Personal

The hum and growl of the trucks hauling garbage to dumping grounds on the hillside in Rennselear and the state workers grinding their way into the Empire State Plaza to work for state agency accroymn in an office abbreviated with 3 to 5 letters, boring a shit but glad as hell they aren’t working for the feds. And I’m riding my mountain bike to the suburban office next to old city garbage dump and sewage treatment plant after watching the den Hoed Dairy video of them hauling poo and water out to the fields on their 1970 Detroit Diesel, almost tasting the tangy smell of the manure and partially burnt off-road diesel on my tongue.

Been working on updating and organizing the datasets on my computer for map 🗺️ making. I got some new data from the DEC and I’ve been having speed and memory issues with loading the data, so I’ve been trying to figure out the right balance between storing things in Parquet and PostGIS databases for map making. I am also dissatisfied with the latest batch of maps I’ve been making, and trying to learn more about the latest labeling features in QGIS. It’s really confusing all the different options that program has. Then there was just a lot of random projects yesterday at Data Services 🖥️, and then I was in meetings all afternoon on Capitol Hill. 🎄 Important stuff like planning the Christmas Party and Pie Baking Contest. 🥧 I can’t believe we’re already thinking about the holiday. Hell, I’m already planning my November trips. Leaves will be gone before you know it, as I smell that sharp smell of Preska’s silage being packed for the ladies for the year.

Last night I was watching that video 📺 about catalytic converters and the advanced engine monitoring tools that keeps engines running in a range where the catalyst is important in urban areas where air pollution is a major issue. I could have done a lot of things last night, but after doing a quick shop and cooking dinner 🛒 I was pretty darn tired out and just wanted to lay back in bed until dark. I think wearing the eye anti-rub shields was inferring with my sleep so I skipped them as I figured I was close enough to a week out from my LASIK surgery. Yesterday, I was noticing how truly clear my vision was riding to the downtown meeting on the beautiful sunny ☀️ day. Still a bit of irriation at times but even that has gone away as is the red eye 👁️ which seems to be fading. I think I am now at that point where I don’t have to wear goggles for showering 🚿 so I can get my face clean and probably if it wasn’t October I could even hit up swimming hole. 🏊 Some people take longer to recover then others, though I admit I still need to regularly add artificial tears 😭 to my eyes to keep them from being irritated at times – and it’s best to use them before I start feeling the irriation again. Supposed to do that for 5 more weeks, we’ll see how that goes, they’re kind of expensive and pain. Contact solution or even the preservative red-eye solution might be okay, even if neither is as soothing as those little over packaged plastic bottles of expensive preserative-free artificial tears. I’ll see what Wally World has and for what price.

I need a plan for the weekend and the next week. 🏕️ Going to be a nice, colorful autumn weekend 🍁 so I should spend it up in the wilderness but I haven’t decided if next week I should go to the Adirondacks ⛰️ or wait for the next week. At one level I feel like I should rest up my eyes a bit more, 👀 all that time in wilderness with the dry conditions could only aggreviate the red eye issues. But on the other hand, I do feel great, and the first half of week looks excellent but Tuesday probably into Thursday looks more unstable and the Columbus Day Weekend looks cool. 🍂 If I wait another weekend, then the leaves are likely going to be well past peak in the Adirondacks, though it might be a lot quieter up north except for the occasional ringing out of gun fire by the deer hunters. 🦌 If I don’t go north this weekend, I do plan to head out to Schoharie at least for one overnight, so I can visit Shauls one more time before their closed for the year. Might be good colors along the Catskill Scenic Trail and nice riding there over the weekend. But who knows how cold and miserable the following week is going to be. Need to decide soon.

Truth is I have nothing packed or prepared for the weekend, 💼 but reality is that doesn’t really matter. I have an obnoxious Save the Pine Bush Meeting at 6 PM tonight, but I’m kind of hoping we’ll keep it brief and I can catch the 18 bus home at 6:50 PM or so I have time to pack. I really don’t need to go to the laundromat before whatever trip I do. I think I can make it through a week with whatever clothes I have if I decide to go to Adirondacks and get supplies before work on Friday, I really don’t need that much for the Adirondacks. Still the thing with going to ADKs is once you are up there, options for food and supplies is very limited – yes you can get a $3 can of greenbeans on Charlie John’s in Spectulator or A&P in Tupper Lake but those are your options. Fresh stuff, yeah right, maybe $1.50 a pound half spoiled bananas 🍌 if you’re lucky. Need underwear? Probably have to wait. Truth is in many ways I prefer traveling in other parts of the state, as I can always get lots of shit to buy, 🛒 at Wally World and Aldi’s. Terrible but it’s the truth, outside of the park it seems like the shopping options are unlimited on vation. Maybe I’m just addicted to that cheap plastic shit at Walmart that quickly get used up and tossed into the fire. 🔥

Would need to load the kayak up if I’m going north, but the truth is I don’t need that much for a week of camping 🏕️ and much of my gear is already in my truck. Really would be my last big adventure with Big Red though I’m thinking Stoney Pond and/or Charles Baker come November. I can’t believe we are already into 🐮 manuring season, and whole regions of state have seen their corn silage chopped. 🌽 The responsible thing would be to be in town next weekend – John Wolcott Underpass ribbon cutting is Wednesday and I’d miss a semi-important work meeting on Tuesday. 🍕 It’s a pizza lunch meeting, not Cardona’s, lol. 😁 I’m just worried the mid-week when I’m at Horseshoe Lake and Lows Lake will be a wash out, 🛶 crap for riding and paddling, only really good for laying around and drinking beer 🍻 and smoking weed. 🍁 The thing is if I wait another week, I know the leaves would be crap in Adirondacks. Maybe okay in Southern Tier or elsewhere, but I want to check out the St. Regis Canoe Area 🛶 and the Adirondack Rail Trail. Been years – really the pandemic year – since I was last up that far north.

I’d love to get to West VIrigina this autumn, but this ain’t the year with my creaky old truck. 🛻 Next autumn though for sure. I haven’t done the mid and northern Adirondacks in a long time – as I was noting. it will be great when I have small, new truck. I need continue researching trucks – probably get a Toyota with the off-road package and a cap, and I’m not going to jack it up I tell myself on 35 inch tires, though kind of want to. I should save money so someday I can own my own land, and actually be able to have livestock and burn shit. 🔥 Retirement that far away, and there a good chance that next truck will last until retirement. September was anoher good month for the blog, brought in $188 in ad revenue. August was a $244 buck month. All for making some maps and interesting things at least in my mind, talking about diesel and cow shit and burnt plastic and smoking marijuana in the National Forest. Or something like that, as none of that would be legal, don’t you know about the urban emissions laws 🏭 to keep our air clean and the planet green. 🌎 Well, those tankers of cow manure and water does help keep the fields green and growing.

I don’t know, what gets my heart beating hard is smoking a lot of pot and those caffeine pills, or hell that dark roast coffee they always have flowing in Assembly’s Data Center which is the Jack Daniel’s of the coffee world.

I might complain a lot about being moved from my beautiful downtown office overlooking the Capitol to a suburbanite industrial building 🏢 overlooking the old city dump and the sewage treatment plant and sewage sludge/PFOA incinerator – it stinks 👃🚽 – but the free unlimited coffee is always good drunk in my DACC mug. ☕ I get all the best swag working for the campaign committee. Says the boy who burns his trash 🔥 and wants to eventually own livestock like hogs 🐽 and horney buck goats. 🐐 It’s actually a lot of fun, th money is good and I don’t have to ride the State Street Hill on my mountain bike 🚲 every day or take Delaware Avenue. Though it sucks with them doing away with the express bus. 🚍 For a while before end, that was pretty awesome with transfer though evening we’re tight. That coffee ☕ definitely makes me poop 💩 well. That and all the fiber I try to include in every meal – be it carrot 🥕 or zucchuni pancakes 🥞 – and yet another big pot of kidney beans 🫘 I boiled down yesterday. I like them just as much as Edward Abbey.

I am not even a real programmer, 🖥️ as fact quietly noted by the real programmers but I do enough SQL and R to make IOI Codes and other data manipulation to keep things moving along in my little division. We do some pretty cool stuff. Next month for my Hoopla September reads I maxed out 📚 last night I got a book on Linux Programming and Rust programming. I keep flirting with old Rust language even as much as a curse the borrow checker 🔎 because I know it’s a superior and safer language to C++ and I like the CARGO package manager, though not how most Rust programs are statically linked rather then using system libraries which are mostly designed to be called from C or C++. I also got a bunch of other Edward Abbey and Hunter S. Thompson books, a book about homesteading and one on using wooded land for a variety of processes, Richard Thayer’s Nudge, and one about the best hikes in Northern Michigan. 🚶 I heard they have cheaper cannabis in Michigan, and a lot to explore especially in the wild part of the state that is not Detroit. In theory a burn ban, 🔥 but most hillbilies without nearby neighbors don’t obey as it’s like a civil $150 fine for funding local libraries at most.

Yesterday I got vaxxed, 💉 and I was incredibly disappointed that I was not questioned about my demand to get the COVID vaccine because it wasn’t fun last year with COVID for Christmas. 🎅 I didn’t get to explain because I smoked some pot a few weeks back, 🚭 that I’m a former smoker and therefor at high risk of the COVID! But the vaccine didn’t work last Christmas, just like seatbelts don’t work in a car crash when you feel sore the next door 💺. I mean you can’t prove in that wreck that you would have definately thrown through the windshield without the seat belt. 💥 I clicked on an ad accidentally for a trial lawyer ⚖️ and now my feed is full of ads for a car crash attorneys. We live such a trippy world these days. 🏳️‍🌈 See if my heart ♥️ gives out in the next few days, probably won’t but that would suck after spending all that money so I could have 20/15 vision and see better then the typical liberal. 👀 It will be interesting to see what the Trumpster does with marijuana, I won’t argue it doesn’t stink and is kind of obnoxious in urban areas – but it’s kind of fun too. Some of my biggest Trump supporting friends also enjoy dipping their hands in growing that plant to smoke, you know in many ways it’s easier then tobacco to grow and lot more fun to smoke or bake into brownies. 🟫 When I say former pot smoker, doesn’t mean though that I plan to stop it’s just that I have to go to work today, I’m not at camp, and I’m not stoned.

I was thinking if the old ladies at the polling place start selling pot brownies with extra fudge at the polling places as a fundraiser for the Lady Auxiliary, 🗳️ I’ll go back to voting in person, but instead it was so easy to just get my ballot in the mail, open it up, check off the marks for all the local Democrats and write in George Hayduke! for County Clerk. I am no fan of Bruce Higgley, I mean I’m sure he’s no worse then the typical machine politico, and the liberals would be like he’s probably better then the Trumpster, Mostly he’s a Democrat who wants to extract as much wealth out of the public. But that’s not saying much. 🐴 In other words, he’s just an asshole. I dropped the ballot in the mail box and the out wrapper in with other burnables, 🔥 soon enough to be bright yellow flames. After getting vaxxed last night, 🚲 rode out to Slingerlands with my dark glasses on to protect my eyes 👀. Then there was a bit more light left, so I rode out along Van Dyke Road past Preska’ Dairy 🐮 🌽 and that freshly chopped silage smelled absolutely amazing in a way only a cow person would truly understand. Going to make a lot of good milk 🥛 and ice cream 🍦 in the coming year. He’s very much a Republican with all of his signs for their candidates so likely to loose by double digit margins, but dairy man often are because if you milk cows, you’re a businessman, probably own a bunch of guns, 🔫 and of course he doesn’t like the subsidy the town gave to one of the other farmers in South Bethlehem to lease now town owned farmland, so no more traffic would infere with those who already have their homes built next to the crop fields that they also complain smell like cow crap during certain times of the year. 💩

I haven’t figured out next week yet. 🏕️ Might just do a quick trip this weekend, or maybe I’ll take off next Monday. Or I could take off the full week, and head north, starting in Speculator but ultimately driving to Horseshoe Lake and Lows Lake, the the St. Regis Canoe Area. 🛶 I do really want to check out out that rail trail, and if I wait to Columbus Day Weekend, as I’m sure Trump want you to call it, 🍁 I doubt there will much color left in the woods. Probably more deer 🦌 hunters then color at that point. But I’m not planning on heading deep into the woods, so whatever. It looks like Tuesday and Wednesday might be cloudy and rainy 🌥️ so that gives me pause. And I don’t know, I have a meeting to go to on Thursday, so when to find time to pack. 💼 Plus let’s be honest, if I’m going to the Central Adirondacks going to need be fairly well stocked up as there is only limited and expensive groceries that I can purchase along the way, it’s not like the Finger Lakes or Central NY where thee is a Walmart, or at least a Tops or Aldis not far away. I might do Cazenovia and Stoney Pond come November again this year I’m thinking. Maybe finally do that last gap in the Erie Canalway I haven’t ridden then 🚲 between Utica and Rome. Might be fun.