Good morning! Happy Thursday. Sloppy and 33 degrees in North Syracuse. Lots of slop. You could call it call it snow or sleet or rain, but it’s warm enough there isn’t much left except some dusting on the grass. There is a east-southeast breeze at 10 mph. The skies will clear tomorrow around 7 pm. But then real miserable for the weekend, but warmer with temperatures in the low 60s as drizzle comes down throughout.

Exchanged the shirt that didn’t fit properly because I bought the wrong size. I should have read the label. It wasn’t a big deal. I got another set of miniature screw drivers because I left my set at home. I pulled the hard drive from the dead laptop, and now are waiting for the case to arrive. Hopefully I’ll have all my files back to later. I’m really looking forward to getting the new laptop in November, especially with the fast SSD drive. I wasn’t ready to replace my nearly 4 year old laptop yet, but sometimes life doesn’t always go to plan. Also got more windshield washer fluid as the pump has always been leaking, and it always runs low on cold, icy mornings when I use and leak a lot of fluid.

I’m thinking about calling today to drop off my truck to have the brakes done and tires rotated. I really want to get it done before vacation, not because I’m in immediate risk of scoring up the rotators, but because I don’t want to wait. And I’m not volunteering to do my own brakes, especially not in the wet nasty weather of today.

This morning will have some more slop in the form rain and snow, becoming all rain after 11am. Overcast and dreary to max. High of 39 degrees at 4pm. 16 degrees below normal. Even miserable Donald Trump supporters don’t like weather that nasty. Southeast wind 10 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. Last year was only slightly more pleasant with mostly cloudy skies with a high around 56. The record high of 79 was set in 1963. There was 1.6 inches of snow back in 2011. Fortunately, we aren’t getting that kind of snow today.

The sun will set at 6:01 pm with dusk around 6:31 pm, which is 1 minutes and 26 seconds earlier than yesterday. Today will have 10 hours and 27 minutes of daylight, a decrease of 2 minutes and 42 seconds over yesterday. Those days are really getting short, and it doesn’t help how truly dreary the weather is today.

Tonight will rain even more, but no snow is expected at least in the Greater Syracuse area. Low of 39 degrees at 6pm. Two degrees above normal. Southeast wind 10 to 14 mph becoming west after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. One year ago, cloudy with a low around 37. The record low of 18 occurred back in 1974.

There are 4 weeks until Thanksgiving when the sun will be setting at 4:33 pm with dusk at 5:04 pm (Standard Time). The average high temperature is 44 degrees, with a record high of 70 in 2014. Looking forward to the turkey and all the sides. November is really a great month even if later October is really dreary. November tends to be cloudy but not really as wet as October.

There are 11 days, 12 hours and 11 minutes until the polls close in NY State on Election Day.

Governor Ronald Reagan in 1964 delivers a speech on behalf of the Republican candidate for president, Barry Goldwater. The speech launches his political career and comes to be known as “A Time for Choosing”. I am pretty sure that Ronald Reagan was just as bad back then as he was in 1980s. We are a little over a week and half from election day, so I can be obnoxiously political.

Late October is not known for it’s nice weather in Syracuse. While in the city and lower elevation locations in the suburbs, the trees still have leaves, they will be dropping with cooler temperatures and rain expected. Starting on Saturday through Tuesday, we will have  typical weather for the days with modest temperatures in the evenings.

Tomorrow we have a chance for a dusting of snow with on and off rain and drizzle throughout the week. No real snow accumulations.  Just wet dreary weather. The most rain will come tomorrow with another 3/4rd of an inch expected.

For the next week, as is common this time of year, we will have mostly cloudy weather for the next week. Enjoy the brief sun we have this afternoon into the evening, as the clouds will prevail later on.

Good morning! What day is it? Hump Day, of course. Light snow is coming down and  its around 34 degrees in North Syracuse. A bit too warm for sticking. Calm wind.

Today will have a slight chance of sprinkles and flurries before 10am. The skies will clear around 2 pm.  High of 44 degrees around the same time. Fairly chilly today. 12 degrees below normal. Northwest wind 3 to 6 mph. Last year, mostly sunny with a high around 55. The record high of 78 was set in 1963. There was a dusting of snow in 1997. We may very well get a dusting of snow tomorrow, but it will not stick to the roadways. None of the snow this morning is expected to accumulate.

I got my old laptop upgraded to Ubuntu 16.04, after going through the steps of Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04 then 14.04 to 16.04. I just wanted to get the latest bug fixes and security patches on the machine, especially if I’m using it every day. The laptop seems to be running about a constant temperature, going up a bit when it’s working hard, but I haven’t noticed the electrical smell at all today. I think it may have been just burning off the dust from sitting in the closet. I’m glad I didn’t scrap my old Thinkpad, as I planned to do sometime ago, but was too lazy to pull the hard drive (and blast with a shotgun and drop it in a roaring fire) to ensure nobody would pull data off it and because that’s fun. I’m going to keep my old Thinkpad for the foresable, just in case I need a backup laptop in the future. That said, I will probably scrap my dead Samsung at one of the free recycling places, well at least after I pull the hard drive, other useful parts, and after taking it apart in an effort to try to fix it.

Already started to look at new laptops. I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and replace it. Fortunately most of the basic budget laptops are between $350-$450 based on my looking at them at the website for Staples or Office Max or one of the big boxes. I think I will stick with a budget laptop, especially as laptops don’t seem to last that long with my heavy use and hauling them around. Budget laptops have plenty of power for my use, although I think I will get one with at least 8 GB of RAM because my old laptop was running low on memory sometimes when I opened a lot of windows.

Thinking of also buying a 500 GB solid state hard drive and putting that in the new laptop soon after buying it, so I get much better performance with my GIS software which is very disk and a somewhat lesser extent, memory intensive. 500 GB is the size of my current hard drive on my dead Samsung Laptop which is more then enough right now. Looks like the 500 GB hard drives are like $150. Solid state drives are great because they have no moving parts, so pull data off them ultra-fast, so applications and large GIS files load quickly. Moreover I run a lightweight window manager, and won’t have Windows on it, it will have plenty of space. I have a 750 GB external drive and will have the old 500 GB drive soon in an external USB enclosure — hopefully today, so I’ll have even more space for backing up and little use.

With my old laptop working fine now with modern software, I’m not going to rush out to replace it. But I do think I will replace it come mid-November, because I want to have something that is reliable as a laptop, and with the case beat up as it is on the Thinkpad, it really is not a very useful as a laptop — even if it works fine in desktop applications with the monitor and external keyboard and mouse hooked up.

The sun will set at 6:03 pm with dusk around 6:32 pm, which is 1 minutes and 26 seconds earlier than yesterday. Today will have 10 hours and 29 minutes of daylight, a decrease of 2 minutes and 41 seconds over yesterday.

Increasing clouds tonight. The sun and clear skies won’t last. Low of 29 degrees at 6am. Seven degrees below normal. Calm wind becoming east around 5 mph after midnight. One year ago, mostly cloudy with a low around 29. The record low of 21 occurred back in 1950.

Back in 1970, Muhammad Ali faces off against Jerry Quarry in Atlanta, Georgia for the first time after Ali’s three-year hiatus from evading to be drafted in the Vietnam War.

There are 5 week until First Day with Temperatures Recorded Below Zero when the sun will be setting at 4:30 pm with dusk at 5:02 pm (Standard Time). The average high temperature is 42 degrees, with a record high of 67 in 1933 during the depths of the Great Depression.

There are 12 days, 12 hours and 48 minutes until the polls close in NY State on Election Day.