Shutdown Diary
Let's start with the latest Washpo statistics:
Of course, some states like Michigan have disproportionately high outbreaks. And I don't have the specific number on the at risk 65+ population but 41% were at least partially vaccinated as of 2 months ago. I would like to think (I don't have the data to prove this yet) that mortality is mitigated by greater vaccine protection of the at risk Since testing is correlated to suspect symptoms.
The last of my 6 younger siblings finally got her first Moderna shot recently. I think the 9 children of 3 siblings have all been vaccinated and at least 4 of the remaining 12 other nephews and nieces are at least partially vaccinated. One of those 4 is a nephew living in Michigan.
I touched on the J&J vaccine blood clot kerfuffle in my last journal post. Basically 7 of 8 patients out of 7.4 million people getting the vaccine have developed brain clots within a couple of weeks Nearly all were women in young to middle-age range. Let's point out that in a country of 32 million cases, there's almost a 10% chance of getting an infection. Eight patients out of millions, even assuming you could prove a link, is extremely rare, a rounding error. I would have had no issue whatsoever taking the J&J vaccine.
Finally I tweeted about this after my last journal post where I speculated about a third Pfizer booster shot this year; sure enough, coincidentally within a day later, the Pfizer CEO spoke about a likely third shot.
Weird Dreams
I recently had a dream from my salad days of studying graduate school mathematics. Apparently I got an unexpected, aggressive love letter from a Chinese woman I didn't know. She proudly described herself as having won the genetic jackpot (which I interpreted as being very curvy), no picture, no description of her facial features (i.e., pretty). For context, I really haven't been the object of many woman's crushes (that I know about; maybe a handful over the years). I got the attention of a couple of very pretty OLL coeds who seemed to find my shy geek personality an attractive alternative from fellow aggressive male students. I just didn't have enough dating experience to know how to respond to aggressive women. (No, the dream ended before meeting her.) It wasn't a racial thing; my only co-author in academia was my former Taiwanese immigrant PhD student office mate. Minnie was married so we were friends. I have dated white, Latina, and black women; I don't think I've met any single women of Asian descent. No dating rule; in fact, I've found many Asian women attractive.. Ironically no Franco-American women like my Mom and sisters.
I've always been self-conscious of my eyes around women. Particularly in a climate of sexual harassment policy, I never wanted my glances to be interpreted as vulgar. I think the first time I really became self-conscious was when Sally, a fellow Navy math instructor and fellow buddy Bill's girlfriend, asked me, "Ron, did anyone ever tell you you've got bedroom eyes?" Um, no, and never since. What the hell does that mean? She thinks I'm leering at her? I never had any romantic interest in Sally (she was a pretty blonde, but she was my buddy's girl and off limits). I didn't want Bill to get jealous and punch me out. According to this source, it's more of a compliment and might mean she's interested. Then one of my programmer colleagues in San Antonio a year or two later had a friend couple visit him for lunch. I briefly greeted them in passing. My colleague saw me after lunch and was roaring with laughter. It seems the wife had nicknamed me "Eyes" and thought I was leering at her. I was in a state of shock; she has made zero impression on me and I never had an improper thought of any kind. I don't know where she got the idea. I think my colleague knew it was some weird projection on her part but what signals was I giving off that got massively misinterpreted?
But the thing I was really self-conscious about was a female supervisor when I worked for a private company in the Chicago suburbs. I had worked for the techie co-founder of the company. PC loved coding; he would get up early in the morning to work on creating computer games. As a company officer, he had to spend a lot of time with customers, cocktail parties, and the like, versus the techie stuff. I had grabbed his attention not by my DBA skills, but because I had written a PRO*C interface for batch cartridge monthly processing for our first and still biggest client, FC. I was sharply critical of one of his female programmers who got the DBA gig when the CEO assigned me to a problematic Citibank Indonesia project. (She basically only prioritized the applications she had been working on and left a few months later for a six-figure job in downtown Chicago. I don't know what stupid company offered her that job, but she and her husband were good friends with PC and his wife. and PC refused to give me the job when she left, pissed off over the kerfuffle.) He made an external offer for the position and the new hire had a family death and decided to take over the out-of-state family business. In the interim, I felt the company had reneged on my job offer and in fact I had turned down a subsequent job offer from academia. The CEO agreed if PC passed me over he would put me in another business unit. So PC eventually put me in the spot when the other candidate no-showed, later calling it one of the 2 best decisions he ever made.
PC decided some months later to take a tech management role at A, which his fellow co-founder CEO considered a rival and threatened a lawsuit. The last several days were surreal with PC holing up inside his office with blinds shuttered. PC would later recommend me to replace him, which was like the kiss of death under the circumstances; PC would later tell me his exit agreement would not let him recruit me to A.
A number of mainframe developers reported to PC. The company was leasing a mainframe on site, and the lease was something like a quarter million dollars per year. The company was transitioning applications to microsystems like from Sun, where we found payback within 6 months (basically application conversions paid for themselves in months), so the mainframe programmers feared for their jobs. Somehow I became the scapegoat of their angst, the company's axman who would replace them with fresh computer science graduates. I have no idea where this rumor came from; the company NEVER discussed personnel with me and I knew the company valued the industry experience they had and felt it was easier just to retrain them. But the malcontents threatened to resign in mass if I was promoted, and the company threw me under the bus.
The person who got PC's spot was D, who had been in charge of the mainframe staff and she was a protégé of the CEO. Zero exposure to microsystems/the Unix world. And she was determined to make an example of me in front of her rogue programmers (by the way, the chief troublemaker left within a few weeks anyway). She thought she was a badass; she didn't give a shit about my stellar company service to that point, I would have to prove myself to her. It was classic managerial incompetence; yes, women can suck as managers as much as men. I could leave for a better-paying job in a second, and management knew it. I made it clear if the company didn't transfer me to another business unit, I would quit; it took a few weeks, and she fought like crazy to keep me from going to Brazil thereafter. They ended up putting someone who made like $15K a year more than me as my replacement, and she knew he didn't have my skillset. And I think he ended up weeks later for Oracle Consulting; he demanded a raise to stay.
So a long intro just to introduce the reader to D, my married female boss. There was one physical characteristic that particularly made me self-conscious around her. She had noticeably large breasts; no, she didn't wear low-cut or tight outfits or flimsy undergarments. She dressed professionally, but her bulging figure was obvious, no matter what she wore. She had a sense of humor about her figure. She once participated in some employee picnic skit where she played a magician's assistant; he pulled out the largest bra I've ever seen from his magician's hat and she blushed, folding her arms across her breasts as if somehow he had peeled off her bra. I was so afraid of being caught/accused of looking at my boss unprofessionally. I tried to minimize our encounters and to maintain constant eye contact around her. I was miserable until the job transfer happened.
Entertainment
One of the puzzling storylines post Wrestlemania is Charlotte Flair, not happy with being excluded from the championship match between then champ Asuka and new champ Ripley, seems headed to a triple-threat match at Backlash. The odd thing is Flair has had prominent victories over both Asuka and Ripley at Wreslemania, so a bit of been here, done that. This week Ripley for some odd reason distracts Flair in a clash with Asuka, costing the former a win. Flair snaps at the male ref after the match, and WWE has "fined and suspended" her. I'm still waiting for WWE to resurrect Green Mist heel Asuka. They need to do that anyway before Becky Lynch makes her long-awaited return. And for some odd reason, WWE hasn't featured AJ Styles and his superheavyweight bodyguard, the new tag champs, since Wrestlemania. They seem to be pushing the Viking Raiders into a clash with Styles. But the booking of Raw in particularly is puzzling.
