Zoom fun

I am going to have some fun with Zoom for the next few days.

First of all, I am on a Zoom call even as I type, for users of the Orbit braille device that I own. I figure I can learn more about it this way than any other thing I can think of.

Then, next Saturday, there is going to be a "Come As You Will Be" party, where some folks with whom I took an online class will be dressing as the person we want to be five years from now. I have decorated the mirror wall behind my computer seat with various window clings for summer and the beach, and I will be dressed for the beach with my swimsuit top, coverall, sun hat, and sunglasses. 🌞🌴🌊

In other news, it looks like both of my normal side gigs are back up and running! Not only have I resumed interpreting, but my deafblind friend and his mom are at a point where they are ready for me to resume being his aide on Fridays. So life is good on that score. I'm seriously missing the income from the OT that I can't work, and losing the two side gigs was just an extra financial kick in the rump.

I also am on a mailing list that keeps suggesting work-from-home ideas, so I have been following those suggestions to see if I can come up with any that will replace the missing OT income.

Meanwhile, there are an awful lot of COVIDiots out there flouting safety precautions. Unsurprisingly, now the numbers in the USA are starting to rise again as a result. I could scream. Science really doesn't care if you believe in it or not; it's going to be true regardless. Unfortunately, what's true is that if we don't take safety precautions, we are going to spread this blasted virus at an ever-increasing rate. If the risk-takers were only harming themselves, I would say that they have the right to apply for their own Darwin Awards. The trouble is that they are also hurting lots of other people who did NOT sign on to take any such risks. Not only are they infecting innocent people, and possibly killing the medically fragile people in their lives, they are also causing infection numbers to rise. This, in turn, creates delays in the reopening of society, which then hurts small business owners and their employees. IMO, no one has the right to hurt other people in that way.

I can't blame people for being tired of taking precautions. We're ALL tired of taking precautions. This has been going on since the middle of March, with no end in sight. But the world doesn't revolve around our entertainment, and the virus isn't going to say, "Oh, you're fed up with masking? OK, I will stop spreading." The same precautions we needed in March are still needed now, and whether or not we are bored with doing these things is not a factor. We have to put our grownup pants on and just deal with it.

Wash your hands, wear your mask, and keep your 6' distance from people.

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.

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.

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. 👍🏻

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!