Corona Quarantine: Day ~80, and Lots More

I had high hopes to post something every few days during quarantine, but that didn’t pan out. Well, here’s a chocked-full update on day 80 … at least I think it’s been 80 days already. Wow, what day is it?! I don’t think I can post updates every few days for what feels like a year already…

Anywho, a lot has happened in 2020. Sure, a lot happens every year, duh, but humor my point for a moment, this is the first year for majority of humanity that a worldwide pandemic (Corona) has ever occurred, but also the first time in a long time that something so egregiously unacceptable on the scale of “human disgust” (the murder/death of George Floyd) that makes me and most others want to get a refund on 2020 and go back a few years or skip on to 2021. Yes, I acknowledge many other Black men and women have been wrongfully killed (the ones that come to mind are Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, and Breonna Taylor). I also acknowledge that not only Black men and women are killed; lots of people are killed of all races, colors, shapes, and sizes by not only guns, knifes, and hands, but also not by just police, psychos, and terrorists. What I’m getting at is that we cannot err on an excuse along the lines of “Well, the world is a complex web and people die all the time for different reasons.” Sure, that’s true, but dang don’t diminish nor take the situation out hand or context. Anyone who knows me knows I love and support our military and our law enforcement … but I do not, under any circumstances, support the pieces of trash humans masquerading as law enforcement killing and hurting innocent people for whatever the heck reason is going through their minds. I love my fellow Black man and woman just as I do any other race, ethnicity, religion, or whatever attribute you think of. We are ALL humans and should treat each other with the same love and respect. No….this is not a plug for “all lives matter”, rather just a simple universal fact of humanity. Black lives NEED to be heard so that then truly all lives can matter vs what we have now with “some lives matter but we’ll put up a front that all lives matter”. Man I could go on and on and on with the errancy of humanity but I’ll move on. Just love thine neighbor, truly without reproach and judgement.

My office is still work from home right now and for the foreseeable future (not terribly happy, but it has its perks). I’m both an introvert and extrovert (just depends on situation), so I thrive working alone, but the job I do necessitates that face-to-face interaction with colleagues. That’s what’s getting grueling typing 10 billion messages each workday. AARGH!

Also, dumb humans who can’t wait to get their hair cut, nails done, or go to the latest beach party or rave are the brainless individuals stirring up “round 2” of Corona. Yeah, I know it may not be them, but they are definitely playing a part in it. The wife and I did go out to the hardware store, grocery store, and dinner (finally!) recently, but we stayed away from folks as directed or the best we could … there honestly really is a difference in us vs the idiots. At least I understand there is a set of universal do’s and don’t’s to abide by for your fellow humans, but some people can’t put their narcissistic nature and urges aside for a few weeks (or months) to let the rest of the world solve this crisis and heal. Sometimes you just can’t fix stupid.

Lastly, I’ll end with a happier note. It seems only like yesterday that we were moving from GA to AZ, and now here we go again (just local this time lol). Some of you may know already that we’ve been setting the groundwork to move in 2020. No, there’s nothing wrong with the house we live in nor the neighborhood, it just no longer fits our needs where we’re at in life. We’d like to downsize to a single-story with more land than to have a 2-story with less land. Plus other obligations and such help urge this along. Well, all the non-essential info aside, today marks the first day of an official journey: we had the realtor photographer come to take pictures. We had just finished this week with what I’ll say is about 98% of evvvvvvvvvvverything we’ve been working on for the better part of a year, plus or minus, and it is finally list worthy and ready. We’re excited to see the photos when we get them from our realtor next week and then we’ll begin the next phase to start listing soon. I’m not putting a date in here in case there are any unknown-to-me conflicts that could arise from doing so (maybe there aren’t any, but it doesn’t matter), but just stay tuned. Hopefully this will be our last “forever home” search (again).

Until next time,

Andrew

Star Wars Day!

Give A Little

So, I’m an avid fan of Reddit. Yes, that site that lots of people don’t like (but people dislike lots of sites!). My belief of Reddit, just like a good majority of things, is that there’s always a good and bad side of things. Well, let’s skip the philosophical side of this and jump to the topic today.

As I was saying, I’m an Avid fan of Reddit and I also love video games. Some coworker friends and I have been playing the latest title from Activision called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (aka “CoD” or “MW”). Sure, there was a slightly similar CoD game back in the early 2007’s but this is the remake/remastered (whatever) version from 2019. Boy was (is) it good. Again, there’s good and bad in everything.

So, where this story comes in today is more with a Quality of Life (QoL) aspect inside of the game. Even if you don’t video game or know anything else about technology, you’ll get this aspect. Inside of MW as you rank up, earn achievements, upgrade weapons/character, there is a little green indicator like the below figure for evvvvverything new that you’ve accumulated.

Think of it like this example: suppose you have a pistol and during a match you rank it up to where you earn a scope or suppressor on it, those will show a green indicator. All you have to do is roll past or click on each value to make the green mark disappear. Well, this sounds simple enough, right? Maybe. Now let’s say you play a LOT and accumulate a ton of these indicators and they can be all across the player profile. That’s a lot of hunting to find and get rid of them.

So, some other users on the subreddit (the specific community) for COD: MW suggested a fix to the developers of the game to make a “clear all” button … and they actually delivered on it. Now, a big part of that was people rallying behind it with a donation to a charity to support this. I, of course, saw this as a win/win and spoke up to make a donation if this got implemented. Well, lo and behold it did. So, this morning I made two contributions to two organizations that I most closely feel passionate too: Samaritan’s Purse and the Wounded Warrior Project.

Technology and gaming is not as bad as some (of you) may thing. There is good out there and this is one of those times where faith in humanity can have a glimmer of restoration.

If you’re interested in more details, click here for the original Reddit post and the follow-up post here. Even if you don’t game, I encourage you to donate to a charity/organization of your choosing at least once. It’s a nice feeling and helps people in ways we’ll likely never see … and that’s ok!

New YouTube project

Some of you may remember a YouTube project I ran from 2017 until just a couple months ago called Peach Cactus. It was a sort-of play on the name Peach for Georgia and Cactus for Arizona representing the states I’m from and moved to and one of their –if not the — key features. Even further back than that, which is merely a memory for me now, was another project called IT Central. Both of these were focused on the IT (Information Technology) field but ran their due course for different reasons.

One thing I always am an OCD (shouldn’t it be CDO???) person about is meticulous details. Even though those names were great they weren’t perfect nor long-term … at least not in the likeness of some of the other great tech users out there (Linus TT, for example).

Well, now I have finally decided on a name that I think can carry its own weight and is worthy of long-term investiture (one day!). I present to you Coody Connection! Sure, it has a better ring with “The” in the title, and I’ll use that, but officially it’s just “Coody Connection”. I will leave the videos from my prior two projects as-is like a freeze-frame and maybe link back to them somewhere, but everything will be fresh and it’ll have its own site, blog, and other properties as it goes on.

Because the name is more generic (in a good way!) I can focus on not only Tech things, but other news, vlog, and tidbits. It’ll take a while to get started, but if you were a fan of Peach Cactus or IT Central, please go ahead now and subscribe to Coody Connection at coody.co.

See you there!

Andrew

Looking for SomeGoodNews?

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.

Link