sundog

Memes are contagious ideas, all competing for a share of our mind in a kind of Darwinian selection.

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January 23, 2005 6:52 PM
Quiet here tonight, though there are many RVs in the desert around me. Feel asleep and didn't get my hike in, I'll do it tomorrow morning and get pictures. Tonights pictures are food from the solar oven. If anyone knows what this cut of meat is called, let me know. I'm guessing pot roast, but it I forgot to look.
Hey lurker girl- I've heard from a digitally deprived co conspirator that you're following the blog.
Say hello by clicking here!
Also the free chicken story page is up!

My favorite mug was a gift from my step daughter who dearly loved Moulin Rouge (as I did, and we cried!)

UP from a nap just in time for dinner! Left, asparagus, onion and mystery beef cut, tender but drier than the shoulder roast (pot roast???). At supper I actually clean off most horizontal surfaces in the trailer so that I have a hope of eating and working without frustrating myself - one of the tricks of living in small spaces. I should read yacht stories, I bet they have all the good tricks. Anyone got a good yacht blog or site? Send me the link!

My two favorite moments of the day here in the Sonaran desert (doesn't that just sound great? So much better than the rocking scrub outside of Quartzsite filled with old people and lives in decline. It's all perspective) are dawn and the 1/2 hour at sunset. The light penetrates the blue haze of the day and reveals all the details of the hills.

Why has it taken me 55 years to sit here, and why did it take so long for me to see that I am permitted to take in what my world tries to give me?

I've written up a webpage to explain why I keep talking about free chickens.
Here is the free chicken story.

January 23, 2005 2:15 PM
I'm enjoying the dish and have been out abusing the truck. If the dish itself is going to break, let it break now. But no, it's fine. Bumps and crashes and off road and big berms, and the dish stayed on.
Went to the net cafe and picked up some warranty paperwork and my deposit. Town is in near grid lock state (that's not one of the fifty states, but it might be one of the Ferengi 50 laws of acquisition). For those of you who know quartzsite, I had to go north to the Tyson Rd, then across the north end of the town and then south on North Moon street in order to bypass the worst of it and get gas, which I admit is because I often have the black beans with eggs at Tom's bus. I gassed the truck up too.
At the internet cafe I hung out hoping that the cute Brazilian woman would show up. I'm stalking her, except that I've only seen her once and I only look in one place. That's like fishing where it is convenient rather than where the fish might be.
Scott says the Brazilians come with the rocks that are shipped to the USA for the big gem and mineral shows here. Ah well. I'm back at the trailer having had no luck finding any Brazilians and the sun is so bright I think I have snow blindness.
Supper is in the solar oven and I'll take a picture of it when it comes out. It's a beef roast. Onions and beef. Carrots are out of stock in Quartzsite today. Luckily there was diet Pepsi and onions.
Tom, Scott, and I are all partnerless - Scott is young and handsome, Tom is cool, and rides a motorcycle, good looking too (or at least I think Tedd would think so), and then there is me, snarfing in the trees like a low ranking baboon, hoping that all the alpha males will go bowling. Pathetic.Get a grip!
So I've come back to nap in the sun and then take a hike across the desert toward two low mountains to the east of my camp. I am so lazy this afternoon! Is this what moose do when they don't have a harem. Maybe they nap too. Certainly the snakes are still napping. The rattlesnakes theoretically wake up in late March. I hope they all know that while I hike.

Triva for TJ. Scott told me that it is OK to paint the dish, if I ever want to, but that you can't use anything but flat on the dish itself. Peopel have used gloss and when the sun hits the dish right it melts the plastic of the feedhorn. This from Quartzsite where the sun is show some serious respect.

OH, oh, good story. When my nephew David was down from Lost Wages (Las Vegas) where he works and lives year round, he mentioned that one day this last summer they had to close the Las Vegas airport for several hours in the early afternoon because the runways were melting. Coming form Oregon I have a little trouble even identifiying with that thing in the sky. Hey, in a while crocodiles.

January 22, 2005 10:34 PM
Very big day today. This was the real screw down the dish and test and train me (again and again). Installing and using Satellite internet is actually the process of creating an uplink downlink satellite system - the earth station - every time I move. The satellite has to be found, and then it has to do many more things than a TV satellite has to do because I'm broadcasting to it and it is broadcasting to me. That satellite is 22,000 miles out in space in geosynchronous orbit. That it could work at all, even for a moment is a miracle. And it works. I'm writing to you tonight via a 44,000 mile round. And it is so fast on the downlink that it confuses my mail program - the mail actually is sent before I write it - wait, no, umm, maybe not. ANYWAY - shut up alan and show us a few picts (does this guy always go on and on and on? yes).

Rather than make you wait, here's the results of todays efforts. I'm back out in the desert where if it weren't for the wretches who must run generators it would be perfectly still.

There are three blue LEDs that light the dish at night for no other reason than the oh and ah factor. I stood out there for 20 minutes and did just that. But nobody could see me because it was dark. It has a cool rating in the book of 125 of a max cool 100.

Here is Scott Whitney, Dustyfoot himself, later in the afteroon finishing up the interior cabling from the dish to the connection point within the canopy. From there another set of cables coming from the modem and controller in the trailer connect here. Scott is very meticulous and I tried to get him to understand good enough, but he seems to be resistant to new information like that.

Here I am faking doing something because I was done with the cabling from the airstream and I love ladders (as all of you know - it's the painting thing). Actually that concerned look is because Scott has just mentioned that I'm probably sitting in the white sealer - which is a thermonuclear product that cannot be removed short of stripping myself naked there and leaving my pants there forever. Scott is actually ticking the private area of the dish, apparently necessary to bring the monster to life. He lives, he lives!

So no great insights tonight, thank god. I've been kind of hanging around the internet cafe hoping to get lucky, but now that my pants are stuck to the top of the canopy, and I only brought one pair, we'll you can complete my thought. Enough for tonight, off to bed with visions of geosynchronous satellites dancing in my head.

Hey Evalyn, what you think about a name for the dish. I'm thinking, Clone a willy 2?

Yea, I just figured that out. No wonder why I like this dish. It's a manly dish. Just look at the feedhorn on that thing, for a minute I thought I was at the Portland zoo. Can they sell these things in the heartland? I think you have to keep them in the stowed position.

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