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Finding the right balance on ads 💰️

I’ve been experimenting more with Google Ads. Where to place them, how to have them without interfering too much with my blog’s messaging and content. While the Google Auto Ads would splash them all over, including over content and pop-ups, that’s a bit much too me. I was hoping to keep them all in the sidebar, but the occasional one stuck in the middle brings in surprisingly a lot of revenue, as does the end of page ads, even though it’s not all that common that people scroll al the way to bottom, but they’re big and therefore valuable to advertisers..

Blogs ads aren’t getting me rich, but they do cover the cost of the domain and hosting and provide a little extra spending cash in the summer. They give me an incentive to develop new and interesting content including maps, knowing every two months or so I’ll be getting a hundred or so dollar deposit in my checking account. And I think placed in the right location, they can bring in revenue without being too commercial. I don’t like advertising, but I think I can live with it for now.

How the Adirondacks remind me I still have reason to hope 🏡

I get tired of the endless number enormous, complicated and thoroughly modern houses I see on Zillow. But when I get to a more remote place like the Adirondacks and look around I know there is reason for hope. Most cabins, especially seasonal hunting cabins aren’t wrapped in plastic or are enormous though some certainly are. I really don’t get the appeal of modernity, the smart television in every room with high speed internet. I am pretty sure the house of future, as sold on television will come with a mandatory 30-yard dumpster with the amount of waste we are told is normal by the television.

I think home should be a sanctuary away from it all. Simple and not needing constant repairs or buying new shit to keep it in good condition. A simple cabin, with as few electronics and as little technology as possible. Maybe some electric lights, but not much beyond that. While I could see the benefits of having a propane heater as a backup when I’m away for an extended period of time, a wood stove, with as little space to heat as possible would be best. No washing machine, no dish washer or fancy appliances. Just a very basic propane stove, an energy efficient refrigerator, a place to charge my cellphone. 

Maybe to live a life like that I have to build it, as few houses on the market truly are like that. But there are people who live that way, as witnessed by the Adirondacks. Not all houses are spacious and “modern” or covered with vinyl siding and full of white walls. Shiplap and board batten are common options in cabins, white drywall ain’t the only option. You also don’t have to have a 2,000 foot square house. Maybe such things are normal in suburbs, along with the mandatory 30-yard dumpster for all the things you get in Amazon on a daily basis, but I find it all so repulsive.

February 24, 2025 – Next Sixteen Weeks

Here is a brief chart that shows the climate normals, sunset times, and length of day for next four months in the Albany area …

WeekDateDawnSun-
rise
Sun-
set
DuskDayNoon Sun AngleAvg HighAvg LowRecord HiRecord Low
0Feb 246:09 am6:36 am5:40 pm6:07 pm11:0338°382074 (2017)-11 (1894)
1Mar 35:58 am6:25 am5:49 pm6:15 pm11:2340.7°412264 (2002)-10 (1950)
2Mar 106:46 am7:13 am6:57 pm7:24 pm11:4343.4°432472 (1977)0 (1996)
3Mar 176:34 am7:01 am7:05 pm7:32 pm12:0446.2°452675 (1990)-01 (1916)
4Mar 246:22 am6:49 am7:13 pm7:40 pm12:2448.9°482969 (1976)0 (1875)
5Mar 316:10 am6:37 am7:21 pm7:48 pm12:4451.7°523189 (1998)89 (1998)
6Apr 75:57 am6:24 am7:29 pm7:57 pm13:0454.3°553487 (2010)13 (1982)
7Apr 145:45 am6:13 am7:37 pm8:05 pm13:2456.9°593683 (1968)19 (1973)
8Apr 215:33 am6:02 am7:45 pm8:14 pm13:4359.3°623989 (1923)20 (1875)
9Apr 285:22 am5:51 am7:53 pm8:22 pm14:0161.6°654292 (1990)25 (1947)
10May 55:12 am5:42 am8:01 pm8:31 pm14:1963.7°684591 (1944)29 (1974)
11May 125:03 am5:34 am8:09 pm8:39 pm14:3565.6°704791 (1881)29 (1969)
12May 194:55 am5:27 am8:16 pm8:47 pm14:4967.2°724991 (1989)29 (1981)
13May 264:49 am5:21 am8:23 pm8:55 pm15:0168.6°745194 (2010)38 (1972)
14Jun 24:45 am5:17 am8:29 pm9:01 pm15:1169.6°765494 (1895)39 (1971)
15Jun 94:42 am5:15 am8:33 pm9:06 pm15:1770.3°7856100 (1933)37 (1977)
16Jun 164:42 am5:15 am8:37 pm9:10 pm15:2170.7°805896 (1967)40 (1961)

Dirt Road

Plowing

Apple Blossoms

Cloudy start to this final Monday of February 📆

They’re using you
To kill all the echoes still
Around
From the sound
Of calendars crumbling
Don’t you worry girl, don’t you worry
Whole world’s in too big a hurry

Well after today, we can put a fork in the month of February 2025. ⛅ A cloudy start to the day, but it will be warming up as the day progresses and should be helping the snow melt by afternoon. Should be a good day to wash Big Red after work 🛻 and see how much sheet metal is still left on the rocker panels. And get laundry done. The sun this afternoon should keep the batteries topped off and then it’s just a matter of the oil pump bringing the oil up to pressure and being off. 🔋 I’ll give Red a while to warm before leaving, but it shouldn’t take too long with temperatures expected to be well above freezing.

Busing it in today, hopefully catching the earlier express bus in 🚌 to give me a bit of time to walk in the Plaza before catching the earlier shuttle over to the Spaceship Enterprise in suburbia next to old city dump and sewage treatment plant. It’s funny, it hasn’t stunk so much lately, 👃 and with my candle warmers my office is always the best smelling place, but it beats the toilet smell of the air, especially outside of the office. I am sure it will be different come summer. 🌸 I sometimes think they sent me there, as I survived many months working in Madison County, counting the trucks hauling corn, silage and manure up and down US Route 20. 🌽

Enjoying my grapefruit after having a pan of spinach, onion, and other frozen vegatables mixed with eggs and lots of turmeric. 🥚Yes, I had eggs for breakfast this morning, I must be rolling in the big bucks as Mr. Director. I do like my turmeric, and eggs for a while were a relatively healthy source of protein, though with a lot of saturated fat. Maybe it’s good to be cutting back to two eggs and having them more occasionally, due to the high price. 🧅 Usually when I’m not making eggs, it’s pancakes or johnnycakes, which include usually an egg both for the protein and because they hold together with an egg in the batter. 🥞

I am now seeing a ton of ads for campgrounds and RVs. 🏕️ Another thing the confused algorithms are getting wrong about me serving up ads. 🤖 I get it they have to serve some kind of ad and I don’t buy a lot of shit.  📦 I stayed at a campground a few times but I don’t like it if I can avoid it. Think one time in Virginia on the Blue Ridge Parkway got yelled at for burning shit. I’m all about wilderness camping where I can make as much noise as I want and burn whatever with nobody caring. If I wanted to spend time in a city, I would stay home. 🏡

Holy Wokerism! ✝️

So this afternoon I decided to ride out to Five Rivers after going to the grocery store, at first a bit tired and unsure of my plans, so I sat down at the pavilion next door to parking lot with my bike at my side. I’m sitting there, just watching the birds and wildlife, thumbing through my phone, and a with binoculars man starts knocking ice off the building to get my attention I guess — and then comes and starts asking accusingly – are you riding the trails? Nah, too icy. I haven’t ridden any trails since I rode the bike trail to work on Tuesday when it very icy. The man huffs back at me and says NO BIKES ALLOWED HERE and huffs off.

Now this is the kind of wokerism that people find so despicable. 😠 I mean I rode there as I wanted some time of tranquility, and it’s a public park. There is a ton of snow and ice the ground, I didn’t tie my bike up to the bike rack as I soon got as there was a snow bank pushed up against the bike rack, and I had just got there, and was tired. 🚴 Nobody likes an asshole, especially a granola-eating bird watcher. I am sure he came here with his electric-powered SUV that runs on fracked natural gas, and will be heading home after his bird watching to his 5,000 square suburban house heated to 75 degrees with the latest in fracked natural gas-powered heat pumps. 🚙 Sometimes you just got to say nothing, but greenies with their condemnation of all those less then them are just so despicable. 💚 It was a nice walk at Five Rivers, saw lots of deer, birds, and wildlife in the preserve. Truth is unlike the greenie, I haven’t powered up Big Red since President Days, I take my bike or bus to work and keep my heat 50 degrees. And it won’t be that long before I own my own land, and I’ll have the off-grid cabin, and be producing a lot of my own calories. While the idiot will be feeling so good about washing out their plastic bottles of organic kale enhanced with pure cane sugar on way to landfill 300-miles away via a short detour the landfill. ♻ I did tighten up the solar panel connection on Red, ☀ and with all the sun we had, particularly on Saturday, the accessory batteries should be topped off and hopefully some is now going into the starting battery. 🔋 We will see when I fire up Red tomorrow after work do the laundry and get supplies including refilling propane for camping. A greenie didn’t ruin my experience though at Five Rivers, it was quite tranquil over getting over being yelled by the greenie.

Social media keeps serving me all these ads about depression and mental health. 😭 Probably the AI was confused by me posting a dairy meme on Facebook showing a farmer catching the milk from a cow letting down before being milked into a cup of coffee. ☕ I’m not depressed, I’m just lazy, trying to keep out of cold and save money. I googled my symptoms, I’m nutty as shit but not depressed. 😝 I do have hope for the future, someday I will own a four wheeler, burn barrel, goats, and a black rifle to ventilate it well so the papers plates and plastic wrappers burn down to nothing while I eat pork and chicken I butchered with my own hands. 🐔 Fuck the landfill industry and big coal power plants. I can almost smell the burnt plastic and hog shit already! Truth is I’m conserving today for a better tomorrow — haven’t taken any big trips lately because the weather sucks, and I’m trying to save money both for the summer and a better future. ⛽ Why spend all your money burning up gas and warming the climate, 🌍 when there are places you can ride your bike to locally? Like tearing up nature preserves on your mountain bike in a foot of snow – when I can legally fall and crash in North Bethlehem or Normans Kill Ravine Mountain Bike Trails. 🚴‍♂️ But I’m scared as shit since last Tuesday’s crash riding on the ice on the way to work, so I’ve been staying on the well salted asphalt for the most part. 🤯

It’s been kind of a lazy weekend, I will admit, working on some various maps, code and reading. 📚 And probably too much watching Youtube and scrolling through social media. It’s not I lack hope, it’s just that it’s winter and it kind of sucks being so cold and icy out. 🧊 The bike trail is shit to ride, with all the pock holes from walkers, 👟 and while I kind of wanted to get out Rensselearville State Forest for a night in the woods 🔥 with a good fire and some grass, the ice scared me. I’ve been so careful around ice since wiping out on the bike path by the Corning Preserve last week. That ice was so slick. It didn’t hurt that much immediately but I was achy later in the day. 👪 No visiting the family this weekend as Dad then Mom have been sick with a cold. Of course, it probably wouldn’t feel so cold out if I didn’t refuse to turn the heat above 50 degrees in my apartment, but yeah. I mean, I’m not a solder in war on poverty, compared to how little many people make these days, though six-figures doesn’t go the way it once did. 💵

I rode down to Hannaford and got milk, and a few bags of frozen vegetables. 🌽 🥦 Enough to hold me over until I go to the laundromat, get propane, wash my truck and stock up at Walmart tomorrow night after work. 🛍 Eleven bucks. I was always getting my milk at Stewart’s 🐮 but I’ve found the grocery store milk is just as good and a fair bit cheaper even with the milk card. Stewart’s milk comes from the Saratoga plant, while most of grocery store milk is made over in East Greenbush, so regardless it’s mostly local. I do wish you could get milk in deposit glass though as while sometimes I recycle the plastic bottles when I have a lot of them, ♻ plastic recycling is pretty much fake, even the DEC doesn’t seem to build as much using that recycled plastic deck board as much nowadays probably due to issues with UV degregation of boards in harsh rural environments. 🌍 But at least there is much more of a market for No. 2 plastics, for at least one product, locally made, unlike glass which for the most part if it gets recovered through single-stream recycling seems to end up being used for aggregate for landfill roads and similar projects. 🚚

One of the things I’ve been working on is learning the ins and outs of XML2 library 💻 and parsing KML files to style them for making maps. The plotKML library I used to use for exporting KML files out RStudio stopped working when rgdal was retired a few years back now. So I can export them using SF but the issue is that SF doesn’t style KML files so I have to read them using XML2, and make appropriate adjustments. It’s good to be handy with XML manipulation, as that’s yet another form of data that is common, something that I see sometimes for work and also for other purposes. Being able to effectively read and manipulate all formats of data is important. ⚙

Tomorrow is the work week. ☕ I didn’t do any coffee today, as I’m trying to dramatically cut back on caffeine as for a while I was really abusing it. I mean those caffeine pills are fun while getting high up in wilderness, but I shouldn’t be consuming them plus several cups of coffee at home, then several more at work, trying to be super energetic. 😵‍💫 It’s rather bad for my heart, especially having to elderly parents now with heart issues. 🫀 Of course, they eat all that processed crap that I will never buy and bring home since I’ve gotten concerned about eating well in my 40s. But a bigger issue is it really screwing with my sleep. 🛌 Taking sleeping pills before bed also isn’t a great idea if I don’t want to start my morning in a complete haze. 😕 Busing it in tomorrow, just because I’m bringing my laptop in and I want the bike trail to melt down more, but I’ll probably ride in on Tuesday and Wednesday, though Thursday looks like rain and who knows about Friday. Hopefully if the bike trail isn’t complete mess, I can ride both ways, as there is definitely enough light in the evening to safely make it home before it’s pitch black out. And only one more weekend left before we get more light in evening with the time change. 🏮 If I get propane, then I’ll be ready to get up to woods, once the weather improves. 😃