December 22, 2019 10 PM Update

|

Good evening! Mostly clear and 25 degrees in Delmar, NY. Calm wind.There are 3 inches of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Things will start to thaw out at tomorrow around 8 am. 🌡️

The weekend came and went quickly but at least I got done the major things on my list 📃 and got out and did some skiing 🎿. I was happy that I have the voltage switch wired up and that’s working well. I did reduce the upper turn on voltage to 13.7 volts to ensure that it does dump some power into the starting battery 🔋 even on fairly cloudy days. ☁ Hopefully now I won’t go out and see after the truck has been parked for a week that the starting voltage has dropped to 12.4 or 12.3 volts. If I’m producing more power than I can use, might as well dump it in the starting battery for easier cold weather starts and to prolong the battery life. I’ve not had any problems with starting the truck but when I see the voltage sag on the starting battery I always get concerned.

Tonight will be mostly clear 🌃, with a low of 23 degrees at 10pm. Four degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around December 12th. Maximum wind chill around 21 at 10pm; Light south wind. In 2018, we had light snow in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 31 degrees. The record low of -12 occurred back in 1955.

It’s weird but on a mild night 🌃 like tonight it just feels so much warmer inside. ♨Does it actually read all that much warmer on the thermometer? Not really but it’s just less drafty and cold feeling. I can be comfortable with a lot less clothes on. 👚 Its amazing how much warmer it feels inside when it gets to 35 degrees outside with the south facing roof compared to a 25 degree day with lots of clouds.

Tonight will have a Waning Crescent Moon 🌘 with 4% illuminated. The moon will rise at 4:28 am. The New Moon is on Wednesday night with mostly cloudy skies. The is on Wednesday night. The sun will rise at 7:22 am with the first light at 6:50 am, which is 30 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 14 hours and 57 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 48 degrees at 2pm. 15 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around November 16th. I’ll take mid November weather a few days before Christmas. Light south wind increasing to 6 to 11 mph in the morning. Nice for a change, it should mean the boiler stays off tomorrow. A year ago, we had cloudy skies in the morning, which became light snow by afternoon. The high last year was 35 degrees. The record high of 64 was set in 1990. 8.8 inches of snow fell back in 1947.❄

I’ve installed on both my phone and my laptop red light filters for night time use, 😴 in hopes that it will improve my sleep. While the hope is that less blue light will make for easier sleeping, I noticed that with the rest of my bedroom lights a dim red the monitor is awful bright 🔆 when I watch YouTube at night especially when I ride the bike 🚲.

I ordered more contacts online 👀 but I think my prescription is expired so it will be canceled as it looks like they actually check ☑ the prescriptions more carefully now. But I’m okay with that as I found another large box 🎁 of contacts in my truck and my insurance now covers yearly contact lens exams. It used to be that contact wearers had to pay for every other exam – or order online. That said, I really hate my current eye doctor 😷 but the other places I’ve been too haven’t been much better. I feel like most doctors offices are scams although I do have to say that doxycycline I got for Lyme seemed to mostly make those problems go away. If my prescription is denied, I’ll have to make an appointment but not right away as I actually have a supply for a while. 👓 And ultimately if I run out of contacts there always is the option of getting used to wearing glasses again.

In four weeks on January 19 the sun will be setting at 4:51 pm,🌄 which is 26 minutes and 6 seconds later then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had snow and temperatures between 31 and 7 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 30 and 14 degrees. The record high of 62 degrees was set back in 1929.

Looking ahead, National Bird Day 🐧 is in 2 weeks, 5:30 PM Dusk 🌆 is in 5 weeks, Ground Hog Day 🐻 is in 6 weeks, Snow Moon 🌕 is in 7 weeks, March 🌨 is in 10 weeks, Daylight Savings Time 🌆 is in 11 weeks, Ides of March ✝ is in 12 weeks, Palm Sunday 🌴 is in 15 weeks, Easter 🐰 is in 16 weeks, Earth Day 🌎 is in 4 months, Mothers Day 👩‍ is in 20 weeks, Pack Rat Day 🐀 is in 21 weeks, Strawberry Moon 🌕 is in 24 weeks, Fathers Day 👨 is in 25 weeks and Average High is 80 🏖 is in 6 months.

Ice on the Vloman Kill

a rising tide of anti-intellectual thinking

|

America dumbs down: a rising tide of anti-intellectual thinking

If the rise in uninformed opinion was limited to impenetrable subjects that would be one thing, but the scourge seems to be spreading. Everywhere you look these days, America is in a rush to embrace the stupid. Hell-bent on a path that’s not just irrational, but often self-destructive. Common-sense solutions to pressing problems are eschewed in favour of bumper-sticker simplicities and blind faith.

To be fair, there are many intellectuals and scientists who mix science and values. That said, science is often used to hide behind - people don't want to appear to be callous and insensitive. 

Redshift

|

Redshift

Redshift adjusts the color temperature of your screen according to your surroundings. This may help your eyes hurt less if you are working in front of the screen at night. This program is inspired by f.lux (please see this post for the reason why I started this project).

At night, I like to watch movies while having my bedroom dimmed a red color. But my computer screen is much too blue. But I found a solution!

New-Car Sales Continue Slide, Meaning Good Time to Deal

|

New-Car Sales Continue Slide, Meaning Good Time to Deal

New cars and car loans are getting more expensive, but there may be a happy twist for car buyers. Automakers can't sell you enough, and if the economy takes a dip, they'll be very ready to deal.

U.S. light-vehicle sales through the third quarter were down 2 percent year over year, and many non-luxury automakers are struggling. When hot brands like Jeep and Subaru take dives of 13 and 9 percent in just September, you know something's off.

In The 2010s, We All Became Alienated By Technology

|

In The 2010s, We All Became Alienated By Technology

I’ve spent six years reporting on deeply alienated people on the internet, during which time I’ve come to see conditions of disconnection and frustration everywhere the Digital Nation touches: on social media, in search algorithms, in the digital economy. In myself. The feelings of powerlessness, estrangement, loneliness, and anger created or exacerbated by the information age are so general it can be easy to think they are just a state of nature, like an ache that persists until you forget it’s there. But then sometimes it suddenly gets much worse.

Opinion | How to Track President Trump – The New York Times

|

Opinion | How to Track President Trump – The New York Times

f you own a mobile phone, its every move is logged and tracked by dozens of companies. No one is beyond the reach of this constant digital surveillance. Not even the president of the United States.

The Times Privacy Project obtained a dataset with more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million people in this country. It was a random sample from 2016 and 2017, but it took only minutes — with assistance from publicly available information — for us to deanonymize location data and track the whereabouts of President Trump.

Post No. 195112

|

It was a nice day for a ski at Five Rivers … ⛷

I don’t think there will be much more snow there for long, but at least I got out and enjoyed it before it was gone. I will be posting pictures that I took with my camera throughout the evening.