Good afternoon! Partly sunny and 37 degrees in the City of Albany, taking the bus home. There is a northwest breeze at 8 mph. We closed down the office a bit early because a lot of people travel for the holidays. 

The sun will set at 4:25 pm with dusk around 4:56 pm, which is 36 seconds earlier than yesterday. At sunset, look for partly clear conditions and 34 degrees. There will be a northwest breeze at 6 mph.

Tonight will have a chance of snow, mainly after 4am. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 28 degrees at 3am. Two degrees below normal. Northwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Total nighttime snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. One year ago, partly cloudy with a low around 20. The record low of 7 occurred back in 2000.

Waning Crescent Moon tonight with 32% illuminated. The moon will rise around 1:06 am. The New Moon is on Tuesday night with chance of showers expected. The Full “Cold” Moon is in 3 weeks.

Thanksgiving Day will have snow likely before 11am, then rain and snow likely between 11am and 1pm, then rain likely after 1pm. Cloudy, with a high of 37 degrees at 1pm. Seven degrees below normal. Calm wind becoming southeast around 5 mph in the morning. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New snow accumulation of less than one inch possible. Last year, partly sunny with a high around 44. The record high of 70 was set in 2014. There was 8.8 inches of snow back in 1898.

Right now, a split verdict on the weekend. Saturday, snow showers likely, possibly mixed with rain before 7am, then a chance of rain showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 44. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. Sunday, partly sunny, with a high near 42.Typical average high for the weekend is 44 degrees.

In four weeks on December 21 the sun will be setting at 4:25 pm, which is the same time as today. The average high is 34 degrees, and the record for that date is 59 degrees was set back in 1957.

I decided on the HP laptop. It really does everything I need or want a laptop to do. Studying the specs this afternoon I discovered that it has a separate unused SSD drive slot that is relatively easy to access, so when SSD prices come down in a year or two, I’ll install an SSD drive for my root and /usr partitions. Probably keep /home and Windows 10 on the conventional drive.  That should speed things up further although I expect this new machine to be quite powerful compared to my old laptop, yet well within my budget. I’m just so impressed by the YouTube videos of how fast computers are at booting and loading apps using SSD drives. 

Tomorrow I will purchase the laptop and pick it up on Friday. Then I will get the latest version version of Ubuntu Linux, put it on a mountable USB drive and install it on a partition. From there I have to copy over my files, install the QGIS and other GIS software, and the LAMP stack that I use for development of my blogs code. Also the OpenShot Video editor and maybe OpenOffice if it’s not automatically installed. It will be great to have a fully working laptop with all my usual software installed. 

Before Thanksgiving Dinner, I might go for a walk at Five Rivers Environmental Education Center. This all depends on how much rain we get in the morning. Friday I will work on getting the laptop set up. Saturday also looks cold and wet.  Sunday, I’m thinking about going snowshoeing or maybe cross country skiing at North-South Lake Campground, and checking out the new overlook and Kaaterskill Rail Trail. The DEC email on that for me thinking about heading up there. 

Good morning! How is your day before Thanksgiving going? Pretty quiet, eh? Partly cloudy and 30 degrees in Delmar. There is a northwest breeze at 11 mph. It is warming up slowly and indeed while we will have a lot of sun for a while, it will still be pretty cold. Spider plant will certainly enjoy the sun.

Today will be mostly sunny, with a high of 38 degrees at 1pm. Seven degrees below normal. Northwest wind 7 to 11 mph. Last year, mostly sunny with a high around 40. The record high of 72 was set in 1931. There was 5 inches of snow back in 1943.

The sun will set at 4:26 pm with dusk around 4:57 pm, which is 36 seconds earlier than yesterday. Today will have 9 hours and 28 minutes of daylight, a decrease of 1 minutes and 47 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a chance of snow, mainly after 4am. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 28 degrees at 3am. Two degrees below normal. Northwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. One year ago, partly cloudy with a low around 20. The record low of 7 occurred back in 2000.

There are 1 weeks until First Day with Temperatures Recorded Below Zero when the sun will be setting at 4:23 pm with dusk at 4:54 pm. Earliest sunset time of the year if you ignore the few seconds you continue to loose heading into early December. The average high temperature is 42 degrees, with a record high of 67 in 1933.

It was a nice walk down to the Park and Ride. I didn’t get down to the library last night so I ended up retiring to bed early and waking up early. That early start meant I was early to the bus stop. But it was a pretty morning with green grass at lower elevations and snow in the Heldebergs.

Some minor traffic delays on Southern Boulevard heading into the city, but we seem to still be making progress downtown. I’ll still be one earlier people in the office but that gives me a jump start on the day.

I am probably going to get the HP Pavilion laptop I was looking at. I will take advantage of that Black Friday sale by ordering on Thanksgiving and picking it up mid afternoon, probably in Glenmont or maybe Colonie. There might be traffic delays but in my experience most Black Friday shoppers prefer the morning. And if I’m only picking it up, I shouldn’t have major delays.

Things that sold me on it was it had a DVD drive — which is increasingly rare these day for laptops — which is good because I being able to get a movie out of the library every once and a while. Movies are nice on cold winter days, especially because I lack internet at home. It’s only a 1/4 lb heavier and an 1 1/2 inch wider then the Lenovo 2-in-1, and has a quarter more ram (8 GB vs 12 GB), more disk space (alas a slower conventional drive). That said the more I think of it, I think QGIS performance will be better maximized by the faster processor and more ram, rather then the SSD drive.

Things won’t open quite as fast, but most of the GIS files I work with really aren’t that large in the grand scheme of things. SSD drives are only going to get less expensive and more common, so I can always upgrade in future years. It can be done on this laptop, it’s just a pain because you have to remove both the bottom case and the top, then the keyboard to get to the hard drive. I much prefer the ease of hard drive removal on previous laptops I’ve owned.

Now it’s starting to cloud up. Well, I’m almost to work, so get I better finish up this post. Have a great day!