May 14, 2020 Night

|

Good evening! Rain and 61 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☔ There is a southeast breeze at 6 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 41 degrees. The skies will clear Saturday around 4 am. Came back inside when it started to rain.

Where to start? 🐰 I find myself in an internet rabbit hole first about Contact Tracing – which creeps me out because you know it will enable bad behavior on the government’s part and then electric motors. That article I shared earlier about fans and the odd way they are set up with 3-2-1 speeds with shaded pole motors. That said, I’m surprised that fan manufacturers haven’t adopted more efficient inverter driver three phase motors or even DC brushless motors but I guess that adds a lot of complexity over shaded pole motors for only a little less energy loss.

This evening I went for a walk at the Schiffendecker Farm Preserve 🐦 behind Walmart and Lowes. I didn’t have high expectations for the gully preserve – it’s the lands behind the big box that the developers forfeited as they couldn’t back fill in a creek.

After that I went to Walmart which was a zoo 🐅despite going there on the off hour. They didn’t have any of the supplies I needed besides contact solution – mostly things that I legitimately need like socks, empty spray bottle for the Martin’s Permethrin to apply to clothes for ticks, headphones to replace the ones that are falling apart, and a replacement propane hose for the leaky one. I’ll have to order online. Seems wasteful when in normal times this is the list of random things I would get at Wally World. 📃 I did get some bulk foods 🍲 but I’m done with shopping at Walmart now until the pandemic is over. My choice going forward is going to be Aldi for quick in and out or if I can’t get across the river or want beer, then Hannaford or Price Chopper. 🍻 That said, I only drink beer when I camp these days. I so hate shopping these days with the bandana on my face as it blocks my view.

Tonight will have showers. 🌧 Low of 53 degrees at 2am. Six degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around June 2nd. Maximum dew point of 51 at 6am. 🏖️ South wind 6 to 8 mph. Windows are open all night tonight. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. In 2019, we had light rain in the evening, which became partly cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 43 degrees. The record low of 31 occurred back in 1977.

Tonight will have a Last Quarter 🌗 Moon with 45% illuminated. The darkest hour is at 12:53 am, followed by dawn at 5:02 am, and sun starting to rise at 5:35 am in the east-northeast (63°) and last for 3 minutes and 14 seconds. Sunrise is one minute and 3 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 The golden hour ends at 6:15 am with sun in the east-northeast (70°). Tonight will have 9 hours and 22 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 4 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will have a chance of showers, with thunderstorms also possible after 2pm. Mostly cloudy 🌦, with a high of 78 degrees at 4pm. Nine degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around June 14th. Going to a nice warm day tomorrow with a touch of humidity. Maximum dew point of 62 at 4pm. South wind 7 to 9 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New rainfall amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. A year ago, we had light drizzle in the morning, which became light rain by afternoon. The high last year was 65 degrees. The record high of 93 was set in 1900.

No camping this weekend. ⛺ I’m inclined to stay home for Memorial Day Weekend as the weather and the bugs usually suck for that weekend 🐜 and it’s likely to be crowded in the back country with the parks closed but I’ll watch the forecast and decide. If I do head out of town that weekend, I’ll probably take next Friday off. I probably should decide tomorrow but I’ll watch the forecast and I can probably still get it off if I ask Monday. I’m more inclined to take the following Friday off and celebrate my Memorial Day Weekend a week late. But all depends on forecast and the timing of my office 🏢 reopening downtown and my work schedule. June may be a busy month for me.

In four weeks on June 11 the sun will be setting in the west-northwest (303°) at 8:33 pm,🌄 which is 23 minutes and 10 seconds later then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had rain and temperatures between 73 and 58 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 77 and 55 degrees. The record high of 94 degrees was set back in 1947.

Looking ahead, Fathers Day 👨 is a month away.

🇺🇸🦅Only 8 days remain until the start of Memorial Day Weekend!🦅🇺🇸

Nice Way To Spend An Evening

I’ve been reading about contact tracers to figure how they work in practice. 🔎

|

I’ve been reading about contact tracers to figure how they work in practice. 🔎

From the articles I shared earlier in the evening, it looks like traditional contacting tracing mostly focuses on close contact – people a person has been within 6 foot for more than 15 minutes. Somebody on an airplane sitting in an assigned seat is a common example. Of possibly a house mate, somebody next to somebody else in a cubicle. Or a family member or intimate partner where they kiss or have sex or eat around the kitchen table.

More recently, with Caronavirus they’ve tried to trace more casual contacts but that gets hard really fast. Unless you the person your sitting next to on the city bus is a friend or a regular rider, you don’t know their name most likely. Or the person next to you in the check out line at the grocery store. And with everyone wearing face masks these days, security cameras are probably not much better at identifying people – facial recognition is unreliable enough when people aren’t wearing masks.

While I would expect many but probably not all stores would be willing to hand over reasonable amounts of security videos to public health departments, I bet it would be harder to get data like rewards cards data or even harder to get credit card usage.

For one, while I’m sure corporate headquarters have the rewards card info they may be hesitant to hand it over the government without a court order. Why let trade secrets out? Likewise, credit card companies probably are limited by law on how much information they can provide without a supeona. Again, credit cards data is valuable for marketing. And it’s not like every one uses a credit card to pay.

Even if you pull those records it could lead to too much data to be useful. In a 15 minute window, there might be hundreds that come and go from a grocery store with few people making close contact. Same could be said about buses – while bus passes could be tracked, a bus over an hour or two could have hundreds of people boarding and leaving.

High technology solutions sound nice but would you run such an app on your phone? I know I don’t have a lot of free space on my phone. What if you left your phone home? Many older people don’t have smart phones or carry them non stop. I don’t want the government tracking my every move, whether or not I attend a political rally or meeting, where I am every minute of the day.

Contact tracing seems like a good solution if Coronavirus was less infectious, required significant close contact and got everybody very sick quickly from it. But I’m not sure it would work well in America with people and businesses seeking privacy and out lives that frequently involving and passing strangers we might never see again.