Staying over at the terminal in Willows tonight and dropping the last part of a multiple stop delivery in Rocklin tomorrow. We dropped the bulk of the freight, bathtubs, in Orland this morning.
I got my generator hooked up and running. Sweet. I am totally self-contained now. This generator will run up to 8 hours on a gallon of unleaded gas. Not too shaby. It puts out 2000 watts at peak and has a surge protector built in. I just tested it out and watched a DVD on my flat panel TV while running my laptop at the same time. No problems.
I finalized my decision to purchase a generator after I got a new truck. A Volvo. Yeah the truck is nice. However the company rigs these trucks to shut off after 5 minutes unless the optimized idle is turned on. The problem with optimized idle is that when the cab reaches the designated temperature it shuts off. When the temperature varies by +/- 3 degrees it starts the engine and the environmental control kicks in again. That's exactly what it's supposed to do. The problem is that when you use a power inverter it will cut out for a few seconds every time the engine starts up. This causes the sattelite to have to re-aquire its signal (about a minute and a half) or if I'm watching a DVD, I have to scan the chapters to find where I left off. This is VERY annoying.
Basically I gave up watching TV or DVD's since I got this truck. With my old truck I could just shut the thermostat off and then back on before the engine shut off and it would reset, effectively preventing the engine from shutting down. This Volvo is different and I can't shut off the thermostat.
Now I don't have to run the engine at all anymore unless I need environmental control. With the price of fuel these days, everyone is happier this way.