We can all use a little… well, a lot of good news right now. A favorite actor of mine, John Krasinski, from The Office, has started a project called SomeGoodNews. So far there’s one video but I anticipate more are to come as it finds its footing. Go watch, like, and subscribe.
Month: March 2020
Corona Quarantine: Day 5
It’s been a very long, arduous week and weekend. Quarantine has only been in effect since last Tuesday, so it’s only day 5 … but it feels like 50 already. I lightly follow the Corona news but it’s just as bad if not worse than before. I think a greater majority of people are taking it more seriously, especially with city, state, and federal mandates in effect.
After work one night last week, the wife and I played the appropriately named board game Pandemic (info and buy). Not in a means of mockery or anything like that, but just simply as a parallel to the world situation right now. Unfortunately, we lost the game but I hope humanity exerts some heavy critical thinking and common sense skills to combat this virus so we do not lose in real life.
My wife works from home, but the only different thing for her was me being here all week. I, however, thought I’d like the “work from home” (WFH) idea, and while there’s definitely perks (less gas/car maintenance, not eating out, etc.) it’s still quite draining to be honest. I have enough discipline to just stay put in my office for the duration of my shift (less lunch and breaks), but I think I’d rather be in the office.
Outside of Costco and Frys early last week (Monday or Tuesday), end of last week we went to Home Depot to get more flooring stuff. Corona may be here but we still have projects to do in gearing up to sell our house. So, we (mainly Danielle because I stink at laying floor) were able to finish my office. My last post showed a picture of my WFH setup, including the awful carpet. Now, it has new, super shiny flooring. Here are a couple of after photos:
Aside from work stuff and laying the flooring Saturday, we spent Sunday working on the fire pit. It was just the rocks surround by some tough weeds, but now it’s all fancy smancy looking and I hope we’ll use it a few times before we sell.
I’m quite sunburned and ready to hit the hay to get ready for the really official week 1 of quarantine — last week was the catch-up every company was doing. I was wrapping up my 5th and final week of the particular class I’m in in college and just literally about 30-45 minutes ago the instructor posted a very well written research article regarding the Coronavirus (not by them). I warn you, it’s not a 5-minute read, but it is depressing, engaging, surreal, and makes tangible what should already be for all of us. Here is a link to the article.
Until next time! Stay safe out there!
Andrew
Coronavirus (Covid-19; “Corona”) Quarantine: Day 1
First off, I know, I know. You’re thinking “Not another Corona article!”. Bear with me it’ll be sort-of short (if we’re both lucky my brain doesn’t go on a rant). I may do a few days here-and-there as well. We’ll play it by ear.
I want to cover a very basic health concern first. Even though Corona has a lot of factual information behind it, it still has an air of uncertainty for further danger. One thing that has been made relatively simple are the “Do the Five” steps by, I think, the WHO. Keep this in mind while we all go through this turbulent period. And if you’re the praying type, pray for those who are in dire positions right now related to the virus (people still working in public, elderly, other health issues, etc.).
So here we are on Day 1 of quarantine.
My company, like thousands of others, is having us work from home for a period of time while the (hopefully) major part of the Coronavirus does its thing here in the US. Aside from my first job in retail, the rest of my professional working life has been technical call/support center focused. Sure they could have done remote before now but there are always various business reasons why they can’t sometimes. It was just weird getting to sleep in about 20 more minutes and having a relatively small commute to work. ha-ha.
Here’s a quick photo of my temporary work setup. Pretty nice.
This virus, even since we’re just in the initial couple of months of it, has change the world forever. It may be subtle to non-existent for some or grand and adverse for others, but to everyone, directly or indirectly, it will affect you. This also goes for inanimate or intangible things, like the Internet. Particularly the Internet. This is a time for the Internet to shine and show proof to the world that the Internet can be a very quintessential part of everyday life going forward. Some people and companies will go back to before while others will adopt in-part or in-whole the telecommute/telepresence aspect that they otherwise wouldn’t or couldn’t before now.
At this point in my rambling, let me add a “sad that this is a needed preface” reality check: we should all know that there are some universal do’s and don’ts. “Universal” as in it does not matter if you’re black, white, fat, skinny, American, Afgan, straight, gay, male, female, non-binary, Republican, Democrat, or any other classification you could append here. This virus is no respecter of classification and we should reciprocate as a global humanity when in need.
You may think that last paragraph was vague or out of context, but it’s not. Sure, in the beginning when Corona was just forming nobody was to blame (I guess except for whoever/whatever created it), but what I’m referring to is the the last two or three weeks that are most important and under scrutiny. The moments you are reading about or seeing are often bloated and impartial facts by media, politically charged, or about the knuckleheads buying 18,000 units of hand sanitizer/ two pallets of toilet paper. Not even to the latter two extremes, people are panic buying resources even in small quantities, but if 1,000 people buy all of the, say, bread, then that is not available for the next person in a more dire situation. Yes, the laws of supply and demand are always in effect in life, but they shift exponentially in times like this … usually for the worse.
All of the chaos, and unbalanced behavior could be resolved with just common sense and critical thinking skills (both of which meld into the universal do’s and don’ts). Common sense would tell you it’s not right to do this or that, and critical thinking would tell you to proceed with caution or not buy stuff in surplus; none of this had to be rocket science. Unfortunately, in this day and age, a lot of people are not using and do not have common sense/critical thinking skills, and this, I think, is probably the key driving a factor in this whole “pandemic” that theoretically could have been mitigated otherwise.
I think I rambled on a bit too much. Yep, sorry.
Until the next update!
Xbox Series X Specs Released
I was excited to read this morning about the specs for the upcoming Xbox Series X, the successor to the Xbox One X/S. Also was information about backwards compatibility and ray tracing.
Here’s Microsoft’s fresh blog post at the Xbox Wire. Where you can read the details amd context for yourself.
New Books I’m Reading
Well, should and will be reading. First up is a men’s devotional book I heard about on the radio about a month ago on either KLOVE or FLR. I bought it and just haven’t picked up reading it yet. The title of this one is 4:8 Devotional: Biblical Faith, Fitness, and Fatherhood by Keith Hutchison (link).
The next two I picked up last night and am excited to read them.
I was introduced to author Kevin Hearne years ago at my last job by a coworker who had some similar interests, including reading, that I did. I had not been reading regularly for whatever reason I couldn’t possibly recall, but he got me hooked on the Iron Druid Chronicles (or IDC) series of books which reinvigorated my reading.
While the IDC series has since concluded, Kevin Hearne has started a new series called The Seven Kennings. To be honest, I haven’t read the first one in the new series yet, but the one I picked up last night was A blight of Blackwings (link).
The last one I picked up is a new author for me. I have shopped at Barnes & Noble pretty much since Borders when out of business in the early 2010’s. I have thus seen the author Cassandra Clare’s books here and there, but last night the latest book caught my attention and fits my sci-fi, fantasy, druid, -esq reading genres. The title of this last one is Chain of Gold (The Last Hours) (link).
I’ve got a lot of reading to catch up on and start!
My Life. My Story. My World. 
You must be logged in to post a comment.