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I am at Whitehall Landing on the Cape Fear River near White Lake & Elizabethtown, NC. I am on the White Lake side of the river. It’s just a beautiful fall, late morning, in November, 2012. The sun is coming in and out of clouds, and it is already up to 71 degrees F.

I talked with Ricky Smith a State of North Carolina Park Ranger at Singletary State Park and found out how to get down to Whitehall landing. Wasn’t sure if it was going to be possible in my Honda Civic, but had no problem getting here. The winding narrow wood’s road had grass growing in the median and gravel on the two tire tracks, so no sand or mud (today) to hinder my travel. There were just a couple of places where the elevation of the road dropped quickly and I thought maybe the car might “bottom out”, but that didn’t happen. You could hear the brush beating against the bottom of the vehicle, but that was almost comforting.

As I neared the end of the road, the banks of the Cape Fear, I could tell that I was at the river the way it dropped off and I could see across the river to the other side. The trees on the other side were rust, yellow and green with some greys & browns thrown in.

So, this was Whitehall Landing, where Capt. Stedman and the Steamer Magnolia had met their fate about 170 years ago. Has it really been that long? The characters seem so alive to me. Couldn’t it just have been 70 years ago? No.

Well, I’ve taken several pictures along the river bank. No sign of a rotting carcass of a boat, or anything that remotely resembles a landing or dock, etc. If parts of the boiler really were blown many yards from the river, then maybe there might still be a shard of reminder here, even today.

If you are travelling down Hwy. 87 and come to Mt. Horeb Church, you are very close to Whitehall Landing from the opposite side of the Cape Fear River.  The photo in the upper left is as if you are looking diagonally from the church, across Hwy. 87, and there is a gated dirt road which will take you close to Whitehall Landing.

Well, the day is turning grey, but still unseasonably warm for this time of year. It is supposed to turn colder with some rain tomorrow, but then I will be in Chapel Hill with some of the other ITTS staff talking with the UNC Helpdesk Staff.

ADDENDUM:  (05/30/18)

As I recall it did rain the next day when we were up in Chapel Hill.

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After I composed the last posting via email, thinking I was offline at the time, I then noticed that I was actually online and that the posting had already been sent successfully. So, I am looking and I am not connected at this time, and am going to send this… am using GO to compose it.

I’ve ran a test post using Gmail Offline from my Dell Laptop running Chrome OS Lime earlier, but today is the real test. I am sitting in my car outside of Lowe’s and I am disconnected from any WIFI connection. I am using the Gmail Offline app to type up this email posting and then plan to connect to Lowe’s WIFI and have it post to my WordPress site. I found that although I had installed Gmail Offline on the old laptop (probably writes to the USB stick), and the icon for GO appeared on my new Chromebook, because I hadn’t actually opened GO on the new system, it hadn’t written any files or emails to the local system. I had to establish a connection first, and have GO download a first set of Gmail emails locally before I could use it while offline on the new Chromebook.

Okay, I also just took a picture of myself with the Chromebook camera (while offline) and have attached it to this email. It should appear in the WordPress posting along with this text.

Sent from my iPad

Sent from my iPad

Sent from my iPad

Not sure how I got the link or info that there was a new Chromebook available for only $249, but it was easy enough to find that there were several retailers offering this deal… and ALL were out of stock (just a few days after the original sale started). I looked at the Google Chromebook site and then googled for more info regarding the new item. I finally found a site that had a good review, and then went back to Amazon.com and put in a back order (with additional 2 year service contract) for one of the new Chromebooks… coming to around $325. Wow! The service contract was shipped almost immediately;-)

I then went out and started researching the Chrome OS, and found that there were versions that you could run from a 4 GB USB stick. I had a Dell Latitude D630 laptop and so I tried downloading and using the "Vanilla" version, but the touchpad/mouse did not work. I then downloaded, and installed the "Lime" version on the laptop, and things went much better. It loaded, and the mouse worked, although the "tap" for Enter key didn’t work. I found that the left-mouse button worked for Enter, instead of the right-mouse button. A Javascript mp3 audio player didn’t work properly on a web page. Trying to view a Word document from Blackboard led to the suggestion, by the Chrome browser, that I convert it to a Web friendly version (Google Docs). Trying to view a PDF document, lead to the same suggestion. *I sure hope that the official Chrome OS on the new Chromebook doesn’t try to make me jump through these hoops!

**The Chrome OS Lime worked well on my laptop. It was fast enough, but then what is is really doing but serving web pages.

***I started to think about using the Chrome OS on campus as a way to use old hardware as a cheap way for Internet access, and basic productivity. I added the Citrix Receiver to my system, and it loaded partly, but then when I clicked on the various apps for my institution, there was a Citrix Server error message.

So, I added the "Gmail Offline" app and am using it to compose this posting. As long as you could type notes, even if you are not connected to the Internet, while in class, then this could be a useful Higher Ed setup.

—

I see that the Cool Teachers, Barbara Schroeder & Chris Haskell (now Doctor Haskell), are back and have posted their first podcast in about a year. They are now going mostly "audio only" in order to stay on schedule, and the first podcast was about 16 minutes long. *Good to have them back!

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