Still Rollin' at 94

Many of the people I know, take up RVing after they retire and join an RV community.  My RV community, the Ontario Trillium Travellers (OTT), is made up of people who love RVing.  Many of the members are not yet retired. Members come from a wide variety of backgrounds and expertise - executives, mechanics, big rig drivers, carpenters, home keepers, etc   We share a single passion, our love for RVing.  And, that keeps us all young.

I would like to share an inspiring story about one of our members that will be published in the OTT newsletter this month.

  Still Rollin’ at 94

Age is no limit, at least not for Clayton.  Clayton Ruppel is now 94 years old and is an active member of the Ontario Trillium Travellers (OTT).   Clayton is the oldest active member of OTT and my guess is that he is also the oldest member of WIT.   Born in 1920, Clayton served in the Canadian army during WWII.  He was overseas from 1940 to 1946.  Semi-retired at age 65,  he built his dream home.  He loved driving big rigs and now has transferred that love to RVing in his Winnebago Chieftain.  Clayton and Dorothy (W # 086492) have been active members of Ontario Trillium Travellers since May of 1996 and served as Treasurer 1998 - 2004, Vice-President 2004 - 2005 and President 2005 - 2007.
A new knee last year allowed him to continue his passion for golf and his Saturday night dancing with his wife Dorothy. When not RVing in the winter, he curls, even skipping for the team. Clayton and Dorothy drove over 200 kilometers to participate in OTT’s September outing at Shangri-La Campground in Ontario wine country.  Dorothy is famous for her "Butter Tarts", a true Canadian classic, and they arrived at our most recent outing with two dozen tarts for a pot luck supper.

I am glad to announce that Clayton and Dorothy are my GDOPs of the Year for 2014.

Turn OFF Facebook's Video Auto-play - Save your data plan

If you are a Facebook user and travel with your laptop, or tablet or you just use Facebook on your smart phone you may have noticed that Facebook is automatically playing any videos that are posted.  Not just those videos you want to see but all of the videos in your News Feed including Ads.  That is not usually a problem but if you are connected to a cell phone network through your phone or through a hotspot, you are paying for all that video data being sent over the network to your device(s).  You may have noticed that your phone bill has increased lately.

This is called Auto-play on Facebook and you can turn that off or at least restrict it to only play when you are not connected to a cell network.  I will show you how for 3 devices - a Windows laptop, an iPad / iPhone, and an Android tablet.

First lets talk about Windows - This probably will likely work on a Mac, with Safari, but I haven't got a Mac to try it on.

Click for larger view

1.  Launch your browser - I have used Internet Explorer

2.  Sign in to Facebook.

3.  In Facebook there are a group of almost invisible icons to the right of "Find Friends"

4.  Click on the far right icon (see picture) then select :Settings"

5.  On the bottom left - click on Videos and then turn off Auto-play Videos

Second,  Android (Tablet or Smart Phone) 

The video can be changed within the Facebook App

1. Launch your Facebook App.

2. There are 3 control buttons in Android - Back, Home and Settings

3. Touch the "Settings" control

4. Then touch the Settings gear that appears

5.  Touch Video Auto-play 

6.  You can now select "On", "Wi-Fi only", or "Off"  (I recommend "Off" especially if you are using a hotspot)

Third on the Apple iPAD / iPhone

In IOS there is no control within the App itself all of the controls are done in "Settings"  Do not launch the Facebook app.

1.  Touch the Settings Icon.

2.  Scroll down to Facebook on the left (select it)

3.  Under the Facebook Icon you will see "Settings" (select it)

4.  Touch "Auto-play"

5.  Select "On", "Wi-Fi only", or "Off"  (again I recommend "Off")

Windows 8 wants to save to the cloud - Just Annoying

You know,one of the things that annoys me in Windows 8?  It defaults to storing everything on OneDrive.  Every time I say select "Save" or "Save As" in a Word Document or a Spreadsheet or anything else it wants to save it in "Documents."  So, I select Save and move on to the next thing not having realized that I have stored it in Documents on OneDrive (the cloud) and not on my computer where I expected it to go.

I don't want to store everything in the cloud!  I only want to move things to the cloud when I specifically want it there to share with other devices or friends.  When I select "Save As" and realize the Windows 8 is going to store it there I have to scroll through options to "This PC" and "Documents."

Here is how to fix that:

Go to the "Charms Bar" (Win key plus C will get you there)
Select "Settings" - "Change PC Settings"
Now Select "OneDrive"
Turn off - "Save Documents to OneDrive by Default"

The Hacker's Email

Here is a snipped picture of the email that caused all my password problems.  When I clicked on the link it brought up a window asking me to sign in to my GMail account.

When I did they got my password and sent out messages to many of my contacts.

Good News - Google now recognizes this as phishing and has blocked it.

Afternoon changing passwords

I just made the stupid mistake that nobody should make and gave away my GMail password.  Here is what happened:

I got an email from a friend.  It really had nothing in the subject line other than random words.  Inside the message was a link and nothing else.  The fact that there was absolutely no personal info should have been an alert.  I did what I tell everyone else NEVER to do - You should not click on that link.

What came up next was a box requesting that I sign into GMail - I must have been half asleep because I entered my user ID and Password.  Up came a site I didn't recognize so I shut it down. Way to late.

This is the oldest trick in the book and I am ashamed that I actually feel for it.  The hacker put up a screen asking for a user ID and Password and I filled it in. Dumb, Dumb, Dumb.

I changed my GMail password and then spent the afternoon sending emails to all my contacts telling them what happened and not to open any emails from me with junk in them.  This was followed by a few hours of changing every password I own.  Luckily, all of them were not related to my GMail password.  I just changed them anyway.