Chalkie

That's pretty much what I said, if you would please re-read. My point was that it is still around military service in a relatively narrow interpretation. On the other hand GEICO, which originally stood for Government Employment Insurance Company has nothing at all today having to do with government employment.

Actually USAA was set up by 25 Army officers to insure each others autos. It has expanded but membership is still limited to active, retired, and honorably separated veterans and their children (as long as the parent is a member). Membership can't be passed to siblings or parents.

Whatever. You must be right and I must be wrong.

For what it is worth, my son works for a general contractor outfit and the only power tools they allow in their toolboxes are Milwaukee (both corded and cordless) because they are the most reliable and durable.

Although we never met "in person" I remember the many posts that Jim made. Our condolences to the family.

– DSHS Commissioner John Hellerstedt, M.D. Here is he problem as I see it. Texas is supposed to be administering the vaccine immediately per the state Department of Health. Yet they are only at 66.68% administered and the county where I am (Williamson) has NO available doses. So where are they? It seems that Texas, again to me, has taken a shotgun approach by allowing the individual counties to run the distribution as opposed to a state level management.

Then perhaps you could list the college/university and way to verify the validity of the survey. LInks are wonderful things and most of the people on this forum were born, but just not yesterday.

If you are using a VPN it creates a "tunnel" from you to the distant point. The way it works is that any points between A and Z are sealed off. So if you are using a VPN it doesn't matter if the entity you are connecting to has one or not.

Having lived in Colorado for 30 years I can tell you that people that should know how to drive in snow don't always, especially when it first starts coming down. It's like they have to be retrained each and every time. The funniest experience with bad road conditions was in Lubbock, Tx though. Snow and ice aren't all that uncommon in the Texas Panhandle. We were heading to Austin in early February for a birthday party and spent the night in Lubbock. Next morning we got up to a heavy coating of ice on the truck. Since we were without the RV we decided to forge ahead. The truck had 4WD and the big rigs were moving, so I tucked in behind one that was moving cautiously and gave myself a good following distance. We came around a curve in the road and could see red and blue flashing lights up ahead. We slowed even more and as we got to where we could see, there were THREE cop cars all spun off the road. We drove on by without offering to help figuring that they could call for their own rescue and might be a little embarrassed.

I could be wrong but I thought maybe he was planning this for the HDT he is currently building in which case the weight is not as big an issue.

I would say that if you fill your water tanks with clean water (well or city) and the tanks are kept sanitized you should be good to go on using it for drinking. We do all the time and have never had ill effects. We do you use a PUR water pitcher for drinking but that is more for taste than anything. As for back flow, install a backflow preventer. They are very common for garden hose and plumping sizes in any plumbing supply, or Lowes or HD. In my rig, the winterizing inlet uses the water pump and when using that it is also usually in the water heater bypass setting. I suppose that you would not need to bypass the heater though. Again, I see no reason why not but you might just have to experiment with that.

My employment in the years immediately prior to retirement required that I work from home. I connected to servers remotely using VPN. I still use VPN on my computer and my phone service also provides VPN. As stated above, my previous employer required a VPN, which was provided by them and an anti-virus provided by the employee. Only 3 (at that time) were allowed: Kaspersky, ESET NOD32, or Windows Defender with Defender being a free option. Their thought was that since you were on a VPN connection to their servers that Defender was more than adequate for work as they were running a/v software on the server side as well. Fast forward to today and you can purchase a VPN (free ones will drive you nuts with ads), you can purchase an a/v program (free ones lack a lot of features), or both. OR, you can purchase a good VPN and just use Defender as it has matured rather well over the years, which is the route I choose.

I don't have a gurgling issue but that seems to me to be a relatively easy and inexpensive bit of preventative maintenance that could even be done more often, like once a month.

The market is indeed hot in Colorado Springs! When we sold in July our house had 7 offers on the first day it was listed and we took the second highest as it was conventional and not VA at out realtors recommendation. I don't know about looking at northern tier states, then you are getting into the fringes of the Great White North. You could always look for something in the mountains of Arizona for lower temps and humidity and still be lower than Colorado. IMO Colorado Springs was and still is just about the perfect place to live but after 30 years we were over the cold winters. And just so you know there is nowhere to escape tornadoes although some place are more prone than others, same goes for earthquakes. 😄

Our granddaughter took the Ford Fusion hybrid on a trip to Colorado, roughly 1650 miles round trip. She only had to fill up twice on a 14 gallon tank with the rest of the miles taken up with the electric. I think she could have done better had she been more smooth on the braking to take advantage of the reactive breaking. Range for that car on gas alone is about 400 on a tank. If I ever get another car it will darn sure be a hybrid, I don't think I am ready for all electric yet, although my son-in-law put down a deposit on a Tesla truck.

My son-in-law has a hybrid. He loves it. It sits a lot now as he mostly works from home, but he figures he gets about 45 mpg.

Both technologies are very promising but are going to take some major pushing and investing to mature the technologies to commercial value. Elon Musk has called the hydrogen fuel cell "mind bogglingly stupid" so we can't count on his innovations but perhaps we can for the sodium ion batteries since they do operate very similarly to the lithium ion batteries.

To me wind makes far more sense than solar in the long run, after all the sun doesn't always shine. It both cases there needs to be a way to store excess production otherwise standard electrical generation (coal, gas) needs to be available to keep the grid up. Wind may become even more successful if small, home-sized wind generators were made available at reasonable prices. It would be nice if someone came up with a better material for batteries than lithium. It too is a finite resource no matter size of current reserves and it causes huge pollution issues in both mining and disposal of used batteries. For example, it takes 500,000 gallons of water to produce one ton of lithium and requires a lot of toxic materials to process it. It also is not so good on the environment visually.

I like that you are getting involved in HAM radio due to activities. That is how I got my start. My son was with a group of 4WD off-roaders that used HAM more than CB so he invited me and some others to commit to a class that was offered by one of those off-roaders. I was satisfied with just having a Technician license until recently. I found this great free study site that you might find helpful, I have in studying for General.

I went to the Texas State Health Department and it said that a pharmacy near us had 66 doses, I went to the website for the pharmacy and it said "Coming Soon". I guess this is what we may face, left hand not know what the right hand is doing, or vice versa.

That may be a good guess, after all it is the country that taxes you watch over the air television, although they call it a license.

Not trying to hijack the thread here but I am very curious about what specific prescription dog food you need. It must be a Lab thing but my daughter's silver lab needs a prescription dog food.

I am not sure I understand your question and will admit I am not an electrician. If you could clarify a bit I will pose the question to my son who is a licensed electrician.

That's not surprising considering that Ford use to own Land Rover. Personally, I would stick with the Subaru with its established tech and reliability.

How many layers do you have in My Maps? I see there is a 10 layer limit. I have not messed around with My Maps that much so this is kind of a thinking exercise for me. Forgive me for asking questions that may be common knowledge for you. Happy New Year to you as well!