Buying a new inverter
In an effort to return to my normal blog, I will try to compress everything that's happened into this one blog post.
Of all the things I could do about my inverter difficulties, I figured ordering one from Amazon would be the cheapest and easiest thing... Until I tried to find a place that would accept my Amazon package. Drop boxes for Amazon deliveries are all over Colorado. And my experience has been that Arizona has many drop boxes. However, New Mexico has barely adopted the idea for some strange reason. Finding a place nearby that would take delivery of my package got so complicated that I decided not to use Amazon.
I was going to stay another day or two at City of Rocks, but being badly in need of an inverter, I took off for the Walmart in Deming, New Mexico. I figured I would get some kind of inverter and spend the night in the parking lot installing it.
Getting to Walmart, it quickly became apparent that they had a very limited choice of inverters, and none of them were "pure sine wave" inverters, which is what you need to run a computer. Slinking back to the camper empty-handed, wondering what to do next, I spied something I had never noticed before.
Right next to the Walmart where I'm staying is a giant store that closed long ago. I can't remember if it was a Kmart or Target, but something large. Lo and behold, a new store had rented about half of the big store, and now there's a brand-new shiny Harbor Freight store right next to the Walmart, and they sell inverters, among other things.
I buy tools from Harbor Freight now and then. They are by no means top-quality stuff, but they are adequate and inexpensive, so I moseyed across the parking lot, found a 2000-watt pure sine wave inverter, whipped out my credit card, charged $250, and walked out with something I hope is better than what I had.
It became obvious to me several paragraphs ago that I could not fit everything I wanted to discuss into this one blog post, so bear with me, and I'll try to finish it up tomorrow.
Theboondork