Good morning! Yeah, it’s Friday! Five weeks to Last Day of Winter 🏂 . But first some cold weather. Mostly sunny and 3 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a north-northwest breeze at 6 mph. 🍃. The current wind chill is negative 8. I can find feel it’s chilly by the windows, but not too bad inside. There are roughly 5 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️

Despite the cold, the sun is nice. Once I am dun with my breakfast of coffee and Bisquick biscuits, I am going to head out for my walk. The morning sunrise is quite is, it’s nice that it’s so clear out for a change. Because only Gawd knows when we will see the sun again. I was debating, but I think I’ll make a second pot of coffee – yesterday’s reheats really weren’t enough.

Today will be partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 20 degrees at 2pm. 14 degrees below normal. North wind around 6 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning with a few breaks of sun the afternoon. The high last year was 41 degrees. The record high of 55 was set in 1932. 13.5 inches of snow fell back in 1988.❄

Going to be a cold day, but I have everything I need to work from home. I’ve been trying to save data all week, so that should be good. Plus I do a lot of my stuff over my phone itself these days, and that doesn’t count against the hotspot data on my phone. It’s just easier to send quick emails or participate in video conferences on the phone, compared to booting up the laptop. Saves electricity too.

I was a bit worried about my electric and gas bill, being relatively cold lately and working at home as much as I do these days. I have been keeping the heat a bit warmer because when I work from home it can get chilly sitting all day during work hours. Plus, I have that little electric space heater I bought to take the chill off things when I’m cold, and that thing has burned through about 35 kWh since November. But it worked out to be a reasonable $101 last month. Sure, I wish the days of $53 electric bills would return, but it’s a few weeks until it’s warm enough that I can turn off the heat. Usually by the second week of March, I can leave the heat at 50 degrees and once it’s regularly above freezing, have it off until late October or November. I think the new water heater is saving a fair bit of energy. And one benefit to being home so much – I tend to leave the thermostat more constant – and furnace seems to keep up better with the cold when I’m not turning it down during the day and at bed time. Plus, I swear the landlord has adjusted the heater somehow. It just works better now. I just hate paying utility bills, because I feel like it’s pissing money away.

Been trying to get Virtual Box working on my laptop, as it’s kind of annoying to have to keep saving my work in Linux and rebooting into Windows. Still having problems, I think Virtual Box doesn’t like the odd place the Windows bootloader is saved in the EFI. And I just don’t understand all the code and technology around bootloaders. I find it confusing and I know if I mess things up I can be left with a computer that no longer boots into either operating system. It’s just so confusing to me. And I don’t even know if I will be able to get on VPN through VirtualBox — not sure how well the virtualization passes along the MAC address, etc. through to software. That said, I’ve been trying to learn more about Microsoft Windows, and be more comfortable operating that technology. I got Zoom working on my personal laptop, although it seemed to drop out a lot yesterday, but that may have been due to my weak connection at the library or VPN delays. I also installed Firefox and LibreOffice, so I have a good web browser and office suite for editing files. I much prefer using Linux but it’s good to have a separate environment for work stuff.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:11 pm with sun having an altitude of 33.8° from the due south horizon (-37° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 9 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 4:44 pm with the sun in the west-southwest (246°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (252°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 5:24 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 3 seconds with dusk around 5:52 pm, which is one minute and 18 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Crescent 🌒 Moon in the west-southwest (247°) at an altitude of 6° from the horizon, 243,975 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 6:26 pm. At sunset, look for mostly cloudy skies ☁ and temperatures around 18 degrees. There will be a calm wind. Today will have 10 hours and 28 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 38 seconds over yesterday.

Yesterday, I got to the store and car wash. I should be pretty well stocked up, although I need to look at getting some new bed sheets, because my 13 year old bed sheets have worn through, at least the base sheet that covers the bed. I was going to get some sheets yesterday at Wally’s World, but I got distracted with work and never got a bed measurement to find on the internet what size bed I own before running to store. It’s a full-size bed after measuring, but the names are confusing. I made the mistake at looking at a Mattress sales website to find out bed sizes, and already my social media feeds and various websites I go through are full of mattress advertisements. Mentioning this on the blog, carefully analyzed by Jetpack advertising network, ensures it will be a steady break from Massey-Furgenson tractor ads for a few hours.

Not that my “free” truck wash paid by the overgenerous previous car washer, lasted long with all the salt and snow melt on the road, but at least some of the built up salt is off the truck. Plus, I needed to get groceries, and now I’m stocked up for a while. Although, I still do get new sheets, unless I can find the flannel sheets I think that are hidden somewhere in the unheated crawl space, which I am sure is super cold right now. Maybe this weekend, if I plan to go out somewhere.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 6 degrees at 6am. 11 degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around -3 at 6am; Calm wind becoming north around 5 mph after midnight. In 2020, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became light drizzle by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 34 degrees. The record low of -18 occurred back in 1875.

Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a high of 22 degrees at 2pm. 12 degrees below normal. So negative. North wind around 6 mph. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning with a few breaks of sun the afternoon. The high last year was 40 degrees. The record high of 58 was set in 1900. 9 inches of snow fell back in 1893.❄

I might go out for a walk Five Rivers or maybe skiing down at Schodack Island or somewhere else, as I should think about getting sheets as the hole in the other sheets is only getting worse. At least I figured out the bed size. At some point I need to get to the transfer station but I can probably smash down and put recyclables in my truck for at least another month, for my big once a year trip where I get rid of the cans, glass, and accumulated plastic and paper from the past winter. No camping this weekend, and I just don’t see that happening for a few weeks base don the weather pattern.

Looking ahead to Sunday, a chance of snow, mainly before 1pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 30. Light north wind. Chance of precipitation is 30%. A little closer to normal. Typical average high for the weekend is 34 degrees. Spring is coming.

🌹🌻🌼Only 36 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼 Tomorrow marks 5 weeks, as five times seven is 35. I could have been a math major, probably making a shit ton more money if I wasn’t such a flunky in High School.

Looking ahead, there are 5 weeks until Last Day of Winter 🏂 when the sun will be setting at 7:06 pm with dusk at 7:34 pm (Daylight Savings Time). On that day in 2020, we had rain showers and temperatures between 51 and 38 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 46 degrees. We hit a record high of 78 back in 2012.