Civil Unrest

Last night, Center City had widespread looting and vandalism in the aftermath of peaceful, justified Black Lives Matter protests.

West Philly is getting hit with looting today.  has moved tonight’s curfew time from 8 PM up to 6 PM.

My employer’s primary locations are in University City, which is in West Philly. They’re sending text messages out to everyone who is subscribed to their emergency alert system. I just got two texts. I suspect there will be email alerts in my inbox when I log in tomorrow morning.

I just this minute, while I was creating this post, got a robocall from my employer about the street closures, curtailed SEPTA service, curfew, and the fact that police will let us pass *if* we have the essential-worker letter from our employer plus our work ID.

I’m grateful to be working from home, as every single bus/train I would normally use to commute runs through areas impacted by the destruction and looting.

I feel sincerely sorry for the businesses impacted by all this, whether it’s in terms of damage or loss of merchandise. They’re innocent victims, as are their employees. 

The curfew just went into effect. The mayor and community leaders are addressing the city live on TV, to try and quell the damaging behavior.

Pray for peace.

Today’s citywide alert:

Last night’s citywide alert: 

Quaran-TEAM

In five days, Philadelphia and surrounding counties will transition from Red to Yellow, in terms of COVID response. But TODAY the weather is utterly perfect. Brilliant sun, low humidity, comfortable temperatures... it’s the kind of day I’d gladly take all year, with just enough rain mixed in to keep the farmers and plants happy. 

So JFM, JR, Mark, and I quaran-teamed our way to one of those surrounding counties, to Styer Orchards. Sadly, only the store was open; the orchard itself was closed.  But the store serves hot food, so we had a heck of a lunch before heading back home. 

Other than Carmela’s funeral, and two quick drive-by visits to my parents, I have not been away from the house since picking up personal belongings from work on April 1.  It was wonderful to have a break in the routine.

Well, that was cool

I had a really interesting dream last night. I wrote about it at length in my journal, but the upshot was that I got to meet Barry Manilow and thank him for all the years of enjoyment his music has given me. We gave each other a huge hug.

I actually can’t recall ever having had Barry make a cameo in a dream of mine before, so I find this to be a noteworthy moment in my dreaming career. 🙂

That moment when...

That moment when you log off work for the day, and holler, "I'M HOOOOME!" 😂😜

Someone must have found a batch of faxes that needed processing, because I got inundated by the fax fire hose again today. Oddly, the ones that were not dated with a recent date were all dated for the third week of April. I suspect that there were some items set aside back then for whatever reason, and today, they were found and sent my way. Well, it's all good. The ones I couldn't finish today will be done on Monday.

In other news, I have enrolled in the Hadley School to take an online braille course. They took over for the Library of Congress, which used to offer a free braille transcription course. I had started the transcription course back in 1990, but at the time, I was working full-time, studying ASL interpreting, AND moving from my apartment into a house. Something had to give. So I didn't complete the transcription course.

I'm interested to see how they handle this online. When the Library of Congress was doing the course, we had to use a slate and stylus and actually braille the assignments. Obviously, I can't do that for an online course.

I will get started on it this weekend. One blessing of the lockdown is that we have all kinds of free time, lol. No commuting, no going out with friends, no going to church... that leaves a person with a whole lot of downtime, so I am finding constructive ways to fill it.

Social Distancing and Work

Today, we got an email from work.

Commencing June 1, folks who are working remotely will have their state and local income taxes deducted based on their HOME address, not their work address. This means, for example, anyone who lives outside the city, but works in the city, will NOT have the city wage tax deducted from their pay. Anyone who live out-of-state will have their own state's income tax deducted instead of that of the state where they work. This will not be retroactive to March 13, but it is how things will proceed going forward from June.

My first thought was that I won't be impacted, as I live and work in the same locality. Then, I thought some more. I started wondering exactly how long they expect things to continue as they are going, if the largest employer in the city (after the city itself) is going through employee records by the zillion and making changes. I realize that not everyone can work remotely, but even so, that has got to be a boatload of humans whose records are being adjusted. This is being done with the knowledge that as everything reopens, all those records will have to be returned to their pre-lockdown state.

Wow. Yeah, the big picture looks a bit different to me now than it did before I logged on this morning. Don't get me wrong; I love my ten-second commute and I will enjoy it while it lasts. However, it might be lasting a little longer than I initially realized.

Double wow.

Resurgence, Part II

The health system for which I work is calling its gradual reopening from the COVID-19 minimal staffing "Resurgence". The clinic where I work is actually starting to see urgent patients, but they are still maintaining a skeleton crew, rotating days that they work from home vs. in the clinic itself to minimize the number of people in the clinic, and rescheduling as many appointments as possible to be telemedicine visits.

I, meanwhile, have been told to continue working from home until the clinic is operating more normally, which makes me happy because I can keep my ten-second commute a while longer. I only wish it was possible to have my ten-second commute forever, because getting to and from work is such a bear on a lot of days, but I will take what I can get. Plus, now that we know I can do this, I can work from home on days where Mother Nature is losing her mind with blizzards, hurricanes, etc.

But anyhow, that's how work is going. Meanwhile, the county in which I live is slated to go from Red to Yellow on Friday, June 5. The Archdiocese is going to resume having Masses as of the following day, which means that one of my side gigs will be back up and running in June, hip hip hooray! Next up, I am praying that the neighboring county where my deaf-blind friend lives will start easing restrictions. I would love to resume going there as his aide on Fridays, which is my OTHER side gig.

Every little bit helps. Between the zero overtime and the zero side gigs, this lockdown has been rough on my bottom line. But I still feel fortunate, because there are a lot of folks out there for whom the shutdowns knocked out ALL their income, instead of a noticeable chunk of it. So I absolutely am not complaining; I'm just observing.

I am also crossing my fingers that everyone who really needs their income stream to be jump-started ASAP will be among the first to return to work when the restrictions are lifted in earnest. We absolutely had to enact the social distancing and the closures, because the virus is no joke. But I know that the precautions that have kept people from getting sick (or worse) have caused hardships in a lot of households. Compared to their challenges, my altered bottom line is nothing. So I hope they can start returning to normal as soon as it's safe.

Singing the praises of distraction-free writing

I have a few devices that are basically portable word processors. I LOVE them. Love. They really help my just sit down and write, sans any kind of distraction.

So for my latest Medium article, I thought I would spend a little time singing their praises.

I actually started this article about 16 days ago, but that's right about when my laptop started to flake out. I spent so much time trying to straighten out all the laptop issues, and then working on migrating my files to the new machine, that I had no time or energy left to finish the article. Finally, this afternoon, as soon as I logged out from work for the day, I decided that the article was getting completed TO-DAY, period. It was actually pretty close to being done, but even then it took me three and a half hours to put the finishing touches on it (because perfectionist).

Anyway, I love me some gadgets.

Enjoy!

Distraction-Free Writing is the Way to Go

Medium Post

It dawns on me that I have got a Medium post sitting waiting to be completed and edited. Fortunately, it does not have time-sensitive content, but it has been sitting for a couple of weeks as I have grappled with computer gremlins.

Well, now that I have the new computer, I am not dealing with random freezes and crashes while I am trying to work, so IMO it behooves me to get this document edited.

I can get to work on that after work.

Also, there is now a Wildwood Tram Car app. Now we can pay fares with cashless transactions, the better to protect everyone from COVID this summer.  Needless to say, I downloaded it as soon as I found out it was available.

Still setting up

My music didn’t make it over to the new machine. I spent last night and today copying it first to Dropbox, and now to a thumb drive.

The old machine takes a long time to do all this. I found out the hard way that if I try to do ANYthing else while the copying is in progress, the computer will freeze and I will have to reboot. 

So I let Dropbox update itself overnight. Then I embarked on the thumb drive copies (currently ongoing at this time).

THEN I can transfer all that good stuff to my new PC. 

Thank God my old PC still works. I’d have lost a lot of things if it went kaput before I could get all these items off the hard drive. 

New Kid on the Block

Setting up the new laptop. 

I had intended to give the old machine one last once-over to make sure everything was on Dropbox, but it repeatedly locked up on me. I think it’s mad. 

So I gave up on the final once-over and moved on to setting the new laptop up. 

I’m going to have my head in Computer Land for the day. Catch you all on the flip side. 

That feeling when...

That feeling when you’re practicing with the braille display and Bulfinch’s Mythology, and correctly identify “Hyperborean”.

At first I thought, “What? That can’t be right”, so I looked at the display. Sure enough, that’s what it said. Yay!

21 years

Happy 21st Anniversary to Mark! Our marriage is now old enough to drink!

Fortunately, the Italian restaurant where we normally go on our anniversary is doing takeout, so we will still get to have their food today. 👍

It's heeeere

Good news! My laptop arrived this afternoon, at least a day earlier than I had expected it to. I will take tonight and tomorrow to make sure anything I need to migrate over to the new machine is safely stored in my Dropbox, so I can jump in and Retrieve All The Things and install them on the new machine over the weekend.

Tomorrow is our 21st anniversary. We usually go to Popi's on our anniversary, but of course that isn't an option until the lockdown restrictions are lifted. Therefore, we will get takeout from Popi's instead. The food will be just as good whether we eat it in their building or ours, lol.

Due to computer problems, I spent a couple of days where I was just too mentally exhausted to practice with the braille book.

But then, I got back on board with the braille last night, and I noticed something. Something must have been percolating in my subconscious during those two days off, because there was a noticeable leap forward in my ability to feel the letters. I think our brain must keep processing lessons whether we are actively working on them or not. So if we keep at them, and don't let too much time lapse, it seems as though we not only might not lose ground, we might gain a bit of ground if we play our cards right. Interesting stuff.

I think I can, I think I can

Keeping my ailing laptop running during the workday reminds me of the story about The Little Engine That Could. The engine had to scale a steep hill, and all the way up, he kept repeating to himself, "I think I can, I think I can!" Then, when he crested the hill, he was able to say, "I knew I could, I knew I could" all the way down the other side.

Well, aside from one glitch during my lunch break, when the computer wouldn't wake back up after going to sleep, I actually did manage to keep the laptop going throughout the workday without issue.

That is huge, because the 17" screen REALLY makes a difference. Some of the software that I have to use for work looks like heck on a smaller screen, and it's not just my eyes that are the problem in this case. The different columns of data are all getting smooshed together (that's a technical term 😆), and it's a pain to read.

I am crossing my fingers for the new device to arrive soon enough that I can spend the weekend setting it up.

Last night, after I set Mark's computer up to work from home, I realized that there were 25 faxes that had come in after my workday ended. So I started putting the patients' medical record numbers on them, on my own time, just so I wouldn't have to go insane first thing in the morning doing that cumbersome task. It was two hours well spent, believe me, because when I logged on this AM, the fire hose of faxes was going full blast and I had truckloads of new items coming in. If I hadn't taken the time last night to do what I did, I would have been running around with my hair on fire today. Instead, I got ALL of last night's faxes processed, plus the avalanche that came in this morning, and the normal level of work that arrived during the afternoon. So there was nothing left undone by the time the day ended.

Now, will the fax fire hose reactivate itself after I logged out for the day? It certainly did yesterday. So who knows what my inbox will look like when I log on in the morning, lol. Watch this space.

Oh, and I got some sad news this afternoon. A former organist from my parish passed away of COVID-19 today. He was 76. This blasted, no-good virus! That's two nice folks that I personally know who passed away because of it, plus there is one person from the local Deaf community who passed away about 3 weeks ago.. We really need our researchers to develop meds that target this rotten thing, because I think that will be at least as important as the work they are doing to create a vaccine. It's fortunate that most folks who contract COVID do not have severe symptoms, but unfortunately, the ones who DO develop severe symptoms wind up in a LOT of difficulty. For their sake, as well as for the sakes of everyone who loves these patients, we need to create medications that will beat back the virus so the patients are in less danger of a health catastrophe.

Laptop woes

My laptop is fritzing out again. I think it’s on its last legs for sure this time.

I just ordered a new one. Le sigh. Thank God that’s an option, but boo hiss on surprise expenses. 

If I can’t revive my machine, I’ll have to work on Mark’s laptop until my new one arrives.

It’s harder than it ought to be to find a 17” screen with touchscreen AND (hardest of all) an optical drive. I’m old school that way. HP came through on all counts. 👍🏻

Resurgence

Today, the medical system is officially embarking on what has been termed "resurgence". This is the gradual reopening of our clinic, which will be seeing patients for the first time since April 1. That was when we began transitioning it to be repurposed as surge beds for non-COVID-19 patients.The good news is that we never reached such a level of overflow that our clinic was pressed into service for inpatients. The other news is that all the things that were done to ready the clinic in case it was needed for overflow beds, has had to be UNdone so we can use it as an outpatient clinic again.

We were a Tier 4 surge area. The hospital got as far as Tier 2, to the best of my knowledge, when making use of overflow beds. I don't know if Tier 3 was used, but Tier 4 was not.

We will be resuming the skeleton crew staffing that we had prior to the changeover. Only a very limited number of urgent patients will be seen in person. The rest will continue to be scheduled for telemedicine for the time being.

I, however, have been instructed to continue working from home for the time being. That works just fine for me. There is no shortage of electronic faxes to process. That goes double since today, it seems like they have turned on the fire hose of faxes now that the resurgence is underway. Holy moley but it has been busy today! I have had over 30 faxes so far today, and it's only lunchtime.

That's fine by me! Bring it! 👍

Reading, With a Twist

Everyone who knows me, knows I like reading.

I have decided to give myself a challenge. I downloaded a .txt version of Bulfinch’s Mythology, to read on a used electronic device I picked up at a price I couldn’t refuse. 

So, what’s the challenge?

This is the device.

Yes, that’s braille.

I’m watching my mom’s eyes change for the worse, drastically since in the past month, and thinking that preemptive strikes might be a good idea if these issues prove to be hereditary.

Plus, I need to keep my brain active during this lockdown. That’s a really major need on my part. 

Therefore, I have hit on a method for addressing both of those issues simultaneously. I have decided to read a book on this device, tactilely.

It’s slow going, as I expected. But it’s an intense brain workout, so it’s not tedious at all. Since I already know how to read braille visually, I can cheat and peek at the display if I hit on a letter I’m just not getting. But I am using that as an option of last resort. I keep thinking of one deaf-blind friend who dived in and just practiced nonstop, and learned braille that way after her vision failed. She’s living proof that it can be done. If she could do it, so can I.

I contacted the Hadley school, which offers free braille correspondence courses for both blind and sighted students, as well. Did I mention that I really need a brain workout these days? 

Besides, those of us who volunteer as SSPs for deafblind consumers rarely learn braille. We probably should spend a bit of time learning that, alongside the effort we make to learn to sign. I learned Grade 1 (uncontracted) braille a lot of years ago, like 1989. But there are numerous braille contractions that I don’t know, and I’ve always wanted to study those, too. Now’s the time.

I’m reading the book in uncontracted format. Who knows how long it’ll take? But it’ll be time we’ll spent.

Farewell to Carmela

On Thursday, we bid farewell to our dear friend Carmela with a Mass. It’s the first time I’ve been to church since the Archdiocese closed down everything in March. We respected social distancing. 

I read the first reading. Joe M. cantored. Afterward, the Misfit Toys had a social-distancing hoagie lunch in Joe’s back yard.

We’ll miss that wonderful lady very much. I’m sure she got on the express elevator up.

The AHL Cancels The Remainder of the Season

This should come as a surprise to nobody, but the AHL officially cancelled the remainder of its season and playoffs today. The news started leaking on Friday, as the Board of Governors was convening to discuss the matter.

It's the only really viable course of action. Minor league teams can't afford to play to empty arenas like major-league ones can. The NHL, NBA, et al have big TV contracts that would guarantee them a bunch of revenue even if the attendance in the arena is 0. Minor league teams rely on people packing the seats as their primary source of income. We just can't safely be crowding into arenas, or anywhere else, until this COVID-19 situation has been gotten under control.

Still, I'm disappointed.

COVID-19 can kiss my grits.

Fresh Start

Holy moley, what a few days it's been!

I believe that I have finally gotten my PC straightened out. I had to reset it twice on Thursday, when it would not let me boot or log in. I would get to the animated circlng dots, either during the bootup process or after entering my PIN, and there it would stay for eternity.

End result: I let the reset process take place (which lasted eons) and worked from my little netbook on Thursday. Finally, on Friday, the computer was at a point where I could work all day on it.

I have since been doing additional cleanup, as well as reinstallation of software. I think I am FINALLY at the point where, once this last little bit of installation is done, I will be recovered from the past four days of agita.

No wonder the freaking Geek Squad is so expensive. Jiminy Cricket, this was a travail!

But the good news is, my computer IS working. I didn't have to take it anywhere to be serviced, and I can continue using it to work from home during social distancing, so hip, hip, hooray!

Carmela

God rest our dear friend Carmela, who was 103.5 years old. She survived the influenza pandemic as a baby, and cancer as an adult. But then COVID-19 ran through the nursing home where she was a resident. 


Thanks and blessings to Carmela for the many dinners at her house, and for consoling us when we wandered over to her home in grief after seeing our friend Joan in the ICU and realizing that Joan was unlikely to rally.

I'm just so sad right now.

That moment when you are working on THREE PCs at once

I strongly suspect that the hard drive on my main PC is on its last legs. Argh grumble mumble swear cuss growl.  The disk usage has been tending to be in the 90-100% range consistently, even when I'm not doing anything particularly intensive.

Therefore, this is the setup I have going today

First, I have my main computer set up (after having spent about 30 hours between yesterday and the day before doing resets and a bunch of other "Dear Lord and Patron Saints of Tech, let this work" stuff. We are finally at a point where it takes a little under 10 minutes to boot up. Which is better than getting stuck infinitely during the bootup and not actually booting at all.

Second, I have my main computer remotely connected to my work computer, so that's two PCs I'm using.

Third, I have my netbook open, so that when things are calm on the work front, I can look up fixes for Windows 10 excessive disk usage, and not cause my main PC to use its disk any more than it absolutely has to. Because too much disk usage equals frozen computer, which equals 10 minutes spent recovering from frozen computer, and I do not need that while I am trying to actually get freaking WORK done.

So there you have it. I am working on 3 PCs at once, because I'm just that much of a geek.

P.S. I have also started to apply any of the fixes I find that don't involve a restart. We have gotten the disk usage down to somewhere in the 80% range.  Go, me! That's still way higher than I want it, but it makes Frozen Computer Syndrome less likely, so I will take it.

Tiny But Mighty

Working from home has just gotten a lot more interesting, in the sense of the Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times".

My main computer, the 17" laptop, started hanging during boot yesterday. All I was getting was the spinning dots. To make a long story a lot less long, I used Google-fu on my phone and tried a whole bunch of scan and repair techniques, all of which did diddly squat to fix the problem.

So I am left with the nuclear options. First, I am trying to reset the PC such that it keeps the files but reinstalls Windows. In the event that fails, the next option is just do a complete clean install of All The Things and start from scratch.

I am decidedly Not Happy about the fact that it has been showing "Resetting the PC.... 1%" for two hours.

However, this is where the Tiny But Mighty comes in. I have got a 7" netbook, which is barely bigger than my iPhone XS Max Plus screen,  Last night, when it became clear that the likelihood was slim that I would have the main PC up and running by 7 AM this morning, I started setting up the netbook to connect to work.

So that's what I am doing today and, apparently, every day until I get my pain PC back up and running.

What can I say? Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Since this netbook does not have a camera (the one thing I would change about it), I had to go retrieve my webcam from the camera bag and set it up, to ensure that it was working in time for our conference call this afternoon. I actually need the camera more for its microphone capabilities than for its imaging, for the time being, as the netbook's audio drivers got glitched by a Windows update many  moons ago For whatever reason, it doesn't recognize its own microphone anymore, but it does work with the camera's mic, so I set the camera up. Nobody shares audio in these meetings, though we COULD if we wanted to. I don't want to, lol.

So wish me luck in reinstalling Windows on my machine, because I am OVER these blasted problems. #FML

To Do List

I have been building up to starting to write on Medium for a while now. I would say it's been two or three months since I made the decision to start submitting articles. But first, I prepared by creating a list of topics to write about.

It amuses me that the article I submitted last night actually started out as one topic, but quickly morphed into expounding on a different topic. Here I was, thinking that I was going to cover one particular situation, and then my brain said  NOPE and veered off in a different direction. I just went with the flow, edited accordingly, and hit Publish.

In retrospect, maybe I need to go through that topic list and make sure that there aren't redundant entries on there. Perhaps a few of the items on the list are a little TOO closely related to one another, and they can be categorized as a single topic.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy writing.  I just heard Todd Rundgren's "Bang on the Drum All Day", and it reminded me of how enthused I am to sit at a keyboard and just create.

Fortunately, the past few workdays have been offering me ample opportunity to deploy my brainpower, which means that I am already in high gear when I log off at the end of the day. I have started handling electronic medical records requests, and it has been a bit of a travail trying to send faxes via email. Once I got it working on my end, the Gremlins started acting up on the receiving end. I got an email yesterday afternoon, saying that we are now to email the requests to a new address set up for this purpose, rather than using Outlook to send the faxes.

It's all good. I started sending the medical record requests the new way as of today, and it works. Take that, Gremlins!

Verbal Abuse is Still Abuse

The latest Medium article:

The Relationship Red Flag That Hides In Plain Sight

Testing an app

I found an app called Blogg that purports to work nicely to manage Blogspot blogs. 

Ok, then, I’ll give it a try. 

Have some SQUEE!

Happy Blogday to Me!

I can't believe it has been 17 years since I started this blog!

I normally gift myself a celebratory trinket of some sort in honor of Blogday, but we might have to postpone that this year. The quarantine has knocked out my two side gigs and eliminated any OT pay, so I have to watch my expenditures.

But I will celebrate this day at some point. Even delayed celebration is celebration.

Kitty Break

Me: [work work work]

[Tiny kitty face appears in my line of sight, looking up expectantly.]

Me: Hi, Merlin! [skritch skritch skritch]

Merlin: PURRRR [Wanders off after his need for a dote has been sated]

Me: [work work work]

When we go back to the office, I will miss having random kitty breaks during the workday.

Star Wars Day

Oh, and BTW. On the departmental conference call today, I told everyone, "May the Fourth be with you!" #nerd

I need to track down some writers groups

I think it's time I seek out some writers groups on Facebook.

Maybe I can find one or more groups geared toward writers on Medium.com. Not only can we give each other feedback, if we are all in the Members Partner Program, our interactions with one another's articles will result in payments to the articles' authors. Win/win.

For the time being, I have resolved to take some of my favorite topics, things that I have been expounding on for years anyway, and write about those things. (Hence, the article I posted on Sunday afternoon.) That sounds like the epitome of "write what you know" to me!

I also seem to write at my best when I am really motivated by emotion. Ironically, for a person who really tries to manage her anger, some of my absolute best writing has sprouted from events that have made me incandescent with rage. Go figure.

I certainly hope that I don't often have the need to pour out words on topics that have me ready to breathe fire, but I certainly have decided to resort to deploying my keyboard regularly when I have something to express... and I don't just mean for brief snippets of writing on social media. I am going to get back to the Real Thing, too, and REALLY write the way I did for all these years on this blog.

Therefore, to do during my lunch break: scan Facebook for writer's groups.

P.S. I was tipped off over the weekend to the existence of another site called MyLot.com . If that is another paid writing site, I will have to look into joining. Income streams FTW. Even pin money is money.

I Never Had to Find Myself

My latest Medium.com post:


I Never Had to Find Myself

Folks who know me offline have heard me opine on this topic, and how early I think the seeds are planted for midlife crisis, multiple times. I thought it would be a good idea to write it out.

I am now officially a writer at Medium.com

I have been a paid member of Medium.com for a few years now. I finally reached the point where the Urge To Write grew too strong to resist, so I started working on articles.

Here's my profile, which I just realized I need to add to my sidebar on here:


Donna's Medium Page

So stop on by and see what's happening! I published my first article over there yesterday. As it happens, I also posted a version of the same article here, but there are going to be times when I post content that is unique to either this blog or Medium, rather than being duplicated.

Here's the article link that allows both free and paid members to read the content:

I Enjoy My Lockdown Work Situation

Enjoy!