Or is that the marijuana wind or the cow shit from the grass puppies blowing on the wind? Maybe my mind is still stuck in Allegany County from work. I bet you not only do they make excellent milk there, they also grow excellent cannabis in that county with all that shit and backwoods people.All I know is that wind was roaring something else a little after 6 AM, the neighbor’s garbage cans were banging around, the wind a roaring, the building creaking and my dumpy apartment suddenly felt drafty.
I tell you that marijuana smoke some old black lady was smoking at the bus stop last night, 🚬 definitely was not the best quality, smelled like it was more tobacco then cannabis, but it clearly had a note of cannabis. She was fairly elderly, probably for the pain. She was being fairly discrete, and while your not supposed to smoke at the bus stop, whatever. The bus was close to on time, and I was able to walk for a half hour in the Plaza. Big group of State Troopers out by the Plaza Bus Turn Around again yesterday, I think that homeless guy that once tried to talk to me was harassing the state workers just trying to get a bus back their car again. Why can’t he just live and let live?
After last month’s $116 electric and gas bill, in part due me being home sick, the dying refrigerator compressor running non-stop for several days, and the generally cold month, I’m hoping for a lower bill this year. That said, I rarely pay more then $100, and only one month out of the year so I’m not complaining. That said, I do not like the wind or the drafts, even if I’ve done my best to seal around the doors while the wind comes in around the cracks in the foundation, walls and bad windows. So, yeah I don’t like the wind, and it’s going to be cold when I’m out waiting for the bus this morning.
I started cooking beans down around 4 AM when I first awoke to run to the bathroom, getting my non-winning entry into the chilli cook-off event today at work. My team is bringing in all kinds of good stuff, and it should be a fun day. Also baked some homemade bread to bring into the office. I figure most of it won’t go so I’ll have good eats throughout the weekend. I borrowed my mom’s crockpot but I didn’t want to carry it on the bus, so I figured it just would be easier to cook it in a pan and bring that in instead.
Today, I spent much of the day working on the Allegany County portion of the database I maintain for work. A lot of hours studying addresses and C structs, USPS Mail Encoders and Google Streetview to trying untie complicated rural addresses, looking at rundown houses and farms. It’s been a long time — too long of a time — since I’ve been out to back-roads Allegany County in my now creaky ol’ jacked up pickup truck in those towns that smell like silage and cow shit.
There are some neat lands and houses down that way. They say they’re poor people but have you ever looked at the costs of raising livestock and homesteading? Equipment ain’t cheap neither is parts and fuel to keep that equipment humming along, feed and vet bills. Those big pickup trucks are not cheap these days nor the fuel bills for trips into town or work. As it’s the rural addresses that tend to break in large blocks in our database, it’s what I end up studying the most for programmatic fixes plus I find the most interesting places to study. Better than the Hampton and those endless Queens addresses that have been breaking since the days of the old Data General system.
Plus how can one be actually poor and live in the deep rural, homesteading, hunting and fishing? Eating fresh vegetables grown locally. I know I’m probably viewing such communities from the lens of the noble savage, romanticizing the cow shit, the broken families, the alcohol and drug abuse as people struggle to appease their creditors risking losing their land and ways of getting around while the law keeps garnishing more of their hard earned cash toiling in the mud, grease, cold and the smoke. I’m reminded by colleague who said they counted the days left in winter on the family dairy by the loads of shit they hauled and spread for the season.
I’ve been told these aren’t good people. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but don’t you know they’re all Republicans, Trump Lovers and Bible Fanatics. Uneducated, poor people. But I don’t know, most of people I’ve met are actually pretty sensible, down to earth people who work and understand the land far better then I would ever. It’s such beautiful country, and it’s real – with broken down farm machinery and vehicles – piles of mud and manure, guns and livestock. I think many of those rural people know a lot more about how the real world does then a lot of scientists and politicians.
For now, though it’s a day dream. Just something to look at through Google Streetview as I fix another record, write an SQL command and take notes to pass along to the programming staff. Eventually I want to live deep rural, but not in New York with the high taxes, gun laws and burn ban. It’s tempting to look just south of border in Pennsylvania, and many things they do better there, but it’s also a fairly blue state and they’re not that far from being another New York after a few changes in power.
A picture below from an autumn trip in rural Cattaraugus County about a decade ago!
It needs to be said, that sugar coating the truth of climate change isn’t helping anyone except maybe short-term political expediency.
It bugs me when political leaders refuse to talk about climate change or acknowledge that humans are changing the climate, because only a stupid person would fail to acknowledge such an obvious fact. Every day when I look at the weather records, we are consistently above historical averages, and record breaking cold is almost unheard of these days. Almost all the cold records are 100 plus years old.
I understand the climate change activists are obnoxious people, advocating unrealistic goals, hoping for near ideal outcomes. Sure an ideal goal for not cooking the planet would be an emissions cut of 80% over 1990 levels, which conveniently now is described as keeping the yearly global average climate within 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures that were averaged out in the 20th century.
That would be ideal. Such levels have been judged to minimize serious damage to the earth’s climate, even though any realistic person knows that wouldn’t be possible without an impractical or generally undesirable crash diet on humanity’s use of carbon for energy and all other purposes. Renewables offer a lot of promise, but they aren’t a stand-in for our high levels energy consumption we get from fossil fuels. Even if we could make nuclear safe, it would bankrupt society before we ever made much of a dent in the climate.
If you were to eat a controlled food ration every day of year and never smoked, drank alcohol, or went out in town on Friday night, you could probably live a lot longer. You would be a lot healthier for sure. But we don’t live in such a world, but do make informed choices in our diet and lifestyle choices, and realize life is a compromise that you make. It’s not a bad idea to eat a little more broccoli, choose to not smoke, consume alcohol in moderation, exercise and not party too hard. But it would suck to give up on all that is fun and good in life. No cookies, no alcohol ever?
Reasonable adults would come to the table and weight the pros and cons of addressing climate change to different extents. There should be an informed dialog, one where we as a society get together and come to a consensus on what would be an appropriate amount of change – and not just an theoretically ideal number. We should harden our communities against obvious storm threats, like increased flooding and sea rise, as the climate gets warmer. We should take reasonable steps, like investment in roof-top solar and wind turbines and replacing old coal and nuclear plants with modern, efficient gas peaking and mid-load plants. We should be designing automobiles to be efficient while serving the purposes of their owners.
There are cost-effective solutions that would allow for economic growth, while ensuring people are comfortable and can do much what they currently do today. Climate change action should be about moderation not extremism, and should address the serious threats while balancing our contemporary needs.
I think that’s a reasonable conclusion based on the radar. Nuisance snow today, maybe a few inches, maybe some rain and ice. Actually it is picking up a bit, but what do I care? The bus will make it through it even if it slips slide a bit. I have got to go in, I have diversity training today, and they’ll be up my ass if I don’t make it.
I wanted to catch the earlier express on in but it was running early and I was running late. Based on the real-time bus tracking I never had a chance of even catching it so I didn’t bother to run out to it though I did get my coat on thinking I might make it. But it’s snowing hard now, I am sure it was the driver’s first run of the day, and he didn’t want to be late for the rest of the runs for the day, which inevitably will be bogged down by the snow. I’ll probably walk down to the express lot, so I can get exercise.
Truth is I have that diversity training at 10 AM so it hardly makes sense to catch the shuttle over the Enterprise but I kind of want to stop by the office at least briefly and ride back over to training downtown with the team. Chilli cook off is on Friday, so this evening I got to at least get the beans soaked and head to bed early so I can move forward on that on Friday.
Went down to the library, made up some maps and worked on some projects. I’ve been thinking a bit about that one piece of land on that dirt road I was looking at out in Berne for building my off-grid cabin. Kind of too far to commute from, and it would be basically impossible to get to work from there with that steep hill being a complete bitch in the winter. But I was having that dream, even if it’s not a realistic one. It’s tough being in this cold apartment in the winter, though riding both ways to work yesterday was so awesome. It just doesn’t feel like work without the commute – that is the commute via the city bus or my pickup – either way. It’s really is pure bliss, riding through the gorge, even if it was a bit icy and was getting pretty dark by the time I hit pavement last night. Still it’s wonderful to think I’ll be able to ride in both ways any time the weather is decent and there isn’t too much snow on the trail.
Any spatial dataframe you create in R, such as with tidycensus can be exported with write_sf to a shapefile.
I know this isn’t rocket science but it is a big time and headache saver. Sometimes joins don’t go quite right in QGIS due to your own silliness but if obtain the spatial data right at the same time as Census data using tidycensus geometry=True then you don’t have to manually join the data, deal with type issues or the wrong year TIGER line.
For example for the PA Poverty maps I poste on the Facebook:
library(tidycensus)
library(sf)
income <- get_acs(
geography = 'tract',
variables = 'S1701_C03_001',
state = 'PA',
geometry = T)
write_sf(income,'/tmp/pa_poverty.shp')
I left the office right at 5 PM or maybe even a minute before 5, and I realized if I pushed it I would have enough light left in the evening to be to the top of the bike trail and on the suburban streets by dusk. Technically you not supposed to ride the bike trail after dusk, but I doubt they’d chase you off it much before 6 PM this time of year. Oops, I didn’t realize how fast it was getting dark, but who is going to be patrolling an ice-covered bike trail after dark in 20 degree weather. There was still light by the time I got to the suburban roads, and switched the bike light on. I am just psyched that now I can ride back and forth to work, weather depending of course, not having to deal with traffic or bus, a trip full of nirvana. Yes, it’s good to ride in but you get the real exercise climbing out of the gorge at the end of the day. The ice slowed me down but it wasn’t that slick and by the evening commute it really didn’t take much longer then it would have taken with the bike path free of ice and snow. Some parts are already free of snow and ice. I have been so manic lately and anything to burn off some energy the better.
Did my usual Wednesday newsletter to coordinators and other staff at work about the various things I’m working on Data Services. Sometimes I wonder if it’s more of annoyance then anything, but I like to share with people the things I’m working on and developing, in hope that the resources are useful. I have so many different projects I’m working on and I want to get people more engauged with data and doing things efficently rather then the old ways of doing things which I always thought were clunky back when I was a coordinator. I do worry i’m oversharing – maybe I shouldn’t have dropped the full voter file on server for everybody at the agency to use as needed but I thought it would be helpful. I am so excited but at times filled with such self-doubt. I do miss working face-to-face with the old team, and I just don’t want to be forgotten if though i oversee an agency that does important but often dull data work. But I see the power of data and can see it as potentially being more — much more.
Big group of State Troopers out by the Plaza Bus Turn Around again yesterday, 
I think that homeless guy that once tried to talk to me was harassing the state workers just trying to get a bus back their car again. 
That said, I rarely pay more then $100, and only one month out of the year so I’m not complaining. That said, I do not like the wind or the drafts, 
even if I’ve done my best to seal around the doors while the wind comes in around the cracks in the foundation, walls and bad windows. So, yeah I don’t like the wind, and it’s going to be cold when I’m out waiting for the bus this morning. 
to run to the bathroom, 
getting my non-winning entry into the chilli cook-off event today at work. 
My team is bringing in all kinds of good stuff, and it should be a fun day. Also baked some homemade bread 
to bring into the office. I figure most of it won’t go so I’ll have good eats throughout the weekend. I borrowed my mom’s crockpot but I didn’t want to carry it on the bus, so I figured it just would be easier to cook it in a pan and bring that in instead.
I am sure it was the driver’s first run of the day, and he didn’t want to be late for the rest of the runs for the day, which inevitably will be bogged down by the snow. I’ll probably walk down to the express lot, 
but I kind of want to stop by the office at least briefly and ride back over to training downtown with the team. Chilli cook off is on Friday, 
so I can move forward on that on Friday.
and worked on some projects. I’ve been thinking a bit about that one piece of land 
on that dirt road I was looking at out in Berne for building my off-grid cabin. Kind of too far to commute from, and it would be basically impossible to get to work from there with that steep hill 
was so awesome. It just doesn’t feel like work without the commute – that is the commute via the city bus or my pickup – either way. It’s really is pure bliss, riding through the gorge, even if it was a bit icy and was getting pretty dark by the time I hit pavement last night. Still it’s wonderful to think I’ll be able to ride in both ways any time the weather is decent and there isn’t too much snow on the trail.
