Shit’s kind of fucked up in America 🇺🇸
Happy Birthday 250, America!
Maybe those are the words I utter when I find myself looking at Ford SuperDuty trucks in a kind of self-masterbation fashion, telling myself the only kind of pickup truck that I can get that is going to be all reliable is a SuperDuty with the big ol’ 7.3L, thanks to the EPA all the half-ton and mid-size trucks are complete disposable crap that probably won’t make it down the road for the next ten years. Thin oils, supercharging, auto-shut off and all the tricks to keep the old ICE engine lumbering along have ruined cars. We need to go electric, without all the high-tech Tesla crap. Make me a Ford F-250 that’ s electric with as few buttons as possible. Buying a SuperDuty – I thought you cared about climate change – you are listening to Greta Thunberg’s Climate Book while ranting about how bad the EPA is.
And I just read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, both now free through the public library, with a lot of disgust. I mean, I voted for Donald Trump mostly because I was pissed the legislature denied me the right to even consider any candidate besides Kamela Harris and Donald Trump. I thought it would be cool to cast a protest vote for the felon, somebody who has seen the other side of the criminal justice system, someone who is deeply cynical about government. Someone who ain’t a boot licker. In the days after the murder of Renee Good, we now know the Trumpster is the ultimate boot licker. And for all his talk about being a strong advocate for the second amendment, it’s hard to say that Trump has even lifted a finger to defend the second amendment. While Democrats too often are willing to tape over the check engine light, Republicans remind me a lot of Henry Holyoak Lightcap taking a 357 magnum to the check engine light. While admitting you have a problem is a step, blowing a hole in your dashboard doesn’t fix it.
Too many days I have the same attitude as the DOT workers who shovel the children’s brain fragments, blood and bones off the concrete after the car crashes on the superhighway, to get traffic moving again after the wreck. Yeah, that’s kind of bad, shrugging it off in a lot of indifference, noting it’s part of having superhighways and the times we live in. Fucking indifference about everything, maybe too much acceptance knowing we are hardly able to resist the evil that has been unleashed on our country, so the best we can do is protect our own interests. Those SuperDuty trucks are simple, reliable but big and burly trucks. I should be out there protesting all the evil that Trump is putting forward, how our world is being overrun by invasive species and garbage heaps, how the poles are melting and our climate is changing slowly but surely in obvious ways. But I tell myself, if I can’t save my country, it’s best to save my own life.
They say you can’t ignore the engine knock. Eventually the rod will snap and go through your block and things won’t go anymore. Truth is sucks for the colored and the poor, and immigrants who are getting roughed up by Trump’s ICE. But so far despite friends posts on social media, I have yet to be impacted by ICE. It’s not like there are ICE agents driving up and down the streets of Albany in military fatigues and camouflage Humvees. While there are still too many cops and cameras watching motorists for speeding and running red lights (honest, we’re doing it’s for the bicyclists safety!), so far the crack down hasn’t come down to the middle-class world of Albany outside of our social media channels, free newspaper subscriptions and color televisions, I see the direction of our country as a nation of bootlickers. While the liberals are looking at disdain at Trump’s boots, they’re more then happy to support the cops when it comes to banning guns, and preferably gun owners, hunters, and farmers too. Liberals have no problem with Trump’s tactics if it supports their agenda. Maybe the only good thing that Trump has done is de-legitimize our government. Made even the most prestigious of government agencies grounded in rational procedure look like violent thugs. It’s not bad that government has been knocked down a few pegs.
Product Information Catalog and Vehicle Listing (vPIC)
Standalone vPIC Databases are intended for use by developers and researchers who prefer to use a local database instead of calling the vPIC API. There are quotas and rate limits associated with the usage of the vPIC API, and you can avoid reaching the limits by using the standalone databases. Please be aware that standalone databases are limited to VIN Decoding functionality only. To retrieve other information (such as makes, models, variables, attributes, etc.), you will still need to use vPIC APIs.
PostgreSQL backup files are compatible with PostgreSQL version 17 and newer. The PostgreSQL database is provided in two formats: custom and plain. The custom format is a compressed binary file containing the database. The plain format is a plain-text SQL file containing scripts to create the database. Both formats will restore the database into a separate schema named 'vpiclist_lite'.
LIDAR Parcel Stats.R
On my Github under the Land Research repository, you can find the code I wrote up last night that grabs a parcel from a tax map, calculates the acreage and percentage of the slope of the land, and the acreage and percentage of the way the slope faces (North, South East, etc.)
I am working on similar code to calculate the same for waterway buffers, mapped wetlands, distance from other buildings.
Getting so sick and tired of people telling me I’m so sorry for your loss. 🙏
Two weeks have come and gone since I retired Big Red. And I still hear form people, but if you don’t own a car, how will you do X, Y, Z? Don’t you know buses are exclusively for the colored and the poor, those old buses – they’re so dirty and so slow. I keep hearing from people that in one point in my their lives back in the day, they did not own a car, and life was so tough and miserable without a car, riding the bus with the colored and poor.
So yeah, maybe I should have kept it more of a secret that I retired Big Red. 🛻 Obviously I would have liked not to have the gap over the winter, but regardless I planned to retire Big Red in April before the Michigan and Wisconsin trip. But honestly I don’t care, the three only real issues in the interim months are trash/recycling – store and use roadside bins, wash – laundromat early in the morning or when my parents take me out there, and visiting the parents for Sunday dinner – they can pick me up for a visit or skip that for now. Honestly, that was the only things that have changed without a truck during these winter months. ☃️ Maybe I would have done a winter camp out at Rensselearville State Forest and had a fire, 🔥 but my feet get cold so easy these days, and especially when it comes to going out to Charles Baker it looks like their would be too much snow to get out there. Plus see I’m more or less following the law, 👮 by not burning shit I’m not supposed to and even washing out and recycling plastic. ♻️ So I’m almost a greeny. 💚
Last night that meeting over yet another development in the Albany Pine Bush 🌲 🦋 just dragged on and on, and by the time I got home it was 10 PM and after eating dinner and settling down to bed, it was almost 11. I was up around 5:45 AM this morning, which I much later then usual as I couldn’t sleep anymore but honestly I’m tired and will probably just sink behind my desk in the office though I already have work piling up my desk 🖥️ based on the emails I’ve gotten over the night. It’s fine it will get done. 🚴 The rain has mostly pulled out, it was warm enough last night that I think at this point the rail trail should be mostly ICE free ❄️ so it should be good for riding in I hope. I’ll grab it off of Elsmere Avenue so less riding if it turns out to still have some ice remaining, but I’m hoping it will be good for the foreseeable future. 🦵 I love riding in, it leaves me feeling so pumped when I get into the office. Same thing too riding back after dark to get the local bus home, it’s much nicer then walking laps in the Plaza. It was crazy 🤪 last night at the Empire Plaza with everything going on when I was getting my steps 👣 before meeting Lynne and heading over Builder land for the meeting.
I realize part of my situation is the virtue signaling I’m doing saying how wonderful it is I don’t have a vehicle 🚙 👉 🚍 🚲, while looking at listings for big-assed Ford SuperDuty pickups. Not that I’ve done that much of the later, though I sure have spent a lot of time studying how to buy a car and get a fair and reasonable price as dealership. Honestly, I just find striking up an auto deal to be so much fun, but that’s because I’m a two-decades plus, hell closer to 25 years at this point, quarter century veteran of Albany Politics when I consider my internship at StateWatch. I just enjoy the personalities and power dynamics, and how people sometimes spin things. There are probably a few crooked dealerships out there, but many of them may mislead or spin things to make the sale. 🤝 People despise such things, but honestly it’s part of the game of getting shit done. 🤡 The stories I can tell and the many books I’ve read about politics and power. I mean, really I’m not so set on Fords or even SuperDuty pickups, and I do see the disadvantages of various models like the Ford 10-speed auto, while also seeing the benefits of simpler XL trim and having a big-burly assed truck, even if it is a gasser both for cost and reliability reasons. 🛻 I was browsing the listing of Ford dealerships on Ford website, and there are 49 within 50 miles of my house, probably if I go out 100 miles and pick up Utica and Syracuse, down to Newburgh, it’s closer to 100+ Ford dealerships. So yeah, if a dealership doesn’t want to work with me, refuses to give me an out-the-door price with all taxes and fees attached, or is otherwise really pushy, I can just hang up on them.
Going to be a little wet riding in but probably not too bad. ☔ I guess I should bring extra socks in case my feet get wet, as old Erie Boulevard reverts back to the canal on rainy days. Bike trail will be wet but hopefully not too icy. 🥞 Onion and cornmeal pancakes this morning with some turmeric, salt, oatmeal and whole-wheat flour for fiber and bite. I need to get carrots 🥕 again, this weekend I’ll do that when I go shopping. With Martin Luther King Day 👑 it’s going to be a three-day weekend, and not terrible weather so I have multiple days I can ride my bike to the store, maybe even go to Walmart but I don’t have any specific needs there, and I’ ve gotten to like Hannaford App where I can make a shopping list, and the app orders everything by aisle and tells me the price and any coupons I’m eligible for before shopping. 🛒 Kind of nice to bike there, even if I don’t like driving on Delaware Avenue with all the cops and red lights 🚨 when I had my truck. Been going through those black beans I cooked up yesterday for lunch and dinner. Used to be black beans were tougher on my stomach 😲 then pinto beans but I’m so used to digesting them at this point, they don’t really give me any gas or bad smells. 🫘 I always get accused of being some kind of a vegetarian when I point out to people that while steak 🥩 and whole milk 🐄 are tasty, and I’m all for supporting dairymen and cattlemen who work the land, 🧑🏻🌾 neither one are exactly health foods. I’ll have to see if Dad will pick me up for a visit this weekend, otherwise on Tuesday morning before work I’ll take bus down to the laundromat 🧺 bright and early. I don’t mind. Other then that, maybe ride out to Voorheeesville or Five Rivers for walk around. Going to be mostly cold enough and snow free for good hiking. 📚 And maybe do a bunch of reading.
