Barb gets these coupons by email for some of her favourite
stores. They usually come in the email
and she can claim them at the store from her iPod. However, she got a coupon as a attachment and
needed to print it out. We didn't have a
printer any more but I told her she might be able to print it as a file. She tried and the file came out in XPS
format. We couldn't figure out any way
to view an XPS file. I found out that
XPS was an old format that Windows had developed to compete with PDF but it
never caught on. I looked up ways to
convert XPS files for PDF files but there was no free software that I could
find. Then I thought to look on Linux. I no longer had a Linux system on my computer
since I got my new computer but I did have a version that I had installed on an
emulator called Virtual Box. So I went
into Linux in Virtual Box and found an XPS to PDF conversion software package
for free. I was able to convert the XPS
file to a PDF file and then I emailed it to Barb and she was able to take it to
the store and show them the coupon on her iPod.
Saturday, 7 January 2017
Dog Chase
Some days when Barb is not using the car in the afternoon, I
drive down to the walking path and take my walk there. It is nice little path beside a little lake
and in and out of a little wooded area.
Today I was there and there was an old lady calling her dog to come
back. I guess her dog had slipped out of
his leash and ran away. She was a very
old lady and couldn't run after the dog.
The dog was teasing her by letting her get a little bit close to him and
then running away again. So I tried to
help her catch the dog. We were lucky
that the dog decided to get up on the seat of someone's golf cart. Then I went on one side of the cart and the
old lady went on the other side of the cart and we caught the dog. It wasn't even the old lady's golf cart. She thanked me for my help and I continued on
my walk.
Sweet Talk
We had to have our sprinkler system turned off permanently
before we arrived because it wasn't turning off by itself. Then when we got here we had to get it
fixed. We paid $500 for a man to come an
dig up the pipes and replace some pipes and a valve. Then we tested the sprinklers and found that
they weren't working very well. Most of
them were pointed the wrong way and some were just gurgling and not spraying at
all. Our lawn and our plants were all
brown and wilted. So Barb called the
people to come and fix them again. She
had been told by our neighbour that if she says that the sprinklers are pointed
the wrong way they will come out and fix them at no charge. The man came out and Barb was outside working
on the garden and talking to him while he was checking all the nozzles. He had to replace 5 nozzles and adjust them
all but he only charged us for 1 nozzle which we get for free. Barb said that if it wasn't for her sweet
talking we would have been charged for all 5 nozzles.
Softball Evaluations
At The Villages there are five different divisions of
softball leagues and you have to be evaluated before you can get on a team
according to your abilities. I dropped
Barb off at her pickle ball courts at 7:30 and drove to the softball diamonds
for the first day of evaluations. I was
so happy that I was going to be early and I thought to myself that I should try
to be early for everything from now on.
I got to the diamonds and there was nobody there. Then one guy showed up and I got out of the
car and asked him if he was there for the evaluation. He said that he was there for his softball
game. He said that the evaluations were
at a different set of diamonds.
Fortunately, they were not too far away and since the evaluations didn't
start until 8:00 I got there just a little late.
Air Conditioning
We have been having trouble with the air conditioning in the
car for about a year and a half. We have
taken it in a number of times and the garage is never able to fix it. Barb was worried that we wouldn't be able to
cope with no air conditioning for the whole time we are in Florida.
So she asked around about where her pickle ball friends brought their
cars to get repaired. Barb was told to
go a place called Vaugn's Quality Autos.
She was expecting to drop off her car and pick it up later. So she was thinking of borrowing her friend's
car for a few hours. The night before
she was going to bring in her car we drove by the place and it looked like a
dump with cars all over the place in various states of assembly. The gate was locked and the sign for the
place was all rusted. Barb found out
that she couldn't make an appointment.
She just had to bring in her car and wait until they fixed it. So she brought her car in in the morning and
as she drove in she was met by the owner.
He said they were kind of busy right now but she should bring her car
back in the afternoon. So she came back
at 2:30 in the afternoon and the owner got one of his guys to look at the car
and he said it just needed a part and they would have the part delivered in a
few minutes and she could wait for it.
Barb was surprised that the garage had no hoists and that there were
about 13 guys working on cars all over the dirt parking lot. Barb waited in a dusty waiting room with a
bunch of other people. They fixed her
car in a few minutes and only charged her $35.
Barb asked the owner how he can work without any hoists. He said that if someone's car needs a hoist,
he just sends them somewhere else.
However, since he doesn't use hoists his guys can work on all those cars
at the same time. Now the air conditioning
works great.
Postal Box
We have to go a long way from the house to get our
mail. However, the postal boxes are
close to the entrance to the park. So
Barb can pick up the mail every day on the way home from pickle ball. The first time she went to the mail box, she
didn't know which one was ours and there are hundreds of boxes there. She asked someone there how she could find
out which box was ours. The person said
she could ask the mail man inside the building.
So she knocked on the door of the building just as she noticed a sign
that said "Do not knock". The
man inside said he didn't know which box was hers because she wasn't on his
route but he said he could help her by knocking on the door of her box from the
inside. Then Barb found her box by
following his knocks. She used her key
to open the mailbox and saw the mailman's head on the inside of the building
looking out and smiling.
Learning Betsy
Barb was driving with her friend and noticed that hers
friend was able to save a place on her GPS in her favourites by pushing
something on the screen. So Barb tried
it when she found one of her pickleball courts and found that she could save
the location in her favourites and she just had to change the name from a Latitude
and Longitude to the name she wanted.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)