"In 2014, DEC administered 79 leases on 44,464 acres of state land in Allegany, Cattaraugus, Cayuga, Chautauqua, Chemung, Erie, Ontario, Schuyler, Seneca, and Steuben Counties. There were 237 wells located on and/or unitized with state land associated with 65 of these leases paying production royalties. The 44,464 leased acres are unchanged from 2013. "
"Boston Consulting Group reports that it costs barely $8 an hour to use a robot for spot welding in the auto industry, compared to $25 for a worker—and the gap is only going to widen. More generally, the “job intensity” of America’s manufacturing industries—and especially its best-paying advanced ones—is only going to decline. In 1980 it took 25 jobs to generate $1 million in manufacturing output in the U.S. Today it takes five jobs."
"The automated, hyper-efficient shop floors of modern manufacturing won’t give Trump much room to deliver on his outsized promises to bring back millions of jobs for his blue-collar supporters."
A good song for this very winter like morning.
Good morning! Definitely a cooler morning walking down to the express bus at the Park and Ride. Now it’s partly cloudy and 31 degrees in Delmar. Breezy, 17 mph breeze from the west-northwest. The current wind chill is 20. The sun definitely helps a bit but it’s still a cool November day.
Despite the chilly conditions, I bundled up and hiked down to the Park and Ride. Certainly the express bus is a more pleasant way to go to work especially with the scenic views of the Empire State Plaza from the South Mall Arterial. A nice fairly new bus today that is reasonably warm.
Today will have a slight chance of snow showers before noon. Partly sunny, with a high of 35 degrees at 1pm. 10 degrees below normal. Breezy, with a northwest wind 17 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. Last year, mostly cloudy with a high around 51. The record high of 70 was set in 1931. There was 9.1 inches of snow back in 1943.
We are now forty days from New Year’s Day. I know I’m ready for a fresh start, especially after the rather ugly year of 2016.
The sun will set at 4:26 pm with dusk around 4:57 pm, which is 37 seconds earlier than yesterday. Today will have 9 hours and 29 minutes of daylight, a decrease of 1 minutes and 48 seconds over yesterday.
Tonight will be partly cloudy, with a low of 26 degrees at 5am. Four degrees below normal. Northwest wind 10 to 15 mph. One year ago, mostly clear with a low around 22. The record low of 5 occurred back in 1972.
Fifty-three years ago today, President John F. Kennedy would be shot and killed on his tragic trip to Dallas, Texas. Certainly that was a rather sad day in our nation’s history.
There are 1 weeks until Square Dance Day when the sun will be setting at 4:23 pm with dusk at 4:54 pm. The average high temperature is 42 degrees, with a record high of 66 in 2005. I remember doing square dancing in elementary school gym classes, I think to Credence Clearwater Revival’s Green River. Which seems strange now but maybe I remember wrong. Memories fade as time goes by.
I got chatting in the office yesterday, and it came up in conversation that it will be my tenth company Christmas party I’ve been too. It’s remarkable to think I’m going on the tenth year of doing something when our world seems to be changing so quickly.
Still thinking about laptops. I’ve decided on many grounds that the Lenovo Flex laptop is not right for me. I’ve pretty much decided that I want a fairly budget laptop with a 1920×1040 screen and that I will put in a 512 GB SSD drive. That way I can start fresh with a fast hard drive, and save the drive with Microsoft Windows 10, should I ever have the need to boot into it. Swapping drives on most laptops seems pretty easy to do. I will settle for 6 GB of RAM although more would be preferable. That said, I’m kind of back at ground zero, and still don’t have a laptop.
Have a great day! Bundle up and stay warm outdoors!
Good morning! Today is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Going to be a rather cold one. Mostly cloudy and 30 degrees in Delmar. Breezy, 17 mph breeze from the west-northwest. I can here the wind whipping around outside. The current wind chill is 18.
Watch out for the snow band stuck over the Northern Catskills. Should it push north it could mean a messy commute. Otherwise, we are looking at skies clearing around 8 am.
For today we will continue to have a slight chance of snow showers before noon. Partly sunny, with a high of 35 degrees at 1pm. 10 degrees below normal. With the wind it will feel much colder. Breezy, with a northwest wind 16 to 20 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%.
Bundle up as you head out today….
Last year, mostly cloudy with a high around 51. The record high of 70 was set in 1931. There was 9.1 inches of snow back in 1943.
Good evening! All I can say is brrr…. Cloudy and 34 degrees in Delmar. Breezy, 24 mph breeze from the west-northwest with gusts up to 44 mph. The current wind chill is 22. The skies will clear tomorrow around 8 am.
All I can say is I’m glad that the 719 bus is running on time. It’s cold enough tonight with the wind that had the bus been more than a few minutes late, I would have returned to the lobby of the building and just caught the local home.
Tonight will be mostly cloudy, with a low of 30 degrees at 4am. One degree below normal. West wind 13 to 17 mph. One year ago, mostly cloudy with a low around 34. The record low of 9 occurred back in 1969.
In four weeks on December 19 the sun will be setting at 4:24 pm, which is 2 minutes earlier then tonight. The average high is 35 degrees, and the record for that date is 54 degrees was set back in 1895.
It certainly is dark taking the bus home from work. The sunsets a lot earlier in Albany then in Western NY. I really don’t like it especially on the Delmar bypass, when it’s so dark and you can not see out the windows from the lit inside bus. That said, my phone is keeping me busy and city lights are somewhat pretty for the evening commute.
Continuing to research laptops. I am having second thoughts the Lenovo Flexpad aka Yoga 710 that caught my eye at the store about a month ago. It apparently has various issues with Linux out of the box that can be mitigated but it requires a lot of work arounds including patching the BIOS and tweaking the kernel. Some of the Linux drivers are also buggy on the machine because it’s relatively new and different. I don’t mind doing that stuff long as it works. A bigger issue for me personally is the screen is difficult to replace compared to conventional laptops. And knowing how good that I am at breaking screens and shit more generally, makes it a bit of a non starter for me. I may research other more conventional laptops that can easily swap hard drives and buy a 512 GB SSD hard drive and install it.
It’s going to start snowing again shortly, so I really don’t want to go out especially with the cold. It would be a bad night to slide off the road or breakdown. Granted it’s not as harsh as mid January but it sure ain’t nice with the wind. I hope I didn’t turn the heat down too much before leaving home this morning.
I finally took action last night to clear out the drain in the bath tub. It had been getting slower over time, so I bought some drain cleaner and with the plunger, and now it’s mostly restored to full flow at draining. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. I might get more drain cleaner and try cleaning it again in another week in an attempt to make it drain as fast as the shower water comes down, but I don’t expect it work perfectly with the marginal plumbing in my shitty little apartment in the suburbs.
Also been doing some general cleaning and sprucing up around. Maybe will do more tonight. Still have some camping gear left to unpack. The cooler still needs to be cleaned, but most of the gear is done. Hit a few mildew spots in the kitchen with some bleach and try to get things cleaned up because things are a bit musty from the time I spent gone, and because my apartment is cheap and awful. But it sure is nice being able to walk around town and catch the bus to work.
I don’t expect to be driving Big Red that much now that winter is upon us, except to go out to my parents house for Sunday dinner and occasional camping, hiking, and hunting trips in the wilderness. Big Red does need a bath some point from the mud of the previous trip and now the road salt from driving home last night.