Good evening! After some rain, it’s now cloudy and 68 degrees at my parents house in Westerlo, NY. ☁ There is a northwest breeze at 7 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 66 degrees. Rained and thundered for an hour or so but not so hard that the rain made it into the truck cap, as often happens with heavy rains.

My parents loss power at their house, but I didn’t notice for a while — I thought the Wi-Fi just dropped because the lights powered by the battery and solar panel continued burning brightly. 🌃I switched over to my phone’s 4G network and only noticed the lights were out at my parents house after I saw somebody mentioned the power loss on the Facebook. For many reasons, including reliability, that’s why when I own land and a house, I’m planning on going the off-grid route. ⚡Sure off-grid systems fail, but when they do, you can usually fix them yourself rather then wait for the grid operator to fix the poles and the plants. 🕯Usually too your less reliant on the electric power living off-grid, so your more prepared to make appropriate adjustments.

Tonight will have showers and thunderstorms likely before midnight, then a chance of showers. Some of the storms could produce gusty winds and heavy rain. Mostly cloudy ☔ , with a low of 61 degrees at 4am. One degree above normal. Maximum dew point of 66 at 8pm. Northwest wind around 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms. In 2017, we had mostly cloudy skies, clearing in the early hours of the next day. It got down to 58 degrees. The record low of 45 occurred back in 1982.

Tonight will have a Waxing Gibbous Moon 🌔 with 92% illuminated. The moon will set at 3:42 am. The 🌕 is on Wednesday night with showers. The sun will rise at 5:18 am with the first light at 4:43 am, which is 20 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 8 hours and 41 minutes of darkness, an increase of 15 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming sunny , with a high of 76 degrees at 3pm. Four degrees below normal. Maximum dew point of 58 at 6am. North wind 9 to 15 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. It was somewhat humid. The high last year was 80 degrees. The record high of 95 was set in 1898.

Definately got warmer and more humid as the day progressed. 🌶 We had a little bit of sun for a while but that disappeared later on. Then before I headed out to the store it’s started to pour. 💦 Strangely enough after I cleaned the sap off the windshield earlier in the day, I had zero problems driving in the rain. Not a lot of rain all told but for a while it picked up. 🌧 The more the better. 🔥 We need all the rain we can get to avoid burn bans should it get hot and dry come July.😎

I had a nice dinner at my parents house and now are camping in my truck. As I mentioned earlier, it rained for a bit earlier, but now I expect a fairly nice evening. Might open the windows for ventilation in my truck.

I hooked up my laptop to my monitor and desktop keyboard and worked on some code last night into this morning,💻 although I have to admit those projects were mostly bust — especially my effort to streamline the Nano code using pointers and references — I kept messing it up. I guess I’m learning.🎓 I rarely end up using my big monitor or computer at home.

Continuing to play with pointers and references in an effort to reduce the code size for one of the display projects I’m working on. Despite buying 4 more Arduino Nano development boards, I think the in the future I will use more ESP32 development boards, because they are similiar but much more powerful with only using slightly more power.💻 I’m just running up constant memory limitations with the Nano, even when I try optimizing the code a lot. Combined with a kind of shitty PWM mechanism, and an very outdated architecture, 🐭 I am not sure why the Nano isn’t just retired in favor of ESP32. Maybe because it’s not designed by the open source folks that originally made the Nano and are still making money selling the genuine board. Open source software has to make a profit somehow so people get paid, and donations and government funding is limited.

Made a lot of progress on things that needed to be addressed — things were cleaned up in various parts of my apartment, with a good heavy bleach in places to retard the mildew growth, the trash was taken out, a bunch of beer cans were returned and cardboard and paperboard recycled at the Park and Ride dumpster. Finally got rid of that box the solar panel came in, as I expect I won’t be needing that anymore now that the panel is semi-permanently mounted to the truck.

Went to walmart and bought food and boots for the week.🍗🌽🍳🍛 I especially needed cheese and oil and pan spray for making up waffles. Now I can do eggs or waffles for breakfast next week. My apartment is still a dump,💩 one that will start costing me another $25 a month once rent goes up in August. Still I think it’s a good deal, when you look at the cost of buying a house and land, paying taxes, and dealing with all the crap being a New Yorker is.🛒 It would be one thing if I was committed to live in New York for the rest of my life, but that’s not likely unless I get hit by a car crossing the street or do something with electricity or fire that is really dumb.💀

Looking ahead to next weekend, the story will be all about the heat that I’m enjoying from the Potholers in the Adirondacks. Next Saturday, sunny and hot, with a high near 94. Maximum dew point of 71 at 7pm. Next Sunday, mostly sunny and hot, with a high near 96. Maximum dew point of 75 at 7pm. Typical average high for the weekend is 81 degrees.

I am trying to get things ready as possible for next week, with the heat and humidity on its way. :evil:Not only will that certainly encourage mildew, I am not going to want to spend much time inside, certainly not working hard cleaning. Plus it’s a quiet weekend, compared to next weekend when I am going to spend an (possible) extended weekend most likely on Piseco-Powley Road. ⛺I am thinking of taking off Friday or Monday, maybe the prior as I think it will be easier to get off from work with the holiday weekend next week, plus it would mean I could get better campsite. 🏕 I want an isolated one so I can light off fireworks and shoot my guns without disturbing anyone, but on the other hand, having sunlight would mean I could keep the battery fully charged, for running the fan — which I’m sure will be on a lot but would make camping a lot hotter.

I checked the oil in Big Red, 🚗 and decided it could use another quarter quart. It’s not gone down much but I always like to check it at least every month or two or every 1,000-2,000 miles and keep the oil levels right around the same part in the middle of the normal range. Oil consumption isn’t excessive but that one time, after driving 10,000 miles and not checking it (after my 2015 West Virigina Trip), it was below the normal operating range.😮 I may have been parked on a slope that time in mid-2016 too, so I got a bad reading. I am not do for an oil change for a while, as I haven’t driven much but I may get the oil changed before my week-long summer trip to the Finger Lakes at the end of July. I also scrubbed down the inside and outside of the windshield, which hopefully it will make it easier to see driving at night and when I’m driving in the sun. 🔳The windshield was so dirty on the outside from the sappy pollen from the tree it’s parked under, plus the inside was dirty from both the plasticizers leaking out of the dashboard plastic, the dust and grim from driving many miles on dirt roads in the back country. 🔲Much cleaner now.

While I promise you this won’t be a rant about New York State, I think it’s horseshit they arrested those kids at Stewart Landing for illegal camping and one of them for having a “big scary (illegal) handgun” on them. I think the Sullivan Act is a lot of bullshit, something that is totally obnoxious and stupid in New York — along with the ban on aerial fireworks. 🎆 In Pennsylvania or about 40 other states, wouldn’t have even been the least bit illegal. They should build more campsites along Stewart Landing and fix up the road back there. I’m sure one of the uppity neighbors called them in for partying, because as far as I’ve heard they still don’t have an active ranger stationed down that way. Those campsites — except those on the lake — aren’t that great and are hard to get at Stewart Landing. I much rather camp on Piseco-Powley and drive down there.🔥 I can understand why they want to control camping to a certain extent, but they do fine in the all the National Forests I’ve been to in many other states without officially designated campsites. New York has many stupid laws made by people from New York City who don’t understand life upstate.

I ordered the dual throw switch and a box of diodes, both from US suppliers, although the later came from an US-based AliExpress supplier. The switch came from EBay in Staten Island — it was cheaper then what I would have likely paid at AutoZone. I actually bought two, because of the shipping costs, and I figured I can always use a dual throw switch for other projects. 🔘 The diode I’m using is a standard electronic 5-watt 20 volt Schottsky diode — nothing fancy so I can use the remaining 19 of them for other projects. Those relays don’t move much current at any rate, but the automotive application has a forward voltage that is dangerously close to the 16 volt diodes I had at home. 🔋 I probably didn’t need a Schottsky diode but I figure this way I can use them for other projects. I don’t really know why anybody would use Silcon-diodes at this point anymore, unless you really wanted to waste energy and produce heat. I guess if you use thousands in manufacturing, you might go for the slightly lower prices. Some electronics use Zener diodes, with their predictable reverse voltage, but those are different. 🔌 I am going to hook things up probably on the Fourth of July — not before this weekend, because I don’t want to accidentially break something before camping, although I’m not sure what I could pull lose by accident.

The plan is that I have one position that disconnects the accessory battery form the starting battery when camping, as the system currently works. This way I won’t overdischarge the starting battery by my lights and things I plug into my truck cap. The other position will keep the batteries connected even when the truck is off. This way when I am camping and I have bright sunlight pushing the solar controller to ramp down, I can dump some of this extra power to top off the starting battery during extended stays, when it might get discharged from opening and closing the doors. Also, when I’m parked at home for a week or longer, the solar panel can make sure the starting battery remains at full charge. This will be particularly useful in below zero weather we sometimes get in the winter — it will start after a week parked with ease if the starting battery has been maintained at 100% even in the cold. Sunlight is limited in winter, but the panel is a 100-watt panel and the starting battery should be close to 100% before I get started.

In four weeks on July 22 the sun will be setting at 8:25 pm,🌄 which is 11 minutes and 43 seconds earlier then tonight. In 2017 on that day, we had rain, cloudy skies and temperatures between 79 and 66 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 83 and 62 degrees. The record high of 102 degrees was set back in 1926.

Looking ahead, July 🏊🏿 is in 1 weeks, Last Sunset After 8 PM 🌆 is in 7 weeks, Average High Falls To 79 Degrees ⛱ is in 2 months, Daylight Savings Time Ends 🛥 is in 19 weeks, Veterans Day (Sunday) 🇺🇸 is in 20 weeks and First Sunday of Advent ✝ is in 23 weeks.