Good evening. Currently 58 degrees and heavy rain. I went to the laundromat and store, and with the heavy rain, driving conditions are difficult. Showers continue, mainly before 1am. Low around 42. South wind 5 to 11 mph becoming northwest after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. Sunrise at 6:52 AM tomorrow.

Tomorrow is going to be great weather for my trip to the North Country. It will be mostly sunny, with a high near 51. Northwest wind 8 to 10 mph. I plan to get up at 6 AM and leave by eight, with hopes of reaching Plattsburgh by 11. I will spend some time poking around Plattsburgh before heading to Malone by around 2 PM and setting up camp at 4 PM. Going to be a great day, I haven’t been to the North Country since 2009. This is the one region of the state I haven’t been in the past five years, so it will be interesting to see. I just remember how flat and expansive the land is up there, with relatively few little towns in between. At least gas is cheap!

Little on the fence where I will camp at, possibly Deer River State Forest or maybe CCC Dam at Brasher State Forest. Both are nice but the prior is more wild, while the other has more developed and nicer campsites. Both are situated on ample state land, and I think both have cell service so I can play on my phone on the potentially cold and rainy Sunday. Deer River has more hills so it might be safer for plinking. Maybe visit both.

Depending on the weather Monday, especially the risk of Lake Effect Snow, I will decide how to come back. There are several state forests I’d like to see in St. Lawrence County but not if that means I risk driving through white out conditions on slippery roads. Might instead come back via Lake Placid then the Northway. We will see.

Many things are packed. But there is more to do. So I better get to bed. Goodnight.

Good evening. Currently 60 degrees with light drizzle this evening. It will clear out by morning. I have Friday and Monday off from work, I’m heading up to the North Country to do some camping, hiking, hunting, and exploring. Plattsburgh tomorrow then the Massena and Malone area for the rest of the weekend.

Tonight showers, mainly before 1am. Low around 44. Southeast wind 11 to 16 mph becoming light and variable. Winds could gust as high as 26 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New precipitation amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible.

Hopefully the showers will hold off while I pack.

Caught another mouse in the trap. Apparently I haven’t won the war on mice yet. Reset out the traps and I’ll see if I catch any more mice today. I thought I had won the war. Oh, well.

Traffic is bad on heading southbound on the 787. It is exceptionally bad even by rush hour in Albany standards, so we are going up McCarthy Hill.

Upgraded my laptop to Ubuntu 15.10 and managed to break all my GIS software. I don’t know what happened but somehow a lot of libraries aren’t properly linking. I think I was using the Ubuntu GIS repository which is unavailable currently for 15.10. I may try to fix it next week or maybe it’s easier to do a clean reinstall. Sometimes when you break libraries and packages in Linux it’s easier to do a totally fresh install.

McKownville Improvement Association President Don Reeb spoke to Save the Pine Bush Dinner last night. His presentation was quite interesting. I had no idea that Albany Nanotech was a legitimate entity. I just thought it was a bunch of government workers and college students pretending to create good jobs in our community to make up for a rotting upstate economy due to rural de-industrialization. It reality, it’s a consortium of the biggest tech companies coming together to share $20 billion in expensive nanotechnology chip development and testing equipment.

Apparently the equipment is so expensive that even the wealthiest of corporations can’t afford or more likely refuse to spend their own testing equipment. The companies pool resources together and get state financing, state own buildings and massive tax breaks to do their research. Because they and their contractors enjoy most favored status by the state, as it furthers the narrative of job creation by politicians, they are generally free to act as cowboys and ignore the state law when convenient. Nobody knows that much about nano-particals, you can be certain it will be a toxic superfund site by the time, like most former manufacturing facilities of an earlier era. But it created good paying jobs.

Fascinating presentation for sure.