Turn your Computer into a TV

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our E-mail Digest or RSS Feed. We will then send you the stories that are posted each day in an e-mail digest. We use a service called Feedburner for delivery of these emails. You will receive an e-mail from Feedburner after you subscribe and you must click on that email to activate your subscription. Thanks for visiting and enjoy all the information! RV.Net Blog Adminby Chris Guld, www.geeksontour.com When we first bought our motorhome, it had 2 TVs.  One in the front, living/dining area, and one in the back – the bedroom.  We got rid of both of them and set up a TV tuner with a projector and a window-shade screen.  It’s great!  We have a big screen with surround sound – a pretty good home theatre for any house, let alone a 30 foot class C motorhome!  When I recently purchased a new Windows 7 laptop, we wondered what to do with my old laptop.  It was still working fine, ( see rule #1 for buying a new computer) so I wasn’t going to send it off to recycling.  How about a TV for the bedroom!  Jim found a stud in the wall and installed a TV shelf bracket that fits my old laptop just perfect.  The antenna connection was already there, all we needed was the TV tuner.  The one Jim got is the ATI  TV Wonder (he got a great deal – $25 – by buying it on the daily special at Woot.com), but he’s also used the Hauppage.  Just google for USB TV Tuner to see lots of other choices.  Basically this tiny box... Read more

All roads lead to the 2010 season in Quartzsite

By Bob Difley Even RVers in the West who haven’t yet learned the value of solar panels or spent a single night witehout hookups have heard of Quartzsite. And some oldtimers have yet to visit however, but the saying goes that if you are an RVer, you will visit Quartzsite at least once before you retire your horses to pasture. It is an experience near the top of the RVer’s lifetime To Do list. Quartzsite’s wide open desert with plentiful camping possibilities on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land lures hundreds of thousands of snowbirds to the weather-friendly desert in winter. Most RVers call this kind of camping boondocking, i.e. “in the boonies” though in Quartzsite, you could end up as crowded as a hook-up campground. But the beauty of it is that the choice of where and how sociable you want to be is yours. The options include groups of friends circling the wagons much like the early pioneers did on the Oregon Trail. Though the pioneers chose this method mainly to protect themselves from marauding Indians, today’s RVers seek social camaraderie instead, putting tables, chairs, and a communal campfire in the “hub” of the circled wagons. You can choose to camp in close to town and have neighbors, or move further out and have your group area all to yourselves, a definite advantage if you are nudists or practice strange rituals or ceremonies. Several hard compacted dirt roads lead off into the far reaches of the LTVAs where campsites... Read more

Young Fulltime RVers – Keep or sell the house??

Dreams, goal setting, and action plans play a starring role at the turn of the year. You may be considering the full time RV lifestyle. Good for you! If you are a home owner that’s a piece of the puzzle that must be in place before you hit the road. In this short Young Fulltime RVer video I’ll share with you a few questions to ask yourself when pondering this issue.  Happy New Year everyone! Be safe and dream big!! Evanne www.RVCookingShow.com PS – Explore the Young Fulltime RVer page for more fulltime insight.  Read More →

Wii Fit Exercise in an RV

When we first started the RV lifestyle – I was looking forward to being active.  For some reason I thought that, just by virtue of living in an RV, we would be more active.  I guess I had visions of hiking and biking and swimming. I was wrong. When you live fulltime in an RV, it’s your life – not a vacation.  And, our life involves sitting at the computer a lot.  When we’re in travel mode, it means sitting in car seats a lot.  In other words, we have to make a conscious effort to get exercise in our life just like before we became RVers.  And, since we’re always in someplace new, we can’t get into a habit of any walking route. Enter the Wii Fit.  We love it!  We got the Wii Fit several months ago – but it’s been in hiding for the last couple months    We just got the Wii Fit Plus to re-energize us.  Both Jim and I have done our ‘workouts’ twice this week.  It’s something that actually fits in our lifestyle, *and* in our RV.  If you’re already fit, the exercises will be laughably easy, but if you’re a ‘mouse-potato’ like us that’s a good thing! Read more  Read More →

Neat new tool for RVers: Dyson’s powerful handheld vacuum

By Bob Difley Two situations facing RVers in this holiday season are (1) What to give our favorite RVer (a spouse or son/daughter, maybe) and (2) How to clean up the old rig and make it presentable for visits from family and assorted holiday merry makers. Luckily Dyson, the vacuum people, have come up with something that will fill both requirements. I’m referring to the Dyson DC31, a powerful new handheld vacuum that will have your clean up chores finished before the fun of using it wears off. Dyson recently sent me a DC31 vacuum to test (probably upon hearing about the current state of cleanliness of my motorhome) and I agreed to put it to the test. These are the findings of me, my wife, her sister, my brother-in-law (who vacuumed out his entire car), niece, and nephew, all who participated in the testing over the Thanksgiving weekend). The first thing I noticed was the powerful suction, what Dyson calls their patented cyclone design (ten years in development, twice as efficient as a conventional motor, spinning at 104,000 RPMs). twice as power-efficient as a conventional motor,. The claim was that it is the only handheld vacuum that doesn’t lose suction over the length of the battery charge. I can attest to this, having used it right up to the end of its charge. The Root 6 utilizes a 21.6 volt lithium ion battery that gives ten minutes of continuous suction. And this battery, Dyson claims, re-charges three times faster than the competition. I can’t guarantee that, not... Read more

RV Cooking Show – Crockpot Turkey Breast for Thanksgiving

Holiday greetings, friends,   Poof! All of a sudden we’re coming into the busy, busy winter holiday season so I’ll make this brief. Do the words “RVing” and “turkey” in the same sentence have you shaking your head, thinking “can’t happen”? Well think again! In this episode of the RV Cooking Show host Evanne Schmarder shares her little turkey secret…the crockpot. Moist, tender, and easy. Take a look at Crockpot Turkey Breast for Thanksgiving, we think you’ll agree…it’s delicious!! We’ve also got some goodies in the Thanksgiving archives: Try Mom’s Famous Cranberry Sauce…folks in 18 countries over five continents did and gave it a thumbs up. I’d always been on the lookout for an easy and elegant sweet potato recipe…well, here it is. No video – just a text recipe – but worthy just the same. Go a bit “rouge” yourself this year with one of our wacky but delish recipes…Trash Can Turkey for the adventurous or double the sauce recipe, use turkey breast instead of chicken, and crockpot a Trailblazer Turkey. Question: do you track your RV travels? I’ll share my method in this RV Cooking Show episode and have blogged about it around the RV Cooking Show virtual campfire – our blog. Check it out here. May I take a moment to say that I’ll be counting YOU, our loyal viewers, among my many blessings this year. Happy thanksgiving to you and yours. Most sincerely, Evanne and the RV Cooking... Read more

Rallies and Seminars

Last week, we were at the Gypsy Journal Rally in Celina, Ohio.  About 130 RVs gathered at the rally to meet, greet, and have fun, but also to learn.  They know that going to rallies and attending seminars is the easy way to learn. Learning the hard way is having 3 tire blowouts your first year on the road before figuring out how to manage your tire pressure.  Learning the hard way is having a minor traffic accident that punctures and ignites your propane system before figuring out that you should turn off the propane while on the road.  Learning the hard way is to lose all your travel photos to a computer problem before you figure out how to make backups. Learning the easy way is to take a seminar from someone with experience.  They don’t get much more experienced than Joe and Vicki Kieva.  You probably know of them because they’ve been writing a column in Good Sam’s Highways magazine for many, many years.  I found their website, RVKnowHow, very useful even before we first got our RV. They’ve been writing and giving seminars on RVing for over 20 years – they say that they are now retiring from the seminar business, giving their last one at the Gypsy Journal Rally.  You’ll still see them on the road, they’re just not going to let the seminar circuit determine their route!  It was a real treat to get to see them again. But, theirs wasn’t the only seminar.  Jim and I (Geeks on Tour) presented 6 different computer-related... Read more

Are you Online while Driving?

by Chris Guld, Geeks on Tour I remember when we had to schlep our laptop up to the RV park’s office and plug in to their phone line in order to use dial-up to get online.  Then came Wi-Fi.  You could browse the Internet from the comfort of your RV.  We even got a Datastorm Satellite dish that gave us high-speed Internet *wherever* we were parked – in the middle of the desert, or in the most remote national forest.  What luxury that was.  We live fulltime in our motorhome and we need to work to make our living.  Our work is primarily on our website so it’s important that we be able to connect wherever we are. Read more  Read More →

Six Words About Your RV Life

Hello intrepid travelers, Calling all wordsmiths, writers, witty individuals or families…can you condense your RV and camping experiences and expectations into six words? I double dog dare ya to share Six Words About Your RV Life!! Have you heard of the six word memoirs project from SMITH Magazine? In 2006 the fine minds behind SMITH Magazine offered aspiring writers, poets, those with something to say, and plain ole witty folk an opportunity to tell their story in six words. It’s said that Hemingway did just that when challenged to write a six word story. He came up with this: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”  Thousands of others from the famous to the neighbor-next-door have submitted their six word story in several SMITH Magazine projects including a series on Love & Heartbreak. And this got me thinking about my own six word memoirs…stories about my life on the road, as an RVer. My motto and the RV Cooking Show’s tag line is a mere six words – “Love to travel. Love to eat.” I quickly realized we all have a story to tell, a short ditty to share – especially when it comes to our RV and camping travels. So, with much anticipation and excitement I am delighted to introduce a special six word series – Six Words About Your RV Life. Think about your adventures and see if you can craft a six word memoir about your RV vacation, lifestyle, camping experiences. Leave your six words on my RVCookingShow blog or right here on this RV.net blog posting – Six... Read more

Dalton Gang Hideout

The Dalton brothers were one of the most famous outlaw gangs of the Old West, and today visitors to the friendly little town of Meade, Kansas can walk in their footprints at the Dalton Gang Hideout. Read more  Read More →

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