Obama Does a Good Thing for the 51st. State. Then Crooks.

If you happened to look at the Spring weather widget thing on here yesterday evening, you might have noticed the high humidity. I had to turn the AC on again last night. But today it was a lot better, even though it threatened to rain.
Ray and I started out by putting the fittings on the water tank, to see if we needed anything else. Tank at bottom of picture. Yes, of course, plumbing seems to always be like that!
We thought we had better do something about the broken AC shroud, compliments of Arkadelphia WalMart. We started to take the shroud off, and then thought that maybe we had better check to see if the AC still works!

I started to plug the rig into the 30 amp RV outlet, second time since we installed the new cord end. The PO had taken the RV 30 amp plug off and installed a 15/20 amp one. I couldn't plug it in last time, it just didn't seem to fit right, and Ray had trouble, too. This time this Bakelite plug disintegrated in my hand. I should have known to buy one from an RV store, but I wasn't near one, and had bought it from a hardware store. I did have a rubber molded RV cord end with an 18" pigtail that I had bought a long

time ago. So I found a length of flexible conduit which we slipped over the cord first, we butt connected the wires, coated them with liquid electrical tape, then wound electrical tape around each wire separately, brought the conduit over the splice, and wound wide electrical tape very securely over the whole thing. I had checked about getting shrink tape for this splice, but couldn't find any the right size.

Right in the middle of doing this, it started to rain, so we went into the TranStar and started to remove the sink which is too small for that size rig. I already had a larger one ready to go in there, just hadn't done it. We found out that we will have to remove the gas cook top, and counter top to get it out, so as it had stopped raining, we finished up on the cord.

The smaller sink is just the right size for the Mirage. It came with a teeny, tiny round one, molded into the fiberglass counter top, which we will cut out. It just has a hand pump faucet, and I happen to have a much better Attwood dual purpose one, so we will be installing a city water connection on the outside. Yes, this was just a bare bones camper when I got it, but that is alright, as I hardly ever go anywhere!

I was checking my emails, and there was one about the 51st state, the State of the Birds. "America is blessed with a spectacular abundance and diversity of birds, with more than 800 species inhabiting the mainland, Hawaii, and surrounding oceans. Birdwatching is one of the nation’s most popular pastimes, engaging millions of Americans; and it is big business, estimated to generate $45 billion dollars in economic activity each year. Birds are also a critical element of our farming industry as pollinators of crops and controllers of pests, as well as being key indicators of the health of the environment on which we all depend."

Then I read, and rejoiced at this:
http://www.abcbirds.org/newsandreports/stories/090304.html
"Administration Moves to Restore Endangered Species Act
The Obama Administration has announced its intention to reverse a rule passed in the last days of the previous administration and thereby restore the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to its previous full strength. The rule removed long-standing requirements for federal agencies to consult with experts at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service in cases where their actions may impact endangered species. Instead, it allowed each agency to decide on its own whether or not to consult. The announcement by the administration this month has been enthusiastically greeted by American Bird Conservancy and others in the conservation community. "

Of course, on that bird site there is the article about letting cats outside, who kill birds, but I won't go into that today.


Later this evening:
PS: I just got this from Bob2K, (an old friend from a previous RV chat), who posts on the RV-Dreams Community Forum:
"Last night we got a call from a woman that said a "3rd party" was trying to use our checking account and she wanted us to give her our 16 digit account number so she could make sure they didn't use our account.
Jerry hung up on them since the call was late at night and smelled like fish. We called our bank this morning and spoke to a VP and she said that there was a scam going around.
You might want to check with your banks and make sure they know what's going on and can watch your accounts. Happy Trails, Bob and Jerry."

Also, today, I got an email that looked to be from eBay Messages, asking for my name and address to send a payment. It did not have my full name on the top of the message, like eBay does, and it wasn't even addressed to my eBay User name. Of course I forwarded to eBay Security, and they are already working on it.
Beware, the crooks are always trying to get to you.