Category: Generic

Awake

The alarm is set for 5:00 AM. I woke up at 3:30 and haven’t been able to fall back asleep. It’s 4:25 now. Crud.

Lots of stories online of folks freaking out while shopping for things like hand sanitizer. Remember when Americans trusted science and listened to the press when it suggested how to act during a crisis? Okay, so maybe Americans never truly had a grasp on that one, but you know what I mean. I feel as deluded as Archie Bunker for thinking, “those were the days.”

On a more serious note (seriously!), I haven’t shaved in over a week. I was thinking that if society collapsed I would want to look the part. You know, Grizzly Adams meats Rick Grimes and shit. Sadly I’ve reached the point where I can’t stand being this fury any more. I’m going to shave. Forgive me for entering the apocalypse looking all 48-year-old-baby-faced and shit.

Sigh.

Boy, Did We Pick the Right Week to Go

Disney World is closed.  Closed.

As in, not open.  As in, not accessible.  As in, you can’t come here.  As in, the Mouse has left the theme park.

Holy crap, did we ever pick the right week to go on our vacation!  We completely nailed it, corona virally speaking, of course.

DSC_0759

The Domino I Hoped Would Not Fall, Will Fall

The NHL is expected to suspend the regular season today.  The commish has a call with the ownership group at 1:00pm Eastern (they are probably all on the call as I type this).  After the shit show in the NBA last night*, it is expected he will temporarily pull the plug.

I was sincerely hoping this would not happen*.  David Pastrnak is sitting on 48 goals for the season.  I was really hoping the league would keep operating long enough for him to score two more.  When was the last time the Boston Bruins had a 50 goal scorer? According to this article, the last time was when Cam Neely did it in ’93/’94.  I was really hoping Pasta would tick this box before things went bad for the league.  The Bruins have a game tomorrow in Buffalo.  Couldn’t Commissioner Bettman give him one more game to see if he can pot two more goals?

Oh well.  They are telling teams to look into booking games through July.  I just hope Pasta doesn’t cool off during this unfortunate break in the season.

In closing, here is a list of Boston Bruins 50 goal scorers:

  • Phil Esposito
    • Scored 76 goals during the 1970-71 season
    • Scored 66 goals during the 1971-72 season
    • Scored 55 goals during the 1972-73 season
    • Scored 68 goals during the 1973-74 season
    • Scored 61 goals during the 1974-75 season
  • Johnny Bucyk
    • Scored 51 goals during the 1970-71 season
  • Ken Hodge
    • Scored 50 goals during the 1973-74 season
  • Rick Middleton
    • Scored 51 goals during the 1981-82 season
  • Cam Neely
    • Scored 55 goals during the 1989-90 season
    • Scored 51 goals during the 1990-91 season
    • Scored 50 goals during the 1993-94 season

 

*Unlike the NHL, the NBA has confirmed players have COVID-19.  The first, NBA patient zero, if you will, was joking about the virus just a couple of days ago.  During a press conference the rocket scientist made a show of touching all of the microphones, effectively guaranteeing that all of his teammates who were interviewed after him caught the virus that he was already carrying.

*This is sarcasm.  Like, #sarcasm.  Everyone in North America knew this was coming and it’s not a bad thing.

CDC Map

The CDC has an interactive map showing the number of cases by state.  Click the link to see the actual map.  This image you’re seeing here (assuming the Google share works) is just a screen shot.  I’ll update this as things change.

The Telecommute Call

The telecommuting call for my company has been made.  It will be for at least two weeks and it will start Monday.  That’s actually good as there is something I need to do at my desk tomorrow.

In our house, Jen is already telecommuting.  Bellana will start remote classes on Wednesday.  I will start telecommuting on Monday.  All we have left is Harry’s high school.  What’s it gonna be, high school?  Are you going to jump on the resource management bandwagon or are you going to keep insisting you know better than all of the experts who actually study how to handle this sort of situation?  Are you going to make a small sacrifice that might make life easier on our soon-to-be-overtaxed health care industry, or are you going to keep letting large groups of people meet and contribute to the infection spike which will potentially put our soon-to-be-overtaxed health care industry into a state where there are more patients than beds and supplies?  What’s it gonna be?

Guitars and Statistics

I doubled the number of songs with guitars recorded tonight.  I had three, now I have six.  They all suck and my attempts at keeping things low-fi are making them suck even more.  What can you do, right?  Two of the songs are in 7/8 time because prog, and two are in 3/4 time because… I don’t know, waltz maybe?

So… COVID-19.  WHO has declared it a pandemic.  Duh.  It is pretty global now so, yeah.  Pandemic.  Dig it?

I’m seeing all sorts of people calling the responses so far “panic”.  They don’t seem to get it.  It’s not panic, it’s resource management.  Every single infectious disease expert is telling us to put “social distance” into practice.  Why?  Resource management.  There are going to be x number of infections, based on the data we have from China, and y percent of those infections will require hospital care.  Finally, we only have z number of hospital beds available at any given time.  y is less than x, but y is greater than z.  Dig?  Statistically speaking there will be more infections requiring hospital care than there are hospital beds to put them in.  If we put “social distance” (I fucking LOVE that term and I’ve been practicing it since I was about four years old) into place then we spread out the infections over time, thus reducing the number of cases requiring hospital care at any one time so that suddenly y is less than z.  Boom.  Problem if not solved then partially alleviated.  Statistics, babie.  Stats for the win.

Read this from the New York Times: Flattening the Coronavirus Curve

Read this from WBUR: Harvard Global Health Expert: Mass. Hospitals Face Capacity Problem If Coronavirus Cases Spike Quickly

Remote Classes

I saw some rumblings on thebookface that the University of Vermont had made a call on post-Spring Break classes. I just checked with Bellana and it is confirmed.

Spring break ends on Monday, but classes on Monday and Tuesday are cancelled outright. Starting on Wednesday they are switching to remote classes.

In other words… hey you crazy spring breaking kids… don’t come back.

I asked her if she left anything in her dorm that she needs going forward and she said she’s all set. She is prepared. She’s also planning to go back as soon as they let her, which is understandable. I guess the question now is will they lock the place down while the students are away or will they be able to get back into their rooms if they need something.

We will see.

Strat… Delay

I brought my Fender Stratocaster up from the cellar this morning.  I cleaned everything out of the case (except for the whammy bar and a couple of strap locks that were there when I bought the guitar six years ago).  I plugged it into the little Bassbreaker and made sure everything worked.  The volume pot is a touch on the scratchy side, other than that it’s top notch.

Then I put it back in the case and leaned it against the wall and left it there.  I was going to take it to Guitar Center tonight after work to see how much they would give me for a trade in.  I paid $700.  Strangely, $700 is about the retail price for a Vox AC15 amplifier.  Weird how that works out, eh?  I know Guitar Center has a reputation for being stingy about trades and if they offer anything less than $700 I’ll take it somewhere else.  Maybe ebay.  Maybe reverb.  I’m not taking a loss on this baby.  No way.

I’m not doing any of that tonight though.  I’ll take a look at the world situation on Saturday and see how things look.  This is the very definition of non-essential.  It can wait.

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