Maybe I was actually one toke over the line in weekend that was kind of fun
I woke up this morning feeling terribly sick and dehydrated. Somehow I managed to drag myself out of bed, on the bike and rode to work. But I still feel pretty awful.
I concede maybe it was all of that weed, beer and caffeine pills that I popped this weekend 
while I was camping in the pouring rain. 
It was all fun until it wasn’t anymore, when the paranoia started to creep into my life. And I got so couch locked in my truck and I couldn’t hang out with the bros on Side-by-Sides at the lake at 3 AM. It was a fun weekend, despite the rain, even if not always the healthy, even though I did eat good 
besides the PBRs, Marlboro Reds, Dank Weed and caffeine pills. Don’t tell a liberal that, they might get upset with me watching as that cottage cheese containers and styrofoam egg container got burnt up in the fire. 
You’re going to die you ADDICTED SOB! So much dioxin and styrene! So sad, says the libtards in their best impression of the Trumpster. 
It really was a great weekend, even if I ended it kind of a messed up way in my mind. 
On Wednesday of last week, I ran over something and got a leak in my rear-tire of the bike, and the tube started spraying Fix-a-Flat everywhere a quarter mile from home before the leak stopped. I didn’t do anything as ultimately I didn’t loose much air but then when I was riding on Saturday, another blow out and the tire started to go flat, so I ended up pushing my bike to back to camp, as I didn’t want to damage the tire. 
Topped the tire off with my air pump, and the crazy thing is the tire has held pressure through today. 
I do think I want to top it off harder though now that I’m back commuting, as I kept it a bit softer for riding trail both on Sunday and also along the Catskill Scenic Trail on Memorial Day.
Memorial Day was nice, 
by mid-morning it actually warmed up with lots of sun. Rode about 20 or 25 miles along the Catskill Scenic Trail, after walking around the Blenheim Power Authority wetlands for a while. 
Nice day, lot of people on the trail but not that congested. I had no problems with the bike, 
but I really should keep my portable air pump and a spare bike tube, and maybe a hex-key on my bike box for emergency repairs on the trail. Rode until about 3:30, from Blackberry Street east of Stamford to near Humdinger Farm Store outside of Bloomville. Time was tight so I didn’t do that last mile to Bloomville that honestly is kind of boring.
Truck drove fine all weekend, 
handled the bumpy Burnt Hill Road with no issues, although everything still drives like a 13 1/2 year old jacked up full-size truck that it’s getting a bit rough, rusty and loose throughout. But I drove slow, and actually rode through the mud wallows the night before on my mountain bike so I knew they would be fine. Driving out to parents house on NY 990V down that hill past the Schoharie Reservoir though, I was riding the brakes following a slow-moving camper and noticed that one of the rotators was complaining a bit, making a whop-whop noise. I decided that I must have a suspension issue and drove out to my parents house in a bit of a panic. I had no issues, but it chewed at me all the evening. 
I was thinking I should take to it mechanic for another inspection of truck’s suspension, but I’m not really that concerned as those brakes have complained on the truck for ten years since I’ve put the lift kit on, as those 35 inch tires take a lot of stopping force and generate a lot of heat. And they are probably muddy as shit from that Burnt Hill Road, it rained a lot the weekend that was. 
I was thinking a wheel is coming loose on my truck again, though I really think it’s just the rotators are getting a bit worn (again). Or maybe the pads are almost shot. But I’m not sure if it’s really worthwhile to get fixed at this point, as the whop-whop noise is only noticeable on hard braking for a long period of time, and I shoud have just downshifted.
I get into these panic modes in my mind at times, 
in part because I don’t want to break down in the remote country I spend so much of my time. Plus it was 15 years ago on Memorial Day Weekend when my Ford Ranger had a brake caliper fail at Burnt-Rossman State Forest, so that was even more triggering, 
as was just being up there. It is silly, half of the times I have problems with my truck it’s stupid shit and ultimately it works out. It might just cost some money if things are broke down, but there is always almost a hotel and a car I could rent in an emergency, I need to learn to go more with the flow. Maybe I should get my truck checked out, but I don’t have much to go on. Some of the unpleasant noises and behavior my truck makes have done it for a decade with no issues. But it doesn’t help my anxiety, probably fed more by the declining levels of THC on my brain from the weekend that was. While I hadn’t smoked since Sunday evening, and I was no means stoned on Memorial Day, the truth is THC is a fat-binding, and still changes the way to think for at least a while after the high burns off. I haven’t smoked since the Adirondacks in April, so it was a good high, but anxiety is never fun.
So I complained about it a bunch when I was at my parents house for Memorial Day Weekend. 
They want me to dog sit next week while they travel, 
which is fine, but I don’t want to be dealing with a broke truck in the process. Not that I have any issues, besides me straining to think the sway and generally worn-out suspension on my jacked up truck is just worn but at least somewhat safe. The truck isn’t going to last forever, and as the shop as tells me, it’s a jacked up trucks — it’s been modified and always will be a bit fucked up. It’s still been a lot of fun, and I’ve generally been quite gentile to it, despite the sometimes shit roads I drive, usually at at a reasonable speed. The burgers were good, but I swear half of my problem was I was dehydrated, 
which certainly can give me confusion and panic in my brain. Plus my blood sugar was a mess, as I skipped lunch yesterday besides a banana 
, drank no water 
and rode my bike for 22 miles. That wasn’t good for my health. When I drink lots of water and eat good food, my mental health is so much better.
Today is a better day, though the morning was rough. 
I need to cut back on caffeine and drink more water. That said, it’s never fun that next day after heavy pot smoking. I like marijuana, just like beer and caffeine, but it can fuck you up. Especially if you’re not controlling your blood sugar and water intake. I really don’t drink enough water, especially with the caffeine habit that keeps me peeing. 
The advertisers are sure I’m diabetic, but I doubt it since I started eating good, quitting processed food and most meat. 
Of course in their minds, I’m also a vegan or vegetarian, but I’m hardly that by ideology, I do like that occassional burger or bacon as a treat with bros, but it’s not an everyday occurrence – I never have bacon with eggs, 
too much saturated fat, but I like frying heritage bacon up with spinach and onions and other vegetables. Hog lard makes everything taste good. Riding the bike to work, was a good reset for my mind. 
This evening I am going to car wash after I ride my bike home. 
It’s a nice mild evening, and I want to confirm in my mind that all is good with Big Red. 🛻 I want to get that accumulated mud off to slow the progress of rust the best I can, and it’s a nice mild evening for washing the truck. I might also go down to the Henry Hudson Park for a while, to enjoy the evening. And then there is a few supplies I need to get at Walmart that I didn’t get before camping, like frozen fruit and vegetables. 
Otherwise, I would have stopped at Hannaford on the bike ride home, as those Maine Wild Blueberries are amazing, but I do want to wash and test out the truck this evening for sanity reasons. 
Worse comes to worse, it’s not a long tow to the garage from home, but realistically, I know what happened yesterday with the THC-fueled mind worms. 🪱It’s also a chance to take advantage of the free Sirius XM radio 
that is on all week in my truck.
Plus I had some good fires this past weekend, burned up those pallets that burnt hot, took care of the burnables from home, cleaned out one of my filing cabinents of old papers that needed to be securely turned into carbon dioxide, 
such as old tax records from 2008. Almost burned some W2s and tax forms from 2022 and 2023 that accidentally got put in the burn garbage, but I picked them out before I tossed them into the fire. See, there is some advantage to doing your own recycling of paper into carbon dioxide, if you’re careful when feeding the fire. And that grass and beer was good, even if it was cold and raining. 
And the black flies weren’t bad.
I need this flag for camping
Sun ain’t going to shine anymore 🌥️
Okay, maybe it will get sunny out come Tuesday when I’m back home and if I had stayed home it would have been sunny and warm all weekend.
Saw some sun between the rain showers yesterday, ⛈️ indeed it was enough to bring the battery 🔋 back up to full and it was nice for a while. Rode my bike a bit and hide down into Cole Hollow but spend a lot of the day hanging around camp finish up The Secret World of Groceries and now Walter Issaicsons Elon Musk. I find I always have a lot more time to read 📖 and listen to audio books up at camp.
Today I want to ride over to Duck 🦆 Pond and then maybe do some fishing 🎣. But first I’m listening to the Lex Friedman interview with Oliver Anthony. Seems like a good thing to do while smoking 🚬 some pot while sitting next to the fire. I usually don’t do day time campfires 🔥 but it’s mad cold this morning with the clouds and the wind. 🌬️ I also might hike some and spend some time exploring Cole Hollow and maybe Huckleberry Kingdom Road mostly because I like that name. 🍓 Plus if I’m stoned I know of a few waterfalls out that way, and if there is ever an activity I like doing while stoned it is looking at a waterfall.
Do I just want a burn barrel out back? 🛢️
You know one year into the journey about looking at home – actually a homestead – I often think a lot about what I really want in being a landowner which obviously has to include a house. I want land and a burning barrel out back, or at least some kind of incinerator that I can take care of my own burnable waste.
It would be so nice to only have to go to the transfer station once a year with a few bags of tin cans and glass for recycling, some scrap metal and a few other broken things that can’t be burnt. To not have to clean out or sort those inevitably discarded plastic yogurt cups and milk jugs, the junk mail and plastic wrappers that frozen fruit and vegatables that are just plain garbage with not even a possibility of being recycled.
I get tired of looking at the endless mounds of garbage in the city. It seems like every job I’ve had is overlooking a garbage dump, whether it’s in the sky scraper downtown, out in suburban buildings in Pine Bush or now in the data department in Menands. I really don’t want to be part of mine-buy-consume-landfill system. And I note with a burn barrel or incinerator you can break part of the cycle.
Truth is that Iike fire and it’s wonderful to be able to burn debris rather then haul it off your land. Sure is nice when you have a roaring fire up in the woods, to be able to toss that empty yogurt container or onion wrapper in the fire, and it disappears into smoke. Fire is great, it not only disposes of material, it warms you and provides light and entertainment.
But also I don’t just want land to have a burn barrel – I want to be able to homestead, produce as much of my energy and food on site without reliance on the primarily natural gas and coal-fired grid, instead primarily making electricity with solar and heating with wood.
I also want to turn my compost into chicken and hog feed, and rich soil to grow things, rather then keep buying things packaged in plastic, sending my money off-my-land and into the mound on the outskirts of town rather. And to the extent possible, return poop and urine to soil using an outhouse, composting toilet or humanure system.
Truth is I have a real problem with the buy – consume – landfill way of doing things that removes one entirely from the costs of production and disposal, which isolates you from the smells and pollution, which makes everything so fake.
A Data Scientist 🤓
I like to describe myself as a data scientist at least on the blog. I think it’s an accurate term to describe what I do professionally and as a hobbyist – I put together data, tease insights out of it, use it to create outputs from the data. I link names and addresses together from various government records, clean addresses and data, do spatial calculations and render things as Excel files, CSV files, and database updates.
A data scientist is not a programmer or a database administrator. He or she doesn’t fix computers. If anything, I break them sometimes by pushing them a bit too hard. But instead, I work to get insights out of data, take one form of data and then transform it. You might say a bit portion of my work – outside of data cleaning both manually and automated – is extract, transform and load. Often I’ll pull data out of the db2 database, work on it and join it in R and then upload it using a different program that was custom written for my needs.
Sometimes I wish I was a computer programmer by training – everything I know was learned mostly by reading and practical use outside of a few classes I took twenty years ago in college on Data Structures and Statistics. But I’m not needing it in sense I don’t write lengthy C/C++ programs, nor do I worry about user facing interfaces. Instead, I just extract value of data using common tools like SQL, R and some Bash and Python scripts. While I use some AWK, I don’t nearly as much as my predecessor did. AWK is good for simple things, but it doesn’t hold a candle to modern Python and R.
Data science is an interesting field, and one that is surprisingly accessible with relatively easy to use and powerful tools like R and Python. And it’s actually a lot of fun, as you’re not getting into the weeds of computer programming, memory allocation and the alike. A lot of things are relatively simple and clever scripts, and teasing out value of what’s out there but may not obvious until you join the data together.
It was only in 2021, when I really got interested in Python after a friend suggested I give it a second look for doing data processing for GIS. I also got tired of the sometimes clumsy and slow processing in QGIS, and while I had used some Python to automate things in QGIS, I became quite interested in PANDAS and Python for working with data. I got every book I could get my hands on about writing Python code, with a particular focus on data science. Later that year, actually Labor Day, I stumbled upon the R programming language and tidyverse and ggplot – and with it’s strong graphics capacity and ability to quickly process geospatial data I was hooked.
Since then I’ve been using R Studio every day. It’s not to say that I don’t occasionally use Python or other languages, or mapping tools like QGIS. But R has such a rich universe of data manipulation tools, it is so powerful and quick for processing data, manipulating spatial data and querying and exporting Census data. R Studio is the tool I use the most at work and for the blog and many other purposes. And it was all something I taught myself all just at first by watching a few Youtube videos while laying in a hammock, drinking a beer at the Perkins Clearing Conservation Easement in Adirondacks.
Maybe it was just dumb luck that the Data Services position opened up when the former director retired and I was a good fit for it. But I really love being able to clean, process and manipulate data every day using powerful tools and generating new insights that are powering government forward.
