The drive was fine apart from the rain, which strangely enough no one either at home nor at our destination had, it was as if the rain cloud just hoverred above us all the way until about 15 miles from the site when it stopped.

Due to the traffic and weather we did not get there until about 20:30 so didn’t do too much. Do the normal, connect electric etc and then sort out TV arial. That was a joke, we managed to get 2 terestrial TV channels and no digital channels. By 22:00 we gave up:)

Woken by the kids in the morning I asked for a timecheck, 7:30 I was told so I got up and washed to be told, ’sorry dad I misread my watch, it’s now 6:50′.

Everyone was now getting up, this was not popular as Tracey does like her lay in at the weekends. Once we were all up, had a few cups of coffee and breakfast I thought I would get the ‘camping satellite kit‘ out and give that ago.  With Tracey sat on top of the Motor home with the satellite dish I was tuning  and making suggestions on how to angle the dish. Within about 15 minutes we had a good choice of channels although BBC 2 wasn’t being received but that was not a concern for us.  As long as Tracey could get her fix of Casualty then we’re happy.

The rest of the weekend was a ‘normal’ caravanning weekend, wanderred down to the local resevoir in the morning, met up with my family later etc and then on Sunday packed up and came home.

Before we left I had heard about a way to get mobile internet for your laptop for a year for less than £30 which I tried over the weekend.  I will post about it over the next day or so.

The past week has been hectic, we managed to get the stump ground by a tree surgon, this was needed so we could put some kind of hard standing at the end of the existing driveway for parking the motor home.

We had thought orriginally about getting a builder to extend the driveway with a concrete slab, this had two downfalls, the first being that planning permission is required and the 2nd was the cost so we decided to just level the area off ourselves and lay two rows of paving slabs.  The two rows should be the right distance apart from each other for the motor home, I did measure so lets hope I did it right.

We had to remove a fence and pedestrian gate from the end of the orriginal drive which means we have had to commission a set of gates to go at the front of the driveway so the dog can’t get out.

We pick the motor home this afternoon, the dealer is going through bits with us and then letting us stay on their rally field so we can play with the awning which is  not being demonstrated. Then it’s home to fill up with the normal bits.

This morning we are making the most of having nothing to do for the first time in a week, boy it feels good:)

Last week I contacted a ‘Tree surgen‘ and he quoted me over the phone and said he was be able to do it Monday or Tuesday, he said he would confirm over the weekend. The weekend came and went, Monday came and went, Monday afternoon  I emailed them to confirm when they will do the work. No response. It’s now Thursday and they still have not bothered getting back to me.

Yesterday I called another tree surgen, he came out later to look at what is needed and gave me a quote, he said he is grinding stumps today and can do the job about 13:00. By 15:30 he had not arrived so I telephoned him, a lady whom I assume is his wife said that the grinder had broken down and he had gone out to get replacement parts. I accept this happens, what I don’t accept is the fact that he could not phone me and let me know he would not be able to do the job today. I’ve sat all afternoon waiting for him to arrive when I could have been out doing other things.

I phoned another company this morning, they were tied up and he said he would phone me back within half an hour, guess what, 6 hours later still no call back.

Businesses off all sizes but especially small businesses are struggling in the current climate, is it no wonder if this is how they treat customers.

I do have a 3rd ‘Tree Surgen’ coming out tomorow morning, I do hope they take their business more seriously.

So now I need to make up the difference, I have tidied up the site and am hoping to get at least some earnings from it, but it has reminded me that I should not put all my eggs in one basket.

I now have two projects I have to get complete, I’ve just got to decide which to do first LOL. Project 1 is the EC clone site, I know there will be at least a small membership to get the site going but at this time no confirmed method of monetizing the site. Remember it must at least pay for itself.

The second project is one I have been doing on and off for a while, when complete it would not have any users to start with but could become a nice money earner once the membership grows, in addition the scripts will be sellable and from doing research in demand.

OH well maybe I should toss a coin.

I received an email from Google about a week ago advising me that one of the pages had ‘mature’ content and unless I resolved the issue then my they would disable ads on the site.

Considering the results produced by the site are taken from main stream search engines there is little I could do, what I did do was filter out some obviously mature words and words that are beleived to be Google ‘Stop words’, ie words that could have a detrimental effect on how google views the site.  So these words should no longer appear.

Well it appears this was not good enough, and sometime on Tuesday of this week they stopped serving the adsense ads on the site.  I have tried an alternative ad network but it just isn’t doing what is needed.

I may rebrand the site, this worked once before when there was an issue a couple of years ago, I resolved the problem then but the effect was not quick enough to please adsense so a rebrand was the only option.

I would get up in the morning, see the kids of to school, get the laptop out and do a bit of dropping, some reading and then spend the rest of the day coding. I loved it, coding was my passion and I enjoyed it.

Recently things have changed, I’ve spent lots of time in the garden, which I am loving. Yes it has been warm over the last week but this has been going on longer, I’ve built some decking which took me forever, we’ve started cutting down tree’s (got to figure out the roots) so we can extend the drive for the motor home, and this afternoon we have a French exchange student arriving for a week.  The worse part is I am not missing sitting at the keyboard.

Part of me feels I have let people down, I stated I hoped to have my EC style site completed within a month, well more than a month on and to be honest it is not going to reach completion any time soon (Sorry).  I have another project which I dropped to do the EC style site, again this should be complete by now but it’s not.

Is this the signs of getting Old, the kids in our house say yes, ‘Dad you are an old man’, but heck I would like to think I am only half way through my life, sure that means I am not Old just yet.

I know that I will get coding again, heck I have to but I want it to be because I want to and not because I have to, I know once I get started in the morning I will get into it, love what I am doing and get some work done.

Well get everything done in the morning, managing to get home for a cuppa before going back out to look at the motor home. That was until Tracey’s mum phoned, and as mum inlaw’s do asked what we was upto and I knew what was coming next. Yes, she wants to come and have a nose around with us.

So no time to finish that cuppa, we had to go and pick her up and then shoot over to the dealership. We ended up arriving 15 minutes late so we had to wait for the sales person to finish up with another customer.

We then went to view the van, Paul the salesman left us viewing it and would return in about 10 minutes or so so we can take it out for a test drive. We was aware that the van had an awning, but to our surprise it also came with sides for the awning so we can make it into another room. From caravaning experience we knew this was a great bonus, it means if we are staying anywhere for a few days we can put it up and the kids can sleep in  there, giving everyone a bit more breathing space.

Having mum inlaw with us isn’t always a bad thing, she loved it, well maybe that is a bad thing. Tracey is concerned about the cost (debt) but her mum was so positive that Tracey came round to what a good idea and investment it is.

We took it out for a quick test drive, and that was fun, the AutoQuest 180 has a total of 6 seat belts, the driver and front passenger obviously, and a further on the dinning seating. The lounge area at the rear has no belts. So the kids sat belted up in the dining area, Tracey and her mum sat in the lounge area at the rear and then Paul and I obviously in the front.

The test drive was no different to any other test drive really, except when I had to go all the way around a roundabout (360 degree turn) to head back. This was nothing special again but Tracey and her mum was unaware of the turn coming up and as mentioned did not have belts on. I am laughing still as a type this as Tracey’s mum went flying from her seat on one side of the van onto Tracey’s lap.  Oh taking mum inlaw out does have its fun moments.

Anyway, we asked the  normal questions, looked over the van, Tracey and her mum where virtually disassembling the interior, and we then discussed it on the way back up to the sales office. We decided to go for it, so we signed on the dotted line and are now the proud owners of a 6 berth 2006 Elddis Autoquest 180, with a Peugout base.

AutoQuest 180 - stock photo

We will be collecting the Motorhome in about 3 weeks time, we get a hour or so ‘walk through’ of everything and then we are on our own.

I now have 3 weeks to get my rear end into gear to start earning money to pay for it LOL

Let me start with some history, we have a tent that we hardly use, we did have a 25 ft caravan which we used but not much, we have never had a motor home but I have always wanted one since I was a kid. NOTE : I wanted one not WE wanted one LOL

We haven’t used the tent much because we bought it a few years ago after selling the caravan but  the following couple of years things where good for us and we ended up going abroad and staying in apartments etc. If all else fails we have the tent for what are good fun holidays.

We sold the caravan because we hardly used it, because of it’s size and the narrow road we could not manouvre  it on/off the drive way so it had to go on storage, this meant when ever we went away, we had to drive over with everything needed and load it up, come back pick kids up from sch0ol etc and then go back and get the caravan.  This was OK but if we an ‘impulse’ weekend away in it then it became a lot of effort.

OK so why we  looking at a motor home now. We had been looking for something and Tracey suggested the shop at one of the local Caraven dealers, yea she was right they had the exact thing we was looking for, BUT they also had an 1985 motor home parked outside. I just had to have  a look.

It was very dated, but I thought ideal for us to drive to spain in etc. When I asked about the price they claimed it has just came in so had not been priced yet but expect it to be about £6500 GBP.  Ouch, more than I expected for a  24 year old vehicle so we left.

I then decided to try a speciallist motor home dealer local to us. Tracey is not keen at all but we take a browse anyway and then we left. I did mention another couple of places but we didn’t have the time so left it.

That evenning I checked my licence because I knew my disability meant I had restrictions on what I can drive, yea there sure is,I am limited to 3500kg weight. Tracey could drive something twice that but she won’t so there is no point even thinking about that first motor home (Recreational Vehicle) we had seen.

The next morning, kids get taken to school and then Tracey says to me, ‘what are we doing today?’, ‘what do you mean?’  I replied, ‘You wanted to go to Lowdham didn’t you?’, so we did.

We told the salesman what we are looking for and the restrictions we had, he said that is a big restriction for the number of beds we need but he has 3 that meet that criteria, two we looked at, one we liked, the third is at a show for the weekend, it is a couple of models above the one we liked so we have  arranged to view it on Friday after leaving a ‘lock it up’ deposit so no one can buy it at the show.

The motor home is only 3 years old, has low mileage and  costs an awfull lot more than I had ever thought I would pay, I didn’t expect to get credit for it because of the current climate etc but I did.

So come Friday we could well be the proud owners of a motor home, I am worried about the cost but I am also excited about the thought of being able to ‘tour’ the country and europe etc which has been my dream for years.

I don’t know why but for about the last week or so I have spent no more than a couple of hours in any one day sat at the computer, and generally that time has been just browsing, reading and dropping.

I was away from the computer for so long one friend said ‘me is starting to think you should start smoking again’, I know he doesn’t mean it but I understand where he is coming from. So if I have not been sat at the computer what have I been doing?

This is the really scary bit :

I have not been working so not been increasing my existing residual income.

I have been sorting a few bits out in the garden, finished decking, put up swimming pool for kids (yea completed just before the rain came down).

Spent $$ on stuff for garden but I can’t even remember what we bought.

Oh and looked at buying a Motor Home (RV)  - more to come on this I am sure

Apparently EC use a database that is stored  in memory space rather than on the hard drive. I can see that this does improve speed of the database commands, my main concern would be if the server was to crash then all that is stored in memory would be lost.

I have decided to use the same set up that I use with Yzoo/YzooSearch, at its peak it was receiving upto 1 million page views a day, each one requiring at least one database update. It started as will the new site, using a standard mysql database, but as the site grew additional servers where added and used as ’slave’ databases. 2 of the servers also became master/slave servers so if one dies for whatever reason then no data would be lost and on restarting it automatically updates. This is great as ’slave’ servers can be added or removed as and when necessary, but it can become expensive.