Sunday, December 11, 2011

Cozy Rosie is named


Our Airstream needed a name. Somehow, referring to “it” as "it" didn’t seem to describe “it.”

Cozy Rosie

I need to back up for a moment and talk about our desire to name objects.

One of my responsibilities at work is serving as an administrator for several UNIX (Linux) Web servers. All of these servers have names that they go by on the Internet.

I was having hardware issues with a new server, which was under warranty. I called the service department and started explaining the issue. In the conversation, I started calling the machine by its name and explained how it was the backup server to another named machine.

That was when the service technician asked if these machines were running Linux and not Windows. When I said yes, he chimed in that he knew it because UNIX people always name their computers then start talking about its personality.

Since I work with UNIX/Linux computers, naming inanimate objects seems normal to me.

Some of the first names we considered were TravelStar Galactica or the Aluminum Falcon. While these were great names, they didn’t seem to fit our camper.

We settled on Rosie since this was a play on the World War II Rosie the Riveter campaign. That was shortened to Riveting Rosie, which lasted about a week. That was when my wife remarked how cozy it was in Rosie. At that point, our Airstream had a name and it was Cozy Rosie.

I think the service technician was correct in suggesting that UNIX/Linux people not only name things, but they also assign personalities to them. Cozy Rosie definitely has a growing personality—something we continue to learn about as we continue our adventures in Rosie.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Wind Creek State Park, Alabama

Our first adventure in our new (to us) camper was a one night stay at Wind Creek State Park in Alabama. This would be our first opportunity to practice the steps we were shown at our orientation when we took possession of our new trailer.

Wind Creek State Park
For some reason, the set-up seemed much easier at the dealership. Fortunately, several seasoned campers were quick to identify us as "rookies" and came to our rescue.

The first problem was our assigned site. There was a ditch on both sides of the little bridge we would have to back our Airstream across. With less than 15 minutes of trailer backing-up experience among us, this was too big of a challenge. The park rangers agreed and moved us to a less challenging site.

After backing in to our site, we had to connect the power, water and sewage to the park. We discovered that is is easier to connect than disconnect.

Next, we moved inside to discover we didn't know where anything was nor did we have a handle of where things should be located. And that was how we spent our first day in the camper--trying to figure out where we should logically store stuff.

ABOUT WIND CREEK STATE PARK

It would be unfair for us to attempt to evaluate this specific park because we were overwhelmed with making our peace with trailer camping. We did note the following:

Park Focus: a large lake
TV Reception: campers on a hill could see Birmingham stations. We could not receive any stations.
WiFi: Yes, and it worked reasonably well.
Camping sites were paved and had water, electricity and sewage hookups.

We plan to return to this park and to take some time to enjoy it.