Delmar is a hamlet in the Town of Bethlehem, in Albany County, New York, United States. It is a suburb of the neighboring city of Albany. The community is bisected by NY Route 443 (Delaware Avenue), a major thoroughfare, main street, and route to Albany.
A census-designated place (CDP) has been established since 1980 by the U.S. Census Bureau for tabulating the population of what the census has defined as the boundaries of the urbanized area in and around Delmar. The population was 8,292 at the 2000 census, but it was not included as a CDP in the 2010 census.
In 2005, CNN/Money Magazine named the Delmar ZIP Code (an area larger than the Delmar hamlet or CDP) as one of the “Best Places to Live” in America, rating it the 22nd best place to live among what it called “Great American Towns.
๏ปฟGood morning, America. Happy Thursday. A pseudo-Monday as yesterday was a day off for state workers, but then again, many people had to work yesterday. Tomorrow is a real-Friday, which proceeds a cold, wet, and election Saturday. In many ways, yesterday was kind of a waste because it was so cold and wet. I had wanted to get out of town, but I only got as far as the supermarket. The same seems true for the weekend โ Sunday might be nice, but Saturday looks to be downright cold and miserable. I guess itโs November. But look at it this way โ we have avoided the snow so far.
At the 9 o’clock hour we are up one more degree to 49 degrees. Rain showers have picked up a bit but still it’s mostly a drizzle rather than the heavy rain expected this evening. The next really decent day holds off until Sunday through Tuesday.
I donโt know if you had heard the news but I guess some drug addict or thief has been stealing catalytic converters off pickups and cars at the Elm Avenue Park and Ride, literally 7/10th of a mile down the street from where I live. I heard about the story on Tuesday, but they just mentioned a park and ride in Delmar, and I didnโt read any farther. It sucks, because I know some of people who had their catalytic converters stolen. Most of them ride the 719 bus. Comprehensive insurance covers a lot of the loss, but people shouldnโt have to pay for the damages caused by criminals.
I figured it was one of the Park and Rides, but not necessarily the one just down the street form where I live. I realized I hadnโt started up my truck since Monday, so I better get out and check it. It was fine. I guess the thief just hit up the Park and Ride. Stealing in a suburbanite neighborhood with half the neighbors being Republicans with No SAFE Act signs on their lawns, probably is not a good place to be stealing catalytic converters โ if you canโt run faster then 1,250 feet per second or so. I hate to waste buck shot on your typical criminal, itโs pretty expensive at least by my standards. A week from Saturday starts deer season in the Southern Zone, so Iโm sure everybody is well stocked up.
Finally put the screens in my windows and got them all sealed up for the winter. Now I can turn on the heat, which I did with the electric radiator upstairs for a few minutes yesterday. The gas heat downstairs is cheaper to operate, but it takes time to heat upstairs, and I didnโt really feel the need to heat the downstairs. I just wanted to get some of the dampness off from the cold rain of yesterday.
This weekend doesn’t look particularly good as Saturday will be so cold with the wind. Which is disappointing as I really wanted to get out of town. Sunday looks okay but it’s one day. I still am hoping somehow vaguely in mind of taking a North Country but only if the work and weather would cooperate.
Good morning 48 degrees with light drizzle. Rain picks up this afternoon, mild weather continues, around 54. Make sure to bring your umbrella and rain coat. Drive safely.
Very few people today successfully commit suicide by carbon monoxide leaving a car running in a closed garage. Cars under normal circumstances don’t produce much carbon monoxide. Intentional carbon monoxide poisoning is difficult on modern cars.ย But tragic accidents still kill people who leave cars running in garages. How so?
A properly running automobile uses oxygen to burn gasoline to produce power. The tailpipe releases a non-toxic to humans gas – carbon dioxide. Not to dangerous if you have a sufficient oxygen supply.ย The same car left running for a number of hours in a closed garage will consume two parts oxygen for every part carbon in the gasoline. Eventually oxygen levels will fall to a point where a human will start to asphyxiate should they enter the garage.
At the same time the car engine will start to asphyxiate from a lack of oxygen. The oxygen sensor in the car will throw an error code and check engine light will come on. However the engine will keep running in a limp home mode but incredibly rich. The rich fuel mixture will stop the catalytic converter from properly working and will cause the engine to burn rich producing carbon monoxide at levels much higher than usual. Until all the oxygen or fuel is gone, the engine will produce incredible amounts of deadly carbon monoxide.
Between asphyxiation from a lack of oxygen and carbon monoxide produced by the oxygen starved car engine, you have a deadly mix – even on cleanest, most modern car that when driven on the street produces little of the deadly carbon monoxide poison.
Good evening. As we head into the 10 oโclock hour we are 50 degrees with a heavy, cold rain coming down out of the sky. Certainly not a nice night to be going out if you can all avoid it. The heavy rain will make for tricky driving conditions, limiting visibility and traction on the road. It may not be freezing rain or heavy snow, but itโs definitely a night to stay home and relax. It was raining so hard I bailed on my evening walk and going down to the library. Iโm just glad that I didnโt get it in my head to go up to the Adirondacks and spend a very cold and wet night in the woods.
The rain is supposed to stop by tomorrow morning with some clearing by afternoon. If your planning on to barbecue with a coat on tomorrow afternoon, it should be fine. 54 degrees isnโt too bad for mid-November. While some of the forecasts continue to show a dusting to an inch of snow in the Southern Adirondacks for Friday, for the most part things look like they will be mostly wet but snowless in the next few days. Surnise tomorrow is 6:41 AM but unless you want to get wet, theyโre isnโt much of purpose going out and looking for the sun to rise.
I almost broke down and turned on the heat. Kind of chilly in here, with the dampness tonight. But I resisted as I still donโt have the storm windows in upstairs. Iโm sure running the heat without the storm windows wouldnโt waste that much heat โ or I could put them in โ but Iโm still not ready to accept winter is rapidly coming. I turned the electric floor board heat on 15 minutes a few weeks ago, but not since. Gas heat is still off. Today was in the 50s and even tonight isnโt expected to get that cold. Being an apartment, my place doesnโt cool down that much, and with a big south-facing roof, when the sun comes up, 50 degrees outside can mean itโs 70 degrees or warmer inside.
Once real cold weather comes, Iโll turn the gas up to 60 degrees when Iโm home and awake โ and possibly electric baseboard heat up briefly in my bedroom to 70 โ and when Iโm not home/awake back down to 50 degrees on nights about 10 degrees and 55 degrees when itโs going to be excessively cold or a snow/ice storm is approaching. Iโve never been a real big fan of hot rooms, although Iโm sure when I get my place in my woods, I wonโt mind having a roaring woodstove from time to time.
Itโs fall again, so I have a mouse or two that moved into my apartment. This happens every year, in part because one of the walls in my apartment has shifted away from the slab foundation, so they have pretty much free range on their way in. This time, one of the mouses chewed a hole through one of the walls between the kitchen and the bathroom, through a kitchen tile. I was not pleased. I had a mouse stuck in that wall a year or two ago. He died in there. I just got to get some traps set up to kill the mice. Eventually, I will trap them all and theyโll be gone for another year. Itโs a cheap rental, so I donโt really care. I keep food locked away, and except for one time when they got into a cabinet and chewed up some stuff, things have been pretty much fine.
By any frame of the imagination my apartment is pretty awful. Mold, mice, and general deterioration. It’s an ugly building indoors and out. Then again, I hardly invest much time in upkeep or cleaning. But itโs in a great location with off-street parking and ample public transportation. I am within walking distance of a small wilderness park along with a developed park (with wireless Internet), and a very nice public library. For milk and bread โ and a beer cave with beer โ I can just walk to next door. I donโt have to drive on the weekdays, much less worry about snow or inclement weather. It is certainly not my dream location โ Iโd rather live in the middle of nowhere, where I could make as much noise and smoke as I want without bothering no one. It would be nice to be able to shoot guns and have roaring fires in the backyard. Camping kind of makes up for it now. I am looking forward to spending some quality time this year in lean-tos and hot tenting, so the weekend trips donโt have to come an end once the snow falls and backcountry roads are closed for the year.
Spent some time banging out some new state land maps on QGIS, mostly replacing and modernizing maps from Chautauqua and Allegany Counties. A few are new maps, others are replacing missing maps, and some just have updated data and coordinates. Nothing too earth shattering or new, but something to keep me busy and keep my blog up to date with the latest batch of maps. I havenโt been out to Western NY, especially not the Southern Tier portion of the state since fall 2013, but I figured I would still update these maps, as there is a lot of good state land out that way. Probably revised St. Lawrence County maps will be done next.
Once winter comes, I expect I will be doing a lot more map making โ today was the first time in months that I had my laptop hooked up to my big screen monitor and keyboard in a long time. The big screen makes map making much easier. I know, a 23 inch screen is tiny compared to what most of the kids are using these days. I donโt have Internet or television at home, so to keep busy at home by either making maps, coding, reading or listening to podcasts. I find map making to be incredibly therapeutic, as it works my artistic side of the brain, as I load the data, style it, and appropriately scale it. Map making to me is like watching sitcoms and other cheesy prime time TV most people use to pass the time. Map making is somewhat productive too.
I screwed the first batch of maps up. I left off the contour line elevations. I had to redo them. To compound the problem, I forgot to save the original map templates. Fortunately, undo saved my ass. Next time I’ll remember to save the map layout templates before I export the map PDFs.
It was 22 degrees at daybreak this morning but it is rapidly warming up with the clear skies and at the 9 o’clock hour we are well clear of freezing at 38 degrees. Later today we will get up to around 60 degrees which is about 10 above normal. While it will drop down to around 42 degrees at 9 PM it will be clear and good for continuing to view the meteor showers. Lately, you haven’t had to look too hard to see shooting stars.
It’s November. Like usual the sun is setting early. Sunset is at 4:39 PM and twilight around 5:08. If you’re a 9-5 worker that means there will be a little bit of light remaining to walk to your car or at bus stop but it gets dark before you’re home. I know it sure gets dark early in the woods for camping. I kind of like long evenings but not how short those days are.
Probably not heading up to North Country for the second half of week. The weather looks pretty crappy for the second half of week after Veterans Day and I really don’t have that much vacation time left over. Rain is predicted for Massena from Wednesday through Saturday. Even if it was July, those would be miserable conditions. Unless it remains snow less into December, I think I can cross the North Country trip off the plans until at least next year. I probably should have done the trip for the first half of the week.
All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration with temperatures pushing 64 degrees and expected to reach 71 by afternoon. Rain showers for the evening commute, so take it easy on the way home. The weekend won’t arrive for you if you don’t make it home alive.
Tonight’s sunset is at 4:42 PM for a total of 10 hours and six minutes of daylight. That means 13 hours and 53 minutes of darkness. Seasonable weather for the weekend with a high around 53 and cloudy on Saturday and 50 degrees and sunny on Sunday. It’s called November. At least at this point we are snow free everywhere.
Tomorrow it’s off to White Rocks in the Green Mountain National Forest. I drove to through this area, just north of Manchester VT two years ago but never overnighted there. I also spent little time hiking there as it was pouring rain that morning. But a lot of nice little campsites and very scenic area.
God only knows about the weather for next week and heading up to the North Country. Right now it looks too wet to be worthwhile to take the trip but forecasts change. I’m not going to request the time off until I have more certainty on the weather.
