Coronavirus Tales

Jonman wrote:
onewild wrote:

I've just been saved by the f*cking Tories and I have no idea how to feel about this.

Even a stopped clock...?

This is when you know you are living in bizarro world. Imagine the idea of a universal basic income even emerging from a Tory mouth a couple of months ago.

muttonchop wrote:

Every Wednesday night I'd have a group of friends over for D&D.

My group of GWJers is (currently) planning to go on Discord & Roll20 on Monday, and it is genuinely difficult to express how important that escape valve is to me right now.

Jonman wrote:
onewild wrote:

I've just been saved by the f*cking Tories and I have no idea how to feel about this.

Even a stopped clock...?

I mean I'm still waiting for my work to be like "yeah it doesn't quite work how it sounds" or something in the next week or so.
However I have crunched my own numbers and I can live off 80% wages, covers bills and more than enough for food afterwards, considering that there is no socialising to pay for at the moment and no need to buy patrol if I'm in my house. If they call for volunteers to take the hit to go home on that, so others that can't afford that can stay, I'm going to.

MathGoddess wrote:

Son would be taking 7 AP exams this May. I wonder what will happen with those too.

Via Washington Post (sorry, no direct link)

The organization that oversees the Advanced Placement program said Friday that regular AP testing will be canceled because of the coronavirus crisis and replaced by shorter online versions of the exams that can be taken in 45 minutes at home. The College Board’s announcement reflected the extraordinary upheaval in education, with schools across the country closing in an effort to slow the spread of the virus.

AP tests ordinarily occur in May. But disruptions in classes are occurring in many states, with no end in sight, posing unprecedented obstacles for teachers and students. Students will be able to take the 45-minute exams on computers, tablets or smartphones.

“To be fair to all students, some of whom have lost more instructional time than others, the exam will only include topics and skills most AP teachers and students have already covered in class by early March,” the organization said.

Partner laid off today. I'm good for now and we should be okay.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Partner laid off today. I'm good for now and we should be okay.

Have you considered starting a religion?

We are finally seeing real benefit from being a small specialty firm with lots of remote workers. We have not dropped a beat and are incredibly busy, and everything is working with all of us remote. Makes me feel good. At least I still have work to keep me from worrying for part of the day.

Of course, if the computer products pipelines go down, we'll be laid off for a while. I know it's not a good time to try to get a laptop, unless you actually find it on a shelf. I understand Dell has built a backlog of several *million* this week...

We've been able to order from Dell with relatively quick shipping by choosing standard models and then just ordering an SSD and extra RAM separately. Anything custom seems to have ship dates too far out to be useful.

Robear wrote:

We are finally seeing real benefit from being a small specialty firm with lots of remote workers. We have not dropped a beat and are incredibly busy, and everything is working with all of us remote. Makes me feel good. At least I still have work to keep me from worrying for part of the day.

Of course, if the computer products pipelines go down, we'll be laid off for a while. I know it's not a good time to try to get a laptop, unless you actually find it on a shelf. I understand Dell has built a backlog of several *million* this week...

I set myself and my job up with a laptop just last fall. So thankful for that.

It’s time for me to eat pie. Humble that is with a side of crow.

Anyone got a good flour tortilla recipe?

Should we have a cooking under quarantine thread?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Anyone got a good flour tortilla recipe?

Should we have a cooking under quarantine thread?

I plan to try my hand at tortilla making and a few other ones. Get more pasta, bread, and other fun recipes. Gonna quarantine I guess I can get even better at some things.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Anyone got a good flour tortilla recipe?

Should we have a cooking under quarantine thread?

I've always used the one from Joy of Cooking and liked it quite a bit.

So did the Walmart run for my mother today. Good god, it looked like a bomb went off. Huge swaths of shelves were just bare. All beans and all rice, for instance, gone, down to the last bean. Nearly all the spaghetti sauce was gone, and the only kinds left were the sorts my mother can't eat. Nearly all the meat was gone, I think I could have gotten a little, but it looked like the pickings were slim. (It wasn't on the list so I didn't look closely.) Butter and eggs, gone, just the entire shelving are that they were in, picked clean and basically polished. There were little notes in that area saying "please don't buy too much of this stuff", which apparently people are ignoring completely. Flour: gone, nothing left.

I was able to get enough food to keep her from starving for a week, but basic staple foods are absolutely not to be found. I felt lucky to grab the very last bag of her preferred cereal.

The dairy section was weirdly well-stocked. All the cases were full, milk wasn't a problem at all.

Malor wrote:

So did the Walmart run for my mother today. Good god, it looked like a bomb went off. Huge swaths of shelves were just bare. All beans and all rice, for instance, gone, down to the last bean. Nearly all the spaghetti sauce was gone, and the only kinds left were the sorts my mother can't eat. Nearly all the meat was gone, I think I could have gotten a little, but it looked like the pickings were slim. (It wasn't on the list so I didn't look closely.) Butter and eggs, gone, just the entire shelving are that they were in, picked clean and basically polished. There were little notes in that area saying "please don't buy too much of this stuff", which apparently people are ignoring completely. Flour: gone, nothing left.

I was able to get enough food to keep her from starving for a week, but basic staple foods are absolutely not to be found. I felt lucky to grab the very last bag of her preferred cereal.

The dairy section was weirdly well-stocked. All the cases were full, milk wasn't a problem at all.

It is super odd what people decide to horde. Frozen foods would be the logical choice in this crisis, and that's not what people are hitting at all.

I went on a run and got everything for a pleasant week or two. Eggs were blasted but I got a dozen of a fancy type.

Anyways. This is all weird.

Frozen food here was almost all gone. They just got a huge amount of canned veggies so I got that instead.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Frozen food here was almost all gone. They just got a huge amount of canned veggies so I got that instead.

Yeah, all weird.

Frozen food isn’t great in the case of prolonged power outages. I’m already noticing occasional internet connectivity hiccups which is a little worrisome.

The frozen foods were heavily picked over here, but there was enough left for me to find stuff for her. There was none of the ice cream she likes, but they had Entenmann's turtle pies, which are good, and there were plenty of the more off-brand ice cream types. So getting her something wasn't hard, just not what she really wanted.

This was my first stop and I was worried she wouldn't be able to eat at all, so I snagged the last cheap bag of frozen burritos for her. That whole section was almost picked clean... there was the one cheap bag kinda back and high up, basic bean and cheese burritos for a few bucks, and then a few bags of the more expensive types, but everything else was gone.

Couldn't find any of the Marie Callender pot pies she likes, but called her and was able to buy her some alternatives that at least sounded okay to her.

She's not gonna starve, but damn, things are messed up. I'm worried about the 'no staples' thing, because I cook a lot, and those are important to eating decently for a reasonable amount of money. Many of the spices were gone... only the really ritzy organic stuff was left, at like five times the normal price. I won't really need anything until the end of the month, but if I can't get staples by then, that's really gonna mess up my food budget.

Random observation: there was lots of oatmeal and, oddly, Pop Tarts. They had a huge amount of Pop Tarts.

edit: it feels like a trip into Communist Russia. The place looked a lot like they pictured grocery stores in that era.... very sparsely supplied, but with some stuff in great abundance.

Our local supermarket has a sign up - “No more than three flats of bottled water per day per customer”. Bottled water? People, if we need bottled water for the next 18 months, instead of tap, basically don’t worry about anything else... This is not a tornado, or a hurricane.

Bottled water? Please...

Mr GT Chris wrote:

Frozen food isn’t great in the case of prolonged power outages. I’m already noticing occasional internet connectivity hiccups which is a little worrisome.

There's not much reason for the power to fail. Internet's likely to be sluggish in many areas for awhile because everyone's stuck at home and using it for entertainment. ISPs may or may not want to scale up their connections, based on whether they expect the higher demand to last. I'd advise them to go ahead with the upgrades, as this will likely last awhile, but it's not like they're going to ask.

If you see Internet bobbles, in other words, I wouldn't worry too much. That'll straighten out, and problems there won't translate to problems with other utilities.

I think it’s low risk and we won’t see an apocalyptic failures of services. But as workers are impacted by the virus then certain repairs or scheduled maintenance will be delayed affecting quality of service.

This week I start teaching all of my classes online. Now to find out if the private lessons I teach outside of school are going to happen. They're like...40% of my income? Teachers don't really get paid in Greece, hence we have private lessons.

We're waiting for traffic to be cancelled. Some (very) stupid people have decided it's time to go home to their villages (no one is actually *from* Athens; they're all from islands and mainland villages). So all of those villages and island villages that have had no exposure at all...yeah.

Can anyone tell me the Pros/Cons of using Microsoft Teams video conferencing vs. using Zoom (through MS Teams)? I am going to do my first online class Monday morning. I am semi-worried about my 11th grade class, as I'd vote them most likely to share an inappropriate desktop image, so besides functionality, I am also looking for ease of Warnings and Ban Hammers.

Yeah stores were oddly picked over when I was there earlier this week too. Granted the team was sticking at the time. Funny enough I heard them laugh and talk about how nice it was to just put everything out and not have to go stock the back area. There was 2 people lined up for TP some of a few things and loads of others. Grabbed some bags of flour, meat, and a few other Staples but half of what we wanted was gone.

Side note I found this post on Reddit the other day and it's solid advice for how to manage your self mentally and physically when stuck in isolation for long periods.

Local grocery store has implemented a system to maintain social distancing in the checkout lines. The intention is good but they need better signage because people were really confused. A lot of people were trying to get into line as usual and there was a lot of anger and frustration. Some fights almost broke out.

I think the reduced hours also caused more crowding at least in my case. I usually go to store when it first opens to avoid crowds. With the new hours a lot more people were at the store when it first open. I don't want to see what it is like in the afternoon.

Roo wrote:

Can anyone tell me the Pros/Cons of using Microsoft Teams video conferencing vs. using Zoom (through MS Teams)? I am going to do my first online class Monday morning. I am semi-worried about my 11th grade class, as I'd vote them most likely to share an inappropriate desktop image, so besides functionality, I am also looking for ease of Warnings and Ban Hammers. :)

Haven't used Zoom much, but Teams is garbage. Bad audio quality, atrocious video quality. And yes, I know it's not my internet connection. Was having a Teams call with my boss, it was so bad we switched to FaceTime which was crystal clear.

Tach wrote:
Roo wrote:

Can anyone tell me the Pros/Cons of using Microsoft Teams video conferencing vs. using Zoom (through MS Teams)? I am going to do my first online class Monday morning. I am semi-worried about my 11th grade class, as I'd vote them most likely to share an inappropriate desktop image, so besides functionality, I am also looking for ease of Warnings and Ban Hammers. :)

Haven't used Zoom much, but Teams is garbage. Bad audio quality, atrocious video quality. And yes, I know it's not my internet connection. Was having a Teams call with my boss, it was so bad we switched to FaceTime which was crystal clear.

Generally my experience with Teams has been positive. However, this week in particular there were more than a couple hiccups with us and our clients. I think the large up tic in users working from home might have been to blame. The great thing about Teams is that if you use Office 365 there's a good chance you already have it and don't have to pay more.

We use Teams at work and have used it daily for 2 weeks since we're all working from home now and the video and audio quality have been nearly flawless.

Teams quality may be location dependent then. I'm in the Boston area, and consistently terrible for the last 10 days.