The First Wave Continues

I stopped logging COVID-19 numbers on June 20th. Things were improving rapidly and I just didn’t want to be bothered keeping to the schedule anymore. One month later I started keeping track again. I’ve heard people refer to the current spike in the numbers as a new wave. I don’t think it’s a second, or third, or anything wave. I think we have done such a colossally terrible job as a nation of respecting our neighbors that we’re still very much in the first wave. It looked better for a minute there, but it was a ruse.

Massachusetts doesn’t post numbers on the weekends anymore so I can only track the national counts.

In the last 24 hours there have been 164,776 new COVID-19 cases in the United States. The vaccine has been available for free for months and months and we had over 100,000 cases today.

Again, I say this to all Americans who have not yet taken the free and effective vaccine: Fuck You.

robertjames1971Leave a comment

Still Won’t Install

I wonder what’s going on with the whole installing World of Warcraft thing? I try to install the battle.net client and it fails. I went to the support page on line and found a direct link to install Warcraft for Mac and downloaded that and it fails to install in exactly the same way.

I’ve never seen anything like this. I wonder if it has something to do with the network at my parents house. Is it just too slow for the servers to deal with? Did whomever set up the network put a firewall in place that is blocking me? I wonder if I try this at home will I have the same trouble? Did some setting somewhere on this machine get corrupted by the first try and now it’s always going to fail?

It’s just crazy.

robertjames1971Leave a comment

Sad Sigh

My parents celebrated their 54th wedding anniversary this week. We made as big a deal as we could, given the circumstances. My sister brought my mother to the rehab hospital to visit my father and they were both over the moon happy.

My parents were on the phone with each other a few minutes ago. I overheard her ask him how long have they been married. She sounded surprised when he answered. Then she asked how much older she is than him.

Then she asked me if he was my father for the second time today and the third time since I got here last night.

I can’t take much more of this.

robertjames1971Leave a comment

Please Install

I want to play World of Warcraft with Jen while I’m at my parents house but it just won’t install. I deleted the battle.net desktop app and I am trying to reinstall it… and that status bar hasn’t moved in ages. Why do I even bother?

robertjames1971Leave a comment

Wasted Opportunity (Also, blog Stats Review)

I’m serving another 24 hour prison sentence. Dinner has been served to both of us, the doors have been alarmed so she can’t wander off without making a huge noise (I can’t either of course, but I know how to turn the alarms off so there’s that at least), her meds have been delivered, and my intermittent fasting period has been kicked off for another night (a little early, but that’s okay).

If I were smart I would be using my prison sentence to work on some 50/90, but the SyFy channel is running both parts of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and how can I not watch that? The only horcrux left is the snake.

We only have one more day in July, and lately that means I have been paying attention to the hit stats for this blog. I created this account in March of 2017 and the monthly counts for 2021 so far have (with one slight exception) destroyed every other month since the account was created. I’m not sure why (though I do seem to be posting more than ever before) but the numbers have been way up since last November and they skyrocketed starting in January. As always, please remember that skyrocketing monthly numbers for me look more like terribly bad afternoons for real blogs. All of you folks paying me visits are my new best online friends, but there aren’t that many of you, you know? Select company, right?

This is not my first wordpress.com account though. The first ran from December 2012 to July 2016. I was curious how my current stats compared to the old account’s. Turns out I am generally getting more hits now than I did then. Mostly. There were two months, December 2015 and January 2016, where the monthly hit count was higher than anything I’ve had with this account. Every other month was significantly lower than what I have been consistently getting in 2021. Why were those two months so much more popular than any other months since I started? No idea. I look at the summaries and I don’t see anything resembling a spike. There wasn’t one post that somehow, magically, drew in the people in droves. Nope, everything looks normal. I just had way more hits in those two months.

I set the record for this account last month, by quite a bit. This month has a chance to come close, but it’s going to take a crazy good night tonight and a really great day tomorrow to set a new record. Also, July has one more day than June so even if I do set the record it should have an asterisk. Roger Maris like a mutha, right?

Okay, I am going to ride out the rest of Deathly Hallows 2 for the next hour or so. Maybe I’ll try to write some lyrics, or a bass riff, or something. Anything, just so long as my mother doesn’t have a bad night.

Please don’t let her have a bad night. Pretty please.

robertjames1971Leave a comment