Good evening! Partly cloudy and 61 degrees in Dormansville, NY. ⛅ There is a west-northwest breeze at 9 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 56 degrees. Not a terrible evening but the temperature is dropping quickly after a pretty warm day, especially mid-day. It didn’t get up to 80 degrees in my apartment today, but it did play around 79.5 degrees or so. Close enough, I guess. It wasn’t a bad weekend for sticking in town, and I got done the things that I needed to get done this weekend. Tonight, I’m staying over at the parents house with my truck camper. It’s a bit chilly of an evening, but not that bad.

It was kind of a busy weekend for me with all my projects, so I didn’t get out and do much big hikes,🚶in part because every time I wanted to go out it looked like the sky could open up any minute.⛈ I kind of got wet last night doing my evening walk, but it was nice earlier in the day on Saturday hiking in the Pine Bush, despite all of the stress of figuring out the battery thing and trying to return the hammock. 🌲 Those fields of lupine where beautiful! I accomplished most of my goals for the weekend. A few work things too, but  they weren’t a big hassle and are just part of doing business this time of year.

Tonight will be partly cloudy 🌤, with a low of 48 degrees at 5am. Five degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around May 20th. Northwest wind 5 to 9 mph becoming calm after midnight. In 2018, we had partly cloudy skies in the evening, which became cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 58 degrees. The record low of 36 occurred back in 1986.

Tonight will have a New Moon.🌑 The Strawberry Moon 🌝 is in 2 weeks. The sun will rise at 5:20 am with the first light at 4:46 am, which is 26 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 8 hours and 52 minutes of darkness, a decrease of one minute and 9 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will have isolated showers after 2pm. Mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 61 degrees at 1pm. 14 degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around April 22nd. West wind 8 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 76 degrees. The record high of 97 was set in 1925.

Today I added EEPROM functions to my display in my bedroom, adding the ability to record the daily high temperature and low temperature, along with maximum dew point and all time high and low. I also finished soldering on the waterproof temperature probe which I hooked up outside my bedroom 🌡– and downloaded the libraries that I will need to make it work.⚙ I’m hoping to find some time to write code to add those functions to my display. I also ordered a few barometric pressure sensors from China (42 cents a piece!) as it would be nice to have that on my display in my bedroom — I”d like to be warned when a storm is approaching and the pressure is dropping, and likewise when fair conditions are expected. Sure I could get that information from the Internet and feed it into the display, except I choose not to have Internet at home except for my smartphone. Could I write an Android app to beam that up to my display — probably — but I don’t feel like digging that deep into the API.💻 It’s kind of a crude display, but I find it entertaining to have all kinds of facts and silly quotes and the alike beaming across my room to my bed.

I didn’t have a lot of new and exciting content for the blog, although I did post a bunch of essays I’ve been working on over time, some of them a bit more political, but that’s fine. Tonight I tried to catch up, with a bunch of new content. I like to share my thoughts, and if they aren’t for you, that’s fine, feel free to skip on past them for other content or filter out just the maps and photos. I installed that second battery in my truck, which should make for much better results when doing extended camping trips, especially in shaded campsites. I probably should re-work or make some more maps up, but I’m kind of running out of ideas for maps for New York and I don’t really want to gather all the data necessary to make maps up of other states, especially places I don’t know well.🗺

I am very happy with how things are preforming with the second accessory battery in the truck, as I noted earlier. 🔋 While I haven’t really stressed the system yet with a heavy load at camp, it does seem like things are working really well, with stable voltages in the truck cap, and lots of storage so I should be able to go multiple nights, even in cloudy or rainy weather without having to start up the truck. Many times, especially when driving on nice days with the kayak off the roof of my truck, I think I’ll be able to leave the accessory power for the truck cap, CB radio, phone, and dashcam entirely disconnected from the alternator — solar does everything. That will keep the batteries from being overcharged or unbalanced and minimize the load on the alternator. I’ve notice no odors or issues from the battery being located in my sleeping unit.

Next weekend looks like it might be perfect weather-wise. 😎 Next Saturday, sunny, with a high near 76. Maximum dew point of 52 at 7pm. Next Sunday, partly sunny, with a high near 75. Maximum dew point of 56 at 5pm. Typical average high for the weekend is 76 degrees. I’m not planning to head out of town next weekend but I could change my mind. I’m thinking in participating in one of the trail day events, and maybe the Gas Up on Sunday. I could go out camping but I think I’d rather wait. I’ll have o think about it some more, but I expect a busy week this week, so I don’t want to be running around to head out of town this weekend. Plus, I honestly don’t trust we will have real nice weather by next weekend, as the forecast will certainly shift downward, as so often happens with the weekend forecasts lately. I guess I could head out of town next weekend, but I just don’t see it likely, as I kind of want to be home early on Sunday as Monday is my oil change/tire rotation day (NOT a SESSION DAY!).

I’ll have to research some hammocks to replace the ripped one. I’m very disappointed about the quality of the LL Bean one I bought but I’ve seen a lot of affordable options on the Internet — affordable for me being sub-$50. If you pay premium, you’d hope they stand behind their products. But corporate profits are more important now. I probably would like to have to relax and maybe camp in by the next time I head out of town in two weeks or so.💤 The one I had was a disaster ever since I bought it, so I’m going to look at alternatives. I have the straps and the carbineners, so I just need the hammock itself. And I like the hammocks enough, that even if I have to replace them time to time, I guess it’s worth it. Maybe I’ll be gentler on my next one. Figuring gasing up my truck costs over $60, I can’t complain that much about other ordinary camping expenses.

The stuff I’ve bought from LL Bean lately has been all crap lately,💩 so I’m thinking I’ll probably just cancel my credit card with them, and take full advantage of the bank rewards card I currently use with the cash back. I’ve earned like $200 in statement credits over the past year with that card — just buying the normal things I buy like gas, food and supplies, and I don’t spend a lot of money.💳 It’s not a lot of money, but it’s still nice to gather a few pennies for things I was going to buy at rate. I don’t go out of the way to get rewards, I just buy the ordinary stuff I need to live. It’s nice it’s just points that I can convert to statement credit on my card — and it’s real money used to pay my purchases. Not a lot, but every buck helps.

In four weeks on June 30 the sun will be setting at 8:37 pm,🌄 which is 9 minutes and 36 seconds later then tonight. In 2018 on that day, we had hot, humid weather with mostly sunny skies and temperatures between 94 and 64 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 81 and 60 degrees. The record high of 98 degrees was set back in 1964.

Looking ahead, Fathers Day 👨 is in 2 weeks, National Nude Day 👱 is in 6 weeks (skinny dipping is fun), Sunset Before 7:30 PM 🌆 is in 13 weeks, Labor Day 👨‍🏭 is in 3 months, Autumn 🍂 is in 16 weeks (yeap, it’s coming) and Average High is 60 🍂 is in 19 weeks.