Shutdown Diary
The latest stats from WaPo:
The down trend of the Delta wave is apparent. We have seen the rolling average case count now break under the 100K figure. This doesn't mean, however, the fight is over. For one thing, as people seek shelter indoors in cool/cold weather, bioaerosols can accumulate in less ventilated areas. Booster shots are increasing particularly among senior citizens and essential workers, like those in the health profession.
The FDA advisory panel will reportedly meet late this coming week to discuss Moderna and J&J boosters and on Oct. 26/Nov. 2-3 to discuss pediatric vaccinations (5-11yo). A disappointing September jobs report reflects in part effects of the Delta variant on businesses, e.g., restaurants. Some California sheriffs (Riverside and LA counties) are balking at enforcing vaccine mandates which they expect will result in turnover and staffing issues.
Miscellaneous Notes
I never felt creeped out over Big Tech mining my information until now. I was checking on Home Depot's store hours early Saturday morning Google search showed a box of the local/closest store with the note that I had been there 3 weeks earlier. How the hell did it know that?
I had 3 wall sockets simultaneously go dead literally overnight about a week back; I don't recall that over my adult life as an apartment tenant. Management hopes to schedule an electrician late this week. In the meanwhile I'm making use of a number of extension cords and adapters (hence Home Depot).
Probably my favorite feature in my newer car, besides the integrated camera on backing out of my parking spot, is the sensors. It does a good job of alerting me to someone walking behind my car or approaching cars even before they're in my sight. They also do a good job if letting me know if I come too close in parking or backing out.
I manage to maintain the post-academic absent-minded professor meme. Yesterday I was annoyed to find my auto's Bluetooth sound system wasn't playing my VLC playlist; what the heck did I do--forget to toggle on Bluetooth on my cellphone? Nope. Simpler than that--my phone holster was empty. I'm usually anal-retentive about leaving home with it. I didn't own a personal cellphone (I had to carry one for work) until I had a car problem driving to Los Angeles from Silicon Valley. Luckily a truck driver stopped on this isolated stretch of I-5 and let me borrow his.
The last week was reasonably good for blog readership for the first time since I had a highly unusual 800-pageview burst at the end of August. I've had one or 2 100+ pageview days many months over the past year. Most of the readers are domestic; no clear pattern. I occasionally promote my essays on Twitter but to be honest, I don't see much traffic from Twitter; my journal and social media digest posts often reach double-digits and I don't promote them on Twitter or Facebook. The burst is beginning to dissipate to a more normal stream. There is always the hope that once others sample my content, they'll stick around or spread the word. Google Analytics has a separate monthly statistic on visitors to my website (static blog pages?) which for a long time has been in the low-20's range, had been more recently in the 100+ range but seems to have reverted to trend. I suspect Google isn't prioritizing my posts; there used to be a time I could query a topic and see my own posts show up; I haven't seen that in a while, although Blogger reports most of my readers come via Google.
I have to laugh. Somehow a Canadian college thinks I'm one of their students. I got a bilingual notice (also in French), including a reference to English as a second language training. That was the case when I was a 4-year-old kindergartener. (My fluently bilingual parents at the time mostly spoke French at home until my kindergarten teacher freaked out. The school threatened to hold me back until they got my IQ score; my folks responded by going English-only at home. My younger siblings still blame me for their not being bilingual. I don't know why my folks went cold turkey; they and their parents had been brought up bilingual. Soon French was only something they spoke in the house so the kids couldn't eavesdrop--say, discussing birthday or Christmas presents.)
Windows 11. I'm sure most users who keep their Windows 10 updated have gotten notices on their PC's eligibility for Windows 11. I had to buy a replacement for my desktop several months back (I'm writing this post on it), and it qualifies for the upgrade which is in the process of being rolled out. It seems my workhorse HP laptop, less than 3 years old, fails the accepted CPU test. (Microsoft has a downloadable tool to get more specific information on why your PC doesn't qualify for upgrade.) Let's for the moment forget that I don't recall hardware issues when I had to migrate my older machines to Windows 10. Microsoft has done a poor job of managing user expectations. Does Microsoft have a plan to roll out compatible versions for legacy hardware? If not, what's its commitment to supporting Windows 10 for legacy machines? I suspect a lot of businesses have millions of legacy machines which won't qualify for upgrade. They will not be happy with the idea of junking millions of usable machines just to get Microsoft's latest security updates. It might be Microsoft has addressed these questions somewhere, but I've looked at a few dozen articles and haven't seen these obvious points discussed. Obviously Microsoft gets license fees on the sales of new machines and would prefer to convert licenses from perpetual to subscription modes which would provide a more predictable income stream. A lot of us are already used to doing that for bundled security software.
My cloud drive issues have continued from the past few journal segments. One issue is that the desktop client itself has a misleading status indicator after launch, saying everything is up to date. I think in the background it's doing a sync scan on restart, but it doesn't show that on launch of desktop client. Eventually I'll see something like "processing 70000 files". The problem is, of course, that I may relaunch the client, not aware of background processing. And, in fact, reviewing my cloud drive online, I can see sometimes nothing has been uploaded over the last couple of days. I know now to go and delete my local cache contents and relaunch the client. Typically I'll have to log back in and switch to mirroring vs. default streaming mode (I don't like risking online access to my workfiles). The good news is the client makes it fairly easy to port workfiles across PC's. I've had occasional weird issues like it trying to reupload multi-GB files I manually uploaded via the web and occasionally I'll find redundant older file versions downloaded. Right now it seems updated although it's complaining I'm reaching my storage limits, largely because I got a massive dump of Cato Daily Podcasts for some reason via iTunes I mentioned in a recent post. They have an option where I can get up to 10X more storage for about triple the cost. I don't really need it for workfiles, but that option would allow me to put some PC backups in the cloud and/or do some eternal drive reorgs. I may pull the trigger but in the short term I could simply relocate podcasts to a local drive. Now that I've finally got the drive functional for the first time since the mandatory client transition, I'm almost afraid to reboot my workhorse PC.
Weird stuff. I use Joplin to collect web clippings.(including COVID-19 posts). I don't think it has an auto-run option so I inserted the typical startup folder shortcut of the binary, but somehow it kept starting up version 2.3.5 vs upgraded 2.4.9, with a popup suggesting doing an upgrade. I knew the installed desktop shortcut worked; I checked its properties and it looked like the program location was equivalent. I wasn't sure what the differences were, but an obvious workaround was just to get rid of my ahortcut and copy over the desktop shortcut.
There's something about the cool, crisp autumn weather that stirs my Franco-American (French-Canadian) blood. I do love my coffee (and yes, I do have a few cans with chicory). I also love certain flavored ones, like New England Coffee's blueberry cobbler. Of course, we are now in pumpkin spice season I've mostly brewed k-cups recently (I'm somewhat of a cheapskate; I generate refuse to pay more than 25 cents per pod. My local Lidl often has 100-count boxes within my price range, but those are generally for regular versions, like Colombian-bean, breakfast blend or coffee shop, not flavored ones. I've bought some pricier boxes on Amazon; locally, if in stock, they are even pricier. I've bought some ground packages which I had misplaced until today. So today (with extension cords) I used my replacement drip coffeemaker I bought from Walmart a while back for the first time, and I'm now on my third big cup. (I've been known to nurse one cup all day.) It's like when I've had a beer for the first time in months; it's like "Where have you been all my life?", and then after 15 minutes, it loses its taste to me. I'm not a teetotaler by conviction, but Maryland is one of those states with the insane policy of not letting you buy wine and beer in grocery stores, so you have to go to a liquor shop and I'm not that motivated. I think I last had a glass of wine when I visited my Mom in Texas before the pandemic. Of course, Texas, my native state, is weird. When I temporarily moved to Irving post-academia, it turned out to be in a dry county; one of my sisters lives in a northeast Dallas collar county; I remember stopping by a store on the way to her house. Bill Clinton was about to win the election, and I hoped the 6-pack would ease the nightmare. Nope; all it did was increase my trips to the bathroom. I don't even think I got past 2 or 3 bottles. It used to drive my late Dad crazy when he took me to VFW or the American Legion. He would finish his first mug, and I was barely an inch into mine.
As foe WWE, the so-called interbrand draft was so-so, but some weirdness like women brand champions transferring shows without an exchange of belts. I suppose you could have something like a unification match and have the alternative show belt dropped to a cross-show challenger. I was surprised they didn't do Rollins challenging Reigns, his old Shield teammate for the Smackdown title like they were teasing for months before putting him on Raw. Granted, that makes him an instant contender for face Big E's title. It's puzzling they're letting Goldberg cut promos promising to "kill" Lashley for putting a full-nelson on Goldberg's son, who had jumped on Lashley. It looks like we're headed to a renewed rivalry between Flair and Sasha Banks. At least one fresh rivalry as they had Finn Balor against fellow face Cesaro. You have to wonder if they'll finally have one or both turn heel, long overdue. Right now the biggest storyline is whether Heyman, Reigns' current adviser and Lesnar's old one, will turn on Reigns, costing him the belt at Crown Jewel PPV.
