As we head into the nine o’clock hour, it looks like we at around 59 degrees with rain showers on the way. 51 degrees later with the rain ending and the wind picking up. Going to be a cold November day, especially for going home time. Not to mention downright miserable for those out in the woods.

Standard time is back, you’ll need you headlights for the evening commute. The sun will set at 4:41 pm with dusk around 5:10 pm, which is one minute and 9 seconds earlier than yesterday. At sunset, look for mostly cloudy conditions and 53 degrees. The dew point will be 47 degrees. Breezy, 20 mph breeze from the northwest. Today will have 10 hours and 4 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 2 minutes and 25 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be partly cloudy, with a low of 33 degrees at 6am. Three degrees below normal. North wind 7 to 11 mph. In 2016, we had mostly cloudy skies. It got down to 28 degrees. The record low of 18 occurred back in 1962.

I think with this cold weather, I am soon going to have to put the storm windows back in an occasionally turn on the heat. I knew those days were going to come eventually. I don’t expect to be traveling as much these days so the budget will ultimately balance out. That said, the bus is ridiculously warm but I guess they have to get the temperature cranked up before the mercury falls this afternoon.

Thursday I will take the truck to the off road shop to check the bolts and tighten as necessary. It’s a pain, but I will have BDS parts should they broken — but I think it’s more likely to be just loosing up from the vibration. I should be back in business for the weekend, if all goes well. Hopefully it won’t be expensive. But after that I don’t expect any repairs for a while. I like my big truck, even if it is a bit costly to run. It takes me on many a fun adventure.

I am going to order the special t-bolts I need to mount the aluminum bar to Yakima racks which I will mount the solar panel on the roof on my truck cap. They should arrive by the weekend, so I can pick up the aluminum bar this weekend. Then it’s just a matter of cutting the aluminum bar to length — although I guess I could get two 4′ bars (which are really 47″ or so), rather then and skip the cutting. Four feet might a bit wide though as the tracks are 38″ inches apart, and I don’t want the bars sticking out too far. I am going probably get rubber bushings so the aluminium doesn’t rub against the brass bolts and cause corrosion or excessive wear. Lowes has a lot of choices for aluminum bar, but I bet also my local hardware store does too. I’d rather go to Delmar hardware for the bushings, and maybe I should buy both there. I want to go solar before my November trip.

I hope to start building some projects with my Arduino tonight. I will protype out my LED control project with the small LEDs I have before I invest in an three-color LED string but I’ve been pricing that out. I am not totally sure what kind of sensors I will use, but  the kit I have all kinds of sensors I could use for inputs, including a remote control. I’m thinking maybe use a light sensor to adjust brightness, along with a programmatic thing that would start out with dimming reds in the evening then yellows to blues for waking up in the morning. But I have all winter to figure that out.

Looking ahead, there are 7 weeks until Christmas when the sun will be setting at 4:27 pm with dusk at 4:59 pm. On that day in 2016, we had drizzle, mostly sunny skies and temperatures between 43 and 21 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 33 degrees. We hit a record high of 66 back in 1889.