Dealing with Lockdown

[whartung]

I've been working from home the past month and a half. Interesting experience, hard to draw a clear boundary between work and home.

Our company is closing 2 offices and making them full time remote employees.

Our remote experience has been pretty successful, and it's going to be difficult for the company to downplay remote work like they did before.

It's been a mixed blessing for us here. My commute was roughly 1h 15m, with 30-40m of it in dreadful traffic. So I can't say I'm missing that. But I am missing the office, it's campus. I enjoyed having lunch there, eating outside.

If they decided they wanted me to work remote, then I'd put serious consideration in finding a small office to lease each month nearby, and work there. Give me a more rigorous schedule and demarcation line. I can probably get an office cheaper than what the commute is costing me anyway.

 

[Timerover51]

^ I've heard that there can be competition at home for scarce resources--like computer/wifi access for the office(s) plus schoolwork plus recreation plus . . .

Such as a parent trying to work from home with several kids who are supposed to be doing 4 to 6 hours of school work online.

 

[BRover]

Such as a parent trying to work from home with several kids who are supposed to be doing 4 to 6 hours of school work online.

Exactly what I was referring to--or two+ adults working from the same home.

 

[Condottiere]

Having been forewarned, I bought three sets of computer parts before shortages were apparent, which were on sale.

In terms of hardware, basic office and browsing is easily addressed, arguably 720p gaming, with a Ryzen 3000G and a B450 motherboard, plus two eight gigabyte RAM sticks, below two hundred bucks each set.

I rather doubt resale value would suffer much in the next five years.

As regards to bandwidth, I've come to the conclusion that in a lot of regions you're just being ripped off, with the start of the lockdown, telecom corporations suddenly discovering a great deal more of capacity that their customers can avail themselves.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

yhea, apparently quite a few people in the UK have been forced to upgrade their home internet to faster set ups as they go form browsing facebook and the odd youtube video to trying to conduct video conference calls and other very high-bandwidth activites they would never normally do. its telling that Openreach (basically the infrastructure division of BT, broken off into a semi-separate company for anti-monopoly reasons) have been rather active over lockdown, and the ISPs seem to be doing rather well, all things told.

 

[BRover]

Regarding bandwidth:

1. our local phone co-operative has fiber optic cable to every customer, so we have the bandwidth available.

2. Years ago, Dad subscribed to a local network, which was pretty good--until more and more others discovered it, and it got slower and slower. And the company told him, when asked, that they had no intention of increasing capacity. So he quit them. Instead, he used long-distance dial-up, which is not so bad (in those days), and not too expensive, if you limit the time online to what you need. I think he was getting it for a few pennies per minute.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Our company is closing 2 offices and making them full time remote employees.

Our remote experience has been pretty successful, and it's going to be difficult for the company to downplay remote work like they did before.

It's been a mixed blessing for us here. My commute was roughly 1h 15m, with 30-40m of it in dreadful traffic. So I can't say I'm missing that. But I am missing the office, it's campus. I enjoyed having lunch there, eating outside.

If they decided they wanted me to work remote, then I'd put serious consideration in finding a small office to lease each month nearby, and work there. Give me a more rigorous schedule and demarcation line. I can probably get an office cheaper than what the commute is costing me anyway.

This. I'm what used to be called a "re-entry student" (aka "old guy going back to college), and I could easily allocate time for one of my four classes to be online. When all four are? It's a lot more conceptual effort to block out the time for study and the Zoom sessions. Saving 3-4 hours a week in commute time is nice, but not having the mileposts of "today's the early class/late class/long day" leads to a bit of a disconnect.

If I thought online classes were preferable, I'd have tried to pick them in the first place.

 

[flykiller]

Guys are buying cases of 500 to a 1000 rounds a month

that's just a day at the range.

 

[BRJN]

NE Indiana shelves are mostly filled, at Wal-Mart and Meijer and Kroger anyways. Last weekend the Campbell's Soup was bare. This weekend frozen pizzas were really scarce. Deli and hand-cut meat sections are shut down but pre-packaged meats &c are stocked.

I haven't been into the meat store near me but the parking lot is populated when I pass by, so they must have stock. They use all-local suppliers (same county or next county over).

Gas price $1.29 / gal. Filled my tank (for the first time all month) and got change back from a $20 bill.

I flipped out my daughter: I told her I worked at a gas station for the 1991 Gulf War and people would get mad: "A dollar a gallon?! You guys are ripping us off!" She may (briefly?) see those prices herself.

 

[aramis]

that's just a day at the range.

Even in Basic, I never went through more than 600 rd in a day. (in riflery phase, it was 6-9×20rd clips each AM and PM. Under 400 rounds. But that's also time taken to check targets, downtime due to misfires, etc. 1 sheet 10 bulls, 2 shots each, recover, score. Or one silhouette, 20 rounds, recover, score...

Outside that, it's never been more than 50 rounds per weapon, and never more than 5 weapons a day...

1000 rounds in a day is competition-level practice... or rapidfire/autofire practice.

Definitely not what my friends and I, growing up in a gung-ho pro-gun state, experienced.

Monthly? Yeah, a couple months I exceeded 500 rounds across 3 or 4 shooting trips...... but even my more rampantly gunbunny friends, in gun-happy Alaska, where guns outnumber people 2:1, seldom went through that much a month.

I seem to recall that 300 rounds per day is a standard daily combat load...

 

[whartung]

1000 rounds in a day is competition-level practice... or rapidfire/autofire practice.

Quite.

After 100-200 rounds, things get rather dull rather quickly. it's not like the next 100 are going to be that much more interesting.

Now, yea, if you're running courses, practicing like that (vs stuck in a lane with with piece of paper 50 feet away), perhaps then.

But even that gets pretty exhausting.

 

[flykiller]

After 100-200 rounds, things get rather dull rather quickly

dude. that's when you limber up the other gun.

 

[Timerover51]

It should get interesting in Illinois this week. A judge basically said that the governor's latest lock-down order is illegal. And some counties are now deciding that the totality of the lock-down order is not going to be enforced, viewing it as a violation of the citizens Constitutional rights.

 

[warwizard]

we found out that a nursing home in our small town had 40 dead and 340 or so sick, and as late as 2 weeks ago has mini bus loads of seniors shopping at our local grocery store, a lawsuit forced them to go public. Otherwise they would have claimed Dr. patient privilege and never told the authorities.

 

[Condottiere]

The Swedes appear to have bet on herd immunity, backed up in their faith of their robust healthcare system (and smaller population, as well as being on the northern fringe of Europe).

 

[BRover]

we found out that a nursing home in our small town had 40 dead and 340 or so sick, and as late as 2 weeks ago has mini bus loads of seniors shopping at our local grocery store, a lawsuit forced them to go public. Otherwise they would have claimed Dr. patient privilege and never told the authorities.

Yeah--too many coverups by too many officials--whatever the organization. Sad. Apparently even China had this problem for the first month or two, until it go serious enough that they demanded more accuracy. And even now, there are some statistical anomalies . . .

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

care home deaths have been something of an issue in the UK as well. the government has said it hasn't been publishing info on them because it simply didn't have reliable info on deaths in care homes because it didn't control most care homes (unlike the state funded NHS), and it didn't have pre-existing accounting procedures to tally and report deaths in care homes (again, unlike with the NHS). They are now starting to publish care home deaths but the data is for several weeks ago as they still don't have accurate and rapid reporting chains in place. The overall tone of the news reporting on it is more "cockup" and "incompetence" than "conspiracy" and "coverup".


Officially, the uk government reckons that care homes have and will contribute about 1/6th on top of the hospital deaths, but that a average thats covering some big day to day swings (on at least one day care homes added 1/3rd on top of the hospital deaths).

also, these death figures are only for confirmed COVID cases, not suspected. given the paucity of testing capability (still only around 40,000 a day, dispite promises of 100,000 by this time), its likely that a significant number of deaths and cases are slipping though the official stats because they couldn't confirm the virus.

I know the Chinese added something like 40% to their official death toll once they re-opened Wuhan and were able to better account for everyone. I imagine that a great deal of those extra cases were suspected ones and were never in hospital.

 

[Condottiere]

One prediction is a billion infections worldwide eventually, with food shortages.

Speaking of which, apparently the American meat packing industry just got nationalized to ensure a continuing supply of baloney sausage.

More locally, a somewhat hazy time table for reopening up the non essential parts of the economy in the next two months. Beginning of June, gatherings of more than five people will be permitted.

Assuming nothing spikes.

 

[Timerover51]

One prediction is a billion infections worldwide eventually, with food shortages.

Speaking of which, apparently the American meat packing industry just got nationalized to ensure a continuing supply of baloney sausage.

No, the meat-packing industry did not just get nationalized. As for the "baloney sausage" crack, that is not exactly what I call helpful.

More locally, a somewhat hazy time table for reopening up the non essential parts of the economy in the next two months. Beginning of June, gatherings of more than five people will be permitted.

Assuming nothing spikes.

Reopening is up the the states, not the President. Each state makes its own choices, unless lawsuits take over, as in Illinois.

As for me, I am thinking of practicing "civil disobedience" for the first time in my life.

 

[Timerover51]

It would appear, that barring a successful lawsuit, the Illinois lockdown will last quite a while. The following quote is from the "Restore Illinois" plan put forward by the governor as the requirements to fully reopen the state, which would allow gatherings of more than 50 people.

Testing, tracing and treatment are widely available throughout the state. Either a vaccine is developed to prevent additional spread of COVID-19, a treatment option is readily available that ensures health care capacity is no longer a concern, or there are no new cases over a sustained period.

I will leave you with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for those who have not read it in a while and for our non-US forum members.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.