Good morning! Happy Election Day 2017. As you probably are aware at this point, you should probably plan on getting out and voting toay. Mostly cloudy and 43 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a north-northwest breeze at 7 mph. The current wind chill is 29. A bit of chilly morning, you will want a sweater. Only going to get cooler as the day progresses. The skies will clear tomorrow around noontime.

Today will have a chance of light rain, mainly after 4pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high of 41 degrees at 7am. 10 degrees below normal. North wind 5 to 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. A year ago, we had mostly cloudy skies. The high last year was 53 degrees. The record high of 75 was set in 1938. 4.5 inches of snow fell back in 1886.

The sun will set at 4:40 pm with dusk around 5:09 pm, which is one minute and 8 seconds earlier than yesterday. At sunset, look for mostly cloudy conditions and 40 degrees. There will be a north breeze at 5 mph. Today will have 10 hours and 2 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 2 minutes and 23 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a chance of light rain, mainly before 8pm. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 28 degrees at 6am. Seven degrees below normal. North wind around 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2016, we had mostly cloudy skies. It got down to 26 degrees. The record low of 18 occurred back in 1971.

Last night I hooked up a few different projects with the Arduino. Probably the one I’m most interested is driving the RGB and making nice colors. The starter kit’s RGB LED was a pretty low quality one that doesn’t blend colors well, but I developed a sketch that simulates how I would set up my morning light, once I get a bigger RGB LED strip and MOSFET transitors to drive it. I think also need to add some kind of smoothing capacitor to the circuit because when I try to ramp up the light slowly, I get a lot variation in how quickly the light ramps up. I’ll have to do some more reading up on the Internet to find out what is suggested.

Today being Election Day is a holiday so I have it off from work. I plan to vote in a little while then head up to Troy to help out one of my former co-workers who is now running for City Council. David Bissember is a good guy, somebody who will be a very progessive and smart voice for Troy. We just got to drag those voters out. Elections are ultimately about who shows up and votes, which the political insiders refer to as turn out. This is the first time I’ve been home for Election Day since before I went to college — it will be werid voting on the machine.

Myself I enjoy looking at the different candidates and deciding how to vote. I’m a lifelong Democrat and I usually vote Democratic, but when I think the Republican offers a better option, I will vote for them. The local GOP is pretty obnoxious, teaming up with wealthy developers and farmers and rural residents struggling with high taxes, opposing the new property transfer tax that would help protect open space. I’m not thrilled about all of my choices, but certainly on the town level I will vote Democratic except for farmer Giles Wagoner on the Working Families line, and maybe for the Republican for town judge — Andy Kirby’s mailer really turned me off. His messaging about law and order is not what I think we need a judge to be. We need a judge to be compasionate and emphasize fairness on all sides. Probably vote for the Con-Con so to reform consitution and I am leaning towards Tim Stanton, the corn and vagetable grower for County Legislature special. I think county government needs some fresh new ideas, and too many of the people on there are too indebted to the local political machine. That’s my take on it.

Climbed onto the truck this morning, disassembled one of the Yakima Landing Pads and found out the type of square Yakima mounting washer (for the track) I need exactly to mount the aluminum bars that I will mount to the truck cap. I thought I knew what I needed to order, now I confirmed it. Mounting the bars to the Yakima rack for the solar panel should be easy. Then it’s just a matter of cutting and drilling the aluminium bars that I am buying, mounting the panel to that and sliding it up on the roof.  Then I just have to run the solar wire (in plastic romex) down on the front of the cap, to under the truck cab, and up the same hole that the main power wire runs back to the truck cap, and hook it into the solar controller. I will have the sun topping off the accessory battery any time I’m parked in the sun with the kayak off the roof.

Looking ahead, next Tuesday is Average High is only typically in the 40s when the sun will be setting at 4:33 pm with dusk at 5:03 pm. On that day in 2016, we had mostly sunny skies and temperatures between 58 and 25 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 49 degrees. We hit a record high of 70 back in 1973.