Good afternoon! Today is a sweet day. Friday and it’s National Chocolate Day. Cloudy and 41 degrees in North Syracuse. There is a west-northwest breeze at 14 mph. The skies will clear around 6 pm. Still pretty cold and drizzly out this morning but without the slop we had yesterday coming down in the sky.

Certainly not a nice day. Kind of wet driving to work today. Not a downpour but just so drizzly. Roads didn’t seem as slick as last night, but I also was a lot more careful driving in this morning. The weekend will warmer but just as drizzly. Leaves are rapidly falling.

Today as I’m not working my laptop so hard, it’s been running a lot cooler. No more burning smell anymore — I guess the dust has burnt off. The fan speed according to the indicator has dropped, and core temperatures are around 54 C with the battery only running at 50 C. When I work it hard, the temperatures do increase a fair amount to as much as 80-90 C . Which is really warm, but based on what I’ve read isn’t unusually hot for my particular model of think pad. As I work the machine harder and open more windows it does start to raise the temperature.

Still hoping to get the hard drive enclosure, so I can get my old files today. We will see if it comes. Annoyed that it was delayed, and maybe I should have just gotten it at OfficeMax, but it would have probably cost twice as much, and I wouldn’t have been able to read the reviews to know if I got a good quality product.

This weekend I plan to sit down and work on my November road trip. I think I know where I want to go — Western NY and then dip down into Pennsylvania a bit — but I still need to firm up my plans some more. Thinking about at least a night or two at the Finger Lakes National Forest then camping in a half dozen different state forests in Allegany, Cattaraugus, and Chautauqua County. i know I posted one routing a few days ago, but I am thinking of further changes to my plans.

Today will have a chance of showers, mainly before 1pm. Otherwise kind of cloudy and depressing. Remaining cool too. High of 45 degrees at 3pm. 10 degrees below normal. Northwest wind around 14 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. Last year, cloudy with a high around 56. The record high of 78 was set in 1971. There was 2 inches of snow back in 1952.

The sun will set at 6:00 pm with dusk around 6:29 pm, which is 1 minutes and 24 seconds earlier than yesterday. Last day of the year in Syracuse with a sunset after 6 PM. Going to be cloudy though, so it will get dark early. Already the sun has set before six in Albany, actually going on a week or so. Today will have 10 hours and 24 minutes of daylight, a decrease of 2 minutes and 40 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy with low of 38 degrees at 1am. Two degrees above normal. Calm wind becoming south around 6 mph after midnight. One year ago, we the same exact conditions. Generally, late October weather. The record low of 19 occurred back in 1969.

In 1956, Elvis Presley receives a polio vaccination on national TV. This single event is credited with raising immunization levels in the United States from 0.6% to over 80% in just six months. Talk about a celebrity making a change for good. Nowadays, polio is almost entirely eradicated from the population.

There are 2 weeks until Veterans Day when the sun will be setting at 4:43 pm with dusk at 5:13 pm (Standard Time). The average high temperature is 50 degrees, with a record high of 70 in 2002. Come November, you don’t get a lot of very warm days. But I should be on my road trip at that point and hopefully I will have good weather.

There are 10 days, 10 hours and 3 minutes until the polls close in NY State on Election Day. It keeps ticking away. I’ll be glad when it’s over. It’s been a long election-cycle.