Good evening! Light rain and 42 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a south-southeast breeze at 10 mph. The rain held off, but now it started to come down as I walked home from the libary. The skies will clear tomorrow around 4 pm.

Tonight will rain, mainly after 7pm. Low of 42 degrees at 6pm. 11 degrees above normal. South wind 10 to 16 mph, with gusts as high as 29 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. In 2016, we had clear skies. It got down to 28 degrees. The record low of 12 occurred back in 1972.

Tonight will have a New Moon. The First Quarter Moon is on Sunday, November 26th with partly cloudy skies expected. The Cold Moon is on Sunday, December 3rd. The sun will rise at 6:51 am with the first light at 6:21 am, which is one minute and 14 seconds later than yesterday. Tonight will have 14 hours and 23 minutes of darkness, an increase of 2 minutes over last night.

Tomorrow will have showers likely before 4pm, then isolated showers after 5pm. Mostly cloudy, with a temperature falling to around 39 by 5pm. Windy, with a southwest wind 23 to 29 mph becoming west in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 50 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 64 degrees. The record high of 71 was set in 1921. 4.2 inches of snow fell back in 1914.

In four weeks on December 16 the sun will be setting at 4:23 pm, which is 6 minutes and 23 seconds earlier then tonight. In 2016 on that day, we had snow, partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 21 and 1 degrees. Cold day last year. Typically, you have temperatures between 36 and 21 degrees. The record high of 55 degrees was set back in 1971.

Happy Start to Regular Season in the Southern Zone! I hope you were one of the lucky ones if you were out in the field or in a tree stand today. I am sure it’s a zoo on public lands. Heck, even later in the season, I’ve hunted small game on public lands, and looked down the ridge and spotted numerous hunters. Nearly half a million people participate in the southern zone deer opener. Mostly though I make excuses for not spending enough time out in the field and not taking advantage of those tags that I buy every year. 

Small game I can process while camping and dump the carcasses in the woods to feed the coyotes, but I hate to see a deer carcass ending up in a landfill. Next weekend I will be up in the Adirondacks with my shotgun assuming the weather cooperates. I keep telling myself I am going to buy a tree stand and a safety vest, but it never happens. So I usually just do small game, sitting up on a ridge, looking down. Obviously, some day in the future when I own land, things might be different. For me, owning more land is much more important then a fancy house. Smaller and simpler for a house is better in my opinion. Use the gut pile to bait coyotes, then I can shoot them too and get the pelts to sell. Double bonus. I really do need to spend more time out hunting though.

I can’t believe that yesterday, they were pouring concrete for sidewalks with such cold weather as part of the Delmar’s burn the free state money program. I guess they had to replace the water pipes before the leaks kept getting worse but it seems like the state’s streetscape program is a complete waste of taxpayer funds everywhere its been utilized in recent years. It either subsidizes suburbanite sprawl or replaces already pedestrian friendly streets with shinny new concrete and asphalt that quickly cracks. I don’t consider myself to be a real conservative, but I hate how much money and therefore resource the government squanders.

Finally got the power supply and transistors in the mail, which is one of the things that sucks about eBay. It’s sometimes really slow but that’s fine, I haven’t had a lot of free time since I get home from work. Amazon is great but I don’t want to pay for a prime membership. Maybe I’ll have to rethink that now that I am doing more electronic stuff. Wired up the transistors to the LED strip and nothing worked or the light output was either too dim or not switching on or off. So I probed with voltage meter and studied the diagram. I now I know what I did wrong, I hooked the resistor for the “pull down” line between the gate and the signal from the Arduino. The “pull down” resistor should be hooked to ground, so that when there is no HIGH, the gate goes fully LOW, so the lights are totally off or dimmed to the appropriate level. That makes a lot of sense, but somehow I was tired and confused when I wired it.

Figuring this out, I got lots of fun measuring the voltage levels and resistance levels. And studying the diagrams, trying to figure out what I did wrong. Most scary though was when I accidentally shorted out the 12 volt hot side with my voltage probe into the Arduino which at the time was hooked up to my laptop, which not only made a little it spark, promptly sent 12 volts to the USB port on my laptop which caused the kernel panic and the laptop to reboot. In the process, I killed the power supply on the Aruindo. It still works from the USB power, I can’t power it in from the VIN pin. While the Arduino could be replaced for like $8, I was not happy about possibly frying my laptop.

Fortunately the laptop was not fried by the brief spark. I did however fry the Arduino’s built in power supply. Ordered two more for $16. The laptop’s USB port seems fine, and I am able to program and operate the Arduino as normal using the USB port, except the power in port is dead, so I can’t boot the board up without using the USB cable. I will keep it for development purposes though, and I can always pull the the Atmega328P microcontroller for other purposes. It’s niec the Arduino I have the socketed microcontroller. Many do not. I should also be able to reuse the USB port and power jack for other things. For sure, I am not going to leave my laptop hooked to the Arduino anymore when it’s being powered by 12 volts, and in many cases will do more testing of voltages before I connect things on up. You live and learn.

I visited the Bethlehem Sportsmart but I ended up buying nothing except a donation to the Hurricane Relief, because there wasn’t anything there I really needed. I thought that you had to pay to go in, like a Gun Show, but I guess not this year. It was just like a giant tag sale with lots snowshoes, ice skates, and skiis. I did look at ice skates, but not fit me. I think ice skating might be fun, assuming that my ankle holds up. I am more interested in ice skating on remote lakes, rather developed areas. Watch as I sprain my ankle and die from hydothermia all alone. Or fall through the ice. I have a busted snowshoe and my poles need new bottom pieces, but I’m not going to throw them out when there is  a good chance that I can repair them and get a second life. I hate to throw away anything that I can fix and continue to use, or spend money on things 

Picked up my dry cleaning. That should be good once legislative session gets underway. I will need more shirts come budget time, but I have a few that are in good shape, and several in packages that have yet to be opened. I will miss Sears now that is closed.

Figured out what kind of bolt I need for the Yakima Anchor Plates from doing some Internet searches. It looks like it’s a 6mm metric bolt. I just need to figure out the length bolt I need, a factor that will in part depend on how thick the aluminum cross bar I buy. I want to get as thin and wide bar as possible, but it has to be rugged to not flex or break on rough roads. Before I buy those things at Lowes, I want to confirm the height of my truck cap compared to the car wash, to make sure I can fit into the car wash without damaging the solar panel. It’s kind of important to be able to was the road salt of my truck once that time of year comes around again on the calendar. I was going to do this today, but then I got lazy and then it got dark and started to rain. So it will get put off until tomorrow.

Looking ahead, Bye, Bye American Pie which is The Day the Music Died in 11 weeks and Winnie the Pooh Day is in 2 months.