Good afternoon! Partly sunny and 37 degrees in the City of Albany, taking the bus home. There is a northwest breeze at 8 mph. We closed down the office a bit early because a lot of people travel for the holidays. 

The sun will set at 4:25 pm with dusk around 4:56 pm, which is 36 seconds earlier than yesterday. At sunset, look for partly clear conditions and 34 degrees. There will be a northwest breeze at 6 mph.

Tonight will have a chance of snow, mainly after 4am. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 28 degrees at 3am. Two degrees below normal. Northwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Total nighttime snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. One year ago, partly cloudy with a low around 20. The record low of 7 occurred back in 2000.

Waning Crescent Moon tonight with 32% illuminated. The moon will rise around 1:06 am. The New Moon is on Tuesday night with chance of showers expected. The Full “Cold” Moon is in 3 weeks.

Thanksgiving Day will have snow likely before 11am, then rain and snow likely between 11am and 1pm, then rain likely after 1pm. Cloudy, with a high of 37 degrees at 1pm. Seven degrees below normal. Calm wind becoming southeast around 5 mph in the morning. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New snow accumulation of less than one inch possible. Last year, partly sunny with a high around 44. The record high of 70 was set in 2014. There was 8.8 inches of snow back in 1898.

Right now, a split verdict on the weekend. Saturday, snow showers likely, possibly mixed with rain before 7am, then a chance of rain showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 44. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. Sunday, partly sunny, with a high near 42.Typical average high for the weekend is 44 degrees.

In four weeks on December 21 the sun will be setting at 4:25 pm, which is the same time as today. The average high is 34 degrees, and the record for that date is 59 degrees was set back in 1957.

I decided on the HP laptop. It really does everything I need or want a laptop to do. Studying the specs this afternoon I discovered that it has a separate unused SSD drive slot that is relatively easy to access, so when SSD prices come down in a year or two, I’ll install an SSD drive for my root and /usr partitions. Probably keep /home and Windows 10 on the conventional drive.  That should speed things up further although I expect this new machine to be quite powerful compared to my old laptop, yet well within my budget. I’m just so impressed by the YouTube videos of how fast computers are at booting and loading apps using SSD drives. 

Tomorrow I will purchase the laptop and pick it up on Friday. Then I will get the latest version version of Ubuntu Linux, put it on a mountable USB drive and install it on a partition. From there I have to copy over my files, install the QGIS and other GIS software, and the LAMP stack that I use for development of my blogs code. Also the OpenShot Video editor and maybe OpenOffice if it’s not automatically installed. It will be great to have a fully working laptop with all my usual software installed. 

Before Thanksgiving Dinner, I might go for a walk at Five Rivers Environmental Education Center. This all depends on how much rain we get in the morning. Friday I will work on getting the laptop set up. Saturday also looks cold and wet.  Sunday, I’m thinking about going snowshoeing or maybe cross country skiing at North-South Lake Campground, and checking out the new overlook and Kaaterskill Rail Trail. The DEC email on that for me thinking about heading up there.