I think they should let municipalities to run their own cable networks. Some municipalities have public power, and it's a lot cheaper than investor-owned utility power. Internet is massively overpriced in America compared to other countries, and much slower for the most part too.
The measure sunsets in 2016. Albany County is one of the last counties upstate that doesn't allow deer rifle hunting in all of Upstate NY. Hunting licenses for 2014 season go on sale on Monday, August 4th.
See also this graphic from 2014 syllabus: https://andyarthur.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Screenshot-07222014-064318-PM.png or skip to page 23 for details: http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/wildlife_pdf/1314guidefull.pdf
Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the second gear of the week. Hot and humid day today, after a nice respite for cooler weather this past week. Next weekend should be fairly nice, although maybe showers on Sunday.
It was a pretty quiet weekend, although I ended up going into the office for a couple of hours on Saturday. Never did make it to the Adirondacks, as on my way out the bus, I got called back into the office, and got stuck working at the office for a while on Saturday. Went fishing on Friday and Saturday nights, and mostly lost lures and broke fishing lines in the Hudson River.
If I had my truck this past weekend, I probably would have gone up North. Sunday was really nice for sure. I could set up easily in the dark with the electric lights, but setting a tent up in the dark and getting a fire started in the dark is no fun. I don’t mind cooking in the dark in the woods when I have lots of light, but with bears and other wildlife, not so much in a dimly lit campsite.
This week I am truly hopeful for getting Big Red back soon. The body work should be done by mid-week, so it mostly depends on what needs to get be done to get the engine restarted. Then I finally can return the loaner car, and get my truck back. I will probably drive around town a few days, to make sure everything is running well, and re-tune and tighten connections on the CB radio. Then I plan to finally get out of a town for couple of days.
Then I am looking forward to getting out of town. I have a list of potentially places to go, but ultimately that will be decided based on the weather, and when I get my truck back. North Lake is on the short list, but also is the Western Adirondacks or Moose Plains. Probably don’t have time to plan out a full trip to Pennsylvania. If don’t get my truck back until Friday, it will complicate weekend plans.
At this point, due to work constrains, and simply because I haven’t put any miles on my truck this summer, I probably will hold off on the lift kit until November. I am going to take my truck to have it’s tires rotated in the next couple of weeks, and I think that will hold things over until the state inspection in early October. This will buy me more time to save more money, and have things to look forward to in the fall. Or maybe decide to spend the money somewhere else.
It actually takes less energy and produces less carbon dioxide to cool a home in Florida then it does to heat a home in Minnesota in the winter -- especially if the home is heated by oil or electricity.
I don’t know when my laptop automatically upgraded, but the new version of Quantum GIS is out. With Linux you get new versions of software, for free, with minimal hassle.
It has some pretty nice new features, probably most important of which is the use of multiple-processor cores. This day of age, almost all computers have multiple-processors, such as my Samsung laptop with four cores. At least for on-screen rendering, having a multi-threaded setup, dramatically speeds QGIS. It also seems quite stable. I’m not sure if the map export feature is multi-threaded – it doesn’t appear that way, but I didn’t watch the CPU monitor that carefully. But it also seems somewhat faster.
Another great feature is “Shapeburst” shading. This makes the lakes and waterbodies look like Google Maps, where the center of the lake is a lighter color, while it gets darker as the borders approach, to make things stick out and more glossy. You can also use “Shapeburst” shading with state lands, to make glossy, easy to spot state land borders, like the DEC has done for years with their state land maps.
The National Forest system, especially in a state like New York, is often overlooked. But there are many remarkable wild lands being used sustainably for both timber and minerals, while providing a variety of public recreation.