Good morning! Happy Tuesday. Who knows how that monster happened to grow that way? It’s parents are frightened, it wishes it would go away. But the taxes keep coming, and they have to be spent on big bulldozers and tanks of cement. Stand by me, and protect that tree from the freeway misery. Take it Malvina! Some of those historical aerial photos I’ve been posting lately are pretty neat. I wish more were georeferenced, and served as WMS or tiles — I guess I could upload more to MapWarper. Six weeks to Pink Moon 🌕 . Partly sunny and 16 degrees in Delmar, NY. Calm wind. Things will start to thaw out at around noontime. 🌡️

A cold start to the morning. I mean it could be snowing out, but I am not ready for 16 degrees in mid-March. I didn’t have the heat turned up, so it took a while for the heat to kick on last night, so it was cold inside during the middle of the night. Especially after we had a day that hit 70 last week. Yeah, it’s been cold the past few days and I’m ready for spring. I am definitely going out for my morning walk though in a little a bit — there is no wind and it’s sunny enough that I expect the weather to be nice for walking. I didn’t get to go for my evening walk, because a project came in a seven o’clock and I ended up working until nine, mostly because it was something I hadn’t done in years, I was tired, kept making mistakes and had to back and fix my work. At least working from home, I didn’t have to catch the bus half asleep then stumble back to my bedroom.

Woke up early this morning with a dream about moving out west and getting out of the world of the east with all it’s problems. I really hate living in the city, in the east where everything is so restricted and regulated. I know there are vast places out there, even as close as parts of Western NY and Pennsylvania, and even the Midwest where people don’t spend their lives trying to figure out creative workarounds to problems created or ignored by their government. If you’ve lived in Upstate NY for any time, you know that much of life is about finding workarounds and creative solutions to everyday problems that shouldn’t exist. I am just taken aback by how vast a place like Alaska, or even much of the west really is. Everything just seems so close together, masses of people so hutled together in a little space with homestead and home next to each other due to a lack of space. I don’t believe the state religion practiced by many that there is no place in world as wonderful as New York, that our state has everything, as that’s a lie, despite what the state uncles want you believe. In a few more years.

Today will have a slight chance of rain and snow between 2pm and 3pm, then a slight chance of rain after 3pm. Partly sunny 🌞, with a high of 37 degrees at 3pm. Seven degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around February 25th. Calm wind becoming south 5 to 8 mph in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 20%. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 47 degrees. That second day of remote work last year was pretty nice. Other days were cloudier and colder. The record high of 82 was set in 1990. 13.4 inches of snow fell back in 1956.❄

Working on refining that code that I posted last night for bulk encoding with the NYS Geocoder. The code I wrote is super simple and works okay for a few addresses but the geocodeAddresses endpoint can take up to 1,000 addresses per call and is much faster then calling the individual endpoint, piece by piece. Also think I want to port it to Python, as this should be simpler, and I need more practice coding in Python. I know Python is the language of the future, and I’m much too reliant on PHP which I’ve been using on and off for 20 years, except for the time I was using Perl for everything including CGI. Python has those wonderful Qt bindings and is great for scripting in QGIS and writing other graphical programs. uncles want you believe.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 1:05 pm with sun having an altitude of 45.8° from the due south horizon (-25° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 5.8 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 6:26 pm with the sun in the west (262°). 📸 The sunset is in the west (269°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 7:03 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 54 seconds with dusk around 7:31 pm, which is one minute and 11 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Crescent 🌒 Moon in the west-southwest (255°) at an altitude of 31° from the horizon, 252,059 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 8:04 pm. At sunset, look for rain 🌧 and snow 🌨 and temperatures around 35 degrees. There will be a south breeze at 7 mph. Today will have 11 hours and 58 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 56 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a slight chance of rain and snow before 9pm, then a slight chance of snow between 9pm and midnight. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a low of 31 degrees at 4am. Five degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around March 29th. South wind 3 to 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2020, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 35 degrees. The record low of -1 occurred back in 1916. Extremely cold days are getting rarer as we head toward April. But that happens every year, and I complain about it. I just I wish I lived in a warmer climate, where winter wasn’t so harsh or long.

A picture perfect weekend on tap. 😎 Saturday, sunny, with a high near 45. Sunday, sunny, with a high near 55. Typical average high for the weekend is 46 degrees. I might head north this weekend, but it might be better to wait until the snow is mostly gone at this point. I am not sure. I also want to take the truck out for a drive this week to see if I notice that squeak I heard the other day. I almost think it was because the window on the truck cap wasn’t closed tightly, and it was super windy on Wednesday. Only going to get warmer it seems as the month progresses, and maybe Good Friday into Easter will be nice and work won’t be so crazy.

🌹🌻🌼Only 4 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼 I am ready for it, and I’m even more ready for the the month of April. But first I should bundle up for my morning walk. It’s that time.

Looking ahead, there are 6 weeks until Pink Moon 🌕 when the sun will be setting at 7:51 pm with dusk at 8:21 pm. Albany replaced the Pinkster Festival with a Tulip Festival in recent years, moving away that part of history, or more likely consolidating the days. On that day in 2020, we had rain showers with cold and cloudy weather 46 and 37 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 63 degrees. We hit a record high of 91 back in 1962.