November 24, 2018 Morning

Good morning! Happy Small Business Saturday 🛍️! Next Saturday is December 🎄. Yeap, getting Big Red government inspected on Wednesday, Trump will be proud. Partly cloudy and 24 degrees in Delmar. β›… There is a south-southeast breeze at 5 mph. 🍃. With the sun, things feel quite mild. There is a inch of snow on the ground. β˜ƒ ️Things will start to thaw out at around 11 am. 🌡️ Snow won’t last long locally once the rain comes.

It’s a pleasant morning, so I am going to go for a walk out to Voorheesville along the rail trail, 🚂then come home for lunch then down to the library. 📚I will do my internet thing – the internet works fairly well now – at least in certain parts of the library then come home and work on some electronics projects,🔬 then read more of The Unsettlers, a book by Mark Sunden about off griders and back to landers. 🚜

Today will have a chance of rain, mainly after 4pm. Increasing clouds 🌞, with a high of 38 degrees at 2pm. Six degrees below normal, which is similiar to a typical day around December 8th. South wind 5 to 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 48 degrees. That year I was hiking Moxham Mountain and camping on the East Branch, it was nice. β›ΊThe record high of 70 was set in 2014. 8.8 inches of snow fell back in 1898.❄

The sun will set at 4:25 pm with dusk around 4:56 pm, which is 34 seconds earlier than yesterday. Not becoming much earlier at this point. 🌇 At sunset, look for rain showers pushing in 🌧 and temperatures around 37 degrees. There will be a south-southeast breeze at 6 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 27 minutes of daytime, a decrease of one minute and 44 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will rain. Patchy fog after 10pm. 🌧 Low of 37 degrees at 6pm. Eight degrees above normal, which is similiar to a typical night around October 26th. Light and variable wind becoming northeast around 6 mph in the evening. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New precipitation amounts between three quarters and one inch possible. In 2017, we had clear skies. It got down to 39 degrees. The record low of 2 occurred back in 1938.

I am watching the forecast, but I’m thinking I may get out of town next weekend as long as the forecast remains true 🌲and we have nice weather Saturday and Sunday doesn’t turn out to be icy. Probably head up north, as at this point it will be mostly muzzleloaders and a handful of riffle and small game people in the woods as all the action now is the Southern Zone. 🔫

As previously noted, next Saturday is December 🎄 when the sun will be setting at 4:22 pm with dusk at 4:54 pm. On that day in 2017, we had rain, mostly cloudy skies and temperatures between 45 and 31 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 41 degrees. We hit a record high of 67 back in 1934.

Old Forty Road Ramp

November 24, 2018 8:30 am Update

Seven weeks until the coldest day ever recorded in Albany, when it was recorded in the morning at negative 26. Still a hell of a lot warmer than the negative 54 recorded in Old Forge, coldest temperature ever recorded in New York State.

New campfire ring

The math behind absentee ballots rarely changing election results

There’s a reason why people say absentee ballots rarely change election results from what is reported on the machines on election night – simple math.

Let’s say there is an election with 2,000 votes on election day and 100 people who voted by absentee ballot. Candidate “A” won on Election Day by 1,010 votes. Candidate “B” won 990 votes.

The television news reported that the election results are too close to call – with only a ten vote margin giving Candidate “A” an election night win.
While technically the results are too close to call, statistically Candidate “B” has an very up hill battle to win. Let’s look at the math.

The 10 vote margin means that Candidate B got 49.5% of the vote on election night. Candidate B needs to get 50% of all absentees plus and additional ten votes (50+10=60) or a total of 60% of all absentee votes. In other words, Candidate B must perform 10.5% better with absentee voters then Election Day.

Can that happen? Sure, but generally the voting patterns about a candidate on Election Day are similar to Absentee Voters. And while it’s possible that absentees voters went more strongly for Candidate B then Candidate A, the margins are rarely the necessary difference to overcome under performance on Election Day.

Absentee ballots generally are counted but its very rare that they overturn Election Day machine counts. Candidates hoping to overturn Election Day results are best to hope for glitches in election night reporting or machine errors, not what absentee voters put on their ballot.

Above the Canyon

Samsung Apologizes To Ill Workers, Promises To Compensate Them

Samsung Apologizes To Ill Workers, Promises To Compensate Them

""Beloved colleagues and families have suffered for a long time, but Samsung Electronics failed to take care of the matter earlier," Kim said, according to Yonhap News Agency. "Samsung Electronics also did not fully and completely manage potential health risks at our chip and liquid-crystal display production lines."

'his apology and promise of compensation is more than a decade in the making. As NPR's Anthony Kuhn reported from Seoul, "Dozens of workers have reportedly developed cancer, leukemia and other afflictions at the world's largest chip-maker."