Good afternoon! Four weeks until the day you vote. Mostly sunny and 81 degrees in North Syracuse. There is a south-southwest breeze at 11 mph 💨. Despite the breeze, it’s actually fairly muggy with the dew point around 68 degrees. We have one of those rare stretches of muggy weather in October, which will stick around Thursday around 7 pm. 😓 But it’s really hard to complain about the warm weather, as after all it’s mid-October but feels more like summer then autumn.

Today will be mostly sunny 🌞 , with a high of 83 degrees at 3pm. That’s the normal high temperature for a hot ol’ July day, like I would spend pool-side in the Finger Lakes, and is 21 degrees above normal for mid-October. Maximum dew point of 68 at 3pm. Hot and muggy weather for mid-October. How unusual! Maybe that’s the future with climate change.  Southwest wind 9 to 11 mph, with gusts as high as 23 mph. A year ago, we had mostly cloudy skies. It was very sticky. The high last year was 76 degrees. The record high of 83 was set in 1949. There was a dusting of snow in 2000.❄

It was definitely a fantastic walk along the Onondaga Lake this morning. 🏞 I got a good hour worth of walking in, which is good because I’ve been getting stiff from sitting all day. The leaves are starting to turn color along the lake,🍂 which made for a pretty hour long walk. Traffic wasn’t too bad, as it often gets really backed up along Vine Street in and out of the village. I took Bear Road rather then West Taft and South Main, which is a lot less congested. Saw some geese fly by, 🐦 and there was people out fishing on the lake. 🎣

While I doubt I would want to eat fish 🐠out of the most polluted lake in New York, the lake has gotten a lot better in recent years, thanks to the dredging of the mercury-laden salt beds from the last of the Chloe-Alakil plants that closed in 1985 under the lake, and improvements to wastewater treatment works in Syracuse. 2/3rds of the lake’s inflow comes from the treatment works, and while the lake regularly drains itself into the Seneca River/Erie Canal, water quality is highly dependent on how well the treatment works operate.

Going to be an absolutely fantastic evening, even if the sun sets really early. The sun will set at 6:31 pm with dusk around 6:59 pm, which is one minute and 42 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for partly clear skies and 80 degrees. The dew point will be 68 degrees. There will be a south-southwest breeze at 8 mph. Today will have 11 hours and 19 minutes of daytime, an decrease of 2 minutes and 52 seconds over yesterday. Too bad I don’t have any place where I can sit out back and have a cold one. Too bad.

Tonight will be partly cloudy ☁, with a low of 65 degrees at 6am. 24 degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 68 at 6pm. South wind around 8 mph. In 2017, we had light rain and mist in the evening, remaining overcast into the early morning. It was somewhat humid. It got down to 58 degrees. The record low of 25 occurred back in 1980.

The past few days, I’ve been looking at getting a power meter to measure the amperage and maybe the wattage flowing in from my solar panel. I have an estimate of the battery voltage and therefore the charge from the voltage meter in my truck cap, 🔋 but without knowing the amperage flowing over the lines, it’s kind of a guess. Often I noticed when the battery is nearly full, I controller can be floating the battery under cloudy/shady conditions. I am assuming the amperage is pretty minimal. It would be interesting to know.

Most of the traditional gauges I’ve seen use a shunt and an external meter, but I’ve lately been looking at the GT Power meter I saw on AliExpress for under $10 🗾 that has the shunt and meter built into one until, measures voltage, amperage, and calculates wattage and other power consumption data. Nice little meter. It looks like it uses 10 or 12 gauge wire, so there may be some power loss from resistance, but from the Youtube videos I’ve seen seen the voltage drop is pretty minimal. Mathematically, 12 guage wire can do something like 20 amps over a 1/2 foot with only 3% voltage drop. This is acceptable as most of the time the power flowing over the wire will be less then 20 amps.

I am thinking I may buy two — put one on from the solar panel controller to where it hooks into the bus bar and one between the bus bar and the battery. 🔌 This way I can see how much power is flowing from the battery and also how much power is coming off the panel. I’m going to think about it more and maybe order it later in the week — as I figure if I order from China it may take a week or longer arrive.

There are 28 days, 7 hours and 13 minutes until the poll close on Election Day in New York. 🗳 Today I filled out my absentee ballot application and sent it back to Albany. I think the board may have sent me one to my home address, but I think they’ll send me one to Syracuse. If not I will get the absentee ballot forwarded to me. Not a big deal, I’m sure I’ll get a ballot one way or another. Most of the local races aren’t exciting or even competitive, but I would like my chance to register my protest vote for Governor by voting for Marc Molinaro on the conservative line. Probably then vote for the rest of the Democratic incumbents the rest of way down the ticket on the working families line, but I could change my mind. I don’t know.

Other than that, it’s been the usual busyness and craziness at work. 👷 Looking forward to my big November trip, once it gets well underway. I’m still very happy with the adjustment of the headlights. Still working on the exact route, but a lot will depend on the weather and how I feel on any particular day. I am still thinking of spending multiple days at one campsite, just because I get tired of doing so much driving, especially with the days being so short — and I like being able to use the solar to charge the battery and save fuel — especially now with gas prices going back up. ⛽

I am starting to run low on hard-disk space again. All those video files chew up a lot of time, especially when I save multi-minute clips from road trips on my dash cam. But finally, M2 solid state hard drives have gotten quite affordable, 💾 under the $200 mark, even for the 1 TB models. That will double my hard drive, make my laptop a lot faster. Two years ago when I bought my laptop I wanted an SSD drive, so it would make GIS work faster 🗺 but it was too expensive back then. I have to figure out how difficult to take apart and upgrade the laptop will be, but I can’t imagine it’s rocket science.

Looking ahead, there are 4 weeks until Election Day 2018 🗳️ when the sun will be setting at 4:49 pm with dusk at 5:19 pm (Standard Time). On that day in 2017, we had rain, mist, cloudy skies and temperatures between 63 and 42 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 52 degrees. We hit a record high of 73 back in 2015.