Pandemic Report
The latest stats from WaPo:
We're down to about 89K/daily cases. The biggest news over the past week include: Moderna suing Pfizer/Biotech over alleged patent infringement; Fauci's end of year retirement; another Biden Administration COVID-19 infection: Defense Secretary Austin; a BA.5/BA.4 version of a COVID-19 booster on track for this fall; and pro tennis player Novak Djokovic is skipping the US Open because the US is still requiring vaccination for foreign visitors. (Novak, who was infected late last year, has refused to vaccinate on principle. Personally, given the US has waived the testing requirement, I think the vaccine mandate is inconsistent, but I think Novak is responsible for his own bad decision. If it was up to me, I would let him play--I argued the same for the Australian Open. I just don't like the bad example he's setting for others.)
Other Notes
Well, the blog month ends next week, and it'll be a sharp rebound in pageviews from last month's low multi-year low, but unlikely to reach my long-term trend of 2K+. I had a cluster of 100+ pageview days maybe a week+ back, which had happened maybe once a month a few months ago. It's sad to see it slow down to a more recent normal pace, but more recently posts have been trending to double digits and some essays are gaining a few dozen readers. I appreciate that because some of these posts were written over several days.
Familiar readers know I subscribe to Amazon Prime Video. One feature I've become accustomed is the "continue watching" bar. It takes me back to when I bought my first VCR (which was really expensive at the time--about $1K). I was no longer tied to network TV schedules or if and when certain content like favorite movies. (I remember a 2-casette copy of "The Sound of Music" cost $75.) In fact, I hosted a rare dinner party for my UH Catholic Newman friends, ham and potato salad around a showing of "The Sound of Music". But, among other things, being able to put a show on pause, without missing anything, was a big deal: a bathroom break, an inconvenient phone call, preparing a snack no longer impacted my entertainment experience.
So flash forward, and now under the original leadership of streaming services like Netflix, we now have extensive bundled video libraries and some service originals, plus online alternatives to rent or buy other content. (In addition to Amazon, I have 2 other streaming services bundled with my cable/Internet bundle, but most viewing I'm doing on Amazon.)
So one of the nice features, at least on Prime Video, is the ability to bookmark videos and/or series in the "continue watching" bar mentioned above. Currently, I'm watching 2 old series via the freevee service: "All in the Family" and "Little House on the Prairie". There's only so much of a sitcom I can view in one sitting. And freevee/Amazon tracks your series and episodes. I can track these explicitly but I've rarely had to during my recent Dallas marathon. So there are normally icons for the 2 series and any other movies, etc., like I've watched, like "Thirteen Lives".
So the whole point of this discussion is earlier this week I went to my Amazon Prime app via my cable app (note: Amazon recently redesigned its portal page without my knowledge, so that startled me on initial exposure--it didn't take long to figure it out but I prefer to choose my interface). So over the past week, I loaded the app--only to find the continue watching bar missing. A Google search didn't identify an explanation, like some setting to toggle back on. I would later discover a way to see the latest videos you've accessed on Prime Video, so I had a way to get back to where I left off. After a while I discovered my Prime Video continue watching bar was back on my PC portal. I'm still not sure what happened--maybe some outage at Amazon.
I mentioned an issue where my health insurer hadn't processed recent visits, leaving me nervous my providers would drop me for nonpayment. I didn't even get a notification when the claims got processed, i.e., for my personal-responsibility-copay. I checked online this week and found they recently processed 4 claims, the first 2 delayed because the hospital sent their invoices to the wrong address. There was a link to a payment portal for the provider, so I made my payments. I guess my more recent insurer for my employer isn't as generous, because I don't recall having had to pay over $300 for my annual eye checkup before.
I recently had to access a retirement account I have via an ex-employer. Ironically I had accessed the account earlier this month and I corrected an old mailing address. So I noticed multiple notices of the USPS forwarding from my old address, not a confirmation to my current address. I inferred it was from my current employer vendor. I found myself locked out of my account for God knows what reason (I have some password managers) and I had to jump through hoops. I ran into an unexpected issue because apparently the street descriptor I had originally stored was incorrect, i.e., "circle", "lane", "avenue", "street", "drive", etc. I don't know what happened--if my entry was auto-corrected, if I typed something obsolete from muscle memory, etc., but I ended up having to jump through hoops getting it fixed, not the street number or street name, but the street descriptor. I haven't checked, but there's probably a way to validate a submitted address via USPS.
We're about a week away from WWE's next premium event, being hosted in Wales. WWE is definitely telegraphing a possible job of the titles from champ Reigns to McIntyre. Oddly enough, Justin Theory, the current MITB holder with an automatic challenge right to the title, has not been been involved in the storyline, and Karrion Kross has aimed most of his promos against McIntyre, although on a couple of occasions he's targeted Reigns, too. So I'm not sure where they're headed with this angle, or how they're finally going to split the titles between brands, but it should be interesting.
