Heat Wave Friday?
Friday, August 25th, 2023 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio |
I slept in until 11:30 today, but when the pets and I got outside, it felt noticeably less oppressive than it's been since Monday, so I checked my phone. And to my surprise, it was only 79F! And on the hourly, it says the high will only be 85F at 5PM!
So, as Dad used to say... Praise God from whom all blessings flow!.. because the heat wave is over!
85F is a far cry from the 91F they were predicting for today.
If you go by Celsius, and aren't familiar with Farenheight, then I apologize for this week of entries that has focused so closely on such numbers, without any conversions.
Farenheight is a more granular scale than Celsius, meaning that degrees are smaller... which is why we always report them in whole numbers, and you never see somebody saying that it's, say, 55.7 degrees Farenheight.
This is because Farenheight is tuned to human perception. You may not notice if the temperature changes half a degree, but you will notice if it's changed one full degree.
Whereas in Celsius, 0 is the freezing point of water, and 100 is it's boiling point... in Farenheight, zero is the point at which humans say, "okay, fuck this!.. it's too cold!" And 100 is point at which we say, "fuck no! This is too hot!"
The closer the ambient air temperature gets to 0F, or 100F (-17.77C or 37.77C) the more life threatening it becomes.
Most people, except for the elderly, can withstand the range from 0F to 100F, for a period of time, if they're dressed properly. But if it gets below zero, or above 100... then people start dying of either hypthermia, or heat stroke.
You would think then, that 50F would be the ideal temperature... and it is if you are outside, and exerting yourself... either working, or excercising.
And I suppose 50F is also ideal if you're inside, cooking in the kitchen.
But 50F (10C) is uncomfortably chilly if you're just... hangin' out, trying to relax.
So, if you're thinking about Farenheight as a, "percentage of ambient hotness," as has become an internet rule of thumb... then remember that 50% is perfect, if you yourself are generating heat by working, or cooking... in other words... if you are sweating.
If you're not making yourself sweat... then 70% ambient hotness, is ideal.
Humidity comes into play because it affects how well your sweat can evaporate.
Evaporation of water has a cooling effect, so if the air is dry and you are sweating, a light breeze, or a fan will be enough to evaporate your sweat and help to cool you down... even if the ambient temperature is on the warm side.
But if the humidity is high, the sweat just stays on your skin... which not only makes you uncomfortable because you're all wet... but is dangerous because you're one evolutionary cooling strategy is not functioning!
My brother Tim, who lives in Las Vegas... in the Nevada desert... doesn't have to worry nearly as much, if it gets over 100F, because the air is so dry, that sweat evaporates almost instantly.
It's still not nice, when the air is over 100F, but he's not wet, and his life isn't in danger.
Here in the eastern half of the U.S. however, humidity often goes up in unison with ambient temperature, making even 80F quite uncomfortable, and anything above 90F dangerous.
It would be negligent to bring all this up without acknowledging global warming... which is caused by CO2 in the atmosphere... which prevents heat from escaping into space.
CO2 is sequestered in the bodies of plants and trees, as a byproduct of photosynthesis. And coal and oil are the compressed remains of ancient plants and trees. So anytime a fossil fuel is burned, or a forest is on fire... tons of CO2 are being liberated back into the atmosphere.
And this is a problem, because the hotter it gets globally, the more forest fires there are, and the more we run our air conditioners... which are powered by electrical plants burning fossil fuels.
And if things continue as they're going... huge parts of the planet will indeed become uninhabitable by humans... not only because it's just too hot to survive outside... but because excessive heat also renders the systems and devices we use to cope with heat... inoperable.
Computers & machines, power grids & infrastructure, don't tolerate high heat and humidty much better than we do!
There is no silver bullet solution, at this point, to global warming. But if we're to have any hope of mitigating it... we do have to acknowledge it... which, sadly, the rich and powerful do not want us to do... because their profits come from fossil fuels... and they are too short sighted to understand that these profits will vanish anyway... when huge swaths of civilization collapse.
That is the deal! :D
As for me... all I can do is go to work, so that I can survive another day.
And it's 2PM, so I have to get ready to do that.
Wouldn't have been a bad Friday at work, except the PTA was having some kind of picnic thing in the parkinglot and the park, that was supposed to be from 5PM to 7PM, but it dragged on until 7:45.
So I had to take time out of my day between 5 and 5:30 to help them set up tables and crap... and then between 7PM and 7:30, I was just waiting around for them to call me to help take it all down again.
I also normally eat lunch at 7PM, so I didn't get to do that until 7:50, and... it just threw off my whole damn night!
But that's the kinda shit that happens when school's in session!
Also, for those who don't know, in this area... maybe it's the whole state?... every public elementary school has a city park next to it, which doubles both as a park, and the school grounds.
The school parking lot also doubles as the park parking lot.
So you get weird situations like today, where a throng of people take over both the park and the parking lot for some kind of quasi-school related park activity.
But I'm supposed to drop everything to help them and... I can't go out and smoke because they've taken over my sacred empty lot!
That same woman came again tonight at 11PM to do the four hour area. Still didn't catch her name.
I texted Jeremy about it, because he'd planned on coming tomorrow to do that area.
So... yeah, nobody gives either of us a heads up about anything, but... it looks like for the time being this woman will be showing up at 11PM.
And again, I'm fine with that, because I'm done with everything by that point, and I leave at 11:25.
In other news, I may have been wrong about my cameras failing in the heat.
Today, I couldn't access them again, from work and thought they had gone down again. But then I turned off WIFI, and they came right up!
So... I didn't realize my phone was actually accessing the school WIFI... because I never have to sign in or anything. But apparently it has been.
And the school WIFI sucks total ass!.. because it basically blocks traffic to everything on the internet, except for YouTube.
The weekend is finally here, and it's 72F outside right now!
I've set my alarm for 12:30, rather than the 10:30 of the weekdays, to prevent myself from turning it off, and sleeping until 3PM tomorrow!
The porch fan is back on, blowing at the plywood... which I will patch with expoxy tomorrow.
I also have to mow the lawn and water Natalie.
I'll also take my measurements of the soviet rotary phone mike and order the parts I'll need to wire it up.
This is a photo I took last night of the barely visible writing on it, but you can see that those are cyrillic characters.
But it struck me last night that in order to test it, I kind of need an amplifier.
So I decided to buy one...
This is a small 20 Watt Amp... only about 1.5 square feet... but it's a Fender!
It's about a hundred bucks, but I just feel like no studio is complete without some kind of amplifier.
It may not be necessary for recording, but... it does come in handy for testing things, and tuning and whatnot... and it's just fun!
I also now have five more songs on my list to record.
So... it started with the computer and the software... and then I broke down and bought a dynamic mike.
That required an input box, which can also allow for guitars.
Next thing you know I busted out the old bass and guitar, and put them on stands, as well as the dynamic mike.
Now I'm about to bust out a solder gun and recreate my old rotary phone mike.
And an amp is on the way!
But I can't sit down to do anything until I get that damn hatch door replaced.
However... next weekend is a three day weekend, because of Memorial Day.
So now my goal is to get the damn hatch door project finished next weekend!
So, the more I get done with it this weekend, the better... and this week will be cool enough to work on it before I go to Cloud.
Okay!.. that's my week, and that's the saga of the 2023 heat wave!
°¦}
