Love in the Time of COVID-19

I got the starter originally from a former poster at The Other Place who came to visit while on a trip through the U.S., so it’s only fair I keep passing it on!

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I’ve been utterly humbled by my students retooling thesis projects to work on COVID-19.

The kids are all right.

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Yesterday at work, we got a message from one of our customers to let us know that the stuff we had built was helping them in their work on Covid-19, which was a good morale boost. Then this morning we started on requests for new features specifically in support of that work. Those requests jumped the queue over everything else, of course. Today was a release day, so it was a very short timeline, but we got most of them through the QA process and deployed. Makes me happy to see how everyone’s working together on that and to be a part of it, even if just a small part.

I do kinda envy people getting an extended vacation for this, but don’t envy the ones not getting paid, nor having to go back afterward.

Also learned that my neighbor is working long hours managing the volunteers handling the school lunches for a bunch of area schools.

In bad news, waffle house is now over 20% closed, which is a red alert for FEMA. And we’re above China in total cases and deaths per million population. Starting to feel like a global total war scenario, just not the one I pictured when I was a kid.

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I got this in the mail today. It gave credit to the wrong person, so I fixed it.

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I have the flu, mild cough, but no fever. About 4 days now.

Fuck.

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Are you sure that’s what it is?

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Russian numbers have a whiff of poop about them.

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The flu is what it feels like, but who knows. Testing for Covid19 is not easy to get, and I’m not having shortness of breath so local authorities probably wouldn’t give me one. And I’m not sure I need the extra stress right now.

But it’s scary. Every now and then I panic and that causes tightening of the chest. But it soon goes away (sometimes with a little help from my “friends”).

Thanks…

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My contribution to the reading-aloud videos flying about lately:

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Went out hiking.

Lots and lots of people had the same idea. Lots of people traveling in packs.

Kids chasing after other kids, after other strangers.

Social distancing is, at best, a farce.

Whole foods has a six by six grid taped on the floors, but the other two groceries aren’t taking it so seriously.

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About time they flipped the table.

Unfortunately I’m sure the orangutang in charge here is happy about it - “If we send everybody back to work by Easter, will that kill enough people to get them scared enough to pay for the wall? It’s an election year, dammit, kill as many of our own as it takes to get them to put up a wall!”

(apologies for the insult to orangutans)

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Journal of the Corona Year

3/26

I have learned two things from working at home:

1 — If, in the middle of they day, you realize you need to trim a fingernail, you can do it at that time.

2 — There is no good coffee available in Bay Ridge. In short, their brew is too thin and their water is too hot. I could make my own in the middle of the day, but a walk is healthy and I want to do my part in supporting the economy. There were a couple of places that looked promising, but now that I’m working from home they have closed. So I’m still looking and hopeful.

Yesterday I tried ordering groceries for my mother in Minnesota. She calls me from half-way across the country so I can order food from a store that is less than a mile away from her. I’ve done this for her a handful of times over the past few years.

She has basically quarantined herself for many years. The problem is that the person she hires to drive her a couple times a week is quarantining himself and is thus unavailable.

Cub Foods has a horrible website. Maybe all food stores have horrible websites, I don’t know. This is the only one I have visited.

After spending a half hour selecting 18 items, and hearing the backstory to each choice, the time to “checkout” has come. There are no days available to schedule delivery. No options are given. No way around this step. I had been having a pretty good day up to this point.

This morning I checked on their website again. Fortunately the “cart” still held the order, and a delivery date was available. The soonest day available was a week from now, next Wednesday. You would think with most of the economy shutdown there would be a lot of people available to deliver groceries. But I guess not.

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Her show on Amazon Prime is masterful. She lets him have if.

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Much the same point as Charles Mudede, but with vile angry jokes.

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This is great! Dr. Fauci is both relieved and thrilled that he gets to talk to someone with a brain and the ability to articulate words in a highly-reasonable fashion!
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