Good afternoon! What day is it? Hump Day, of course. Next Wednesday is Halloween 🎃👻. Cloudy, damp with maybe a few drops of light drizzle and 46 degrees in North Syracuse. ☁ There is a northwest breeze at 8 mph. 🍃. It looks like we won’t have to worry about any ice for a while, as temperatures are not expected to drop below freezing until Friday around 4 am. ☃️

Not a real nice day, but so it seems like we’ve had a lot of unsettled gray, cool days lately. ☁ Just damp and not real nice. i guess that’s not real uncommon in late October, although I would hope for at least a few nice days. 🌥 Maybe later in the week? Then light snow this weekend? 🌨 Fortunately though, the snow seems to be trending further east that this point. I hope we have better weather come November for camping. The 8-14 day outlook issued yesterday, points to warmer but wetter weather. Probably not going to be dealing with snow, but some sun would be nice.

This afternoon will have a chance of showers. Cloudy and damp, with us now reaching the high of 48 degrees. ☁Nine degrees below normal. Northwest wind 8 to 11 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. A year ago, we had cloudy skies with some clearing in the afternoon. It was sticky. The high last year was 75 degrees. The record high of 75 was set in 2017. There was a dusting of snow in 1962.❄

The sun will set at 6:06 pm with dusk around 6:36 pm, which is one minute and 30 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for rain 🌧 and 45 degrees. There will be a west-northwest breeze at 10 mph. Today will have 10 hours and 36 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 2 minutes and 44 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a chance of rain showers before 1am, then a chance of rain and snow showers. Cloudy ☔ , with a low of 33 degrees at 6am. Four degrees below normal. Northwest wind around 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Little or no snow accumulation expected. In 2017, we had mostly cloudy skies. It was somewhat humid. It got down to 53 degrees. The record low of 19 occurred back in 1981.

Today in 1977, pursuant to National Holiday Law, Veterans Day is observed on the fourth Monday in October for the seventh and last time. 🇺🇸 The holiday is once again observed on Armistice Day, November 11 beginning the following year. The change was prompted by World War I Veterans and anti-war groups who thought it was more meaningful to celebrate the holiday during the commemoration of Armistice Day, which was supposed to represent the end of all war.

There are 13 days, 8 hours and 57 minutes until the poll close on Election Day in New York. 🗳 Today my feeling is I’m just tired. I kind of miss home, and most of all the miss the wilderness. It will be nice to get back into the Albany routine, catching the bus to work every day, enjoying the relaxing bus ride in while I work on my daily blog post. 🚌 I really hate driving to work, and dealing with the traffic, especially now that the temperature has cooled down and my cruise control doesn’t work until the engine is warmed up (this has been an issue in recent years). I also miss my regular office and the nice view from my office at work. ⛰

So it won’t be that long until my big November trip. I am really looking forward to it. 😃 I just hope it’s not as bitterly cold as it’s been the past few days in Syracuse with the gray skies. That said between the driving around and the UV light that’s getting through the clouds, the accessory battery in the truck remains really healthy, 🔋almost always most of the day at a maintenance voltage of 13.1 volts or higher. Many days it has been at float by mid-morning. This is good because, last cycle traveling for work, I kind of trashed the battery, although I also didn’t have the low-voltage disconnect hooked up back then to protect the battery.

Still thinking about heading up to check out the Chimney Bluffs State Park in November, 🌊although not until to my vacation. I just don’t think I will be a good nice day to do it before then. On vacation, I would do it the same day as I visit Montezuma, 🐦 so it would be a pretty busy day, as I have to be to the Finger Lakes National Forest probably by 4 PM to start getting set up before dusk concludes, as I don’t want to drive after dark. I would probably get up before dawn camping at Stony Pond State Forest, to make sure I have the time to do both. Montezuma is basically just 30 miles south of Chimney Bluffs. It’ will be fun to see more of rural Wayne county. 🚜 Each night for camping, I am planning to spend at least two nights, so there is less taking down and setting up, especially with the solar panel to help keep things charged up, especially if I have a reasonable amount of sun. This will give me more time to explore the land, get to know it better and feel less rushed between sunrise and sunset.

I ordered a few more electronic project components from AliExpress. I got some 5mm (large) Ultra Violet and Warm White LEDs, and a $8 basic Bluetooth to FM transmitter to use in the truck. 📡While my truck has bluetooth for the phone,🔷 it does not have it for the radio, and I would like to be able to listen to podcasts and maybe music through my phone on the radio. Sure I could use a headphone wire, but that’s a pain to hook up every time and having buttons to control my phone without touching it is a good thing. I normally use my USB stick drive for playing music in the truck, but it’s not up-to-date or has all the podcasts I like to listen on long trips, especially boring ones on the expressway.

The LEDs are going to be used for various projects. This winter I want to build some signs with LEDs. 💡Last year, I tried doing it with foam board without much luck — the results just sucked. I am going to invest in a quality corded drill and use drilled press board to make the signs and fixatures. It would be fund to have an animated sign for camp and other projects. The UV LEDs would be fun to use for various projects — UV-A light on anything florescent glows brightly and shows things you might not otherwise see glowing under normal light. It’s 390-400 NM LEDs so they aren’t real harmful to skin or eyes, although you wouldn’t want to stare into them or hold your hands under them for many hours at end.

As previously noted, next Wednesday is Halloween 🎃👻 when the sun will be setting at 5:57 pm with dusk at 6:26 pm. On that day in 2017, we had mostly cloudy skies and temperatures between 54 and 40 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 54 degrees. We hit a record high of 73 back in 1946.