Good morning! Happy Repeal of Prohibition Day 🍺! Figuring I don’t drink anymore that’s less fun. Three weeks to Boxing Day 🥊. It’s raining down kilowatt-hours and 21 degrees in Delmar. 😎 Calm wind. In other words, it’s a nice December day even in Trump’s America. Things will start to thaw out at tomorrow around 10 am. 🌡️

Today will be partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 32 degrees at 1pm. Eight degrees below normal, which is similiar to a typical day around December 27th. Calm wind. Cold but nice. A year ago, we had cloudy skies. The high last year was 53 degrees. The record high of 65 was set in 2001. 9 inches of snow fell back in 1902.❄

The sun will set at 4:22 pm with dusk around 4:53 pm, which is 8 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for mostly cloudy skies ☁ andtemperatures around 30 degrees. There will be a calm wind. Today will have 9 hours and 11 minutes of daytime, a decrease of one minute and 6 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 21 degrees at 5am. Four degrees below normal, which is similiar to a typical night around December 15th. Light and variable wind. In 2017, we had light rain and mist in the evening, remaining overcast into the early morning. It got down to 29 degrees. The record low of -5 occurred back in 1901.

Made it down to the express bus stop this morning, 🚌 and it was a nice hike. Lots of sun, but the sun angle was just right or maybe it was the clouds, so the sun wasn’t right in my eyes. That was good for a change. Bus was right on time, making good time heading downtown. So no complaints yet.

Continuing to think about my vacation plans. Today I’m planning to call the forest service to confirm which roads are maintained in the winter, at least plowed.🏔 I think I know which ones are but I want to make sure I’m on a plowed road should a heavy squall come through and leave several inches of snow. Never mind, today is a federal holiday 😚 and the forest service is closed today. They won’t open until Friday but that’s fine, I’ve checked nearby Web Cameras and there isn’t that much snow up there, and they aren’t expecting that much. I can always stop by their office next week and ask in person as a future reference — I could see doing a winter trip at some point in the future.

The full week of sun for camping next week, has seemingly turned to mostly cloudy for Monday and Tuesday, although Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday continue to look quite nice.🌞 ❄ Where I’m planning on camping is relatively flat and not too far from black top, so I’m not super worried about ice on the road, just the possibility of an unexpected snow storm. That said, as I noted last night, my lightweight tent isn’t sturdy enough really to hold up against any real accumulation of snow.

I’ve been very happy with the performance of my Bluetooth 👋 controlled light I built over my bed. It’s nice to be able to turn it on from outside so it’s not dark when I come home. My only complaint is idle power consumption — roughly 0.8 to 1.2 watts, mainly because of the inefficiency of the linear regulators stepping voltages down from 12 volts down to 5 volts — burning more then half the wattage off as heat. I looked at getting a small switch mode supply, but the ones I’ve seen on AliExpress that are through-hole technology, are a few bucks a piece, probably not worth it for power savings. 📶 Efficiency per watt for the light while it’s on is quite good based on my estimates, although I don’t have a light meter. They aren’t that expensive from China,  maybe I’ll think about getting one next year. Next step is to rebuild the board that controls the warm/cool white lights that I use for getting to sleep, and making them all communicate together.

The screws came in the mail, and I replaced the missing screws in my laptop. 💻 That should hopefully keep the motherboard from flexing and things breaking. I am hoping to get many more years out of my laptop, especially if I decide to upgrade the hard drive to an SSD. I have plenty of memory, just not enough disk space. I really like the screen on the laptop with the 1920 resolution, it’s great for making maps.

As previously noted, there are 3 weeks until Boxing Day 🥊 when the sun will be setting at 4:28 pm with dusk at 5:00 pm. On that day in 2017, we had snow, partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 22 and 8 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 33 degrees. We hit a record high of 59 back in 1895.