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A variety of maps, writings, and photos on a various topics that can’t easily be categorized into a county or place.

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Empty Container Before Recycling ♻️ Plastic Bottle

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So the label said when I tossed it into the white trash bag. Soon enough to melt and burn, just like so much of my trash, anonymously disappearing into the flames and a little black smoke.

Plastics recycling is mostly a scam. Some of the No 2 plastic are turned into plastic lumber for decks and railings at DEC projects, but most of it is trash, a byproduct of all that natural gas we use to heat our homes and to a lesser extent the oil that fuels my SuperDuty truck and a billion other cars. But for me, it’s just trash and ultimately fire.

Sometimes I watch as the plastics melts and burns, but mostly I don’t. Mostly it’s just there to get the fire burning hot, the goal to incinerate and destroy it as fast as possible without stink lest leery eyes report it to law. Maybe not lawful in New York but who cares in wilderness. The nasty stuff is mostly gone, fracking producing oodles of cheap polyethelene and environmental regulation means PVC is mostly a memory except maybe for fire-resistant electrical cords.

I won’t argue there isn’t too much gross plastic crap everywhere to send up in smoke. I tell myself eating healthy, I’ve cut way back. But I could do better if I got milk delivered. Or was a bit more careful of a consumer. But what do I care? It smashes down and then almost completely disappears in the flames.

Second day of vacation 🩴 🏖️ 😎

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At least weather wise, the second day of summer vacation might be the best though only time will tell. Sunny, cool, light breeze morning slowly but surely drying up the mud from yesterday.

I got to camp around 1:30 pm just as the final rain shower of the day was pushing away. 🌧️ Certainly they didn’t get as much rain in the Finger Lakes as Albany got yesterday, but it still was wet and indeed much of the drive out to the Finger Lakes was through drizzle and clouds, though ultimately it wasn’t a bad drive but not totally exciting either.

I got a later start then I would have hoped but it was pouring all Wednesday night, and I didn’t get to the bank 💵 on Wednesday and needed to go to a video lottery, I mean video ATM 🏧 machine to get small denomination bills for farm stands, tag sales 🏷️, ice cream 🍦 and anything else I might need that couldn’t be put on a card during vacation. I wasn’t sure if the VTM was located outside, it was when I got to SEFCU State Office Campus but my truck with the mirrors couldn’t fit but I walked up to the ATM and got it done, despite the signs saying such things are prohibted. Discrimination I tell you. It’s a disability, you know my penis is broken. Too much time jacking off dreaming of watching garbage burn up in wilderness. 🐺 Or Pennsylvania.

The brakes on the SuperDuty are absolutely amazing. You get to the bottom of a long hill, and they have zero fade. 🛑 In the default drive mode the engine gently downshifts as you go down a long grade but it’s not aggressive and you have a ton of manifold vaccum on the big block, maybe not diesel level but it’s impressive compared to the small blocks I’ve always driven. Really enjoying not fearing the brakes or having to shift at all while I’m in Finger Lakes. You just put the SuperDuty in drive, and off you go, super easy.

I got up to camp and sat in the truck at first as it was rather wet, and around 2 PM got into earnest setting this up, erecting the tarp and tent, table, propane and lights, hammock, and so forth. Smoked some dope and drunk some beer. 🥴 Fried up zucchuni and bathed it with cornmeal, bacon and salsa. Ended up popping down $28 for a steering wheel cover, as the SuperDuty work truck steering wheel has such hard nasty plastic, and I wanted to have some creature comfort on my long road trip without sore hands. 🫶 What can you say, I’m a girly man who works with computers 🖥️ all day and spends too much time jacking off. And camps up in wilderness.

Seems like there is more cows 🐮 up in the National Forest, especially calves this year but maybe it just was dumb luck where they were grazing, due to clouds and drizzle. Often when it’s hot out they tend to head to the more shaded, remote parts of their pastures. I’m sure if it’s as wet as they say come Sunday there will be even more mud and smell like wet cow farm. But you know I dream of someday having cattle to graze out back past the burn barrel. 🛢️ I am thinking Tuesday looks like the best day to head down to Pennsylvania to do the Blackwell Triple Crown, 🫅 though I’ll be driving between the peaks, along with driving up Lamb’s Vista, riding a bit of the Pine Creek Rail Trail, checked out the blackened you know what and rundown farms and homesteads, maybe get a few more smokes before driving back in darkness to camp. Want to leave very early that day, maybe set my alarm for 4 or 5 AM so I full day for PA day.

Today heading down to Watkins Glen around 9:30 AM, then swinging by the library to do some work and finish up some loose ends,  🧑‍💻 hope to hit the Montour Falls Rail Trail around 11 AM, 🚲 then a little bit of hiking at Watkins Glen Park, a swim in the late afternoon at the pool, then Glen Dairy Bar 🍨. I thought about kayaking Seneca Lake but I don’t think today I want to do. I’ll bring the tube, I could go for a float on the lake in the evening, but instead I’ll probably ride Rock Dam Road, watch the sun set over Seneca Lake, swing by Wally World for stevia, maple syrup and a few other supplies 🛒 before heading back to camp this evening.

Tomorrow looks cloudier, 🌥️ but I might head down to Taughannock State Park 🏞️ maybe with the kayak 🛶 and do some paddling on Cayuga Lake if it’s not too turbulent. I don’t want to necessarily head into Ithaca with a traffic on the commercial strip or even worse the insane farmers market traffic 🧑🏻‍🌾, but I might park at Allen Treman and launch from there. Sunday looks to be the wettest day of summer vacation, I’ll stay up in the National Forest, I have my fishing pole, maybe see what I can catch at Foster Pond, and just wander around in the woods, and do some reading and hanging out in camp. Hopefully it won’t be a washout but I have the propane heater in case it’s truly cold and miserable in wilderness. If the accessory battery gets low, what’s nice withe SuperDuty is I can just hit the remote start button, and it will idle for 15 minutes to charge everything up. Dug out a trench 🪏 to hopefully keep the water from ponding up at camp on Sunday.

I need to get my 10 Hoopla borrows done by this evening as it’s July 31st today, believe it or not. How fast time comes and goes, by the time summer vacation is over, autumn will be rapidly approaching. That said, I feel like it was just yesterday I was up here, Labor Day 2025 back with Big Red on his last summer vacation. It was kind of boring 💤 driving out here, the same scenery, and the SuperDuty with its’ good brakes and excessive amounts of power, made the drive even more boring. I was thinking 🤔 I could have been going out to Michigan the whole time out here, for a totally different experience. But I changed my mind, and honestly, I just have too many office responsibility to take care of currently with work, so yeah, I need to get down to the Watkins Glen library 🧑‍💻 and get on my way before this day is done too. Happy end of July and Happy Beautiful Summer Vacation Day to me too. ☺️

Thematic Map: New York Electric Grid
SVGZ Graphic: Albany County Electric Grid
Map: Mountain House Trail and North Mountain

And I return on August 9th

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Yesterday was kind of a crazy busy day as I closed up the as many loose leads before heading out on vacation this morning. Didn’t get to the bank, so I”m leaving at 7:40 AM not 6:40 AM in rush hour, so I can hit the bank and get small domination bills prior to vacation.

Still raining this morning, so that’s another reason to slow my departure, 🌧️ I was going to shower first and then pack, but that’s dumb as I’ll get real wet. So instead I loaded the kayak up, after the drizzle turned into a good soaker, got my gear in the truck, and now it’s slowed down.

Bank opens at 8 AM 💵 so I can get the small demonization bills I need for farm stands, tag sales, other things I come upon my trip. It will be mean hitting traffic 🚦 potentially on the Thruway with rush hour, but I’m heading west, and except for commuters heading to Schenectady it should be reasonable. I’ll drive carefully, take my time, the SuperDuty has excellent brakes and accelerates like a bat out of hell.

Mostly the truck is loaded, 💼 and I’m at the point where I am checking my list, doing a bit more cleaning, going to shower, trim my hair and nails 💅 and then be on my way by quarter to eight. Get some money at the bank, fuel and bacon in Rotterdam, and then I might stop in Oneonta if I need to pee or move my knees around and get maybe some cottage cheese and grapes at Wally World, though certainly not essential. I ended up deleting the remote start for 6:40 and then 7:40 AM, it’s kind of silly this time of year, mostly just motivation to leave by a specific hour. I have my key fob, and I can fire it up a minute or two before I leave, just to get the oil moving in the engine, though I’ll hit traffic and it will have plenty of chance to get to temperature before erging on the highway.

Should be a great adventure. 🏕️ Ten days away from it all, the rain is pulling out. Much lazy crazy then yesterday, when there was so much loose ends to pick up, and then I spilled hot wax all over my recently cleaned office carpet, the file cabinet, and myself as I was rushing out to the shuttle 🚀 which I didn’t want to miss in the pouring rain, as five projects came my way. It was obnoxious to say the least. Ended up working late downtown 🖥️ but hoping for a very quiet vacation 🩴 but inevitably there will be some projects to do.

AI is coming for your brain 🧠

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Sure seems like that times when you read the alarmist headlines. AI is going to be everywhere, it’s going to use up all the electricity, demand building millions of gas-guzzling power plants, put everybody out of work, break every security code, and give the everyman the information they need to build nuclear and biological bombs in their backyard.

I’ve been quite interested in AI, getting to the bottom of it, avoiding the hype. It seems like much of AI is just hype – all of the proposed AI data centers if built would increase the United States’ data center capacity by 15 fold. As if the world needed that kind of compute. Not to mention, whose paying for it and building all the electric plants to make it happen? Much of it is just speculation. People chasing money, on the possilbity of a need.

Likewise, much of the demand of the big US AI companies for cheap electricity, environmental exemptions, restrictions on the use of open models, seems primarily to be about incumbent US players. If you can’t build a better product, then you can try to get Congress to pass a law banning the use of your competition. But over time, the best product wins. If China is making better, more efficent models, then their open models will win. Americans have long had a very unhealthy obession with bigger is better.

I am a believer in small, efficent models are often better. I hate the idea of a few centralized companies controlling AI, I would rather have billions of small, task specific AI models running on individuals computers rather then some slow API calling distant know-it-all models on server farms hundreds or thousands of miles away. Most of the time, specific knowledge of a task beats encyclopedia knowledge. General reference has it’s place in this world, but most tasks are narrow and don’t require terabytes of data and knowledge to process.

Truth is things like Google Gemani are fun, and can help you think about problems and provide data in a way like an encyclopedia does. But they are generalists, and when you dig into them a bit and ask specific non-encylopedia type questions, they aren’t very good. They’ll try to churn out a probable answer and sometimes good answer, but at their roots, their little more then a giant encyclopedia that makes good predictions on what you want to hear. And I’m not sure we need 15 times more of their capacity. We need more efficiency in these models, something the Chinese are good at, but also we need more task-based, local models rather then these big encyclopedia remote models.