December 25, 2019 Night

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Good evening! Partly cloudy and 30 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌃 Calm wind. There is a inch of snow on the ground. ☃ ️It was technically a White Christmas here but the snow is rather old and faded. Things will start to thaw out at tomorrow around 11 am. 🌡️

I had a nice Christmas dinner with the folks 🎄 and then went for my evening walk. 🚶 Took a sleeping pill 💊 earlier and now have retired to bed. Got to get milk in the morning 🍶 and I’ve been waking up so early lately I got to start retiring early to bed. With darkness so early this time of year, I plan to retire to bed most nights at camp next week ⛺ by nine to save on the lights and because it’s going to be fairly cold most evenings although not terribly cold but may be fairly damp up at camp based on the latest forecast. 💦 I doubt I’ll stay up to midnight on New Years Eve but it might be fun to set an alarm clock for five before midnight, get up briefly, light off a sparkler 🎇 at midnight and go back to sleep.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 23 degrees at 6am. Five degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around December 12th. Calm wind. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 19 degrees. The record low of -17 occurred back in 1914. Definitely can get cold in the winter but not always.

Tonight will have a New Moon. The sun will rise at 7:23 am with the first light at 6:51 am, which is 23 seconds later than yesterday. 🌄 Still loosing a little bit of light on the morning for a few more days. The earlier sunrises don’t really start happening until the first week of January. Tonight will have 14 hours and 56 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 15 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a high of 37 degrees at 2pm. Four degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around December 13th. Not too bad for late December. Calm wind becoming southeast 5 to 7 mph in the afternoon. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 35 degrees. The record high of 59 was set in 1895. 13.9 inches of snow fell back in 1969.❄

It seems like the voltage switch ⚡ is working well as it’s maintaining a healthy voltage both on the accessory and starting batteries. 🔋 Alternator ramped down after a short drive because the amperage flowing into the battery sunk due to the full charge. I did increase the connection upper voltage on the voltage switch to 14.2 volts as it looked like relay was cycling on and off more than it should. Not good for the relay or the batteries to be constantly connected and disconnected while not enough power coming off the solar panel. By the time the solar panel reaches 14.2 volts the accessory battery must be close to full charge or there is a lot of sunshine coming down.

In four weeks on January 22 the sun will be setting at 4:55 pm,🌄 which is 28 minutes and 7 seconds later then tonight. In 2019 on that day, we had cold weather, but generally mostly sunny and temperatures between 18 and 0 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 30 and 14 degrees. The record high of 62 degrees was set back in 1906.

Looking ahead, New Years Day 2020 🎉 is in 1 weeks, Bubble Bath Day 🧼 is in 2 weeks, 5 PM Sunset 🌆 is a month away, 37th Birthday 🎉 is in 5 weeks, Average High is 40 ☀️ is in 10 weeks, April Fools Day 🤡 is in 14 weeks, Pink Moon 🌕 is in 15 weeks, Tax Day 💰 is in 16 weeks, Earth Day 🌎 is in 17 weeks, Memorial Day 🇺🇸 is in 5 months, Latest Sunset 🌆 is in 26 weeks and Inauguration Day 2021 👴🏻 is in 56 weeks.

Wind and Rain Shelter I put up this weekend

Why Won’t Millennials Join Country Clubs?

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Why Won’t Millennials Join Country Clubs?

Almost 40 years later, a young woman riding her motorcycle to the country club would still be an outlier. Millennials who are burdened with loan debt often can’t buy homes, much less drop thousands of dollars on club initiation fees and dues. (Annual country-club dues run several thousand dollars on average, plus an initiation fee that’s usually no less than $5,000.)

And if cost isn’t a deterrent, many young people are put off by the image of the country club—stuffy and formal, with old-fashioned dress codes and rules about cell-phone use. Not to mention the rich history of racial and religious discrimination that accompanies many such organizations.

The traditional country club and the activity that is its mainstay—golf—are both having a hard time attracting a younger demographic. In the 1990s, there were more than 5,000 full-service golf and country clubs in the 1990s. In 2010, there were about 4,100, and now that number has dipped below 4,000. A 2014 study commissioned by the National Club Association found that club membership was down 20 percent from 1990.

Arsenic-based pesticides in former golf courses is an enormous problem.

Why Printers Add Secret Tracking Dots

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Why Printers Add Secret Tracking Dots

These “microdots” are well known to security researchers and civil liberties campaigners. Many colour printers add them to documents without people ever knowing they’re there.

Dots from a HP Laserjet printer, illuminated with blue light. Credit: Florian Heise/Wikipedia.

In this case, the FBI has not said publicly that these microdots were used to help identify their suspect, and the bureau declined to comment for this article. The US Department of Justice, which published news of the charges against Winner, also declined to provide further clarification.