Up at five o’clock, frying onions and eggs and spinach, a good breakfast before sitting down and doing more study of neural networks and machine learning. Early to rise makes a man, healthy, wealthy and wise, or so I tell myself.

Good morning! What day is it? Work from Home Day, of course. Sunny and 25 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌞 There is a north-northwest breeze at 9 mph. 🍃. Things will start to thaw out at around 9 am. 🌡️

Out for a morning bike ride 🚲 to Voorheesville to burn some calories before heading home and settling down to work. 💻 Depending on the projects that come in for review I’ll work down at the library or in my truck. Lunch time I want to get to Tractor Supply to refill my propane tank 🏮 and get a few supplies for camping 🏕 so I can get an early start come Thursday. I’ll set up camp, do some hiking and then Friday I plan to ride more of the Erie Canalway from Canastota to Rome.

Today will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 40 degrees at 1pm. Three degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around December 11th. Northwest wind 7 to 10 mph. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 32 degrees. The record high of 61 was set in 1957. 8.4 inches of snow fell back in 1975.❄

Should be a nice day though that breeze will make it cold. 🌬 But I’ll bundle up for my morning ride, this time out to Voorheesville, then when I’m working remotely from my truck at the library, I’ll have the solar gain of the windshield to stay warm or I can work from inside the library if it’s quiet enough and I don’t end up taking many calls. ☎️ I’ll see. Then I’m hoping if I have some downtime at work I can run home and do some packing and getting ready for the trip. Should be a nice weekend, but maybe cold a times.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 11:54 am with sun having an altitude of 24° from the due south horizon (-46.9° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 13.5 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 3:39 pm with the sun in the southwest (230°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (238°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 4:25 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 25 seconds with dusk around 4:56 pm, which is 25 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Gibbous 🌔 Moon in the southeast (139°) at an altitude of 44° from the horizon, 228,182 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 5:33 pm. At sunset, look for mostly sunny skies 🌃 and temperatures around 38 degrees. There will be a northwest breeze at 10 mph. Tomorrow will have 9 hours and 6 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 4 seconds over today.

I am very happy with that new photo-electric smoke detector. 👨‍🚒 This morning I accidentally got a frying pan a bit hot when cooking down the onions, and no alarm. 🧅 That made me quite happy and I am sure my neighbor too not having a fire alarm at 5:30 AM. Breakfast still came out quite good, and I cleaned up my kitchen a bit. Soup I’m planning on for lunch.

Tonight will have increasing clouds ☁, with a low of 25 degrees at 6am. Four degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around December 9th. North wind 9 to 11 mph. In 2022, we had clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 16 degrees. The record low of -18 occurred back in 1942.

Today a train moved very fast in America — that is relatively speaking. 🚉 In 1967, a Pennsylvania Railroad Budd Metroliner exceeds 155 mph on their New York Division, now Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. It was a test mission, but the high speed rail wasn’t to be due to frequent break downs and bottlenecks along the Northeast Corridor and the soon to be bankrupt Pennsylvania Railroad not long to be kept afloat by government funds and soon to offload passenger service to the government in the form of Amtrak. 🛤️ I don’t think even the latest high speed rail experiments have gotten that fast in recent years in America though slowly but surely the Northeast Corridor between New York City and Washington DC has gotten faster. 🚄

Weekend is starting to look cloudier but mild. 🌥 Thursday – Sunny, with a high near 34. North wind 10 to 13 mph. Friday – Sunny, with a high near 33. North wind 3 to 5 mph. Saturday – Mostly cloudy, with a high near 38.  Sunday – Partly sunny, with a high near 41. Christmas Day – Partly sunny, with a high near 44. Still not terrible weather for winter camping, and it doesn’t look like I’ll have much snow to deal with out in Madison County. Typical average high for the weekend is 36 degrees.