Rain, Rain Go Away!

The weather has been quite dreary for about 2 weeks now.  We’ve had very little sun and a great deal of rain.  Rivers and lakes are rising all over southeastern Wisconsin.  The sun is supposed to make an appearance tomorrow.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed :)

Because of the rain, we didn’t golf yesterday.  Last week, I had good luck using Kevin’s driver so I ordered a driver on ebay.  Hopefully, it will be here before next Monday.  I just know it will make me a much better golfer!  I certainly can’t get worse :)

I am happy to report that we finally have wi-fi internet in our camper.  We are both now able to be on the internet at the same time.   That’s very important so we can keep up with game playing :)

Our cell phone service is through US Cellular.  I could tether my cell phone to my laptop for internet.  This had been working very well, but we both wanted to be online at the same time.  Verizon and Sprint offer a service called Mi-Fi where your phone acts like a hotspot for wi-fi.  I tried getting my phone to do this.  I ordered a router from the 3gstore.com but it wouldn’t work with my phone.  I think US Cellular is missing the boat by not offering the Mi-Fi feature.

I highly recommend the 3gstore.com for internet or cell phone needs.  They are very knowledgeable, and really seem to understand the needs of fulltime RVers.  They let me return the router;  I only had to pay the shipping.  It was worth a try.

The next step was ordering an air card.  The 3gstore had a Verizon USB760 air card for $59.99.  This was a one-time lease fee.  The monthly fee is $49.99.  That’s $10 less than Verizon stores charge.  There is also no contract to sign so you can cancel at any time. 

I installed the air card on our new laptop which has Windows 7.  Then I downloaded a free program from connectify.me which allowed the laptop to act as a hotspot.  I was able to connect my other laptop to that network, and we have internet on both computers.

I cancelled the tethering feature on my cell phone, but because I have a smart phone, I still have to pay for the phone internet service because of the contract I have.  I really don’t use the internet much on my phone.  Once the contract is up, I’ll switch to a regular cell phone.

It’s amazing how quickly technology keeps changing.  Six months from now, there may be an entirely better way to access the internet on the road.  That’s why I really like the fact that I didn’t have to agree to any contract with the air card.

There is a limit to how much data you can use each month with all air cards.  The limit is 5GB.  That means you can’t watch or download much video.  Approximately 3 movies would eat up all the data usage for the entire month.  Hopefully, they will come up with unlimited packages in the future.

We’re going to Texas Roadhouse for dinner tonight.  It’s a belated anniversary dinner.  Thanks for the anniversary wishes.  We appreciate your kind comments!