Early reporting was probably incomplete.
3 Likes
Weāre all in mourning from the death of normalcy.
That perfectly expresses what hit me yesterday. Thanks for linking this!
3 Likes
Someone I work with said something about āwhen things are back to normal in a couple weeksā and I just didnāt have the heart to say that I donāt think thatās remotely possible. I guess my thinking is that things might be OK at some point, emergency over, but that things are not going back to the way they were before.
6 Likes
Aside from disrupting a lot of peoplesā lives for probably months, likely record unemployment, closing a lot of restaurants and other businesses forever, work-from-home where possible becoming more normalized, etc. ā¦ itās probably going to have long lasting cultural effects nobody can predict.
Whether politics goes more authoritarian, or less tolerant of the various casual cruelties of capitalism (as in the āAmerica is a Shamā article linked above), or some of each, remains to be seen.
4 Likes
One thing Iām certainly getting thoroughly cynical about is companies using the pandemic as a pretext to advertise. Sometimes thereās an āimportant announcementā involved, but more often theyāre announcing that I can still buy stuff from them.
An electronics supplier that I bought a couple of plastic knobs from last summer found it important to inform me theyāre ready to meet my business needs.
4 Likes
I order printing for my clients, and yesterday I received 12 separate emails from one printer about COVID. It did not instill confidence.
4 Likes
I wonder if this will turn out to have any epidemiologiucal significance. It tends to increase customer wait time, encourages more contact between cashier and customer. encourages customers to seek out a particular brand instead of opting for whatās on the shelf, and redemption involves moistening the vouchers before sticking them to a game board.
4 Likes
3 Likes
Went for a long run today. Saw all kinds of gatherings, cook outside, etc. Weāre so fucked.
6 Likes
5 Likes
Americans with little-to-no tax liabilityāaka, poor folksāwill only receive a minimum payment of $600, unless they earned less than $2,500, in which case they get zilch. [ā¦] itās essentially just a somewhat larger version of the tax rebate George W. Bush passed in his 2008 stimulus package.
So much for my āmore even-handed than that stuntā comment. I should know better than to give them that much credit.
[edit]
Ok, I still think his proposal has serious shortcomings, but now Iām wondering whoās replaced Romney with a body doubleā¦
8 Likes
More people are watching. This time.
1 Like
Going to pick up my kid from college this weekend. This is how her Senior Year ends. Iām so sad that she will not get to walk in graduation or see her friends again.
5 Likes
I dunno ā¦ Mormons have a long history of providing services to people for free. Like childcare. Itās one of their only mechanisms to recruit people into their fold as adults - find overwhelmed people, offer āfreeā help, and get your hooks in.
Seems like a good election year strategy, no?
5 Likes
Journal of the Corona Year
3/19
I was resolved. Yesterday would be my last day working in the office. I would tie-up all the remaining loose ends, just enough, so I could work from home and be responsible to my health and that of my fellow citizens.
Working in the office you can feel Coronavirus is near. Like seeing a dreaded foe passing by on he horizon and wondering if he saw you.
I get my wifi by linking to my iPhone. Itās a bit slow, but itās reliably always there. On Monday I found out that working remotely basically involves watching a streaming HD movie of your office computerās screen. And this would be going on all day. There was no way I could handle that. By carefully observing the Activity Monitor, I determined that I could manage if I upgraded my service and mostly worked locally rather than remotely.
I could find only one coffee shop still open in Lower Manhattan. I ordered a cappuccino so I could get a coffee with cream and not have to handle the community cream jug. It surprised me they still had one of those available. They were cashless because they didnāt want to handle money. I needed it. 12 ounces was not enough.
There was another person in the office with me, working about 20 feet away. By the afternoon he had started sneezing and coughing.
By the time I got home I had recalibrated my sense of time. I was mentally prepared to be in my apartment for the foreseeable future. I planned on only leaving for necessities or fresh air.
An email arrived last night from my dentist. They were no longer taking appointments.
This morning I woke up calm and ready to work. By 11:00 I realized my plan of working locally would not work. I needed that streaming connection with my office computer to have direct access to my collection of resources. I needed to order some kind of internet service and I would have to go back into the office for the afternoon.
So I contacted Verizon. After filling out their lengthy on-line application, and agreeing to their credit check, they informed me that they cannot connect me for three weeks.
I head to the office. As soon as I arrived, an email came in from one of my design colleagues. She was letting us know that she had tested positive for COVID-19. She was tested a week ago and the results finally came in. The US health system at its finest! I was surprised she got tested at all. She had experienced some shortness of breath at some point, but now seemed to be doing better.
I contact Optimum. They provide the internet for a design colleague of mine who is sequestered about a mile away in Bensonhurst. I fill out their lengthy application, and agreeing to their credit check, everything looks great. My service will be installed in Sunday.
The company will be paying for this internet, and I intend to cancel the service as soon as this crisis is over.
I finished working around 5:30 and went to pick-up my dry cleaning at the Van Gogh. I dropped it off on the weekend, and my how the world had changed since then. I wasnāt sure they would be open. The old man who ran the place was quite sure nothing bad was going to happen.
This evening I cot an email from Krons B., customer service representative at Optimum. Despite entering my address before starting the application, they have now realized that they do not cover my area.
So I go to Spectrum. They are a low-rated cable company, but they seem to be all there is for Bay Ridge. This miht work. I donāt have to wait for a professional installer, I can pick up the model tomorrow from one of their stores. So there is that. Assuming they are open.
3 Likes
What sort of upload speeds does Spectrum offer? And what, in this age of ubbiquitous telework, will you actually get?
I sometimes stop at QuickTrip to pick up some breakfast on the way to work. In the mornings the place is often really popular with nearby lawn care and pool cleaning companies who manage to send out 6-8 trucks all at once, each of which is packed like a clown car. Apparently during the pandemic theyāre still doing that, because pool cleaning is an essential serviceā¦? This morning the store was restricting the number of customers allowed insideā¦ but they were just clumped together in a crowd at the entrance. I noped right past that.
For what itās worth, I tested my connection at 114MBps down, 11.4 up, at about 4PM yesterday in St. Louis. Thatās on their āstandard internetā plan which I think promises 60-100MBps up and 10 down, though their website does a fine job of obscuring anything useful like that (like which plans Iām actually paying for). At least locally, their service has improved pretty significantly in the last couple of years.
Google says they have plans that offer up to 940MBps, but it could vary a lot.
A couple of our engineers are testing WFH this morning, and we have an official cybersecurity/confidnetiality policy about it (whichā¦ what were our 4 permanently remote employees doing without that?) So I guess thatās progress.
Yeah. Thereās this anxiety thing I get where I tense up as if expecting someone to hit me. I feel that most of the time while Iām at work now.
2 Likes
7 Likes
I ordered their mid-grade speed of 40mbps. This is twice as much as LogMeln recommends. So it should work, in theory.
My SOās neighbor at his shop has been sick for a month, with something else, and heās alone. And, down to his last roll of toilet paper.
My guy went to walmart to get cat food, because if there isnāt food for these fuzzbutts, thatās going to be rough. And, they had TP, so he got one for us and one for his neighbor.
Heās a mechanic, with his own shop, and heās got a couple of tractors in pieces at the moment. If he closes, there will be farmers who cannot feed their cattle, which puts them out of business too. But, he locks the gate so he can do the work without being close to anybody. All in all, I feel like our state might be screwed (because they are doing nothing) but we are in a good position, relatively speaking.
My 70 year old asthmatic mother lives in Southern California, and I just hope she can continue to stay in her house and back garden, and stay uninfected. The idea of her getting sick and me not being able to go there, well that whole idea just makes me queasy. My sister is there, and she can do momās shopping if needed.
My six year old niece said, on facetime with mom, that sheās glad this didnāt happen when her grandfather was still alive, because it would have been really bad for him. Heartbreaking, and also true. Momās solace is his back garden, which she tends every day.
10 Likes