A Good Start

Started last Monday at the new client in Vacaville. For once, the client was ready for me: ID badge within an hour, cubicle, computer, and everyone I met knew who I was! The work will eventually focus on validation (proving a process makes the product to specification, as expected), but for now there is a lot of engineering, documentation and work on operating procedures to do.

My cuppa tea.

It’s hot – over 100 degrees F every day – but cool at night, in the 60’s. Plenty of shopping, with over a hundred outlet stores (including Black and Decker and men’s stores).

A feature of the trailer is a nice refrigerator with a freezer, nice but small. Sears is having a sale. Coincidentally, I got a storeroom at the campground this week, 64 square feet, so I have stored all of the stuff I have been tripping over all month. Now, if I store a little more, I will have room for the small chest-type freezer I ordered on sale from Sears. Five cubic feet, with a drop-in from the top and a slide-out drawer on the bottom. When I get it, I will not have to shop every other day for dinner. Once a week would be nice, and would fit my schedule.

The trailer has adequate power wiring for all of this, but campgrounds do not, I have found. Each site has a 30-amp service, with a breaker on a pole. The breaker is exposed to weather, and over the years the breakers start to trip at lower and lower currents; they weaken. So running the trailer air conditioning and starting the microwave, I have found, will never trip the trailer circuit breakers but will usually trip the campground’s breaker. I have taken to running a heavy duty extension cord separately from a small breaker on the campground pole to the microwave, and the problem has been solved. I think that I will now make a permanent connection for that second feed in the trailer, and hook the freezer into it.

The freezer will get power whenever I connect to campground power. When I disconnect power to go on the road, the freezer will turn off. But since it is a drop-in style chest freezer, and since cold air is heavier than warm air, I think that it will keep the contents very cold for 10 hours of driving, until I plug it in again.

It's fun to have projects!