Good morning! Happy Tuesday. Three weeks to Pink Moon 🌕 . Albany got rid of their Pinkster festival 🌺 some years back to focus on a bigger tulip festival. 🌷 Sunny and 38 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌞 There is a northwest breeze at 7 mph. 🍃.
Up early this morning, 🌅 as I have to drop my truck off for the oil change this morning. 🛢 I could do it myself, but it’s so much easier to have it dropped off at my mechanic 🔧 and let him deal with getting the rusty salt-encrusted filter off and draining and changing the oil. Small engines aren’t so bad, but it can be a bitch to get that filter off sometime, and I can never find 5W-30 synthetic at the store. Then I should be good until November or 7,000 miles when my inspection is due — although I might do another oil change before I go to West Virignia in the fall, especially if it’s in the shop for other repairs at the same time. Not like the bad ol’ days when you did oil changes every 3,000 miles. I’ll drop it off, walk home, and pick it up at lunch time. 🚶♀️ That way I get my morning walk in to on this most beautiful of spring days.
Today will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 64 degrees at 4pm. 10 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around April 28th. Northwest wind 7 to 10 mph. 🚩 Another red flag day with the wind, the warmth and the dry grass. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 62 degrees. The record high of 82 was set in 1921. 17.3 inches of snow fell back in 1982.❄
At lunch time, I will probably head down to the store 🏬 and pick up some groceries. I need more frozen fruit 🍓 as I am pretty addicted to that and the Maine frozen Wild Blueberries that they have at Hannaford are like crack, and maybe some eggs and other things. I probably should get the groceries I need for the week, as I don’t have any other reason to drive anywhere this week, although maybe I will go somewhere on Saturday for a hike. I’m thinking Rennselear County but I could decide to just walk somewhere on Saturday and then Sunday maybe do Partridge Run or Rennselearville State Forest. Depends on the forecast.
Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:58 pm with sun having an altitude of 54° from the due south horizon (-16.9° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 4.4 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 6:50 pm with the sun in the west (274°). 📸
The sunset is in the west (280°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 7:27 pm after setting for 2 minutes and 56 seconds with dusk around 7:55 pm, which is one minute and 8 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 8:30 pm. At sunset, look for mostly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 59 degrees. There will be a northwest breeze at 7 mph. Today will have 12 hours and 59 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 50 seconds over yesterday. it sounds like a pleasant evening, I might go down to park. 🏞 I should get more books at the library. I’ll have to look and reserve some, especially as when I head up to wilderness I like to have books to read.
Tonight will be mostly clear 🌃, with a low of 38 degrees at 6am. Four degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 16th. Northwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening. Almost warm enough to leave the windows open, for good sleeping. In 2020, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 42 degrees. The record low of 13 occurred back in 1982.
Not a particularly nice weekend on tap. 😞 Saturday, mostly cloudy, with a high near 63. Maximum dew point of 46 at 11am. Sunday, a chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 60. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Typical average high for the weekend is 56 degrees. No camping plans for this weekend, 🏕 as the weather doesn’t look great, and I’m worried about it being so dry with a rip-roaring fire in the woods. 🔥 The snow is gone even up in the Adirondacks. I am hoping this weekend into next week we will get some rain, 🌧 and then I can head up north for an extended weekend come Thursday of next week. By then the state budget should be done and things will be quiet.
As previously noted, there are 3 weeks until Pink Moon 🌕 when the sun will be setting at 7:51 pm with dusk at 8:21 pm. On that day in 2020, we had rain showers, cold, cloudy and temperatures between 46 and 37 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 63 degrees. We hit a record high of 91 back in 1962.
Who knows how that monster happened to grow that way? It’s parents are frightened, it wishes it would go away. But the taxes keep coming, and they have to be spent on big bulldozers and tanks of cement. Stand by me, and protect that tree from the freeway misery. Take it Malvina! 
Some of those historical aerial photos I’ve been posting lately are pretty neat. I wish more were georeferenced, and served as WMS or tiles — I guess I could upload more to MapWarper. Six weeks to Pink Moon 🌕 . Partly sunny and 16 degrees in Delmar, NY. Calm wind. Things will start to thaw out at around noontime. 🌡️
I mean it could be snowing out, but I am not ready for 16 degrees in mid-March. I didn’t have the heat turned up, so it took a while for the heat to kick on last night, so it was cold inside during the middle of the night. Especially after we had a day that hit 70 last week. Yeah, it’s been cold the past few days and I’m ready for spring. I am definitely going out for my morning walk though in a little a bit — there is no wind and it’s sunny enough that I expect the weather to be nice for walking. 
I didn’t get to go for my evening walk, because a project came in a seven o’clock and I ended up working until nine, mostly because it was something I hadn’t done in years, I was tired, kept making mistakes and had to back and fix my work. 
At least working from home, I didn’t have to catch the bus half asleep then stumble back to my bedroom. 
about moving out west and getting out of the world of the east with all it’s problems. I really hate living in the city, in the east where everything is so restricted and regulated. I know there are vast places out there, even as close as parts of Western NY and Pennsylvania, and even the Midwest where people don’t spend their lives trying to figure out creative workarounds to problems created or ignored by their government. If you’ve lived in Upstate NY for any time, you know that much of life is about finding workarounds and creative solutions to everyday problems that shouldn’t exist. 
I am just taken aback by how vast a place like Alaska, or even much of the west really is. Everything just seems so close together, masses of people so hutled together in a little space with homestead and home next to each other due to a lack of space. 
I don’t believe the state religion practiced by many that there is no place in world as wonderful as New York, that our state has everything, as that’s a lie, despite what the state uncles want you believe. In a few more years.
Other days were cloudier and colder. 
The record high of 82 was set in 1990. 13.4 inches of snow fell back in 1956.❄ 
that I posted last night for bulk encoding with the NYS Geocoder. The code I wrote is super simple and works okay for a few addresses but the geocodeAddresses endpoint can take up to 1,000 addresses per call and is much faster then calling the individual endpoint, piece by piece. Also think I want to port it to Python, as this should be simpler, and I need more practice coding in Python. 
I know Python is the language of the future, and I’m much too reliant on PHP which I’ve been using on and off for 20 years, except for the time I was using Perl for everything including CGI. 
Python has those wonderful Qt bindings and is great for scripting in QGIS and writing other graphical programs. uncles want you believe. 
with a Tulip Festival 
in recent years, moving away that part of history, or more likely consolidating the days. On that day in 2020, we had rain showers with cold and cloudy weather 46 and 37 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 63 degrees. We hit a record high of 91 back in 1962.
Not 40 yet. No need to rush that, as there is so much more to do. It’s a cold one. ❄ And not the kind you crack open unless your ice fishing on plywood today, because the ice is still pretty shallow on most lakes. Four weeks to Snow Moon 🌕 . Last night’s Wolf Moon was pretty nice, at least looking out my window at the cold landscape outside. Mostly sunny and 7 degrees in Delmar, NY. There is a northwest breeze at 7 mph. 🍃. The current wind chill is -14. There are 3 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Things will start to thaw out at Thursday around 1 pm. 🌡️
come July 1st.
Walmart is better for bulk purchases though with more food and less plastic packaging. 
as this morning is quite still but every once and a while a big gust of wind pops up 
and makes me think twice about my plans. I think I will make a decision by 9 AM. I took a shower yesterday, 
so with some clean underwear and socks 
I should be ready to go. Just need to get the binoculars out of the truck and maybe pack a day sack with some water. Will definitely want gloves and a hat today though. I could drive out there, but I think I’d rather walk. I’ll probably talk about it 
and decide to stay home as it’s cold. 
including loosing my balance and falling flat on my face and feeling super itchy and congested, was great after I took a shower, got cleaned up and the antihistamines 
got up to speed. I think that bright sunny morning and the cold got my mood up a lot and made me feel a lot better. 
and ran updates on the laptop 
a piece of mass-produced widely used software. While I don’t like to drink out of the trough that everybody else has been defecating in, 
WordPress has been a pretty stable piece of software with a large API that makes it’s easy to develop a custom front-end for. It’s also OpenSource, 
which is the only kind of software use. Years ago I wrote my entire blog in PHP, then Perl then back to PHP, but it got to the point I didn’t like having to update and administer everything myself, and having access to the big API is nice. And it’s probably faster, more secure and better code base then anything I could write without a formal education in programming. Kind a big switch to move all the shortcodes over to blocks, but it’s good to learn the current API.
