robotech_master

Indiana is under a stay-at-home order starting Wednesday, and going through at least April 6. It's good that they finally got around to making it mandatory rather than merely a suggestion. Of course, you'll still be permitted to go to necessary places like grocery stores and the like, and to work if you work at an "essential" business, but "non-essential" businesses are closing for the duration. The article lists doctor's offices and medical facilities as among essentials. Health insurance isn't listed, but I'm pretty sure it's essential, too. Which means I get to continue working, for all that I work from home anyway. That makes me one of the luckiest ones. And who knows; if I'd gotten a tech writing job like I wanted, I probably wouldn't be considered "essential" and would be stuck at home unsalaried for the duration.

I have to say, I'm especially proud of the work I'm doing now. Granted that the American health care system is messed up, and health insurance companies are likely a big part of the problem, I'm still helping my company process health care requests as quickly and efficiently as I can, and that kind of thing is vital now when that system is just about to be taxed to the limit.

Ran across an article suggesting people should keep a daily journal of life during the Coronavirus outbreak, as a matter of record to future historians. Well, okay, sure. Though given that everything we do these days is digitally logged anyway, it's not as if future historians will be lacking for information to reconstruct how we lived and what we did. Kind of like how I'm in one of the last generations not to be embarrassed by our parents posting phone-cam photos and videos of every embarrassing thing I ever did as a kid to their social media (and thank goodness for that).

But hey, it's not as if I've ever really needed an excuse to write about things. So, my life and welcome to it…

Posted a couple of entries to TeleRead inspired by Coronavirus-related matters, last night and today—one about Macmillan abruptly ending its 8-week window on library ebooks, and another about the changes to our society that I think Coronavirus might cause. Fascinating stuff. It's kind of funny, but in a way I'm actually not terribly frightened of Coronavirus. More like a little scared (mostly for other members of my family who might be less well-adapted to this or less cautious), a little curious, and a lot fascinated.

I guess it's because Corona largely hasn't disrupted my normal routine. I was already working from home, playing from home, largely eating at home, and not venturing out unless I absolutely had to. The only major change now is that I'm going out a little less. I still spend the majority of my day ensconced in my attic with my headset, my work computer, my play computer, my cats, and my minifridge full of booze. (Which, of course, I reserve for the times when I'm not working.) I already did almost all of my social interaction through the Internet, so it's not like I'm being suddenly cut off from anything. I feel sorry for all the people who suddenly have to accustom themselves to staying home from church, or not going out with their buddies. I especially feel sorry for a friend of mine who lost his job right before the epidemic hit, and now despairs of ever finding another job with the economy tanking. I sure hope life can prove his worries unfounded.

So for me, I guess the only major change for me personally is that for the time being I don't have to put up with people telling me I should get out more. Now I can tell them they should stay in more.

I do wish that they were doing more locally to lock things down. They've closed down the dine-in spaces in restaurants and bars; they've closed public libraries; school is closed locally until May 1. And they've even closed the office building where I used to work for the next few days for "cleaning," just to be safe (putting a little added pressure on those of us who work at home to carry the slack but oh well). But I look out my window and still see cars driving up and down the streets just as if it was a normal day. Don't they know there's a pandemic on? We need to be in total lockdown.

But then, I did get out of the house today for the first time myself since, I guess, Saturday or Sunday. Went over to Chicago Beef & Dogs for a carry-out burger for lunch. (Per government orders, they're only open for delivery and carry-out, no dining-in—but this isn't a change for me either, as when I do get lunch there, I carry it home anyway.) Was glad to see the proprietor seems to be doing well. (I feel bad I've never bothered to learn his name. I just kind of think of him as "The Dude," the character from The Big Lebowski who he rather resembles.) Was a good burger. I may order something from Grubhub delivery for dinner tonight, since I get paid tomorrow and I'm still trying out their monthly-fee free delivery service. Mostly I'm eating frozen dinners I've stocked up on from the grocery store, but I need a little variety every now and then.

After work tonight I'll probably watch Picard and The Ready Room with my friend, then play some more City of Heroes: Homecoming. If any of you have been living under a rock and don't know about it yet, why yes, City of Heroes is back, and it's even better than before; instructions can be found via the link in the preceding sentence. And it's completely free, with a monthly donation window for server expenses available for those who want to kick in. I've got about 8 level 50 characters now; I could very easily have more if I wanted to take the trouble to figure out good builds for them. If you want to team up, I play on Torchbearer; my global handle is @ RobotechMaster. If you're just starting out, I'll be happy to give you a little seed Inf to get started on—but I may insist you read all the guides I wrote to find out the best ways to make use of it. 

So, for me, life goes on, the same as it usually does. I take calls from work. I noodle on the computer. I take cute photos of my cats. I wonder when will my life begin…

 Life proceeds apace.

Over the last couple weeks, my brother Aaron and I hit Ikea and a hardware store to get my desk and overhead light set up for my new at-home workspace, then Saturday my brother came out and spent ten hours drilling through ceilings and walls to run a pair of Ethernet cables up to my attic so I would be able to connect my work and play computers directly to modem and router. He really went above and beyond, and I need to be sure to do something nice for him for Christmas.

This is the week I have to hold myself ready for jury duty, calling in the evening before to check and see if they need me the next day. They haven't needed me Monday, Tuesday, or today, but they might still want me tomorrow or Friday. This makes it a little difficult to plan around getting my work computer stuff moved home. We've scheduled a meeting for Friday morning, but that'll only work if I don't have to be down at the courthouse on that day. I'm still not entirely sure how it's all going to go. If I'm not able to make Friday, the next opportunity will be Tuesday. But at least then I'll be free of juridical obligations.

I can hardly wait 'til I've got everything set up and working at home. No more getting into the restroom on break to find all the stalls occupied. No more nearly running into someone when I turn the corner to go to the kitchen or restroom. No more having to step outside my house on days when the world is full of ice and snow (or even just rain). No more having to waste an hour a day on the bus.

Will I be able to resist the charms of the distractions of home? I think so. In any case, I look forward to being able to find out.

 So here I am, writing stuff again. Seems like I only do that when I feel like it, which means that my DW/LJ will kind of have an incomplete account of my life, in dribs and drabs whenever I get around to it. I remember this used to be the main place I chronicled what happened to me, or at least you'd get the daily Twitter aggregations of me saying stuff that happened to me there. Only now I don't really use Twitter for that so much anymore since it stopped being able to repost my Tweets to Facebook automatically. Meh. Someday they'll come up with some sort of social media aggregator that can slurp up all my social media posts and aggregate them into a single timeline. Maybe there's such a thing already; I know there were people trying it a few years back.

So, my life has been going more or less okay for the last little while. The scooters of the fall gave me an extra $2000, and since then I've had a raise and bonus, and will be getting more bonuses and another small raise soon. I've also worked a bunch of overtime the last few months, which was also financially helpful. I've started paying my brother back for the condo he bought me, though he's allowing me to skip a month to rebuild my savings after an expensive Christmas. I'm hoping that spring will bring the scooters back, though judging by the pay rates showing the app now, they're not going to be as lucrative as they were, so it may not be worth going to too much trouble for them anymore.

In any case, it feels like I'm doing a little better managing money matters, especially now that I can use my magic lunchbox to bring frozen dinners instead of paying to eat out all the time. And having a cushion in my savings has helped me a <i>lot</i> over the last few months, when I accidentally overdrew my checking account a few times. No more zillion-dollar overdraft fees, or scurrying to friends or relatives in search of a temporary loan, yay! The feeling of relief is palpable.

Work is going okay. Now that we're past the peak season, calls are falling off to the point where I have space between calls to relax, most times. It's nice to be able to decompress, though I'm going to miss the ready availability of overtime. 

Been getting a friend into <i>RWBY</i>, in such time he has available to watch the show. Ironically, it was right after we got to the part of the show that introduced Vic Mignogna's character, Qrow Branwen, that the big sexual harassment scandal about Vic broke, and suddenly Rooster Teeth announced they'd be recasting his character going forward. That's kind of depressing; Qrow is one of my favorite characters on the show, in large part thanks to the strength of Vic's acting. But going by all the furor, apparently the controversy over Vic's behavior has been going on for a number of years, and it's finally built to the point where it just couldn't be ignored anymore. And if even half of the stories are true, I can understand why a progressive outfit like Rooster Teeth wouldn't want to be associated with him. I hope whoever they get to replace him does a good job.

I suppose that's all I can think of to say right now. Suppose I'll close and maybe write something else later.

So, it's me again.

As a quick follow-up to yesterday's post, after research and consultation with friends, I think I'm going to end up going with this refurbished Dell Latitude from Discount Electronics. It'll probably cost between $200 and $250 once I've added Windows 10 Home and bumped the memory and a few other things. So, I'm not going to be able to get it today (unless someone wanted to be nice and PayPal me a couple hundred bucks out of the goodness of their heart—hey, I can dream, can't I?). But maybe when my next paycheck arrives in two more weeks. If they're out of stock by then, I'm sure they'll have something roughly equivalent in the same price range.

( Because I've been putting in some overtime... )

Getting back to the computer, the main reason I want it is because my brother was kind enough to pass along to me a still-functional bigscreen TV that a neighbor didn't want anymore. It's an older model, without a great breadth of viewing angles, but it's still got a pretty good picture when I'm viewing it dead on. I've got a Chromecast, so I can broadcast from various video services to the TV, but I want to be able to hook a computer up to it and use it for the Rabb.it shared viewing sessions that make up the majority of my video viewing usage—and hook up my USB Blu-ray drive to it for some disc-movie watching as well. That's where the computer comes in.

I'd thought to be able to use my old MSi laptop for it, at least until I could afford something better, but when I took it up to the computer repair guy yesterday, he gave it the hairy eyeball and suggested that it's so beaten up and battered that it's time to see about a new one. Which is why I started getting interested in looking for a new one yesterday. I'll see what the repair guy says about that old laptop and whether he can get it working again inexpensively. If so, I can maybe limp by with it for a while. But if not, then I'll see if he wants to keep it for parts and that will be that. It's not like I have anything important on it at this point; it hasn't even worked for months.

Suppose I should close this entry out and get ready for work. Got another hour of overtime plus an eight hour shift ahead of me today, after all.

More life changes, but of the good kind this time. ( I got a job! )

So that's my good news, and boy am I ever relieved. I hope nothing goes wrong during the background check process. I can't think why it would, but you never know. I also hope my replacement Social Security card arrives by the 22nd, since they might want to see it.

Last night I made a family recipe for a dessert that is delicious out of all proportion to how easy it is to make. It's called a "dump cake" because all you do is "dump" a bunch of ingredients into a cake pan and bake it. My Dad got it from a family friend named Glad Peters, and used to make it for square dance and church potlucks, and a while back I asked him to send me the recipe.

Work was holding a Valentine's Day dessert contest, with three $25 gift cards as prizes in the categories of most delicious, most appealing, and most healthful. So I figured what the heck, it's worth a shot.

As it turned out, there were only five entrants, and I won "most delicious." Most appealing went to someone's Oreo truffles (a decision with which I heartily agreed, they were neat-looking and good-tasting), and "most healthful" went to someone's custard pie (I'm not sure how a custard pie can be considered "more healthful" than a dessert containing cherry and pineapple, but I expect they didn't want to give more than one prize to any one dish).

( Here's the recipe. )

If anyone makes this for gatherings of your own, or even just family dessert, I'd love to know how well it goes over.

Happy Day-Before-Cheap-Candy-Day, everyone!

Well, it was a decent enough day. Woke up a bit early, couldn't get back to sleep, so I listened to my friend demiurgent's newest project, a podcast. Kind of neat. Not your usual review or day-in-the-life 'cast, this was more a sort of artistic thing, combining writing, delivery, and music. It was about fatigue and its effects, which fit as I was feeling fatigued myself. It was something to think about on the bike in to work, when I had the thoughts to spare. Stopped off for a croissant and shortbread cookie (to go) from Panera, then headed into the office.

Nothing much doing; ticket queue was fairly slow, and boss was out all day on one of his local networking projects. I did a bit of noodling around on the Internet, wrote a LJ entry and a post or two for my essay journal…and accidentally wiped out my entire terrania.us www directory while trying to test something for a client. Fortunately, our ISP does weekly backups, and I hadn't actually updated any of my stuff in a coon's age except for the journal, and it's a blogger.com journal so all my stuff was automatically backed up. In the end I lost about four days of site statistics, and some Motivator images I'd just uploaded from my home computer to have a place from which to link them. (I'll probably post those at some point when I get around to it, either here or in robotech since that's what they're about.)

I picked up my paycheck from work, then I caught a bus out west to the BioKinetics clinic, where I picked up my paycheck from them too. Taken both together, I essentially got about 2 1/3 paychecks today. A nice little influx of funds; now I can pay off my $513 credit card bill (I know, I'm a big spender) and my monthly utility bills and maybe have enough left over that I won't feel too guilty about renting a car sometime soon and going to visit a friend. Biked on home after that, and by the time I got here I was soaked with sweat. Fortunately some air conditioning and electric fan action took care of that.

At the moment I'm sitting in City of Heroes not real sure what, if anything, I feel like doing. Maybe some friends will show up. Maybe I'll watch a movie. Maybe I'll take a nap. Maybe I'll post in my Livejournal. Hey, that's an idea!