January 27th 2020

The Grammy Awards

Rant warning!

Well let’s just say I have seen and heard a lot of things in my life, I can remember Elvis Presley, the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. And I remember my father telling me how terrible that music was, you see my dad was a country music lover, and the old country Roy Rodgers, Gene Audrey, George Strait, you get the idea. We only had one radio station that the old radio in the barn would pick up CKOX out of Woodstock and they only played rock and roll for one hour a day and it was from five to six which was when we were milking the cows. I would turn it up every time I walked by the radio and my dad would turn it down ever time he was close. Oh there were many heated debates on the lack of talent required to make this rock music, and the hair cuts on these degenerates was a whole new debate…so I have always tried to keep an open mind of new music styles.

Ok, well I’m willing to admit I have lived through the New Kids on The Block, and the like, but I just couldn’t get past the whole rap craze thing, I have never heard such foul mouthed ungrateful people who sung of killings and whores, disrespecting pretty much any and every one of any authority. Pretty much just noise and in most cases not even good noise, not having a real beat, and in most cases can not be played over the air waves without huge bleeped out sections, the kind of noise that only gets a skip in my little world of streaming music. I really thought it couldn’t get any worse and then on the Grammys tonight there was some kind screaming grunting noise from something called Tyler the Creator, well that was about five minutes of my life that I will never get back and I still have no idea what he was doing other than possibly his diaper was on backwards…it was just bad and even scarier he won a Grammy for some style of noise.

And as the evening goes on there is just more and more bleeping, I am not even close to a prude, after spending forty years in the automotive world, oh if I pinched a finger I could swear a blue streak with the best of them. But to swear and curse for absolutely no reason in a song, that adds no value, and only degrades those doing it, I can’t imagine trying to explain such trash to young people listening to this garbage being produced by some very popular people…I would have said artists but I think of an artist as some one who creates timeless music and doesn’t need to add shock value, but even Steven Tyler of Aerosmith is getting bleeped tonight…has music fallen to this level…the answer is actually very obvious. I can remember when Elvis was on the Sullivan show and the cameras weren’t allowed to show his gyrations, oh how this music industry has decayed, most of the performers couldn’t carry a tune in a basket, let a lone sing in tune, and how degrading when they honour some gangster thug rapper on the same screen as Kobie Bryant. I don’t think overpaid athletes are hero worthy either but I do believe that they deserve not to be remembered with raping criminals that get shot…just saying.

January 26th 2020

La Posa West LTVA

It’s Sunday morning and we will be on the move again today, only 5 miles (8 kilometres), but every move takes the same amount of planning. Wow yesterday was a great day for solar 320.5 amp hours, our biggest day ever. Now you might ask how a winter day in the desert is our biggest day ever…it’s actually easy to explain, while our solar array has always had the capability to bring in this amount of power we just didn’t have anyplace to put it. Remember our old batteries only gave us 224 amp hours at 50% and we tried not to take them much below 70% so we were replenishing the battery’s daily, now we are averaging around 250 amp hours of usage each day, and that is mainly because we can do more without fear of damaging the batteries, or setting off alarms because of low voltage. So now our battery bucket has more room for the solar to dump in power, and now we need a little more solar to fill that battery bucket every day.

This view every sunrise, has been pretty tough to take…just saying

A check of today’s forecast shows a high of 74 or 23 degrees today, in fact warmer than our friends in LaBelle Florida by a couple of degrees, were we make the biggest difference is on the humidity, we are thirty percent lower and will be closer to seventy percent when the sun gets up. Generally this time of year southern Arizona runs about ten Fahrenheit degrees cooler that Florida but we also run 50 to 70% lower humidity. And the only insects are common house flies and of course some ground ants. So sitting out in the evening there are no mosquitos but when the sunsets the temperature drops off sharply, like I’m talking sweatshirt required in minutes, but that’s the desert.

I got most things packed away yesterday evening, this morning only the barbecue, propane fire pit, the propane tank, and our rug are left, Then once we move I can get our flag base, most of what is left fits into the truck box, so less than half an hour will have us ready for the road, the packing is the same for 5 miles is the same as it is for 50, and in reality there will be more bouncing out of the BLM and into the LTVA than most hundred mile moves…just saying.

Well it’s 10:30 and we are settled into our new old spot, you see we are settled back into a spot that we were in two years ago, (yea garbage bins turn right) that spot. But it is close to the big tent, and we are positioned to protect the refrigerator from the sun and get the best harvest possible, the crowd is starting to thin, lots of rigs heading out, that’s why we decided not to dump for a few days, because pretty much everyone leaving will be going to dump.

I have picked up our new solar panels, another 420 watts, so tomorrow will be install day, I have the kits, the glue and a fresh tube of Dicor. So I will mount them in the morning, then I can go pick up the correct length cables to hook them up to the Blue Sky controllers.