Pandemic Report
The latest stats from WaPo:
Infections have slightly dropped to about 119K/day, It looks like Biden has tested negative for the first time after his rebound infection. The government has ordered 66M doses of an omicron-tailored vaccine. Also, Pfizer is in mid-trials for their omicron version. I believe plans are for an autumn target release date.
Other Notes
Well, indeed, blog readership fell under 1000 impressions last month for the first time in memory (and August is off to a sluggish start. It's not all bad news in that more individual posts, especially the special format (non-daily) posts are more consistently hitting double digits and some daily ones are, too. Sometimes I have to work days on a post, like my recent multi-topic one. Odd thing: it looks like the tweet announcing the post got nearly 90 impressions, but only one click on the link. I don't even have a quarter of those in pageviews.
Pet peeve: software or websites that make me jump through hoops disliking when I use my VPN softway. Being Sec+ certified, I appreciate the account security reasons but it is annoying. Google does a couple of things in that regard; I'll frequently tweak posts in html mode. There are various reasons, including inserting html codes for videos, dealing with formatting issues, etc. The problem is Blogger will sometimes balk in switching to html mode if I'm in VPN mode. So my workaround is to temporarily snooze my VPN mode and refresh my browser page. (On an unrelated note, I'll sometimes need to debug Youtube's embed codes. Blogger will complain in trying to switch back to compose mode. In one reason case the problem was caused when the publishers used double quotes in their video title (double-quotes are used in parsing html code). So I manually removed the characters in the title. You would think Youtube should filter for this kind of stuff.) The second thing is, at least while I'm using Firefox and open up Google search, Google will challenge me like I'm a bot, e.g., "click on the pictures with a bicycle on it". I could try snoozing my VPN. but I can also try changing my search provider.
Another pet peeve. I misplaced my Amazon firestick during my last move (and I think my cheap flatscreen TV has power issues with multiple devices attached anyway; I had problems with my TV remote with both my firestick and chromecast attached at the old apartment) My cable TV service has an Amazon Prime app. So here's the annoyance: every time they have a local weather/amber alert or broadcast emergency test, it resets the app. Of course, Amazon enables you to resume watching close to the point of interruption, but it's still a good 5 minutes of busywork in reconnecting the app.
I'm sure people have more serious problems with their health insurance, but this paperwork issue is exasperating. I discovered the problem by accident; the doctor's office didn't tip me off. I had noticed, several weeks past my visit with a nurse practitioner I hadn't gotten invoiced for my co-pay. I went to my health insurance portal and found no claim for this year (I have minor visits every 3 months, alternating doctor and nurse practitioner). I called the doctor's office; they showed "insurance pending" on both of this year's visits. They referred to their billing office. That turned out to be some voicemail vortex where they never return my messages. I then called my insurance provider. The agent put me on hold after asking for the billing number. I was on hold forever, but apparently she succeeded where I didn't--reaching a live person. Apparently, the claims were mailed to some location in Pennsylvania, instead of Atlanta. (My head is spinning. How this paperwork in the Internet economy is getting pushed by snail mail... How in the world did they use the wrong address in the first place? Short answer: remote workers during the pandemic. Why wasn't the claim returned or forwarded? God knows. Maybe it was but slipped through the cracks. But supposedly the billing office was going to send the paperwork to Atlanta. Flash forward 2-3 weeks. No notice of anything on the portal. I call the insurance folks. They couldn't tell me if they ever got the paperwork. Apparently, claims are processed when they are processed and the service analyst has no way of knowing if they are in the system. Are you kidding me? Can they call up the hospital billing people to see if the paperwork was sent? Nope. A follow-up to billing gets no response. I'm worried my upcoming visit will be cancelled over nonpayment. So I do an online chat late this past week with my insurance provider. (Again, no status change on the portal. Only recent blood test claim workup is there. It took a long time, but I finally got confirmation the claims were received last week and are in process. All of this is exasperating as hell to an MIS PhD and former professor and long-time IT professional and consultant.
WWE has had its own soap opera going on in the McMahon family. Father figure Vince McMahon in the early 1980's trsndformed then WWF from a regional company owned by his father into the global pro-wrestling entertainment (yes,scripted shows) Paul Levesque/HHH emerged as a prominent talent in the 1990's and married Vince's daughter Stephanie. The last few years. HHH went into semiretired status (and several months ago, officially retired given service heart/health issues and took more of an executive role within WWE. WWE has had over the past decade a development brand NXT, NXT ran into some competitive ratings issues with a relatively new WWE rival brand, AEW. (I haven't watched its shows, not on my cable lineup.) HHH had built a loyal fan base in NXT Essentially McMahon decided to micromanage NXT into its current 2.0 mode. Many of the stars HHH had cultivated in NXT, especially champion Karrion Kross with then girlfriend (now wife) escort Scarlett and their signature "tick tock" gimmick. They did bring up Kross to WWE programming without his character gimmick and Scarlett and booked him weakly in weird ring garb.
McMahon resigned recently in the aftermath of alleged hush money payoffs to unspecified female talent. Stephanie has emerged as co-CEO, and HHH is reportedly in charge of creative. So I was watching Smackdown last night as face Drew McIntyre came forward to face SummerSlam victor/champ Roman Reigns, when all of a sudden McIntyre was wiped out by a familiar face, and Scarlett showed up to put a signature hour glass in the ring in front of Reigns. Kross turned his attention to Reigns and told him his time is almost up... YES!! There have been rumors WWE was planning to have Reigns drop his titles at the upcoming UK castle premium event, and another rumor is that WWE was thinking of turning Reigns face. Not sure of the booking, but I could easily see Kross taking out Reigns to put the titles on McIntyre.
I finally watched the James Bond flick, "A Time to Die". I have got to stop blogging while watching movies because I tend to zone out, and then I'm trying to figure out just what the hell just happened. SPOILER ALERT. Well, we knew lead actor Daniel Craig was done with playing the role. And given the title, one has to wonder: have the odds finally caught up with the death-defying British spy? Yup.
At the end of the movie we get this counter-intuitive message that James Bond will return. What? How? A prequel? Surely not not like Pam Ewing's famous "dream season" when Bobby is killed by Pam's half-sister, and Pam wakes up to Bobby taking a shower. or somehow Bond freakishly survives the blast.
I have not read any rumors; I'm just trying to figure out how me as a fiction writer (no published work). Just one idea which I doubt they'll go with: God knows Bond has had a lot of sex with a lot of women. It's not hard to believe he had a namesake son who yearns to follow in his dad's footsteps.
