More random ramblings..
I started working from home this week and trying out the new normal. I was pretty sure things wouldn’t go back to normal after two weeks. It looks like our social distancing has been pushed out until April 30th. The number of infected individuals has grown a ton since last week. When will we flatten the curve? Does checking the news everyday give you anxiety like me? Does every little pain or ache you have make you wonder if you are getting it? That’s me. The uncertainty is making me crazy, but I’m hanging in there and trust that the people running the show are making the right decisions for us.
Working from home
This week has been an adventure with me working from home and the home schooling going on. I can now play the school bouncer and be there when my boy is giving my wife a hard time about school by helping administer the timeout and bringing order (or chaos) to things going on. It has also been a blast spending lunch with my boy. We went out and did a little “Zoo” thing in our neighborhood on Tuesday. A lot of people put signs up in their window and the kids went around trying to find all the animals on a list. We had fun doing it.
Learning new stuff
I’ve always been interested in new technologies and programming languages. One that has always scared me was GraphQL, I spent a few nights trying to figure it out by going through a tutorial. I love tutorials, but it makes more sense to me if I can put it to use in a project I’ve done. Once I figured out the basics, I have been trying to place it in a piece of code I did a training on a couple weeks ago at work. I think I have it figured out. I need to finish a few things and maybe present it to my coworkers in a training. It seems pretty powerful.
I’ve also had to do a few things at work this week that have required me to learn a few new things. One of them is how to use the EXPLAIN keyword in SQL to figure out the speed of a SQL statement. One of the problems with inheriting code from old coworkers is being LOST! We have a client that said “Make it faster and make it work”. I asked for help finding inputs for these queries, but they gave me nothing. It’s been an adventure trying figure things out. Wish me luck, because I’m fumbling at this one.
Visiting Friends
Last week we had fun getting out and trying to go on an adventure, to get out of the house. This week, we met at a fast food establishment and got our food and met in a parking lot. We all stayed in our cars and ate our food and talked through the windows several feet apart. It was awesome to get out and see our friends. We have been trying to support local restaurants and this is how we have been doing it. For the most part, we have been staying in and only going out if we need to (groceries, pills, drinks, etc).
Random emails
I have the same name as the Comcast CEO and apparently there are several people out there that think if they can find out his email address they can get past the support channels and get what they want from him….or something. Here is an email I received 3 weeks in a row.
Hello Sir:
Carol G
I am a long time Comcast customer and appreciate the email outreach about the National Emergency. I’d like to request you consider giving “Limited Basic” cable subscribers access to cable news networks during the National Emergency. I’ve called and done live chat to see about expanding my service, but the cost is $40 a month. I can’t do that. So far I’ve missed most of the real time breaking news: White House announcements, governor announcements, and even mayor announcements because I don’t have 24 hour news coverage. I don’t see how it would cost Comcast any money to open up “Digital Economy” services to those of us who can only afford “Basic” for this period of National Emergency. It would be a smart PR move for you as well.
Thank you for your consideration.
Carol has a great point, but I’m not sure if Comcast is going to give her this service. She has the internet, so she has access to all this information. I finally sent her a semi nice email wishing her well and telling her that I was not affiliated with this Dave. Thankfully she agreed to stop spamming me. I hope she finds what she wants I thought about starting a website where I post these interactions. 🙂
Stay Safe!
I hope everyone stays safe during this crazy times! I hope the toilet paper hoarding stops soon, so the stores can rebuild their stock and people don’t have to worry! If my boy keeps using toilet paper like he has been, we are going to be in trouble! How do you train a kid to wipe!? I also pray that people listen and stop spreading the virus.