Yep, I'd never heard of it either, but Shickshinny Pensylvannia is the town we are just leaving as we make our way to the eastern seaboard. We'll reach Boston tonite.

Haven' t updated in several days, manily due to some very long drives and technical challenges, not with the blog, but ancilary stuff that ate up a lot of time.

First I need to back track to Ohio. After our lovely stay with Chuck, Dayna and the boys in Inverness Illinois, we drove all day Monday to Malvern, a pretty lake community 50 miles south of Akron. Our invitation came from Brian and Susy Morris, who actually delayed their own vacation by a full day and a half, so we could meet, have a nice meal together and receive instructions on their home, which they left entirely in our care for the rest of the week. How awesome is that?

Their home is tucked away in a hillside, surrounded by maple trees and Susy's garden, that, as it turns out, supplies them with almost all of their food. Both Micky and I felt somewhat inadequate as we observed her skills in making her own pasta, baking sourdhough bread, pickling, conserving, etc etc. Any of the skills you might have seen on "Little House on the Prarie", you would find Susy doing with great finess and ease. Susy has a very successful blog where you can learn and follow at ChiotsRun.com

Brian blew me away with his home built replica of a 1947 'kit camper', fabricated by hand out of aluminium for the hull and all natural materials inside. He built it from plans he acquired on line, and this vacation is to be it's inagural run. How cozy does this thing look!

Although they both could easily be living off the grid entirely, they run a thriving video production business and enjoy the juice that flows to their array of high-end macs and Brian's prized espresso machine, an art piece of its own.

We hooked the Dutchess up to the 20 Amp circuit Brian had wired for us in the garage, water and CAT5 ethernet cable, connected to their business quality modem. Yah!

The setting couldn't have been more lovely, the rig surrunded by forrest, Cardinals and humming birds landing and taking off from the various feeders and of course the cats. Dexter came out to flaunt his muscular legs in an act of territorial warning, but soon became a fixture sprawled out near our side door, always ready with a freindly meow.

It is hard to describe the food Susy prepared for us, not the actual meal itself, because pasta and salad is easily identified, but the home grown and home made taste, texture and experience can only be summed up by the love that was baked right into it.

Tuesday's plan was to wave them off, and start working on taping some Big App Show appisodes with the green screen and my new light ring which Mr Smith and Baroness Maggie had shipped off to us. Unfortunately, my 'App Show Android Phone", which I normally only use on the wifi at the home studio had been exposed to it's Verizon network for quite a while and had received several system updates, bringing it up to version 2.2.2, seemingly and un-rootable version for the Galaxy S.

I need the phone rooted in order to run the application that allows me to grab a recording of my screen while demo-ing apps.

I mucked around for a couple hours until Shaun arrive to take us out 'shootin'

Shaun and Missy are also No Agenda producers and best frends with Brian and Susy. While Missy was preparing a lovely meal for us at their home, Shaun took Micky and I out for several hours of blasting water bottles with his AR-15 and close range target practice with an array of 22's and 45's. We've both handled Glock's before, but the Assoult Rifle was a new experience. Infinitely more precise and accurate than the AK-47's I'd handled in Iraq. I'm pretty sure we both will want to persue some form of firearm training and ownership in the near future. This was a great primer.

After a dinner of roasted chicken and bread with Missy's Mom's famous #11 home made strawberry jam, it was back to my exploits in rooting Android.

If you've every tried to google for a root procedure for your particular Android device, you will understand the frustrating hours I spent, without success, wading through forums and howto's that pretty much led to no joy. @AndroidBruce spent several hours with me actually placing the appropriate versions of busybox, and su by hand and command line into the appropriate directories and even he had to give up around 1:30am.

As an alternative strategy, I schooled myself in the art of loading Cyanogen mod 7 onto my Nexus S and caimed victory at about 4am, when I slid into bed next to Micky, who had given up on me hours earlier.

Despite the grogginess of too few hours sleep, awakening in the middle of this nature was refreshing, and after a bit of setup, I did my first ever greenscreen production in an RV. The light ring and the portable greenscreen are well tuned to each other and the key worked beautifully. Still needed about 5 hours for all rendering and editing to be completed, leaving ample time to start prepping for thursday's show, but not for the planned romantice evening. That's rock 'n roll I guess :-)

After the show we drove Brian's supercharged mini cooper up to Akron for the meetup, in the Spaghetti Wharehouse, where producer Matt Frank had booked us a private room.

During the introductions I counted 20 sys admins, one Nuclear Engineer and one marketer and a mail carrier. Perfect No Agenda crowd!

Ohio really showed big support for the show, both in their stories of propagating the formula as well as the envelopes of donations we received, even though I'm pretty sure many are just living the president's dream of 'just getting by'.

Just like our othr meetups, it is so nice to hear how much difference we make in people's lives with the show. Mainly by bringing a smile and the occasional belly laugh to our community, slaves that we all are.

Snugly tucked into tthe Dutchess for the evinging's rest, I wondered how The Fonz was able to shut up nature's nightly sounds with the snap of a finger, but more importantly, why he would want to.

Friday arrived with a long trek ahead, about 9 hours to the Log House on the Lake in Schickshinny PA.

But before our departure, a few more lessons for the rookie RV-ers.

-Never lock up the house and terminate your possibilities of connecting to electricity and a landline before you have assured the rig is flight ready and will start.

-Never leave the 12-120volt inverter plugged into the dashboard plug for several days, as it will drain the battery. See learning moment above.

-Never park without having at least half a tank of gas, the generator won't run to recharge it's own battery (which can be used to start the engine) if under a quarter tank.

Thankfully I had enough juice in the genny's battery to fire it up for about 5 minutes until the petrol ran out, but that was just enough to crank the Ducthess back to life. Phew!

Looking at this post, I think it best to stop here, and write more tomorrow about our fantastic stay with Producers Michael and Sarah and their extended family Emma and Bobek. Can't wait to tell you all about it.

 8/15/2011; 2:34:47 PM.   .