Anthracite coal home heating, aka smokeless coal is fairly common in Northern Pennsylvania. Bitmous coal for rural home heating is much more common in Southern Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Bitmous coal is pretty nasty fuel to burn with a home coal stoves, it burns black and sooty like some plastics until its up to temperature when you can see the blue color of the sulfur in the white smoke. Makes wood smoke look clean.
The open secret Jennings filled me in on is that OpenStreetMap (OSM) is now at the center of an unholy alliance of the world’s largest and wealthiest technology companies. The most valuable companies in the world are treating OSM as critical infrastructure for some of the most-used software ever written.
The four companies in the inner circle— Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft— have a combined market capitalization of over six trillion dollars.? In almost every other setting, they are mortal enemies fighting expensive digital wars of attrition. Yet they now find themselves eagerly investing in and collaborating on OSM at an unprecedented scale (more on the scale later).
For those who celebrate such a holiday. But there is no hope, there is always springtime and the mud and manure to look forward to. 💩 Trout fishing too. 🎣 Actually this week is going to be quite mild, but the sun sure sets early this far east with the time change, which I am refusing to adopt, although I doubt I’ll be showing up to work early an hour early on Monday. 😀 That said, it looks nice enough to walk down to the express bus and take it in on Monday, so regardless I’ll be in fairly early compared to the local. 🚌 Might need my sweater, though I got one of them out of my closet this morning.
Full five day work week this week, 💼 as I don’t have any days planned to be off at this point, but the following week is the Thanksgiving Holiday and Buy Nothing Day, although they don’t want to be too socialist where I work, they call it Thanksgiving Friday. 🇨🇳 I think it’s a good excuse to get out of town. 🏕
Friday night to start off Big Game Season in the SZ going to be one of the coldest so far in the Capital Region, ❄️ with temperatures as low as 26 degrees in the city, although I guess a week ago it was that cold. It was 14 degrees the first day I was in Pennsylvania a week ago, so it certainly can get pretty cold this time of year, especially in the mountains. But that’s to be expected with the second half of November upon us. My heat is on, and I’m resigned to spend more time indoors, although I probably will walk the Empire Plaza instead of in the concourse, as I don’t find walking with the muzzle on particularly pleasant.
Today. Feels like … November 21st.
Increasing clouds.
Southwest wind 6 to 9 mph becoming south in the afternoon.
and
47 degrees
,
4:33 sunset.
Tonight. Feels like … November 10th.
Rain, possibly mixing with snow after 2am, then gradually ending.
South wind around 6 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. Little or no snow accumulation expected.
and
33 degrees
,
6:47 sunrise.
Monday. Feels like … November 25th.
Isolated showers after 2pm. Partly sunny.
South wind 6 to 14 mph becoming west in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 24 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%.
If you don’t believe it, Monday represents halfway through the month of November, although let’s be honest, I’m sure the oldies station has already switched to Christmas music and the advertisers are busy hawking the remaining colorful plastic crap on their largely empty shelves, the stuff that makes such black smoke when you burn it as any true Pennsylvania redneck will tell you.
Mostly clear and 35 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a west-southwest breeze at 9 mph. 🍃. Temperatures will drop below freezing at Tuesday around 2 am. ☃️
I am continuing to get up at 5 AM each morning, 🌞 as I have yet to set my clock back. Maybe it’s too early, but I like having the extra time each morning, and just going to bed really early. Now that I’m home with electric light and not so much cold, that is if I am not so damn cheap and refuse to turn up the thermostat much, maybe I’ll end up staying later then I have over the past week when I got up early to maximize the days with limited daylight on vacation.
I am just trying to come to grips with returning back to the more normal life, 👨💼 like the upcoming 5-day work week, my rundown old apartment that is really musty after being closed up for a week, and just all the other crap I have to deal with like getting my truck inspected, and those darn tires installed. It was kind of nice to forget about it for a week. At least it’s a lot warmer and drier inside then it was the last day of camping with all the rain and stuff.
I am hoping to get out of town on Black Friday, aka the Buy Nothing Day after Thanksgiving 🦃 but at lot depends on the weather. But I can see how the days have gotten so much shorter, the weather colder and I’m sure snow will be on it’s way sooner then later, although the deep snow usually doesn’t occur until January. But who knows.
