members, than I wanted. From the RVillage website: "A group for people interested in, or members of, Thousand Trails. Share your favorite preserves, ask questions about the memberships, talk about the latest news. While this is a positive group, legitimate concerns are welcome." A prime motivation for trying to migrate members of the Yahoo group here, was that I was uncomfortable with losing the ability to actively collaborate. If TTN tried to do something that harmed many TTN members, without a means to collaborate, we would be impotent. I don't anticipate that will happen, but want a viable path for negotiation if it does.

Barb, I recall several mentions of a TTN Facebook group. But some folks, including me, will not use Facebook. Some of the posts above, appear to confirm this. I suspect that a focused Escapees TTN member specific thread, will draw fewer barbs. If that becomes and unmanageable problem, we'll move to another site.

Here's what I sent to all Yahoo Group TTN members: I was uncomfortable about losing access to the most helpful community of TTN members I know of. So I started a new topic for TTN member conversations on the Escapees website. For those of you unfamiliar with Escapees, it's a club dedicated to RVing. There is no fee to use their discussion forums. You do have to sign up, but in my experience (more than a decade), you won't get spam as a result. Please consider becoming an Escapees member - I am. Is the Escapees' website the best choice? I think so. I'm not aware of any other RVing website that would be superior. P.S. Yahoo provided me with a list of all of your email addresses. I promised not to use it for any commercial purpose.

Sorry for the confusion I caused. My intent was pure, but my execution sucked. Sorry. Here's the link to my restart:

There used to be an active TTN (Thousand Trails Network) Yahoo Group. But activity plummeted when Yahoo decided to phase out their free Yahoo Groups. Earlier this year, all Yahoo Groups were replaced by Yahoo mailing lists. Instead of showing discussions about a particular topic, each post resulted in an email to every member of the group. For most Yahoo Group participants, that turned out to be cumbersome. So activity plummeted. Tomorrow (12/15/2020), all Yahoo Groups/mailing-lists are scheduled to go dark. The purpose of this post, is to start a new thread for TTN members.

Thousand Trails Membership and Park Information

Big5er, Here's what I said: "The Slink Fire burning southwest of Tahoe near Topaz Lake and Coleville has consumed 26,752 acres and is 84% contained. Officials are hoping for full containment at the end of the week." Changing the focus from crime danger to environmental danger smells to me like hunting for an approach which might stick. Suggestion: Congrats to Zulu and leave it at that. Start another thread for a different topic. ------------------ Note that the complete text of the post I responded to, was deleted. Earlier posts seemed to try to connect Stockton, CA crime rates with the area that Zulu had moved to. My intended suggestion was to quit denigrating Zulu's choice of his new domicile with suggestions that it was an unsafe area. "Cancel culture" was a cheap shot. In this case, I'm tolerating a post that appears to have come from an idiot, because I know he's not. 🙂

"The Slink Fire burning southwest of Tahoe near Topaz Lake and Coleville has consumed 26,752 acres and is 84% contained. Officials are hoping for full containment at the end of the week." Changing the focus from crime danger to environmental danger smells to me like hunting for an approach which might stick. Suggestion: Congrats to Zulu and leave it at that. Start another thread for a different topic.

Stockton is relatively unsafe. No one has disputed that.. The primary topic of this thread is Zulu's choice of a location to live in. Do you think that Zulu's choice is unsafe?

Lou, As always, thank you for your insights.

Twotoes, Here's a condensed version of our discussion above: DZ: "Mariposa County is located in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, north of Fresno, east of Merced , and southeast of Stockton." T: "Stockton has some of the highest crime in the State" DZ: "Stockton is also about 2 hour's away." T: "Drugs and gangs have no problem going 2 hours away." --------------------- Perhaps you can see from these quotes, why I thought you were suggesting that Mariposa County was dangerous. Since that was not your intent, it doesn't appear to me that we have anything else to discuss on this topic.

We appear to be on different wave lengths. The thread's title is "We're Moving to California!". The first response (yours) congratulated Zulu. But subsequent ones seemed designed to denigrate his choice (pee on his party). I googled: Mariposa CA Safety and the first response I received was: I also googled: 'distance from stockton ca to silicon valley". Here was first result:

Stockton is also about 2 hour's away.

Interesting opinion and SKP# Mariposa County is located in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, north of Fresno, east of Merced, and southeast of Stockton. The county's eastern section is the central portion of Yosemite National Park. The population appears to be growing. I'd love to live there and suspect than many others would too. I get it that it became less pristine and affordable over time. But for those that enjoy the location, and can afford it, it's a great place to live. Congratulations Zulu!

Nice description. More vivid than my memory, but highly correlated with what I recall in southern California.

Yes, but there's more to it - bankruptcy last month. https://www.chicagobusiness.com/technology/why-rand-mcnally-got-sold-again

Latest Facts When I try to access: https://store.randmcnally.com/contact-us/ FireFox says: Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead Chrome says: Your connection is not private. Attackers might be trying to steal your information from store.randmcnally.com When I try https://www.randmcnally.com/support/s/diagnose-and-repair, I get a not found error. I wish Rand McNally well, but their current website problems are not due to a "system upgrade".

Rand McNally's home page says: "We’re upgrading our systems now and will be back up soon." IMO, this is typical (and reasonable) marketing speak for, we've been hacked, our systems aren't operational, and we're not sure how long it will take us to get out of this mess. Try googling "rand mcnally" and click on the "Contact Us" link. Then the "Road Atlas" link. And then the "Fleet Rand McNally...". All of these links display content that is much different that they did a week ago. The Fleet Sales link has a pretty temporary page because Fleet Sales are probably their most profitable customers. I'm not trying to disparage Rand McNally. They're behaving like most corporations when they've been hacked. But what they are working on is much more than a typical system "upgrade". The primary purpose of this kind of attack (ransomware) is not about user's information like credit card numbers. It's about making the cost of system recovery more expensive than the cost of paying perpetrator for a simple solution. That said, if they can get valuable customer information, they would probably sell that too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransomware