Good evening! Mostly clear and 30 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a west breeze at 5 mph. 🍃. Another cool April night on tap. Things will start to thaw out at tomorrow around 9 am. 🌡️ Tomorrow is Friday finally.

Tonight will be partly cloudy ☁, with a low of 24 degrees at 5am. 10 degrees below normal. West wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening. In 2017, we had mostly cloudy skies. It got down to 41 degrees. The record low of 14 occurred back in 1943. So we are only ten degrees above the all time record low.

Tonight will have a Waning Gibbous Moon 🌖 with 69% illuminated with the moon rising at 12:46 am. The moon will rise at 1:00 am. The Last Quarter Moon is on Saturday night with partly cloudy skies. The Pink Moon 🌝 is on Saturday, April 28th. The sun will rise at 6:29 am with the first light at 6:00 am, which is one minute and 42 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 11 hours of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 51 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will have a chance of snow before 11am, then a chance of rain and snow between 11am and 1pm, then rain likely after 1pm. Cloudy ☔ , with a high of 44 degrees at 3pm. 10 degrees below normal. South wind 9 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. A year ago, we had cloudy skies. The high last year was 48 degrees. The record high of 82 was set in 1921. 17.3 inches of snow fell back in 1982.❄

Today was a fairly quiet day in the office. Traffic was a bit heavier on the expressway but I got listening to a podcast and time went by quickly. 🎧

Didn’t do any soldering tonight because I ended up working on some coding projects tonight 🔬 and while building things and getting them finished is a lot of fun, I find soldering and working with the 28 gage wires to be so tidous. 🔌

Decided to skip the Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace movie tonight. No need to cause trouble and I knew I wouldn’t be able to agree with that video even if the yes men are quite hilarious. 😂 I was kind of tired and ended up working on some code for my blog. 💻 Entirely internal stuff designed to make my blog easier to edit.

I went for my evening walk. Cold but pleasant.🚶 My leg which has been somewhat sore ever since I awoke last night with a leg cramp has been better.💩 Occasionally I get a really bad leg muscle cramp, usually after eating something in a white sauce or a certain dish I’ve never had before.🍜 Not sure what really causes it but I know this time I wasn’t dehydrated and I did not consume any alcohol.

I continue to look at credit card offers. I noticed that cash back cards really aren’t that great when you figure in the $5 fees to cash out your points. Still might work out to be a few more bucks every month. 💵Or maybe I should just keep my existing card. Money is always tight for me, especially as I save for a better future. 🏡 If I work hard and save as many pennies as possible 💱I can make that off grid cabin in a freer state a reality.

I really do enjoy reading those off grid groups on Facebook🏯 and watching those videos of people’s cabins and farms. There really is a whole different way of living compared to boring suburbia.🌳 Just because you’re not a suburbanite, doesn’t mean you can’t live a good life.

People’s fear of the wilderness and the backcountry is stupid.👹 I bring that up thinking about people’s fears about guns lately in the news. Honestly, the movie Deliverance reinforced the worse stereotypes, but I guess it’s good if it means that the countryside doesn’t become too yuppiefied. 🙊I just wish people didn’t live their every day in fear.

Right now, a split verdict on the weekend. 😕 Saturday, mostly cloudy, with a high near 43. Northwest wind 9 to 11 mph. Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 42. Typical average high for the weekend is 55 degrees.

I am a little worried about the snow flurries on Saturday ❄ meaning they will salt up the roads again and I’ll have to wash my truck off again. I guess you can’t win. I might be going out tomorrow so maybe I won’t get the refrigerator cleaned out so I can go to the transfer station with my recycling on Saturday. Plus I still need to clean up the back of my truck. 🚗Oh well. I am so over winter. May can come sooner than later.

In four weeks on May 3 the sun will be setting at 7:58 pm,🌄 which is 31 minutes and 47 seconds later then tonight. In 2017 on that day, we had rain, mostly cloudy skies and temperatures between 55 and 43 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 66 and 43 degrees. The record high of 89 degrees was set back in 2001.

Looking ahead, Cinco de Mayo 🤠 is a month away, 8:30 PM Sunset ️⛱️ is in 2 months and Thanksgiving 🦃 is in 33 weeks.

🇺🇸🦅Only 49 days remain until the start of Memorial Day Weekend!🦅🇺🇸

This weekend I’m thinking about upgrading my laptop to the beta of Bionic Beaver, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Right now it’s I’m still using Xenial Xerus Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, which will be obsolete when Bionic Beaver comes out.

Normally I’m in no rush to upgrade, as I use the XFCE Window Manager which hasn’t changed much in the past decade and a half but Xenial Xerus is too old that they’ve not backported QGIS 3.0, especially the new labeling engine.