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If it wasn’t going to rain on Saturday 🌧️

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I would be taking the SuperDuty to work today and then heading out to Schoharie this evening, and taking off Friday. But that was not to be.

I guess I don’t have an excuse not to ride the bike πŸš΅β€β™‚οΈ to work today, there is some Ai r quality alerts out there from the wildfire smoke but with the lower dew point and better atmosphere today, the skies aren’t so yellow and dirty πŸŒ‡ like they were yesterday. I didn’t enjoy the heat wave being in Albany for it, but it was mid-week so it would have been tough to gotten away during those days.

Caught the earlier bus home again last night, 🚌 may I’ve been over-estimating the accuracy of the bus schedule and not realizing that if I hurried from the shuttle πŸš€ to the local I could catch that earlier bus, though I think some of it has to do with the construction. But if the bike is working well enough, I’d rather do the bike thing rather bus and pay the $2.60 to the bus company. At least now that I have a Navigator card πŸͺͺ and that’s much easier then the phone app.

Maybe next week can be the short week for heading out of town. πŸ•οΈ πŸ₯Ύ But this week I can list Big Red πŸ›» on a few more sites and see if I can promote him. That one guy is looking at the truck on Sunday, and maybe we can come to a deal. I will get a gas can full of gas to put in Big Red and get windshield fluid to top off that reservoir, and then also top it off in the SuperDuty. I wouldn’t mind getting rid of the truck this weekend, though I want to get a fair value, as everybody who is interested in the truck is a broke welder with no money, and it’s a pity party for a lifted truck. It’s going to cost some money to pull the bed and patch the frame, but if you have equipment and skills, it’s a strong runner, and with some bondo and paint, you could have a nice lifted truck with a mid-rise camper shell  for $4,500. Or whatever we can negogiate it to. I also might get a for sale sign, and put it on my parents lawn, as they are on a fairly busy rural road.

Then in two weeks it’s summer vacation. 🩴 If Big Red doesn’t sell by then, it’s fine. I’ll take him off the market, park him behind the barn until after vacation, so I’m not dealing with the truck sale during vacation. It might get more attention on listing and passers by to take the truck off the market for a two weeks and then put it back on the market. πŸ’΅ I get paid right before vacation, so I’ll have money and my high-interest savings account will with that additional investment reach the number I want it to reach before going back fully into the stock and bond market with my bi-monthly contributions. I’ll get at least something for Big Red by the end of summer, even if I do have to come down in price. I kind of do want to help out some of my friends and colleagues from High School by coming down on price a bit, but it’s also a business transaction, and I want to recover at least some of final value of the old truck. 😩 Worse comes to worse, there is always the scrap yard or donating the old truck, but clearly people are interested, even if they say they can’t afford $4,500. πŸ§‘πŸ»β€πŸŒΎ I kind of sniffle at that number, after spending $59,750 with taxes and fees on the SuperDuty plus $5,500 on the new truck cap, $600 on the bed liner, $1,000 on insurance but not everybody is mid-management or worked for so many years to build up a decent amount of savings and investments. I live in a really run down apartment, no air conditioning, heat at 48 or 50 degrees all winter, no home internet or trash pickup, and I take the bus or bike to work. Owning a somewhat nice work truck is one of few luxuries I have after many long weeks working excessive hours both at the Capitol and out in the field often in less then nice places like Niagara Falls, Cazenovia and North Syracuse. Actually the later two were kind of fun, but when you work so many hours, you don’t get a lot of time to play.

Honestly I have very little plans for summer vacation, πŸŠβ€β™‚οΈ though ultimately I think I am heading out to the Finger Lakes for a week and half in two weeks. Chicken Co-op Road, Watkins Glen and Ithaca, riding roads and trails, maybe a day trip or two to Elmira and Pennsylvania, ride some of the bike trails 🚲, kayak, swim, read, hang out. Not the great Michigan Trip but I ran out of time to plan that all out, and money was tighter then I would have hoped. I haven’t taken those days off, but so far it looks like best week on the calendar to get summer vacation done before things get crazy with campaign data work πŸ§‘β€πŸ’» come the autumn. And then I’ll be back from Finger Lakes and it will be the second half of August, maybe a chance or two to get to Potholers and Schoharie before Labor Day Weekend which I’ll likely spend up in Speculator.

Facebook has been showing all me these land sales and cabin builders lately, πŸ›– and I can’t help but flip through and look at cabin shells, log cabins, and all kinds of rural and lands homesteads without that horrible plastic vinyl siding. And I got looking at Potter County PA forums where people are quite happy to use their burn barrels for their ordinary house trash, save up a load of recycling cans and glass, compost and feed food scrap,s, go to dump a few times a year, and don’t get all uppity about some stinky toxic smoke. πŸ›’οΈ Real rural life, I keep dreaming on. 🐐 But at least many weekends I still get out the wilderness even while I stick in Delmar and Albany for the work. 🐺 The money is nice, but urban life kind of sucks even if I can ride my bike to work. Come after Labor Day, I’ll probably work remote many Fridays and Monday, probably a lot of time from camp up in the Green Mountains, ⛰️ or maybe Rensselearville and back to Speculator for peak autumn weather. β›½ Of course who knows how expensive gas will be at that point, though with the summer driving season ending and pressure on the politicians with the autumn elections coming, gas prices will likely trend down. 🫳 I do idolize the rural poor more then a bit, but that’s probably because I’m a pyro, who gets tired of navigating past the enormous garbage heaps and air pollution of the cities, and somehow the homesteading life with the goats and cows πŸ„ seems so much more sustainable. But I do like my big trucks, says the boy with an F-350 and a lifted Silverado, I can not lie.

Terrain Map: Lows Lake
Terrain Map: Rensselaer Plateau

‘THE BLOB’ WAS REAL

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‘THE BLOB’ WAS REAL

My New York hometown was named after a Belgium chemist, Ernest Solvay. His process for producing soda ash was used by some enterprising Americans to found — with Ernest Solvay's approval — the Solvay Process Company, the cornerstone of the village where I grew up in the 1940s.

Having the Solvay Process Company a short distance from our street was both good news and bad. The factory employed thousands of people, including my father, my grandmother and an uncle who lived next door. The company also provided many services for village residents and in the early years was Solvay's social, medical and educational center.

However, the factory also belched smoke and filled the air with a gritty soot that undoubtedly was hazardous to our health. Waste from the Solvay Process Company, along with sewage from the nearby city of Syracuse, destroyed once-lovely Onondaga Lake. Polluting the lake forever tarnished the reputation of the Solvay Process Company, which in the 1920s became a division of Allied Chemical.

Because it was considered so important to the economic life of the area, the Solvay Process Company had its way on several controversial environmental issues, which is why, despite strong opposition, the factory dumped its waste along the west shore of Onondaga Lake. The company built huge holding areas that were surrounded by tall, concrete dikes. These were the most visible waste depositories, though at least one of the smaller plants operated by Solvay Process openly flowed its waste directly into the lake.

In the early 1940s there were eight large waste beds across the street of the New York State Fairgrounds on State Fair Boulevard, with a ninth waste bed under construction. Those who had opposed the dumping at the turn of the century predicted it was just a matter of time before at least one of the dikes containing the waste would burst. Most of those concerned, obviously, were residents of a section of the Town of Geddes known as Lakeland.

Federal government investing in Tesla and Intel

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From a revenue perspective, the Intel stock investment was a good investment.

But that was as much dumb luck as anything, big AI money started chasing chip and memory manufacturers after getting cool feat about the AI developers themselves. The stock purchase confers no special voting rights that other stock holders have. But is a role of federal government to be stock pickers? Moreover, it seems like a potential conflict of interest for a regulator to be profiting directly over a regulated party, the federal government can do a lot of things to help or harm a corporation, but now they are making money off the deal.

I guess the flip side is that the government already was committed by Secure Enclave and CHIPS funding to invest in chip makers. If they are going to give businesses money, it makes sense for taxpayers to get some of the upside. Currently most economic development programs don’t directly benefit government agencies with corporate shares, though in many cases tax revenue does exceed the money invested – if you believe the corporation wouldn’t expand without the investment – which isn’t always true.

Should the federal government gotten Tesla shares for what it invested in that company early on?

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High Temperatures in July Past 15 Years
Date 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026
Jul 1 89 77 91 81 85 87 97 85 83 75 95 87 79 90 94
Jul 2 85 87 90 77 76 85 97 84 93 66 87 77 84 87 96
Jul 3 87 87 88 78 82 81 94 90 83 65 83 87 85 84 93
Jul 4 90 91 73 70 87 82 96 91 89 72 84 89 85 80 86
Jul 5 83 90 80 83 89 84 92 92 91 78 74 93 87 84 84
Jul 6 92 87 85 85 90 82 86 92 88 87 81 92 93 90 77
Jul 7 85 91 85 86 89 83 80 81 85 84 85 87 89 88 74
Jul 8 88 85 87 81 83 80 86 85 89 68 85 87 92 86 86
Jul 9 84 87 83 76 68 83 92 86 94 80 80 86 95 86 90
Jul 10 86 84 80 83 79 84 92 89 88 78 81 74 94 86 83
Jul 11 89 83 81 87 79 84 83 86 90 72 91 90 86 86 82
Jul 12 91 83 87 87 86 85 85 81 90 68 91 86 85 87 83
Jul 13 91 80 79 87 90 78 88 88 88 74 87 90 91 86 88
Jul 14 89 90 87 85 87 70 88 86 84 84 85 86 91 87 94
Jul 15 83 91 81 75 91 81 93 85 86 83 86 88 94 90 88
Jul 16 88 92 80 77 83 85 96 92 80 83 88 85 93 93 β€”
Jul 17 98 94 78 82 85 87 80 85 81 78 92 87 88 92 β€”
Jul 18 86 94 80 87 86 86 82 80 87 68 81 87 83 78 β€”
Jul 19 84 96 78 91 79 86 83 94 93 80 92 85 83 85 β€”
Jul 20 74 87 80 87 81 88 88 95 87 84 97 86 86 88 β€”
Jul 21 84 85 84 87 88 86 84 91 82 76 96 82 85 78 β€”
Jul 22 86 87 87 81 94 79 87 74 85 76 93 83 87 77 β€”
Jul 23 85 83 91 82 91 80 85 79 82 76 97 87 83 85 β€”
Jul 24 87 76 79 83 88 72 89 82 82 79 97 86 83 90 β€”
Jul 25 82 73 81 83 89 67 84 85 85 80 88 83 83 90 β€”
Jul 26 84 77 82 85 88 78 85 87 87 83 80 87 85 86 β€”
Jul 27 80 83 83 88 90 72 86 88 93 84 83 87 86 78 β€”
Jul 28 76 74 75 93 91 79 83 90 81 76 92 92 87 91 β€”
Jul 29 80 81 74 95 87 76 81 92 86 70 89 86 84 92 β€”
Jul 30 82 80 77 88 79 81 81 91 81 74 82 79 91 91 β€”
Jul 31 82 81 78 85 71 87 86 81 83 70 86 80 89 76 β€”
Andy Arthur, 7/15/26
NWS Observations, Albany Airport.
Map: Severence Hill Trail
Map: Gilman Lake
Map: Empire State Topography