Snowmaggedon and Remote Work
I suspect the familiar reader can almost see my eyes roll as I wrote the segment title. The way that people react to weather reports. I remember that back when I lived in Houston and actually lived through a hurricane (I spent much of the time holed up in the bathroom, afraid the violently rattling apartment windows might shatter), there were reports of San Antonio residents emptying stores of emergency supplies. Now Houston is just 50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico--but San Antonio is about 180 miles further inland down I-10 W.. Now, to be sure, you can get bad weather that far inland, and some heuristics I've seen show hurricanes traveling up to 100-200 miles inland, although rapidly losing strength.
I remember getting a job in the winter of 2013-2014 in West Virginia. The basic motivation for taking the job was getting a toehold in the government contracting space, which is analogous of trying to get your first job without prior experience. The real prize was getting government credentials I hadn't been able to get almost 9 years of living and working in Maryland. The first month or so I was commuting on weekends back to my Baltimore suburban apartment, maybe 220-odd miles away. I was not used to that level of cold. Several days that winter the daily high struggled to reach 0. I recall I ran through 4 windshield wipers. I can still remember one of my wiper arms started malfunctioning about 15 miles from home one Friday commute to Baltimore on I-70E; it was like a dying frog trying to jump. I limped into a car services place just around closing time. One of the mechanics took pity and made an adjustment (I think a nut was loose). It turned out to be a temporary fix but got me through that weekend's commute. Obvious much of WV is at a higher elevation; I lived maybe about 20 miles south of Morgantown and another 20 miles to work in Clarksburg via I-79. I think I saw more snow that winter than the next 7 years put together. I don't know if locals are just hardier in nature, but more than once I commuted to work with snow coming down to the point I couldn't see lane markers and pretty much followed tire tracks from prior drivers. I've had to clear snow from my car and/or chip ice off my windshield far too many times for a Texas native born. Now occasionally it does snow in Texas, especially northern Texas, but it's so rare that one day while I was at OLLU (San Antonio), I went out taking pictures of the snowfall on campus. I pointed out over this weekend to my sister-in-law, who lives between Austin and San Antonio, that she had texted pictures of snow covering their ground outside; she laughed and said it didn't last long and then rubbed it in that the temperature was 75 outside.
This weekend I fielded robocalls from my utility company warning of potential outages and a government agency talking of prospective effects on work schedules. What, were they expecting a foot or more of snow? Not from I can tell. From Accuweather it seemed like locally they were looking at like an inch Sunday and an inch today. WV, Buffalo, NY or Alaska must be laughing at these wusses. I did decide to go to Sam's Club Saturday vs. today---I have an RDO (biweekly flex-day off) today, and usually I prefer to shop without the weekend rush. I don't ever recall parking so full, not a major issue in the sense there's a huge parking lot--you just have to walk a lot longer to reach the entrance.
The work schedule is more nuanced, especially under remote work rules. It's bad enough there are risks of ISP outages during which you can't bill the government. But there are often billing rules contingent on availability of civilians (full-time government employees). For example, in theory I couldn't open up a suite of offices in which I had a cubicle or close up; at least one government worker has to be present. Now a manager contacted us about special reporting requirements if we were working today. I was confused because nearly all of us are working remotely, including our civilian contacts. But the basic context is some people work on site and if they closed the worksite, they generally don't allow remote work. I don't know the specifics, but maybe with reduced staffing they don't need IT support. Generally civilians have better perks; don't quote me but maybe a month of vacation time a year, and locally there is generally "59 minutes" in the last workday prior to a federal holiday--meaning an extra hour off. And generally federal employees get voted backpay after a government shutdown. (I must say one of my little sisters got pissed off at me when I said that once. She used to be an RN in Civil Service and in 2013 she had to work as an "essential worker", as did my brother-in-law, and they both lost a month's pay, never reimbursed. But they have both qualified for retirement pensions, which I don't nor will ever have beyond social security.) That being said, I've never been a federal worker since drawing a Navy ensign's pay before my honorable discharge and I don't think at this point of my life they're going to offer me a job (people younger than me are retiring from government every day). But to be honest, I'm not sure I would ever want it. The government bureaucracy is maddening.
Bur part of the reason of pointing out government contractors are second-class workers is that government contracting firms, perhaps justifiable so, cannot bill for unapproved work hours, and this trickles down to their employees. What this means in practice is if the site is shut down for administrative reasons, e.g., weather, government shutdown, etc., contractors, unlike civilians, have to eat those hours. They're generally not allowed to make up most of those hours later. So they may have to eat those hours (i.e., unpaid or take vacation hours, and most contractors probably get something like 7-10 days/year paid time off). I'm sure others unemployed during the pandemic (and I was, during the first few weeks, no unemployment benefit) are like, "Cry me a river." It's more of a morale issue; I almost never want to take PTO for fear of losing work days.
But after initially suggesting delayed shipping due to weather, Amazon did deliver two items to me late yesterday.
Shutdown Diary
In the past week in the U.S....
New daily reported cases fell 13.4%
New daily reported deaths rose 3.1%
Covid-related hospitalizations fell 14% Read more
Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 8%.
The number of tests reported fell 3.7% from the previous week.
Since Dec. 14, more than 32,717,000 doses of a covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the U.S.
I saw the first time on CNN, although I haven't been a long-term viewer, a doctor advocating a first-dose-first policy. You'll get pushback pointing out a 2-shot cycle for FDA validation protocol, but the biggest boost for protection is that first shot.
Wrestling Notes
Well the Royal Rumble was held last night; I followed the results at a wrestling site. They put formerly injured Hall of Famer Edge over giving him the choice of facing (at least current) babyface McIntyre and heel Roman Reigns. Since Edge is a babyface, it would make sense for Edge to face Reigns. It's also possible WWE will put up a title unification belt bout and Edge makes it a 3-way. No real surprises of note in the Rumble other than Carlito, best known from his gimmick of eating an apple and spitting it into the face of his opponent and Edge's partner, Christian. But WWE has been teasing recent face-turning Nakamura to challenge Reigns, and one has to wonder why they gave a MITB briefcase (guaranteeing a championship match) back to the heel Miz. You also have to wonder if and when they'll bring back Brock Lesnar. You could make a match with US champ Bobby Lashley or Intercontinental champ Big E, but I don't think they'll bring him back for a middle-card title. And Lesnar has notably dropped titles to both McIntyre and Reigns, although the latter might be intriguing from Heyman's involvement with both men. And you also have to wonder if Seth Rollins' return means a challenge to either major belt versus that overly long boring feud with the Mysterio clan.
We don't know what's going on with the men's tag titles, being held by heels on both brands. They rightly had Asuka and Flair job the titles back to Jax and Baszler. I always thought having the latter job to the former was just a gimmick to bring back Flair after an injury. Still, none of the long-rumored female returns, i.e., Ronda Rousey, Becky Lynch and Tessa Blanchard, which might spice up their division, happened, but maybe they're saving up for Raw tonight. Also, what about Bianca's Rumble win? Which babyface champ will she face, or will she turn heel? Not to mention Braun Strowman. Could he be targeting McIntyre's title?
