Really Getting Around

As I said in my last post, Barb had done a number of inquiries about golf carts and was told that there was a fellow in the park who bought and refurbished golf carts. He resold them at a reasonable price but people in the park told us to expect to pay about $1500 for a refurbished golf cart.

A different fellow in the park was selling a golf cart and had marked it down from $1600 to $900 because he was going back up north the next day and was selling his place.

Barb quickly got me out of my comfy chair and down the street to see it. We took it for a test drive. We went my sister's place to get her and her husband's opinion. They noted that it had brand new batteries that were bought in January 2012. The batteries are normally the most expensive part of the cart.

They also noted that it had a new roof and rain cover which is the second most expensive part on a golf cart.

So we went back to purchase it but found out that the guy wouldn't take a cheque. He wanted us to pay cash. We didn't have that much cash. I gave up and started to walk home but Barb tried to talk him into taking a cheque.

While Barb was trying to convince him to take a cheque, I went to a neighbour's house and she said that I should talk to the fellow at the park who repairs golf carts. She said he offered the guy $800 for the cart and the guy wouldn't take it. We phoned the repair guy and he said that it was a good deal at $900.

Eventually Barb convinced the guy to take a cheque. It turned out to be helpful we knew the neighbours. So he felt we were trustworthy enough.

So we had a golf cart. It was a nice baby blue colour and had some decals on it. We were told that every cart in the park had to have the owner's lot number on it, so that if we drove badly the people in the park could report us to the management.

Also there were decals on the cart that said “Ed and Alice”. It turned out that the guy we bought the cart from wasn't Ed and his wife wasn't Alice. He said the cart came with the house when he bought it. Those must have been the names of the people who had the home before him.

We had the cart for a few days and it started to give us problems. 

When we stepped on the accelerator sometimes we would press ten or twenty times before we could get the cart going. This was embarrassing if we were at a stop sign and there was someone behind waiting for us.

It was also a bumpy ride. Barb noticed that one of the tires was smaller than the others.

Then one of the headlights went out.

Also Barb wasn't happy that battery charge dial didn't work. We didn't know when we needed to recharge the batteries. She was out one time with Sarah and the battery died. She was a long way from home and had to push the cart home while Sarah steered. Not only that it was raining hard at the time.

So Barb made an appointment to have it looked at by the golf cart repair guy in the park. She told him about the problem with the accelerator, the head light, the small tire and asked him to install a battery charger dial.

The repair guy was busy hosting relatives for a week.  So he couldn't look at our cart right away but we waited until he was free. Then he came by and picked up the cart and gave Barb a loaner to use while he was fixing ours.

I didn't get to drive the loaner but Barb said it was a cadillac of golf carts and made our cart look cheap.

Anyway, the repair guy had our cart fixed in a day or two. He found a rusted wire connecting the batteries to the accelerator and replaced it. He put in a new headlight. He installed a new battery charge dial.

Barb was happy with all that but she asked him what he did with the small tire. The repair guy said it was just a little flat. All he did was pump it up. It wasn't actually a smaller tire.

We became the talk of the park when people found out that we thought the tire was smaller than the others and it only needed to be pumped up. 

But it was all good now.

Getting Around

The park that we live in has its own golf course. So most of the people in the park get around in their own golf carts. The place that we bought didn't come with a golf cart. So for the first few weeks we were here, we got everywhere by walking.

Barb thought this was inconvenient. We thought of buying a golf cart but thought it was too expensive. Barb's friend Marsha had a electric scooter that she was selling at a reasonable price. So Barb borrowed it for a few days to try it out.

As luck would have it, she got a flat tire. Barb thought the tire might have got a puncture from the spikey vine that is on the trellis beside our driveway.

Barb decided that she really didn't want the scooter but felt it was her duty to fix the flat tire before she gave the it back to Marsha.

This wasn't easy. First, she had to find out where to get a tire for this unusual scooter. She couldn't find anything locally. She checked the internet and talked to a number of places.  She eventually found a fellow in Texas that sold the tire at a  reasonably price and would ship it here. 

Barb also needed to figure out how to change the tire which also wasn't easy because the scooter motor was attached to the wheel and there were important wires in the way.

She waited and waited for the tire to come and it never came. Marsha and her husband got impatient. So they took the scooter back with the flat tire. Marsha's husband had it fixed right away. It didn't need a new tire at all. It just had a leak in the nozzle of the inner tube. The fix didn't cost anything.

Fortunately, the fellow in Texas hadn't shipped the tire yet. So Barb was able to cancel it.

We eventually bought a golf cart but that is another story.

Wheeling and Dealing on eBay

Barb is very happy with her iPod Touch. She is able to email, imessage, Facetime and take pictures with it.

She met a lady in the park who was selling an iPod Touch. She wondered whether I would like an iPod Touch. I already had an iPod classic for my music and an iPod shuffle for my audio books but I said that an iPod Touch might come in handy in the summer when I get emails about fastball on the afternoon before a game. I may not be on my computer but if I had a iPod Touch, it would ring when I got an email, then I would know to check it out. So Barb decided to get it for me to test out.

I reset the iPod to the factory settings and began to set it up for myself. I figured out how to use the wireless and starting getting email. I couldn't hear it beep, it was too soft. I also couldn't imessage or Facetime. After some investigation, I found that apparently it was an iPod Touch 2 and was too early a model.

So we decided not to buy the iPod Touch from the lady in the park.

Undeterred, Barb decided to buy me an iPod Touch 3 on eBay. She put a bid in and won it for $80. Then we waited and it came in the mail in a couple of days. We were excited. I set it up but noticed that it seemed a lot like the iPod Touch 2 that we got from the lady in the park. I checked it out on the internet and found out that Apple sold the iPod Touch 2 as an iPod Touch 3 as well. Then Barb searched the internet and realized that her's was an iPod Touch 4 not an iPod Touch 3.

So still undeterred, Barb put a bid on an iPod Touch 4 on eBay and won it for $130. However, our iPod Touch 4 did not arrive quickly. We waited and waited. Eventually, we had to email the seller. He said that he mailed it the day after we bought it. It was now more that a week later and it was only coming from Tampa. He said he would check into it right away. He found out that it was sitting all this time at the bottom of the mailbox that he mailed it in. He said that when he checked he saw the mailman take it out of the box. It came in a few days and it was the right one this time. It worked exactly like we needed it to.

But now we had too many iPods. So Barb decided to sell the iPod Touch 3 on eBay. She had to figure out how selling on eBay worked which wasn't straight forward because she was selling it from the US but eBay had a Canadian address registered for her. She finally got it up for sale and it sold quickly for more than we bought it. Then she had to figure out how to mail it to the buyer. She packed it up and mailed it. It arrived at the buyer in a few days and he gave Barb a good review. Barb had made her first sale.

Barb and I thought this might be a good way to make a little money on the side, buying things of eBay and then reselling them for more than we bought them.

The Mystery of the Missing Sewing Machine Cover

Barb goes to the sewing club every Tuesday afternoon and the quilting club every Thursday afternoon. The quilting ladies were going on a road trip to Sebring to take a course on free-motion quilting.

A few days before her trip, Barb was starting to get organized. She found out how to carry her sewing table in her carry bag and was very happy.

She was looking for her sewing machine cover to protect her sewing machine when she had to move it to the classroom. She was surprised when she couldn't find it anywhere in the mobile home. It is a big boxy thing and there are not too many places it could be. She said that she couldn't remember putting it away. She didn't remember seeing it since she has been in Florida and she didn't remember unpacking it.

She got me to look around with her all over the mobile home. We were looking in the bedroom closet and she was telling what she had in every box. Then she remembered that she never brought the sewing machine cover. She had packed sewing machine tightly in one of the boxes but the sewing machine didn't fit in the box with the cover on it. So she packed clothes around the sewing machine to protect it. She didn't need the sewing machine cover to protect it.

I had helped Barb solve the mystery of the missing sewing machine cover without doing anything.

Barb's Tennis Probabilities

Barb finds that the tennis in the park is not as competitive as she would like.  So she goes to a local community center when she wants to play tennis.  There are usually 12 or 13 players who show up.  They use playing cards that they choose at random to divide up into three different courts of four for each set.

There is one player who comes every day who is not good enough to play with such a competitive group.  Barb told me that she seems to be in his foursome more often than everyone else.  In fact, she decided to play pickleball in another community instead of tennis because on this problem.

A few days ago, she decided to take her friend Barb to the community center to play tennis with the group.  That one player who seems to always ruin her foursome was there as usual.  Barb played four sets and, even though the foursomes were selected randomly, that fellow was in her foursome every time.

Barb came home and asked if I could calculate the probability of that happening.

I figured that there were 495 ways to choose a foursome out of 12 players.

There are 45 ways to have any two players in the same foursome.

So there would be a probability of 45/495=0.09 of Barb and that fellow being in the same foursome.  So she should expect to play with him once every 1/0.09=11 sets or once every 11/4=2.75 days.

The probability of Barb and that fellow being in the same foursome four times a row would be 0.09^4=0.00007.  So she should expect to play on the same foursome four times in a row once every 1/0.00007=14,641 days.

Barb wasn't sure whether this fact meant that she should buy a lottery ticket or not.

Pickleball Champs

A couple of weekends ago, Barb was in a pickleball tournament at another park in the area.  She teamed with her best friend, Barb, for the women's tournament on Saturday and teamed up with her friend, Mike, from Ottawa for the mixed tournament on Sunday.

In the women's tournament, Barb and Barb was doing well but lost a close game on the winners' side to the eventual winners of the tournament.  After the game, Barb said that she would see them in the finals.  Unfortunately, a little later, while playing their way back on the losers' side of the bracket, they lost another close game because of a referee mixup.  The referee who was an older fellow who couldn't figure out what was going on and had to be replaced.  When he was replaced Barb and Barb were winning 5-3.  However, the new referee decided to start the game over again and with the new referee they lost 15-13.  Barb was not impressed.  Many people came up to her later in the day and asked her how they did in the women's tournament and were surprised when Barb said she didn't win.  They thought Barb and Barb would probably win the whole thing.

The next day, Barb and Mike played in the mixed tournament.  They lost a tough game early and had to play the long way back on the losers' side.  They worked their way back and beat the team that had earlier beat them to get to the finals.  Then they won the first game of finals but it was a double knockout.  So they had to play a second game.  They were up most the game but tired at the end and lost a close one.  So they got the silver medal.

in the next few days, there were reports in the local newspapers about the tournament.  In one of the papers, they only named the winners who lived in the host park.  They said that a team that came all the way from Ottawa came second. Barb took a photo of the newspaper to email to her pickleball pals in Ottawa.

In another newspaper, they listed the winners by name but didn't say where they came from.  So Barb took another photo of the page and emailed that to her pickleball friends in Ottawa too.

Surprise, You Owe Us Money

Barb set up all of our Ottawa bill payments so that they would be paid automatically or so we could pay online once we receive the bill by email.  The other day she got an email from American Express saying that she hadn't paid her monthly bill.  She was furious.  How could this be?

She looked at the bill payment that she setup and found out that she had setup a prepayment for the day the bill was due.  For some reason, American Express always needs five days to process a payment.  Barb realized that she must have forgotten about the special requirement for American Express payments when she setup the bill to be paid on the day it was due.

Barb hates paying bills early but she hates paying interest or late fees even more.  She was mad at herself for making that mistake.  Now she would have to pay interest on her American Express bill, all because of American Express's inefficient bill payment processing method.

It was unfair but there was nothing she could do about it.

She was happily surprised when she checked her next month's bill and found out that they hadn't charged her interest.  She guessed that somehow American Express must have received and processed the payment on the day it was due.

Persistence Pays Off

We have a telephone line and DSL internet here in Florida from a company called Century Link.  Barb set it up before we left Canada.  So it was up and running when we got here.

She got a good deal with free nationwide long distance and unlimited internet bandwidth for one low price.  Barb can watch television over the internet and I can skype with Stan.  We can also facetime and phone the girls and facetime and phone Barb's friend Debbie.

Barb was told she could check her account online but she should wait until she received the first bill in the mail to set it up the online billing.

We were here over a month and we still hadn't received a bill.  Barb starting wondering what was going on.  She found out that the bill was sent to our address in Canada.  By the time she found out, the bill was due the next day.  She was happy that she found out that the bill was due before she had to pay a late fee.

Unfortunately, the bill was twice what she thought it would be.  Barb freaked out.  She checked the bill online and found out that nationwide long distance means United States not Canada.  So a phone call to Julia cost us $60 about 75 cents a minute.

She phoned Century Link to see if they could do anything.  The lady she talked to at customer service said that we could get unlimited long distance to Canada for $5 a month.  So Barb signed up for that.  But Barb couldn't get the lady at Century Link to reverse the charge for the past month.

When we got the following month's bill, there was another $60 call to her friend Debbie on it because the call occurred before we got the new plan.  Barb freaked out again.

So Barb phoned Century Link again.  This time she got a man at customer service.  He said he would reverse the charge for this month's bill because we now had the $5 plan.

Then Barb told him about first month's $60 call.  He said he would try to get that reversed too but had to check with his supervisor.

Barb phoned back a few days later and got a lady from customer service this time. She asked if the first month's charge had been reversed yet.  The lady checked and said it wasn't but she would get it done right away.  And she did.

Barb was very happy.  Her persistence really paid off.

A Stitch in Time, NOT

Barb gets very excited about her handicraft projects.  She set up her sewing machine in the dining room and has been working on a quilt that she brought from Canada.  She spends a lot of time talking to me about her sewing problems, showing me what she is doing and asking for my advice.  My usual practice is not to give advice, in case I get into trouble.  But sometimes I have to help her out with some kind of mathematical or geometrical problem.

Barb also likes to watch some television in the evenings and does some handiwork to keep her awake.  She found a crochet pattern on the internet that she thought looked neat.  It was sort of a patchwork blanket that involved crocheting little squares of the same pattern but with different colour combinations and then joining them together to make the whole blanket.

She started making the squares and was enjoying herself because they were turning out so well.  After she had made about 20 squares, she thought she should try to crochet some of them together. 

This was not as easy as it seemed.  The pattern on the internet was given in two parts.  One website for the doing the squares which was linked to another website for putting the squares together.  However, it was difficult to see how the two websites worked together.

Barb tried for two days to crochet the squares together, showing me the results.  She knew that it didn't look right.  She kept showing me and asking me what I thought.  I thought it didn't look right either but I thought she would eventually figure it out.

She kept trying and trying and she kept reading and rereading the websites.  She is very persistent. She couldn't figure out what was wrong.  She was gettting more and more frustrated as time went on that her attempts to crochet the blocks together didn't look like the pattern on the website. 

Finally, she got my attention and put the website pictures up on the television so that I could see them from my comfy, thinking chair.  We looked at them together and noticed that the squares were not actually the same size when they were being crocheted together.  We then found out how the smaller square needed to be finished while it was being connected to the larger square. 

After that Barb knew how to put the squares together and she started having fun again.  She showed me the new results and it looked perfect.

So I had done my usual non-helpful, helping.  She just had to get my attention and then she figured it out herself.  Of course, she thought that I had figured it out for her.  For the most part, I didn't know what she was talking about.  Really I didn't do anything.  I just happened to be talking to her when she figured it out herself.  That didn't stop her though from blaming me for not helping her earlier.  She said that I should have paid more attention to her problem for the past two days.  She said I knew how frustrated she was and I didn't do anything.  If I had helped her earlier, she wouldn't have wasted so much time and gotten so frustrated.  Sheesh.

Adventures in Barbecuing

We are spending our winters in Florida now.  When we lived in Canada all year round, we barbecued all the time even in the winter.  We haven't barbecued since we have been in Florida because we didn't have a barbecue.

So the other day while I was sleeping, Barb was searching the web to see if she could find a little barbecue for us here.  She found one she liked called a Char-Broil Patio Bistro Gas Grill . She checked out the reviews that turned out to be great.  So she wanted to order it from Amazon.  It was going to cost $140 and they offered free shipping.  She was very happy.

She knew I had an Amazon account since I am always ordering books online.  She guessed my password and found that our American credit card was already listed on the account.  She had never ordered anything from Amazon.  So when she saw the 1-Click-Buy button she clicked it and thought that it was so easy.

When I got up a little later, she was getting ready to go out but decided to take the time to tell me about her purchase.  She was so proud of herself for getting such a good deal.  When she called up my Amazon account and showed me the purchase, it said the bill would be $344.  She freaked out.  How could it cost $344 when she was told it would only cost $140 when she made the order?

She quickly checked the details of the order and found out that Amazon was planning to ship it to Canada.  They were going to charge us $144 for shipping and $47 import tax.  Fortunately, they hadn't yet processed the order and Barb was able to cancel it.  Then she re-ordered the barbecue with the correct shipping address to Florida.  If she had decided to leave the house as she had planned or if I hadn't gotten up just then, she might not have told me about her purchase in time and we might have made an expensive mistake.

Good News and Funny Stories Diary

For many years, I kept a family diary devoted to good news and funny stories about my family while the girls were growing up.  I started it in June 1993 and stopped a few years ago.  I am retired now and am thinking of starting it up again because I have noticed that a lot of good and funny things are happening to my wife and I.  This time, I thought of doing a  blog so the girls can read it,, even though we don't live together anymore.  This is not real life.  This is just funny stories and good news.