Shutdown Diary
According to CDC:
The news continues to be bad since the latest infections are pushing over 200K daily. I can swear Washpo is giving differing stats on vaccinations, sometimes reporting first-time shots, others total shots. But at the current pace, we're looking a 1.5% or so of Americans getting a first or second shot a week. Whereas that's an improvement, not enough to meaningfully slow down this wave.
I finally heard a doctor on Meet the Press talking not just about cloth masks but improved masking. For example, I've found disposable N95 masks on Amazon which fare far better at filtering bioaerosols, which sell at maybe $2-5/unit in multi-packs. (I ordered some.) Be wary of (often Chinese-made) KN95's, some of which don't meet government standards. Cloth masks are better than nothing in mitigating respiratory splatter, but I've seen very limited success against bioaerosols.
My RN sister was hoping her 6-year-old grandson would be able to get vaccinated before school starts. The latest I've heard is approvals by early- to mid-winter. Tom Woods continues to publish annoying rubbish like "only a fool can't see kids don't need vaccine shots". Like, dude--you wouldn't have caught COVID pneumonia if you yourself had vaccinated...
The latest rumor going around is that the FDA is moving towards recommending a booster shot 8 months after your latest vaccine shot. maybe by next month. Plus, we're probably going to see full approval for Pfizer by Labor Day, less than 3 weeks away.
Texas Governor Abbott joins Sen. Graham (R-SC) as vaccine breakthrough cases.
I'm not sure why Southern governors like Ducey and DeSantis are taking hard lines against masking and vaccine policies; when over 70% of American adults are at least partially vaccinated, I think voters are sending a message. I don't like NYC enforcing a vaccine passport; I do think it's fine for indoor businesses implementing such policies on their own. As for the military mandate, soldiers often have to take shots before heading overseas.
Life's Little Problems
Such an exciting life. I spent part of my flex day off at the laundromat. It's less crowded than on weekends. The older daytime manager is watching me like a hawk. I'm nor sure what her problem was, but I soon found out when I toss a laundry pod in the dispenser and started up the machine. Talk about creeping inflation; I think 3 or 4 years back it cost me about $3.50/load and now it's like a couple of more bucks and change. The little old lady exploded at me; at first I thought it was someone behind me. Apparently she went ballistic over where I tossed my pod! How dare I flout the rules! "You're going to have to start your cycle all over again!" Say, what? You're saying throw nearly $6 away? Not that $6 will make or break me, but that'll pay for 2 meals of steak from Lidl...She's accusing me of ignoring a sign: what sign? There are nearly 2 dozen prominent signs of rules and regulations I've seen over the years... I haven't a clue. She triumphantly points out white sheet of paper on a nearby post I had never seen before (it sort of looked like one of those hostage notes with cutout letters) saying to toss pods into the washers directly. Long story short, I didn't have to restart my load, but I wish she had spoken up before I started my load.
Then my go-to password manager in the Chrome browser suddenly disappeared one day. Not even a mention on my extensions page. Weird. I go to Chrome Web Store and try to add it (doesn't say it's already installed) but when I go to add it, it says it's already installed. I've got other PC's with Chrome installed, and it's visible on them. (Not to mention I have the use of at least 4 other password managers in Chrome.) The extension also works on my copies of Firefox and Edge on my workhorse PC. Obviously somehow my local Chrome installation was somehow corrupted . I became obsessed with fixing the problem. There were multiple adjustments made, including browser restarts, reboots, uninstalls and reinstalls. but I suspect a tip to delete a couple of Chrome extension folders under AppData probably contributed most to the resolution. `1
Entertainment
Ir looks like I'll soon resort to more Amazon Prime and Peacock streaming. As much as I love PosiTV's movies, the network is similar to Hallmark in that it heavily rotates its movies.
I have to say I hadn't previously seen "Megiddo: The Omega Code 2". I have to admit a certain affection for certain Apocalyptic fiction, like the Left Behind series, and PosiTV runs another movie that focuses on the Rapture myth (some husband is in a Groundhog Day recurring dream sequence where his faithful Christian wife ends up disappearing). Megiddo's plot might have been a little more interesting weaving the Rapture into the plot. In any event, Stone Alexander is the evil older brother to David, sons of an influential media tycoon Daniel. By "evil", I mean the Antichrist/Satan Incarnate. Stone, the bad seed, ends up being sent to a residential military academy, and then some magic happens, and he ends up as a charismatic leader of a revamped European Union, establishing a New World Order. David, the good seed (almost killed as a baby when Stone starts a fire in his crib), eventually ends up Vice President (and then President after Stone kills the POTUS), an opponent to his brother's scheme. I'm not going to give away the plot here, except to point out part of the storyline I just don't buy into. Flash back several years when the grown sons attended their dad's social event. At one point in the evening, Stone and his father (away from others at the party) clash on an upper floor balcony and Stone tosses Daniel over the balcony to his death. This comes to play later on when President David doesn't agree to Stone's demands: Stone comes up with a doctored clip showing David throwing their father over the balcony. Now comes a scene where the FBI is trying to arrest President David for murder. (David manages to evade the arrest and resurfaces to confront his brother in Israel.) It's just a preposterous story; David wasn't at the scene, there was no physical evidence tying him to the murder, he had witnesses to his whereabouts at the time of the murder.
Speaking of Hallmark, they recently concluded their The Wedding March series. Mick Turner, a one-time musician, owns a Vermont inn, a wedding destination. Olivia, Mick's old college girlfriend, had unknowingly booked her wedding to a New York realtor at said inn, and then finds Mick is the replacement performer for the wedding when her initial scheduling performers cancel. Although their college relationship ended on bad terms, things quickly catch a spark, kindled by their (separate) daughters, and let's say the wedding falls apart when Mick admits he's still in love with Olivia. The series moves on as Olivia takes an interest in the inn and its events. It seemed to take an eternity before Mick finally proposes to Olivia, and finally in last weekend's conclusion we get the long-awaited wedding between Mick and Olivia, with all the predictable complications with arrangements (Mick wants everything perfect), but somehow the singer-songwriter is having writer's block when it comes to writing his own vows. Not bad, but I would have developed the plot differently. It felt a little anticlimactic to me.
