Good morning! Happy Tuesday. Two weeks to December 🎄. Cloudy and 30 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☁️ There is a south-southwest breeze at 5 mph. 🍃. The skies will clear around 5 pm.

This is the middle of November 🦃 so cool and cloudy weather is to be expected. 🌥 Out for my morning walk 🚶🏻, and it’s cool and gray but generally pleasant for the second half of November. A week from today will be the Tuesday before Thanksgiving 🦃. Listening to Simon and Garfunkel’s Cloudy.

Not AN ILLEGAL! At least when it comes to my truck. I got my new registration sticker on my truck 📜 and my truck passed inspection but I have to go back to the shop for the sticker later in the week. Annoying that they haven’t gotten the stickers after the November 3rd rush but they said it would take two minutes to get the inspection finished later in the week but everything looked good. At any rate, it buys me time ⌚. At some point I’ll have to make a decision about the tires and probably the worn struts and the wheel bearing that I think is going although it might just be the wear noise of the tires.

Been doing a lot of research on internet options for January should the pandemic continue along for remote work 💻 from home. I am thinking if I can reduce my data service on my phone 📱 I can cover at least some of the cost. I just don’t think it’s practical to work in my truck from the library when it’s negative 20 out and I don’t want to screw up my good job because I’m so damn stubborn about technology. 🙄My phone plan expires in December, so I could cut down the data plan to save money there. I’ll probably have to reduce my monthly savings goals but I don’t want to kill the golden cow 🐮. At any rate, I would get the most basic and cheapest plan if I had to get it.

Plus it would be a heck of a lot easier than using the USB cable 🔌 to transfer files 📂 between my phone 📲 and the laptop 💻 whenever I need a file between the two. It works but it’s kind of cumbersome to say the least. Plus then I could build smart 🧠 devices using microprocessors to pull data from the internet. On the other hand, I would miss my walks to the library and the park 🏞 to get podcasts and other files.

I am working on a new chart 📊 uploader for the blog that will allow me to directly upload CSV files saved from Open Office or Microsoft Excel and use them as graphs on the blog. That means I can create new graphs directly from my phone or any other computer 🖥 I may be on.

Those Kinzua and Allegheny Reservoir aerial photos 🗺 I’ve been going through are quite interesting, I am going to do some more work on them and eventually post some historical comparisons. 📚 Neat stuff.

Today will have a chance of rain and snow before 10am, then a chance of rain between 10am and 5pm, then a slight chance of rain and snow after 5pm. Mostly cloudy 🌧, with a high of 42 degrees at 2pm. Five degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around November 29th. Southwest wind 5 to 10 mph becoming northwest in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Little or no snow accumulation expected. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 38 degrees. The record high of 73 was set in 1928. 2.8 inches of snow fell back in 1992.❄

Today I decided to do the virtual meeting route from the library 💻 rather than go downtown in part because I feel a bit congested in my nose. 👃🏻 I’m sure it’s just allergies now that windows are closed but everybody else will believe it’s the Corona 👾 even though I haven’t been drinking 🍻 at all lately and have been mostly anti-social. 🗣️

Solar noon 🌞 is at 11:41 am with sun having an altitude of 28.3° from the due south horizon (-42.6° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 11.2 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:49 pm with the sun in the west-southwest (237°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (245°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:32 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 13 seconds with dusk around 5:01 pm, which is 50 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Crescent 🌒 Moon in the southwest (218°) at an altitude of 13° from the horizon, 231,656 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:37 pm. At sunset, look for rain 🌧 and temperatures around 39 degrees. There will be a west-northwest breeze at 10 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 40 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 2 minutes and 4 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be partly cloudy 🌤, with a low of 23 degrees at 5am. Eight degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around December 10th. Northwest wind 8 to 10 mph. In 2019, we had cloudy skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 32 degrees. The record low of 10 occurred back in 1972.

Tomorrow is going to be bitterly cold ❄. I am not prepared for winter ☃️ but I have to admit that for the morning walk and evening walk 🧣I wore my heavy Carhartt. I will have to leave the heat turned up tonight before bed so things don’t get too cold by mid night.

A picture perfect weekend on tap. 😎 Saturday, partly sunny, with a high near 53. Sunday, partly sunny, with a high near 55. Typical average high for the weekend is 46 degrees.

This weekend I will probably stay in town, 🏡 just because next weekend after Thanksgiving I might do a three day Buy Nothing Weekend trip to the Adirondacks. Sure I could probably work remotely from the library on that following in Speculator but the sun sets early this time of year. And I don’t want to drive home from the Adirondacks during the rut in the darkness.

As previously noted, there are 2 weeks until December 🎄 when the sun will be setting at 4:23 pm with dusk at 4:54 pm. On that day in 2019, we had snow and temperatures between 28 and 17 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 41 degrees. We hit a record high of 67 back in 1934.

Good afternoon! Happy Sunday. Two weeks to First Sunday of Advent ✝️. Christmas is always special, especially when it’s more of a religious holiday or celebration of the winter solstice then consumerism. Time goes by quickly, 40 days or so until the New Year.

Gray, cloudy and 33 degrees in Delmar. ☁ Calm wind. Things are melting quickly with only 2 inches of snow left on the ground. ☃ ️

Today will have a slight chance of snow before 2pm, then a chance of rain and snow between 2pm and 4pm, then a chance of snow after 4pm. Cloudy 🌧, with a high of 36 degrees at 3pm. 11 degrees below normal, which is similiar to a typical day around December 14th. Kind of a cold mid November day. Light and variable wind. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. A year ago, we had cloudy skies. The high last year was 46 degrees. The record high of 71 was set in 1928. 9 inches of snow fell back in 1980.❄

The sun will set at 4:29 pm with dusk around 5:00 pm, which is 48 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for snow showers around 🌨 with temperatures around 34 degrees. There will be a calm wind. Today will have 9 hours and 38 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 2 minutes and 2 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be light snow likely, mainly before midnight. Cloudy 🌨, with a low of 30 degrees at 2am. One degree below normal, which is similiar to a typical night around November 21st. South wind 3 to 6 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New snow accumulation of 1 to 2 inches possible. In 2017, we had light rain in the evening, remaining overcast into the early morning. It got down to 33 degrees. The record low of 12 occurred back in 1972.

This afternoon I plan to upload a bunch of new maps and GIS content. 🌐 I often struggle to find new areas to map, especially when I’ve done so much of New York and not knowing other states as well and requiring separate data sets makes it a pain to do them.

I also need to find new data to chart, which isn’t that difficult but it requires me to sit down somewhere I have internet and get it done. Maybe I should plan sometime this week to do that down at the library.

I promise not to complain so much on my blog this week, but winters are so harsh and cold and the heat doesn’t work well in my apartment.😯 Never has. I’m hoping at some point it will warm up and be sunny, 😎 I think that would improve my mood enormously. I’m just cranky because winter came early, its been a tough few weeks at work and the holiday season doesn’t do much for me. And I’m just pissed that I blew off camping last weekend before the heavy snow came. Spring will return eventually. I should look at it this way, I’m saving a lot of miles on my truck and investing in my future.

I’ve decided with all the USB stuff that I have at this point, I really need a powered USB hub for at home do I’m not overwhelming my laptop’s USB port. 🔌 I want one with switches so I can disable things like my keyboard when my laptop is off to save power. I’m thinking that I can also use it to power my VMS display at home.

Still also looking at SSD hard drives for my laptop💾 to speed it up enormously and give me more room with all the videos I do. So far the Black Friday sales on Buy Nothing day are only like $140 which is only ten dollars less than the ordinary retail price. That said I do want to go to the SSD drive before the end of the year so I have more space actually twice as much as I’m putting the M2 drive in that slot while retaining my existing drive. It should make map making much quicker as will it help loading any large file.

I also need some more Lolin32 development boards for projects and a 12 volt power supply for the reading and wake up light I’m building over my bed using warm white LED tape that I got sent to me a few weeks ago from China. Like my other lights it will be Arduino controlled and have a timer to wake me up on dark weekday mornings. I think I will be in the poor house by the time I do all that especially if I decide to buy that big certificate of deposit at the end of the month. More shivering at home and doing things for free like walking places I guess. I have plenty of food for now and gas in my truck so I can avoid spending there, I expect the state inspection to go well later in the month, no repairs needed. After I filled the tires up in the truck three noisys stopped.

My neices Christmas gift is almost finished once I finish soldering in the ultraviolet black light LEDs, finish the code, and get some glow in the dark spray paint for some of the glass beads. ✨The heavy glass star coffee table decoration I’m building turns various colors, blinks and flashes, and uses black light to make anything florescent nearby glow aggressively.

As previously noted, there are 2 weeks until First Sunday of Advent ✝️ when the sun will be setting at 4:22 pm with dusk at 4:54 pm. On that day in 2017, we had mostly cloudy skies and temperatures between 41 and 26 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 41 degrees. We hit a record high of 66 back in 1998.