May 21, 2018 10 PM Update

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Good evening! Mostly clear and 54 degrees in Delmar, NY. Calm wind. The dew point is 47 degrees.

Kind of a pleasant evening. Went down to the park for a while with my laptop, mostly ended up wasting my time on YouTube and making maps📺. I need to come up with some more Google Maps again but I’ve been lazy. It’s just a matter of getting the data and plotting them. I know I should have brought a book and done some reading. Well I’ll have plenty of time to read during the long weekend if I’m camping in the wilderness. 📚

Sitting out back with the firefly light projector which is pretty but with the moonlight it’s almost not dark enough to enjoy them. 🌠Its a pretty toy but with my other lights it’s often too bright in the woods to work well plus the motor in it is super noisy. Solar panel topped up the battery nicely in the truck today so even if I were to tire out the battery tonight it would be charged by tomorrow although slower as its expected to be quite xloudy and rainy.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy ☁, with a low of 54 degrees at 10pm. Five degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 49 at 6am. Calm wind. In 2017, we had mostly cloudy skies. It got down to 49 degrees. The record low of 33 occurred back in 2002.

Tonight will have a Waxing Gibbous Moon 🌔 with 51% illuminated. The moon will set at 2:03 am. The Flower Moon 🌕 is next Monday with partly cloudy skies expected. Might be a nice evening to sit out back. The sun will rise at 5:26 am with the first light at 4:53 am, which is 50 seconds earlier than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 9 hours and 8 minutes of darkness, a decrease of one minute and 47 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will have showers likely, with thunderstorms also possible after 3pm. Cloudy ☁ , with a high of 64 degrees at 2pm. Seven degrees below normal. Maximum dew point of 54 at 12pm. Light south wind increasing to 8 to 13 mph in the morning. Chance of precipitation is 70%. Solar cells ain’t going to produce a lot of electricity tomorrow for sure. New rainfall amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms. A year ago, we had mostly cloudy skies. The high last year was 61 degrees. The record high of 97 was set in 1911.

Today I dressed up for work but it was totally unnecessary.💩 Turns out it wasn’t a session day. I should have read my calendar.👔Tomorrow and Wednesday are session days although tomorrow may be a long day and they skip Wednesday. Hopefully not too late as I don’t want to drive in tomorrow.

I feel like I’m starting to get another sinus infection. 👃I hope not, I’m tired of getting sick.

Right now, a split verdict on the weekend. 😕 Saturday, a chance of thunderstorms after 2pm. ⚡Partly sunny, with a high near 83. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Maximum dew point of 63 at 4pm. Sunday, a chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 77. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Maximum dew point of 63 at 1pm. Typical average high for the weekend is 72 degrees. This might be a workable weekend for heading out of town but to where I’ve yet to decide.🐥 Still leaning towards the Southern Adirondacks to camp and fish. Not sure if I will bother with the kayak as I have to adjust the rack before mounting it back up there and I’d rather focus on stream fishing for trout🎣 and hiking over messing with the kayak.

In four weeks on June 18 the sun will be setting at 8:36 pm,🌄 which is 18 minutes and 48 seconds later then tonight. In 2017 on that day, we had rain, mostly cloudy skies and temperatures between 88 and 72 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 79 and 57 degrees. The record high of 97 degrees was set back in 1957.

Looking ahead, Memorial Day 🇺🇸 is in 1 weeks, Labor Day 👨‍🏭 is in 15 weeks, Consitution Day 👨‍🏭 is in 17 weeks, Columbus Day 🛥️ is in 20 weeks, Veterans Day Observed (Monday) 🇺🇸 is in 25 weeks, Cyber Monday 🛍️ is in 27 weeks and New Years Eve 🎆 is in 32 weeks.

🇺🇸🦅Only 3 days remain until the start of Memorial Day Weekend!🦅🇺🇸

The Challenges I Overcame Going Solar on My Truck

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For many years, I avoided mounting the solar panel on the roof of my truck. Here’s why:

  • Many places I camp are shaded, so the panel will not put out much current.
  • At a flat angle the panel is less efficient then angled towards the sun
  • I didn’t want to drill holes in the roof of my truck cap
  • I didn’t have a good way to get power from the truck cap roof to the inside of the cab of my truck.

If “fixed” those problems by:

  • Re-thinking how I’m using the panel. I no longer look at it as for it’s peak efficiency but for the fact that it will be on my truck wherever I go, and mid-day parked in a lot somewhere while I’m hiking or kayaking, it will be charging. Maybe i won’t get a lot of charge while at camp, but if my battery is back up to 100% by the time I go back to camp — even after just a short drive — I will have ample power for night.
  • Solar is “slow” power, it’s charges things over time. Even I am not peak efficiency, if I’m parked in a bright and sunny parking lot it will recharge battery by the time I’m back at the truck. My relatively small deep cycle battery (100 Ah) with my limited power consumption (generally under 2 amp 12 VDC) works well with the fairly large 100 watt panel.
  • I built a cross bar rack and got the pins that allow me to bolt the panel to the Yakima rack. It’s removable for maintenance and didn’t involve any drilling into the cap, potentially creating leaks.
  • I found a grommet in the floor boards of the truck that was made of plastic that was easy enough to drill through.

Lawns Are an Ecological Disaster

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Lawns Are an Ecological Disaster

"To understand the sheer inanity of devoting 40 million acres, nearly half as much land as we set aside for our biggest crops, to an inedible carpet, we need to back up—beyond the modern lawn’s origins with a real estate family peddling the “American Dream” as Whites-only cookie-cutter suburbs—to the evolution of grass."

"Most plants grow from the top, according to Santa Barbara Botanic Garden Director Steve Windhager. “Grasses, on the other hand, always grow from the base,” he told Earther. From the plant’s perspective, this was a great strategy for dealing with grazers who’d randomly hit the same patch every few months. But Americans, true to form, are more gluttonous."

"We mow our lawns every few weeks. This coaxes our grass into growing its roots outwards, rather than down, spawning more sprawling shoots, in hopes of enabling any one blade to avoid overzealous grazers. However, the $47.8 billion to $82 billion we spend annually on overcutting and landscaping (FYI: we spend $49.47 billion in foreign aid) effectively amounts to trying to kill the grass while offering it life support. We trap it in prepubescence—too young to reseed, racing desperately ever-outward to find reproductive refuges that doesn’t exist."

"We cut ourselves equally: Thirty-five thousand people, 4,800 of which are children, are treated annually for mower-related injuries—resulting in 600 youth amputations. The Royal Statistical Society even awarded the fact that nearly eight times more Americans are killed by lawnmowers than Islamic terrorists International Statistic Of The Year."