Prior to my vacation, my job was kind of winding down. I do a lot for my company, and am an important resource, but my boss and I are having a hard time defining exactly what it is I do... and more importantly, who should pay me to do it. I fully expected to come back from vacation to a day of work, where my boss said, "Thanks for everything you have done, but we are restructuring and do not have a position for you any more." Enter COVID-19. Now all the things I did as a sideline - people walking by my desk asking me questions, or inviting me to impromptu meetings, or getting me involved in other projects - has really perked up. People are MUCH more interested in my input/opinion on their project, when they are working alone in the echo chamber of their spare bedroom or den. So here I am, sitting at home, on my work computer, without much to do other than answer questions as they pop up. And I'm bored. But people are clearly relieved to have me back and available again. So maybe I will still have a job after all this is over! In other weird news, the huge vehicle fleets we generally work with (5-30k vehicles) are taking advantage of the down time to make some purchases and get some projects rolling! Our sales are actually UP over last year, and we look to come out of Q2 with a significant profitability INCREASE. Weird times.
I mean everyone's had their sand castle kicked over. We've effectively lost an employee through circumstance, we're now looking at emergency office space so we can separate peds and maternity and we're investing in like $5k worth of medical equipment. We've also discovered that we have employees that are great at what they do but... suck at the stuff they're not used to. now is the time for the generalists.
They keep sending emails at the hospital I work for saying "All you non-essential staff who've been ordered home are free to come volunteer in other departments...please...anyone...anyone." I've yet to reply, although I do feel really bad about it.now is the time for the generalists.
The pendulum swings mightily, doesn't it? :-) I'm getting into the flow better today. Had a couple of video meetings yesterday and this morning, and it's been funny ... I can't even remember the industry terms we used for common things! I keep waving my hands... " You know... the thingie-thing that the customer has to fill out before the tech can go on site for the installation...? What is it called?" But the cobwebs are falling away. I don't expect my workload to increase, though, so taking this all in the spirit of Ying, is a great suggestion. Love it.
Having a tough time today. I've come to terms with the fact that my summer bar tour work is not going to be happening. And I have only a couple months savings since I was planning on slowly ramping up the work right about now. The plan was to volunteer on this plastic recycling thing this summer, get it on track to be somewhat of a viable business by fall. But now that's also a bust since the makerspace shut down and all our summer proposals are not viable anymore. So I'm in this weird state where I don't have work - or anything to do - so the quarantine is boring as hell. But combined with an urgency to find some work. Ever feel stuck, like you should be doing things and working hard but are feeling paralyzed because you don't know exactly what? It's crazy stressful because I've never actually had a real job in my life, and working for someone else or doing some shitty work feels soul crushing. And while I have many other skills, making resumés and interviewing is certainly not my forté since I never had to before. I know my problems are not super important, since people are dying and worse case my parents will make sure I don't starve. But it still feels like crap when a month ago I was feeling optimistic about finally finding some work I want to do to now being totally lost. And having to revert to looking for meaningless gigs. Applied for some remote tutoring gigs and created an upwork account to maybe edit some videos. Also started writing a CV. Maybe something will help. The situation is evolving fast, who know what's gonna be the situation in a couple weeks. But todays's been the lowest day of my quarantine. I hope I can bounce back and regain some optimism about the future.
Working from home means I've been getting a lot of bird watching in! There are a bunch that stop by our feeder including cardinals, jays, a couple kinds of woodpecker, a red-winged blackbird, and several very round mourning doves. My conference paper did get accepted! I handed in the camera-ready copy last week and posted it to arxiv.org, but it's 'on hold' and I'm not sure how long to wait before talking to them given waves hands the general state of things. A week? Two weeks? It's been intermittently really hard to focus but my advisor expects a lot of progress so I'm trying my best. My wife and metamour are both working from home and their managers are all "take lots of breaks" "don't work too hard" which is just furthering my desire to be done with grad school one way or another.
Oh! Due to aforementioned work-from-home, we moved all my lab plants and all my metamour's office plants home. The only place they're safe from the cat is my bedroom, so now I get to wake up to this every morning: The cat does not care for our aloes so they get to hang out elsewhere:
IIRC, their policy was two weeks even before covid started.My conference paper did get accepted! I handed in the camera-ready copy last week and posted it to arxiv.org, but it's 'on hold' and I'm not sure how long to wait before talking to them given waves hands the general state of things. A week? Two weeks?
Thanks! The FAQ they link to about 'on-hold' publications just says "may take a few days" but I will keep being patient as I'm sure they're both understaffed and more busy than usual thanks to everyone having to stay out of the lab and work on papers instead.
No problem. And, yeah, it's probably for the best to keep calm while they deal with what's certainly more than their usual problems. What's your paper about, if you don't me prying? BTW, I recently found this utility, and it's been proving itself invaluable.
Detexify is the only practical use I've found so far for the touchscreen on my laptop! The paper's on stuff I did for undergrad research ages ago that just never got published. We wanted to see if we could detect static shocks to a computer using only software running on the computer and it turns out that yes you can probably do that, although it's tricky. Looking back on it I wish we had had better experimental methodology but fortunately the project's been revived in a slightly different form so hopefully my dreams will come to pass.
Working from home made me discover the huge importance of routine for me. It makes all the difference in the world. Time to embrace my slight on-the-spectrum tendencies and make a rigid schedule every day, and try to stick to it. It's a night and day difference for my mental health.
I have a similar expetience. On one hand I am happy that I don't get bombarded with questions the whole day at work so I can focus when I want to focus. However, I am also getting distracted here and not getting the same amount of things done at home. A routine at home helps!
I’ve been working with thenewgreen to keep Forever Labs in the best place to weather COVID19. At the same time, we have been working on a major business development. Zoom call after phone call after Zoom call. It’s a weird headspace to be in. We received our ISO biobanking certification yesterday, which is a big deal. We are the second biobank in the world to have it, and the other worked to create the standard. We passed with flying colors. I do take some pride in the quality of our lab operations. We are getting three more days of rain, so I did a bit of grade adjustment for the rain garden, and I cut my native prairie grass plot short this morning. This would be the best time to burn it, but the city wouldn’t appreciate that. I suppose if I put in the effort, I might get them to come by and do it for me. Apparently many domestic and non-native grasses sprout early, and by cutting it back, the native grasses get a chance to sprout. From what I have read, establishing a native prairie is a three-year project. In year one, you seed, and keep cutting it down to 6” to encourage the roots to spread. In year two, you do the same, but cut it down to 12”. Next year, I can let it grow to its full height. I ordered a hophornbeam and an American hazelnut to fill in two places where they’ll fit. I was in charge of my daughter’s science class yesterday. We made a terrarium in a glass bowl. After filling it with plants and some residents, she made a list of what she added in a terrarium journal. Her daily task is now to observe if there are any changes, and to record them. She also is going to record the water she adds. I’m going to make another attempt at bread. Tomorrow, I think. I’ll try letting the yeast proof 30 minutes instead of 10 minutes first.
A few nights ago I had one of these dreams where you wake up and remember everything. Every single detail. And you can't shake it off. I am supposed to swim in the olympics. I arrive late to the qualifiers. I enter the swimming pool and head to the obvious person in charge. She is an older lady, reminded me of McGonagall from Harry Potter in her looks, but not her vibe. I ask her whether I could still swim the qualifiers. She says I missed them but there is one last round happening for the womens qualifiers, I could just join that. So I take off my clothes and jump into the water and swim right next to the lane with the only swimmer, a 14 year old girl. We swim our round, the time is noted. We get out of the swimming pool. I head to the same older lady, asking "what next?". She tells me that I will be swimming later this evening, all the information needed are in this book. And she hands me a 300 page heavy brochure. "All you need is inside there, go find your dorms". I make my way to the "dorms". It took me a while to get that, but using the brochure and asking around, I make it to the olympic village. I walk straight to what looked like "the dorms" only to notice that there is a huge party happening there. Not just there, everywhere around me. People were dancing to a weird tone of a flute I couldn't recognize. A girl named "Huda" (an arabic name btw) was playing the weird flute. And everytime she blew into it, everyone went mad. She seemed to be surprised about its effects but liked the attention, so she kept blowing into it and the people around continued dancing and drinking. I tried to ask myself through the crown of people with the hopes that someone could tell me where my room is. But no one was interested in answering. They were too engaged with what was happening around them to even notice me. After trying a few more times I give up. I sit down, in the middle of the crowd, on some bench. Left and right are people dancing. On the bench, behind the bench, everyone. It feels crowded, even though we are outside. I try to concentrate on the brochure. The info is supposed to be there. So I go through it. Once, twice, three times. Over and over I try to find the pages that tell me where I find my dorm and when I am going to swim again. I keep repeating the procedure. Keep getting distracted by what is happening around me. At some point, after what feels like the 1000s iteration, the brochure starts to lose its binding. First single pages and then complete parts of chapters start to fall out. I try to collect the falling sheets and put them in order, all of that while still sitting on the bench with the party going around me... I keep on trying. Until at some point the whole thing just falls into single sheets and from my hands onto the ground. I gave up. And without much options left. I dive into the madness around me. P.S: I started growing a weird patchy beard.
Excellent detailed description of your dream. Cumol It sounds to me like an anxiety dream, no? Everything that is normal and stable and organized (the binder), everything that tells you who you are and where you're supposed to be is falling apart -- first page by page and then in large chunks. And of course, there's nothing in the book anyway. The woman who gave it to you was delusional (having you swim in the women's qualifiers). You're underlying fear is that when your moorings (the binder) are gone, you will join the madness. But that's what dreams are for: to process all the anxiety and fear. You wake up, like we all do, wondering if our entire society is balanced on toothpicks. Last night, I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and discovered that the power had gone out. I truly felt: now this? now this? I checked the neighbourhood hub facebook group and a dozen people were up at 3:00 a.m reporting their location and asking if anyone else had lost power. It was back on in 20 or so minutes . . . but for a while there . . .
Bread Machine II Electric Boogaloo Yeast proofed prolly a little too long. You could hear the breadmaker going HRRRNNNNGGGH towards the end. Supposedly this is a 2lb loaf but you'll notice it didn't get quite elastic enough to... form a bread-like shape.
Social distancing is going pretty okay for me. I already worked from home. I always did my workouts and yoga from home. It's sunny here at the moment, so I'm getting a nice lunchtime walk for my government sanctioned one form of daily outdoor exercise. On Fridays I jump onto Discord with my friends to chill and play some Jackbox games. DnD is still going strong via group calls too. The only thing that sucks is no kayaking. That sucks pretty bad. But I appreciate that it's barely even a footnote in the grand scheme of shitty things at the moment. For now, the wooden toy I bought in Canada has me dreaming of the good times to come.
Thanks, it caught my eye straight away. This is the company that makes them if you're interested. They have a whole range.
I'm wondering if I should order 1000 N95 masks from Alibaba for ~ 1500€. I feel like the nurses and kind of everybody would need it in Paris. But I don't know if such a small order would help in any way. Is that crazy ? To try to do that on an individual basis ? Might be too late.
A heartening email I received from a Emergency physician friend who spends half her time in the upper peninsula of Michigan, after I sent her the above info:How about the small rural communities. I came back last week to Iron River, MI and quarantained at home, distance myself at much as possible...RURAL COMMUNITIES are completely defenseless. We have currently, because it is winter around 3000-4000 people, but we have only 4 vents and one need to stay clean for emergency surgeries. There are 4 ICU beds only. They only can be staffed for 3-4 days as per federal rules, which have not changed. The monther (sic) hospital in Wisconsin says they will make room for 50 more patients.... but Aspirus Hospital cover the whole western UP, this are about 50.000 to 70.000 mostly elderly people with various co-morbities! THIS IS NOT ENOUGH! [Our large hospital system in Detroit] has sufficient resources and can actually overbid other systems when it come purchasing power, here we do not have this. I fear we will have worse case fatality numbers than other countries, but we won't test, so we won't know.
One thing I only realized when I talked to my parents yesterday is that a lockdown is the best thing ever precisely for rural areas. Their province has only 10 cases on 650k people when our semi-lockdowns began. They're behind, so they benefit the most from blanket measures.
https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid%3Af048c853-7e1d-4715-b73d-3b506b274a30 Interesting paper that suggest dry or steam sterilization at 121 C might be a kind of sweet spot for making masks re-usable. One hospital reported that 134 C deformed the masks, which is not desirable for re-use, but the 121 temp had good results. Hospitals have autoclaves and could do this. Even a clothes steamer with mask in baggie would work nicely, though dialing in the temp might be finicky. I've seen some folks suggest dry heat from rice cooker as well. Even a pressure cooker I bet could get good results.
Right but stickin'em over steam for ten minutes is gonna be fiiiiine. They said that because the CDC, for some reason, is radically anti-UV sterilization and because since none of them know any fucking thing about materials science obviously their technique is superior. Say dumb shit on twitter: scarmonger say dumb shit on Elsevier: visionary
Thanks for the heads-up. Thought I would be able to see the scammers by checking history records & transactions amounts, but you are right, it's a risk I'm not willing to take.
Thanks mk, after reading your comment and kleinbl00, it definitely seems like its not the best course of action.
I'm not sure. I've heard that here, in the merry land of $$$'s, some of the states are in a bidding war against one another for supplies like these. You could actually be competing against government entities, especially on that scale, approaching the size of an industrial order, and ultimately driving the price up. I dunno, this all sucks. You're trying to do a nice thing, and I respect that, but are you sure you can get it to the people who need it faster than what may be an already-established supply chain? I'm worried about the coming few months in the U.S. Very worried.
Seems like mk, kleinbl00 and you are three against 0, so I'm going to follow your advice and not get scammed. Thanks :)
I've been brought in on the ground floor for a very focused group for covid-19 which is a statewide priority. I'm doing it at a county level and I'm relatively new but it already feels like I'm the number two or three at the county for this which is really great. Started doing that yesterday and I put in about 22 hours between yesterday and today. My boss is looking into overtime because ain't no way I'm staying under 40 hours. This is gonna be rough y'all.
This quarantine has been a trip. Already have a ton of weird feelings about it and its only 2 weeks in. Another (3?) months to go! Days 1-3 - fine, but a shame I won't be able to see my friends from home in person. Waste a lot of time playing Darkest Dungeon. Day 4 - oh snap - if this goes past graduation i will never see most of my Gainesville friends ever again ~ not a good day Day 5 - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Day 6,7 - All the homework piles up, finally have to do it. Felt a lot less bad about the quarantine since i'd be inside all day anyways. Day 8 - Feel guilty about feeling bad about he quarantine since we're basically fine and several acquaintances now have sick relatives or are out of work. Day 9 - Discord channels! Finally set up a few, and honestly just idling in voice chat while doing homework or single player video games and not even really talking much has made a huge difference. Days 10+ ...? tbd
I logged in on the old tutor-student matching service to vouch for friend's account, which apparently was enough to reactivate my profile. What followed was a flood of old and new clients that took a major chunk of Monday to deal with. A whole bunch of people thought it's just a matter of price, ones who were too pushy had their numbers blocked. Another market going bananas. Otherwise, it was a remarkably productive week. Finally bought an all-in-one office machine to help with work-related stuff, got into a good feedback loop with adviser, and this remote TAing seems to work well. I actually get unprompted questions from students instead of having to call them to the boards and collapse that don't-fully-understand wave function.
I'm very fortunate to be healthy and able to work remotely. I've actually been more busy at work this week than usual, which is good. Work is the only thing that's able to effectively keep me distracted from the disaster going on around us. A small part of me wants to just wallow in the insanity and binge Netflix, but I know that wouldn't keep me interested beyond a day or two. I think the best thing right now is to overcompensate on (virtual) social connection as best as possible. Call your older family members at least several times a week. Schedule time to talk to your friends and others that you might otherwise see under normal circumstances. Don't let anyone be home alone with just their anxieties.
Wrangled two days a week of work from home out of this COVID mess and wondering if I want to start roasting coffee or not just at home, for funsies, with a like $300 home roaster. cgod, what say ye? Even with a stay at home order I can still go outside and run around town, by myself, which is mostly what I do anyway. So between that and at-home strength and core workouts, things aren't too bad. Going to keep an eye on the National and State parks to see when they re-open and am continuously yelling at friends who go to those places anyway. There's this little nag at the back of my mind about a friend from college, a kind of "what if"...I don't think I've ever really been able to shake it and the fact that it's still there even though I've been in my current relationship for damn near a year, and am...five? years removed from college is unsettling.
ButterflyEffect, not sure if you already have that $300 roaster, but I made instructions on how to quickly and easily mod a $20 popcorn popper to make a decent roaster: If you're wondering if you'll dig it, might be worth dipping your toe in this way first. Cheap. Easy. Fun. They changed the design of the popper I used in the tutorial, but not meaningfully. Same instructions should apply now.
holy shit I even shared that way back in the day amazing, will refresh myself on this
Ha, nice. Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of the cheap home roasters don't yield that much more capacity than a popper. I'm guessing at your mentioned price point you're looking at something like a Behmor, which actually will net you quite a few more grams per roast. If I was paying money for a home roasting machine, I wouldn't go any lower than one of those, else the popper mod is more compelling. I actually have wanted to go old school cowboy-style and dry roast in a cast-iron skillet once I take my grill out of the garage. I think with this lockdown that is going to happen...
b_b and kleinbl00 Some support for my furin-inhibition #mkbatshittery:
I bought skullcap like 3 weeks ago :) I just had a call from a doc asking me if I wanted to manufacture some experimental drug (EV-based) to treat severe patients. It took me like 1 second to say yes. Now I'm gonna spend the rest of the day trying to write an emergency research IND.
... In these perspectives, likely, targeting furin might be an option for the prevention or treatment of Sars-CoV2 infection. So yeah. Maybe inhibiting furin will work. The author theorizes it might help even more so in patients with heart issues.Furin activity exposes the binding and fusion domains, essential steps for the entry of the virus into the cell. Since the S- glycoprotein of all coronaviruses contains a similar furin cleavage site, it is plausible that the activity of this enzyme is essential for the zoonotic transmission of many coronaviruses, including Covid-19 enveloped by a MERS-CoV and Sars-CoV S glycoprotein containing a furin cleavage site.
I'm a believer. As a side benefit it's helping me sleep like a fucking log. Now figure out what's in this magical panacea. It's the turbo-death pill my wife has been giving everyone when they get or start to get sick and it fucking works. The "I feel like shit" dose is 3 pills three times a day for three days and I tell you what I'm ready to try running again tomorrow and I'm on Day Two.
Day 1 of the NZ Lockdown Extravaganza. The sun is shining and I have a powerful urge to travel far and wide. So instead I did some washing, had some meetings and am contemplating packing it in for the day at 2pm with fuck all else to do (work-wise). Thankfully my employer is government funded and they have said even if I don't have any work to do, I'm still being paid during the time away from the office. Gotta love that kind of benefit. I don't want to just sit around for 4 weeks but if nothing comes to my work station I'm just gonna have to get really good at some more video games. Ooh I could stream on the Hubski discord for those who are super bored.