Notes

Four days away from the office, two more left at work through the end of the year 😊

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Heading up to camp mid-morning, going to spend out in the wilderness through Saturday, when I will come back home. Expecting a few inches of snow on Friday, I figure that will make for a pretty afternoon and evening. Not a lot of snow where I’m going but it should be cold enough that it won’t be all sloppy.

Nice morning around the freezing point this morning. ☀️ Looking forward to getting away for a few days leading up to Christmas. Then back to work on Monday and Tuesday, Christmas Eve. Then I’m off through January 2nd, when it’s back to the winter grind in the office. But by mid month, there will be enough daylight in the evening that at least I won’t be riding back to the express bus 🚍 in darkness, and by President Day, I’ll be able to ride all the way home, assuming the rail trail is free of snow and ice.

Getting packed this morning, slowly, as I’m not in that much of a rush to get out in the woods but I need time to get set up and gather wood 🪵 before dark. Plus I’d rather be at camp around noontime so I can have a nice lunch, maybe ride or read during the afternoon and listen some podcasts. 🎧 Have some time before dark, which will come much too early this time of year. I remain too much of a sugar fein, I had chocolate pancakes this morning, 🥞 I bought a big container of pure baking coca at the store this week. Coca itself doesn’t have a lot of sugar and fat, and I used an egg and a little bit of olive oil and Stevia to give it that chocholately goodness with the fats and sugars.

It should be good to camp. 🏕️ Fully expect it to be cold, but I’m looking forward to the snow tomorrow –  the road I’m camping on will be plowed – and it should be pretty watching the fresh falling snow. ☃️ They are talking about 2-4 inches of snow, which is nice but not so much to deal with at camp. I’m probably going to sleep in the truck cap, so I’m not worried about digging the tent out of the snow. Then just kind of relaxing, catching up on my reading. 📖 Bringing my bike, not sure how much I will ride, depends on how deep the snow is up there, though I’m not expecting more then a few inches. Also it will depend on how windy and cool its up there at camp.

Truth was I didn’t sleep that great last night, 🌃 probably way too much caffeine and sugar. ☕ 🍪 They had a lunch in at work yesterday, with too much sugary cookies that deserved a lot of coffee to dip it in. Plus it was another busy day at work, I was trying to get caught up before I took off the rest of the week. I realized I coded a bunch of records incorrectly, so I had to fix them. 🖥️ It’s fine, I can run the job at night next week nohup and the server will fix them as I sleep. 😴

Been thinking about the new year. 💵 I really should look more at finding a fee-based advisor to go over my investments. I do worry about paying a lot of money and not getting something worthwhile in return, or pushed into a bad investment. Trust but verify. I need to read up more about such things, 📚 and while I’m pretty happy with mostly simple index-based investing, I often find it hard to fully understand the tax ramifications of my decisions. Maybe I’m stubborn, but I’m not like some – here’s my money – go invest it and if it looks like I’m getting some return never question it. Maybe it’s like my experiences with the mental health treatment – they promise you so much but the truth is they often don’t have any answers beyond what you already know. Still, I do value the ideas of experts in the field.

It’s great to spend time out in the wilderness, 🎄 but I still want some point to have a place to call home that isn’t a dumpy apartment in the suburbs. But I don’t know. That’s why I spend so much time and money investing and saving for the future. So these trips don’t have to be just something I do a every few weeks! And I have better shelter then a truck cap in the cold!

Three more work days left in 2024 ☃️

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I got my final paycheck of the year and I’m taking off four days and they’re giving us off Christmas and the two days after it. So I’m off to work one more day with another holiday party, heading up to the woods tomorrow through Saturday, family event Sunday and then busing it in on Monday, working Christmas Eve before going out to see the family and then I’m off through January 2nd.

Busy time of the year. 🎄 Caught the early express bus 🚍 downtown, I’ll probably walk on the Plaza before hiking down to Menands. I would have ridden in but it’s going to turn to rain by evening. 🌧️ Probably snow ☃️ in outlying parts but it should be nice and pretty when I get out of town tomorrow.

It seems like that the year just begun but we’ve already made another revolution around the sun ☀️. I got one of the colorful Christmas Light strings working 🎄 which will be pretty for camping especially if I decorate a tree with them. Went for an evening walk 🚶 yesterday as it was pleasant and a lunch time.

Such a nice morning though. ⛅ Clouds and sun but mild, around 36 degrees jut feels much nicer than that. Maybe it’s just the Mitch Miller Christmas 🤶 record or it’s my last work day of the week or that it’s been such a great year in the markets but it feels so good. I’m looking forward to getting up to camp 🏕️ tomorrow.

How I got so busy 🐇

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You know it seems like that I have more and more things consuming my time these days. The thing in my mind is that I’m not really sure what those things are that are using up my time. Maybe it’s my desire to learn, to read and experiment with code. Certainly, I want to get even better working with data and finding solutions. And maybe it’s my desire for escapism or that I’m bored with things being the way they’ve always been.

Some of it is I find projects to do for work, and are constantly busy in the office as the Director of Data Services. There is always new data streams to capture and code. Then there is the time riding my bike to and from and spending days out in the wilderness, smoking pot and hiking and biking. The evenings have been cold, and I like hiding under my electric blanket rather then paying for the heat, watching YouTube videos and reading, always trying to learn new skills. And then I am constantly reading, and trying to learn and understand more and more of the world around me.

In many ways, my blog has taken a back seat, but also it’s because I’ve lost in interest in many things on my blog, because many of the most interesting things I’ve already covered in my blog. But a lot of it is also is just have so many things to learn and improve in my life, and I don’t always feel like spending so much time just rephrasing and redoing what I’ve already done on my blog.

Hate Finding Litter in the Wilderness

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I hate it when I find litter in the wilderness.

A lot of junk can be burned and I’m sure a lot of it is ultimately burned by campers up in the woods. But the rest of it should be taken home for recycling. Steel cans and aluminum cans are marketable commodities, a raw material for the same kind of industrial processes that brought them onto this earth in the first place. I’m fine with people burning out cans to clean them out but they should be crushed and taken home for recycling. Glass shouldn’t really be burnt in the back country as all it does is turn into smaller fragments, and is hard to clean up.

I don’t like landfills and municipal incinerators as the respiratory for waste. Things should be recycled rather than littered – especially if it’s not going to burn up completely or rot away. Gut piles and food scraps left in the woods are fine but they shouldn’t be left in areas where they are a nuisance by attracting wildlife to trails and campsites.

I like the wilderness, and I use some of its resources. I use paper plates, have a propane heater and electric lights, and I might even burn some of my trash. But I always pick up any bottles and cans I find in the woods and try to remove as much litter as practical. Larger things I’ve found left from other I’ll leave out by roads for municipal clean up as that stuff isn’t always practical to take home.

While I think it’s foolish to pretend to be leaving no trace – camping, hiking, hunting and fishing all have impacts on the land – I do try to tread lightly and use the land responsibly so it remains usable for generations to come.

Good morning, Happy Tuesday. 😎

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While the rain was pouring down around 4 AM this morning, it has stopped and it’s going to be fairly sunny and mild by mid-day at least by December standards. All goes well, this might be my first chance to ride into work since the month got underway. It’s been tough with the snow, cold, and then loosing my bike lock. Plus I need to repair the front brake on my bike which is low on the brake fluid and needs new pads.

I got say I certainly do ride a lot of miles. 🚴 At this point, I am around 13,000 to 15,000 miles on my bike. All that commuting plus riding around town adds up. I don’t ride as much in the winter, but certainly in the summer I’m all around. That 17 mile commute round trip to work, igoring all side trips adds up, though this past few weeks it’s been a lot less. 🤷‍♂️ December is tough for riding, the trail is often wet or covered with ice and snow ☃️ not to mention it’s real cold out.

Installed both the state voter file and property tax database on my phone. 💾 Between the two, it’s like two gigabytes of data, which really isn’t that much as the Parquet file format compresses very well, and is so fast. I did it primarily for work – – I often get asked for data when I’m out of the office, 🏢 plus I’m always thinking of interesting ways to query and summarize the data. Did you see that NYS GIS is now posting a statewide shapefile of all election districts in state? Too bad it doesn’t quite match up with the state voter database for field names, and there still isn’t a statewide database of ED by ED election results, though Benjamin Rosenblatt has been collecting and aggregation such information. ❎

Went to Walmart and got groceries last night. Only $70 worth of groceries, so not a lot when you consider prices these days. 🍌 Still may want to run to the store before heading up to camp most likely on Thursday, 🏕️ I particularly want to get nuts 🥜 for roasting. I am thinking of heading out of town for Thursday to Saturday, before it gets too cold, though Sunday I’m planning on doing a family Christmas event 🎄 🎅 but that’s fine, it’s going to be cold come the weekend. 🌬️