Category: covid-19

School

The question of what to do about school this year is changing from a disturbing hypothetical to an ugly reality.

My sister is a teacher. Her union is pushing for 100% remote school. Her district disagrees. I understand why, but how effective will physical class time be with the entire faculty fearing for their lives and the lives of their families? I can’t read the future, but I’m guessing the answer is “not very.”

My step son’s school district is offering both remote and in person options and letting the students choose. He emphatically wants to go with the in person option. He had a rough time with the at home school last year and he doesn’t want to risk his senior grades on doing it again. No amount of counter arguing has convinced him to change his mind. Clearly remote is the better option for everyone, but he wants to go back.

I don’t get the logic these school systems are using. There is a clear risk to the health of the students, faculty, and staff. It was enough of a risk to shut everything down back in March. Nothing has changed as far as the virus is concerned. Why then is re-opening the buildings even a consideration? My step daughter’s school is sort of a bubble, so her situation is different. She’ll be taking most of her classes remotely, but she’ll be doing it from her dorm. If they can keep the bubbles closed then they might have some luck. Of course, I don’t think the faculty or the staff are bubblin’, so maybe it will blow up in everyone’s face.

Public schools though… no bubbles there. How do we handle it? Ideally we would all go remote because that’s the smart thing to do, but since when are American’s smart? There has to be some way to lessen the chances of spreading infections from home to school and back again. Should we wear masks at home? Probably. Should school kids isolate themselves from their parents? The older the kid the more likely that works, but it seems pretty unlikely regardless of age.

We’ve been in a cosmic sized mess since March, and in a couple of weeks it’s going to get a whole lot messier. Frankly, I’m scared shitless.

How are you?

The Stir Crazy Files – Episode 57

I’ve talked a lot about how my back hurts all the time. I’m 49 and overweight, what do you expect?

I’ve talked recently about how there seems to be something wrong with my left thumb. It hurts. It’s not getting better.

I haven’t talked about it in a long time, but my teeth are a mess and every so often I get a little pain, just to remind me that they are there.

Yesterday I bit my tongue. I think. I don’t actually remember doing it. It might be just a scratch or something. Whatever the cause, my tongue has a spot near the tip that just hurts. Every time it touches something, which is pretty much 24/7, it hurts.

In the immortal words of Jimmy from South Park, “I mean, come on!”

Enough already! If The ‘Rona isn’t going to let me leave the house, the least the universe can do is not have me in nagging pain from head to toe while I ride it out. Stupid body. Stupid, stupid body.

Quarantine TV Update

Thanks to 50/90 and the return of some pro sports, my quarantined TV watching has fallen off the cliff. At least prior to this past weekend.

The second season of The Umbrella Academy came out. I liked the first season, so I popped on the first episode. It started with a quick recap of season one. While watching that I had two thoughts. The first was, wow, I had kinda forgotten a lot of this. The second was, wow, that season might have been a whole ton better than I remembered, and I did really like it.

I was planning to watch one episode, and spread the season out for a couple of weeks. Nope. Once I started watching I was hooked and couldn’t stop. I started the season on Saturday and finished it on Monday. Yikes. It was so good.

Prior to the start of 50/90 I started watching The Watchmen on HBO. I was only a couple of episodes in, but I was enjoying it quite a bit. I started up again last night. The second season of The Boys is coming on Amazon in a few weeks. I’ll be jumping back into that. I’ve also been picking my way through a Rick and Morty rewatch. When I’ve got 25 minutes or so to kill before work I’ll watch an episode. I’m in season two. I just watched the Unity episode where Rick creates a life form just to test out his chosen method of suicide. Is that the most colossally depressing thing you’ve ever seen or what? The show is so good.

Then there is the 800 pound gorilla in the streaming television room…. The Handmaids Tale. It’s out there. Its supposed to be amazingly good. I want to watch it. I haven’t watched it yet because I am afraid of it. I know it’s going to hit too close to home. I don’t want to find out how that show is going to make me feel.

That and sports. There’s a Bruins game at 4:00 today. I have a meeting at 4:00 today. Damn it.

The Stir Crazy Files – Episode 56

Windows! Driving me nuts!

My company uses an in-house designed calendar/scheduling application. We use it to book meetings, conference calls, vacation time, everything. We’ve been using it for years and it works great.

In two weeks we’re junking most of it in favor of Google Calendar. I’m okay with the move. The transition is going to be annoying, but I’ve been using Calendar pretty much since Google released it and I know my way around pretty well.

One thing our app does is push notifications onto the Windows desktop. Five minutes before a meeting starts we get a little pop up box on the lower right corner of the screen and it stays there until you either click it off, or five minutes after the meeting’s start time.

Google Calendar has a similar function. In our early testing it would sometimes show up in the browser window and sometimes on the desktop. I think someone was tweaking our system under the covers because now it’s always on the desktop. Weird. For me, it was disappearing after a few seconds though. That isn’t good. If that notification goes away as soon as it displays, I’m going to end up being late for a lot of meetings. I mentioned it at our daily group meeting today and everyone seemed to have a different experience. Some aren’t getting it at all, some are only getting it for a few seconds, and some are seeing it stick around for a while.

Well… it’s gotta be a Windows thing then, right? I’m not anywhere close to what you’d call a power user on Windows 10, but I can usually fake my way around. I brought up the notification settings to see if there is a way I can change the length of time a notification displays. Nope. Nothing. Well that doesn’t make sense. I spent a good 10 minutes clicking around trying to find this parameter setting that I know should be there, while admitting that it might not actually exist.

Eventually… off to The Google. The notification parameter wasn’t under notifications, it was under display. Muthapussbucket! I set it to five minutes, which is the max, even though I was hoping to set it to 10 minutes. It worked.

I feel Windows dumb. Of course the notification setting was not under notifications! Of course! Dummy.

I’m not sure how this relates to being stir crazy due to COVID-19, but the two things have to be connected somehow. Everything connects back to The ‘Rona.

Planning for the Future? What?

I just had a chat with my wife. There is something I might want to do in the future if everything works out right.

What needs to work out right?

  • A COVID-19 vaccine is thoroughly and successfully tested
  • A COVID-19 vaccine is approved and made available to US citizens
  • A COVID-19 vaccine that is available to US citizens is actually attainable by US citizens (those are not the same thing)
  • We all take a COVID-19 vaccine
  • The COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t have side effects that cronenberg the crap out of us and turn us into flipper babies
  • Biden wins the election.

I asked her, if all those things happen, does she want to drive down to DC and attend the Inauguration? Can we swing bringing the kids?

COVID-19 Numbers

Here’s what I have for today. Well, yesterday actually:

  • Methuen, MA
    • Total Cases: 1054 (up 29 from the last time they shared, 15 days ago)
    • Deaths: 61
    • Death Rate: 5.79%
  • Massachusetts
    • Total Cases: 116,684 (up 502 from yesterday)
    • Deaths: 8,580
    • Death Rate: 7.35%
  • United States
    • Total Cases: 4,414,834 (up 84,397 from yesterday)
    • Deaths: 150,447
    • Death Rate: 3.41%

Five minutes after I posted that Methuen wasn’t sharing numbers anymore, Methuen posted numbers. It had been 15 days and the curve is still pretty flat. Not flat, but flat-ish.

Massachusetts looks bad. Really bad. One day isn’t enough to be a trend, and it’s not time to worry about a negative turn around, but the new infections yesterday (confirmed + probable = the number I wrote above) was almost double the day before. There were also a lot more deaths for a day than we’ve been seeing of late. The numbers are disturbing.

Speaking of disturbing. The United States is a disaster of biblical proportions. To say it is insane is the understatement of the decade. We are getting close to the magic day when there are 100,000 new cases in a single day. 2,149 deaths in one day is a single day record that is massively higher than the record it broke. 150,447 deaths in four months.

And we still don’t have a national plan to combat the virus.

150,000 Deaths and 10th Place State

I am still keeping my COVID-19 spreadsheets. One for Massachusetts, one for the entire United States, and one for Methuen. Methuen hasn’t updated their numbers in weeks, so I’ve kinda given up on that one. The other two are still going, updated once a day. I still update the sheets as soon as I see that Massachusetts has posted their numbers. Generally that’s about 4:00pm. They are an hour late today. Some days they post on time but I don’t get to it until later. I try not to look at the US numbers until it includes MA.

I cheated today. I just looked at the US numbers, though I didn’t update my sheet. Two items of note. First, North Carolina caught us. We were one of the states with the highest infection count for months, but things have quieted in Massachusetts enough that a bunch of states have passed us. Today North Carolina dropped us from ninth most infected state to 10th.

Second, the United States of America has officially topped the 150,000 mark for deaths.

One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dead Americans.

But I’m sure that’s just fake news, right? Isn’t all science fake news? Isn’t all math fake news? Isn’t all fact fake news?

Walks

We’re trying to walk again. Jen’s been going on a long walk in the morning before work. My back and my legs aren’t ready for that yet. We’ve been taking shorter walks once or twice a day together. Today we went to the fallen branch and back.

332/365

Exercise… I hate doing it, but even my fat ass can admit that I really, really need it.

Miami Marlins

What passes for the Major League Baseball season this year opened on Thursday. Four days ago.

Today the Miami Marlins had to cancel their next game because 14 of their players and coaches have tested positive for COVID-19.

14.

Forteen.

Now I knew the chances of making it through a 60 game season and a 16 team playoff were pretty much nil, but I really thought it would take a couple of weeks before the system started to collapse. I thought it would last for more than four days.

The Stir Crazy Files – Episode 55

I have had the hardest time keeping my glasses clean. It’s just a massive annoyance to me as I try to work. Jen bought a package of pre-moistened lens paper and finally something helped.

Earlier today I was thinking my glasses needed a cleaning, but I want to conserve these magical lens wipes and I put it off. Then, I took a swig of Diet Pepsi out of a 16.9 ounce/0.5 liter bottle and a single drop of liquid splashed out of the bottle and splattered right on my right lens.

son.of.a!!!!!

Note, I was going to use the word bitch as a negative. I don’t think I can do that anymore. Republican congressman Ted Yoho recently called New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a bitch on the steps to the US Capital Building.

To me, if AOC is a bitch, then we as a society need more bitches, because she is going to save us from the cesspool our nation has become.