The bad news is that the company I work for doesn't give a shit about us so long as operations continue. The good news is I almost never come within 10 feet of a co-worker here and I'm in a cubicle with 5 foot walls, so the risk is mitigated some. I had to come in an get something from my desk today anyway, but I may force the issue and work from home tomorrow and tell anyone who objects to screw off.
And now I'm officially working from home for the foreseeable future.
And you were saying nobody loves you...See?...Corporate warm fuzzies!
Well, I am 99% sure the state will close us all down in the next few days. We are expanding take out and curbside delivery and hope they allow us to continue to do so. My biggest stressor right now is to see how I can take care of our staff during a shut down.
Runner daughter has set up home office upstairs here; she has intermittent asthma and is concerned about being vulnerable, so I've volunteered to make take-out runs at lunch periodically during the week.
Best of luck to you and your staff., this is going to be devastating to the service industry.
I feel terrible for your situation and your staff's, zooomx. And all the folks dealing with mandated shutdowns in other states.
Ubes' suggestion about contracting with restaurants to produce family-style meals for delivery to the neediest or most vulnerable was the right way to limit the misery that's going to follow for everyone whose income is tied to a professional kitchen. I'm disappointed nobody thought how to balance public health, labor, and commerce needs this way.
Even though the leadership vacuum at the top put everyone behind the 8-ball, it’s been gratifying to see leaders of states and cities and in the private sector stepping up and taking action to protect public health. This is the kind of situation that screams for a coordinated public sector/private sector response, but it’s having to take shape slowly and organically as people in positions of power and authority start running through the hurdles in their lanes.
I'm disappointed nobody thought how to balance public health, labor, and commerce needs this way.
Woah there buddy, slow down with that anti capitalist, pinko commie talk.
I just had to break it to my contract art handler that he is out of work for ...... ?????? weeks? I’m getting paid, but he has to sing for his supper. I’m a bit pissed that my institution didn’t do the right thing here.
Our HR chief's husband is, as of this weekend, a newly unemployed bartender. At least she has a job with benefits.
This is going to hit hourly workers really hard, first in the service sectors. Places where folks don't typically have employer-provided health coverage and are dependent on Obamacare or spouses...and will soon be leaning on Medicaid.
I decided to work from home and told my department to do the same. We can do everything on the phone/computer. My assistant went in to the office and just texted me that a coworker announced that she thinks her boyfriend has Coronavirus. Some people!
Come on down the river. The spring break crowd doesn’t seem to give a flying shit, and are actively ignoring public orders to distance themselves.
In South Korea, the 20-29 years age cohort has a very high infection rate, almost 30%, but they are largely asymptomatic. The gap between rates of infection and symptom presentation gets smaller in every subsequent age cohort.
Right, but if these aholes get the virus here on spppprrrriiiiiiiiiing break, and then take it back to their parents house because campus is closed brah.... let alone if they hang with grandma and gramps....
Youth is wasted on the young.
I have a staff who has a vacation in NOLA starting Wednesday. I strongly advised him to reconsider his plans.
Everything is closed. Everything. Bars, restaurant are curbside or delivery only, museums, tours are limited if not canceled....... there is no reason to be here right now.
He canceled his trip.
The Mrs. is working from home right now, I'm in a office area that currently has a total of 6 people and we are sealed off from other areas. We do have contingency plans to work from home in the works.
With all that's going on, there is no plague of grasshoppers, I notice. #StUrho
Our home office could go almost entirely work-from-home, but is waiting for...something to make that call. Likely a known infection or government/social push. We have a warehouse/shop that they intend to effectively separate from the office in that regard. Also the bulk of our revenue-producing business is dispersed across the country in small crews, which is good and bad, it seems. High vulnerability, especially in certain regions, to impact from illness. But also somewhat isolated and therefore...hedged, somewhat?
My bro and niece from central IA drove up to my hometown and while there were going to help stock up my parents for the long haul. While I admire the sentiment, I don't think he should be travelling right now and certainly shouldn't be visiting my parents -- he's a HS teacher, and my niece is a HS'er, and meanwhile my father is nearing 90 and already is using oxygen periodically.
...
On twitter I follow one "NFL Insider" -- Tom Pelissero, mainly as a legacy due to his local ties. That means my twitter timeline gets weird when I see all these ominous Corona Virus tweets interrupted by a "The Cleveland Browns just signed Inside Linebacker Kevin Smith to a 3- year $18.6 million contract."
My Yahoo sports app keeps notifying me of NFL Trades and Deals. The juxtaposition is a little weird.
I mentioned yesterday, but today I have an actionable set up, so I'll share:
In lieu of an NCAA Tournament I have set up a tournament of random things that people like. The "Tournament" itself will consist of people taking surveys about which things they like best. There are also brackets for people to fill out, in which they match up the things that they think will win those surveys.
How The Tournament Will Work (this is the part that stands in for the basketball games)
1. I have created a bracket of random things that people like. I will send out surveys to all participants (and possibly other people too) for each round, asking them to pick which of the items they like best.
2. The item that has the most votes will win that round, and will move on to the next round.
3. In the event of a tie, I will literally flip a coin. Heads will be the higher seed, tails the lower.
4. We’ll keep going until we’ve crowned a favorite random thing.
Creating your Bracket:
1. Open the link.
2. Go to File àMake A Copy
3. Save the Copy as “[Your Name]’s Bracket” (or whatever you want to call it, just so I know whose it is.
4. Then go to Share, and enter my name/e-mail address (and make sure you check the box to notify) so that I’ll be able to view your bracket.
Making Your Picks (this part is just like making a bracket with NCAA picks)
1. Pick who you think will win each matchup. That is, the item that you think most people will select as their favorite during the Tournament phase. This is not just who you like best, though obviously they might be the same sometimes.
2. Some of the items have links built in, if you’re not immediately familiar with the things.
3. Don’t worry about the links or spellings or writing out the whole word when making picks – just so long as I can tell which thing you picked.
4. You will notice that there are 4 regions and a Finals (the tabs at the bottom). Make sure you fill out each region completely, and then put your winner from each region in the corresponding finals line, before completing the finals.
5. If you have any questions, let me know.
6. Deadline for picks is 9 p.m. Thursday March 19th.
There are impossible choices here. Dastardly. I'm in.
A special thanks goes out to the selection committee, whose membership included DPWY (& Sheenie?).
Yes, she contributed a few that made the field
man, I just created the perfect bracket!
I would also support a WGOM specific bracket
Assuming enough participation, I'll be putting up different groups of competitors' scores - one overall, one WGOM, one family, etc.
Tempted. But a good chunk of those require feigning knowledge I do not have. Just like a real bracket.
What's your email address?
matthew b novak (all as a single word, no punctuation) at gmail
LOL i was able to deduce your email address using an old cribbage tournament thread together with the brackef.
Also, for anyone participating, two things of note:
1. Assume a general Matt-knowing public will be taking the surveys. So that'll include a fair number of my family members, but also lots of people who have no idea what, say, my mother's stroganoff tastes like.
2. Feel free to change your brackefs until Thursday night. I'll lock 'em in around 9 that night.
Vikings extend Cousins 2 more years,
thumbs down
Diggs to Buffalo for four picks.
What's up with that? They decided they are not SB contenders?
Decided? More like realized. This was decided long ago for the Vikings.
Not sure where folks are getting info, but our company has pointed out the Johns Hopkins site.
If you like a big, scary SITREP kind of display, this'll do.
Oy. Right off the bat, they need to label that front page dashboard as ‘Global Statistics.’
(mobile version only)
This may not have been wise. I'm watching numbers...growing.
1 in AK. Apparently none in YT or NT.
Should have moved to Yellowknife.
My institution just went defcon 5.
Mrs. Twayn got a work laptop on Friday and is part of a work from home pilot project that started today. I’ve given her my home office in the basement so she can use the big monitor and have her usual two screen work station while I’m working from the kitchen table. I’m also her new IT support guy, apparently.
And New Orleans will close bars tomorrow. Holy. Shit. This entire city is based on the port and tourism. The service industry will suffer huge. HUGE. Big league. Bigly.
As much as I want the idiots who decided to spring break anyway to go the eff home, we need to be able to support those who’s wage is earned through service / tips. This has enormous implications for the city that care forgot.
Small comfort, but at least they got their Mardis Gras bump.
No doubt. I’ve put on my tinfoil hat, so... I’m not convinced that the virus wasn’t raging here well before Mardi Gras. Dr. Chop and I were beyond sick the week before with symptoms resembling the flu, but with hallmarks of this virus. New Orleans economy would have collapsed without tourism over Mardi Gras. Still no word on Jazz Fest, which likely brings more money to town especially for the service industry.
In case you can’t tell, I’m a worried man. A very worried man.
I'm in a small pickle: I'm scheduled to be an election judge in tomorrow's primary, which they haven't postponed/cancelled and in fact sound like they won't. I don't want to vacate my duties, but the wife is a little apprehensive. I'm at a smallish precinct, with the main nominations mostly locked up, and you know, everything else, I'm guessing traffic won't be too heavy. Still, kind of wish they'd call the thing.
Hand sanitizer and neoprene gloves?
I'm surprised there hasn't been more talk of use of gloves for certain situations were interaction is somewhat required. Not a ton of protection, but at least the psychological effect of taking precautions and signaling to others that that is what we're doing and they should, too. I'm not going to touch my face with a glove on, most likely.
I got some for my wife to use when she's in other people's houses for real-estate duties (documenting, measuring and prepping for photos).
gloves don't do much for everyone else, though
Its a little nuts they aren't delaying this thing to give time to get mail in ballots sent out to everyone.
Uh oh, now it's come for Stringer Bell
Hopefully no one is chalking him off anytime soon.
The guy from the pog game?
One of my suggestions for Novak's bracket that didn't make his cut was "callback jokes from Spookymilk Survivor games"
Ditto. I hope we disrupt this and get you the help you need in the meantime.
Dang. At least here curbside is an option. Dang.
We got curbside, small consolation. Lots of tears around the joint tonight. You build something....
Sorry, man.
YMCA closed. Library district closed for a month; hopefully Scalzi's book 3 is available as an ebook.
We told staff to work from home today while the management team tried to figure stuff out.
We want to use MS Teams for collaborative work but...Citrix is our "administrator" (God knows why) and ... We can't create teams. WTF? And Citrix's customer service is shit (part of why we are trying to get rid of it), so they still have not responded to our requests to change settings.
And I can't get vendors to send us price quotes so I can get more laptops ordered. Something I tried to do a month ago, but my e.d. rejected at the time because he was worried about our budget. Now he's on board... 🤷♂️
as a newly appointed budget czar let me tell you about emergency spending.... holy balls.
Did you try using your credentials to create a new team? Also Slack's free tier is adequate, I'm in a couple of slacks with 300-500 people and we're not missing anything. I suppose I'm not sure if calling/video works in free tier, but Zoom is much better anyway.
Credentials? Dude, I am just the CIO. I don't actually control anything.
(Cal Dept of Tech is our O365 tenant and has all admin functions locked down; I have an IT staff of one and am highly dependent on external service providers.
looks like I maligned Citrix on this when it is actually CDT. Oh well. Both deserve discommendation.)
I just meant your email and password. I know nothing about CDT or how they set theirs up but I administer an Office365 team so it was just a suggestion. Anyone can create a team they admin from what I can see, but I'm also not one to prohibit people from using the tools that make their work easier. So Shrug.
We should be able to set up teams. It is a basic part of MS Teams functionality. But the administrators have chosen to not let us do that.
I've been trying to chase down the responsible people all day without luck.
One of the areas of law I studied a bunch in school was Health Law . Pandemics was even a major focus of at least one class, since there are actual government policies that can make a difference (like we're seeing), and somewhat interesting academic questions about restrictions of liberty vs. safety.
Anyway, one of the hats I wear is city attorney for a few different towns in the area. I spent a lot of time today working on local responses for those communities. I honestly never thought I'd use that part of my education in my practice, but... here we are. So weird.
#8 Safety
#9 Liberty
That's actually like a dozen of them, going back to debate.
The bad news is that the company I work for doesn't give a shit about us so long as operations continue. The good news is I almost never come within 10 feet of a co-worker here and I'm in a cubicle with 5 foot walls, so the risk is mitigated some. I had to come in an get something from my desk today anyway, but I may force the issue and work from home tomorrow and tell anyone who objects to screw off.
And now I'm officially working from home for the foreseeable future.
And you were saying nobody loves you...See?...Corporate warm fuzzies!
Well, I am 99% sure the state will close us all down in the next few days. We are expanding take out and curbside delivery and hope they allow us to continue to do so. My biggest stressor right now is to see how I can take care of our staff during a shut down.
Runner daughter has set up home office upstairs here; she has intermittent asthma and is concerned about being vulnerable, so I've volunteered to make take-out runs at lunch periodically during the week.
Best of luck to you and your staff., this is going to be devastating to the service industry.
I feel terrible for your situation and your staff's, zooomx. And all the folks dealing with mandated shutdowns in other states.
Ubes' suggestion about contracting with restaurants to produce family-style meals for delivery to the neediest or most vulnerable was the right way to limit the misery that's going to follow for everyone whose income is tied to a professional kitchen. I'm disappointed nobody thought how to balance public health, labor, and commerce needs this way.
Even though the leadership vacuum at the top put everyone behind the 8-ball, it’s been gratifying to see leaders of states and cities and in the private sector stepping up and taking action to protect public health. This is the kind of situation that screams for a coordinated public sector/private sector response, but it’s having to take shape slowly and organically as people in positions of power and authority start running through the hurdles in their lanes.
I'm disappointed nobody thought how to balance public health, labor, and commerce needs this way.
Woah there buddy, slow down with that anti capitalist, pinko commie talk.
I just had to break it to my contract art handler that he is out of work for ...... ?????? weeks? I’m getting paid, but he has to sing for his supper. I’m a bit pissed that my institution didn’t do the right thing here.
Our HR chief's husband is, as of this weekend, a newly unemployed bartender. At least she has a job with benefits.
This is going to hit hourly workers really hard, first in the service sectors. Places where folks don't typically have employer-provided health coverage and are dependent on Obamacare or spouses...and will soon be leaning on Medicaid.
I decided to work from home and told my department to do the same. We can do everything on the phone/computer. My assistant went in to the office and just texted me that a coworker announced that she thinks her boyfriend has Coronavirus. Some people!
Come on down the river. The spring break crowd doesn’t seem to give a flying shit, and are actively ignoring public orders to distance themselves.
In South Korea, the 20-29 years age cohort has a very high infection rate, almost 30%, but they are largely asymptomatic. The gap between rates of infection and symptom presentation gets smaller in every subsequent age cohort.
Right, but if these aholes get the virus here on spppprrrriiiiiiiiiing break, and then take it back to their parents house because campus is closed brah.... let alone if they hang with grandma and gramps....
Youth is wasted on the young.
I have a staff who has a vacation in NOLA starting Wednesday. I strongly advised him to reconsider his plans.
Everything is closed. Everything. Bars, restaurant are curbside or delivery only, museums, tours are limited if not canceled....... there is no reason to be here right now.
He canceled his trip.
The Mrs. is working from home right now, I'm in a office area that currently has a total of 6 people and we are sealed off from other areas. We do have contingency plans to work from home in the works.
With all that's going on, there is no plague of grasshoppers, I notice. #StUrho
Our home office could go almost entirely work-from-home, but is waiting for...something to make that call. Likely a known infection or government/social push. We have a warehouse/shop that they intend to effectively separate from the office in that regard. Also the bulk of our revenue-producing business is dispersed across the country in small crews, which is good and bad, it seems. High vulnerability, especially in certain regions, to impact from illness. But also somewhat isolated and therefore...hedged, somewhat?
My bro and niece from central IA drove up to my hometown and while there were going to help stock up my parents for the long haul. While I admire the sentiment, I don't think he should be travelling right now and certainly shouldn't be visiting my parents -- he's a HS teacher, and my niece is a HS'er, and meanwhile my father is nearing 90 and already is using oxygen periodically.
...
On twitter I follow one "NFL Insider" -- Tom Pelissero, mainly as a legacy due to his local ties. That means my twitter timeline gets weird when I see all these ominous Corona Virus tweets interrupted by a "The Cleveland Browns just signed Inside Linebacker Kevin Smith to a 3- year $18.6 million contract."
My Yahoo sports app keeps notifying me of NFL Trades and Deals. The juxtaposition is a little weird.
I mentioned yesterday, but today I have an actionable set up, so I'll share:
In lieu of an NCAA Tournament I have set up a tournament of random things that people like. The "Tournament" itself will consist of people taking surveys about which things they like best. There are also brackets for people to fill out, in which they match up the things that they think will win those surveys.
Link to participate is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WgwxRWA5xWc8BkciEWeW5ncY5oAU-AmyFEEcEJn7kJ0/edit?usp=sharing
There are impossible choices here. Dastardly. I'm in.
A special thanks goes out to the selection committee, whose membership included DPWY (& Sheenie?).
Yes, she contributed a few that made the field
man, I just created the perfect bracket!
I would also support a WGOM specific bracket
Assuming enough participation, I'll be putting up different groups of competitors' scores - one overall, one WGOM, one family, etc.
Tempted. But a good chunk of those require feigning knowledge I do not have. Just like a real bracket.
What's your email address?
matthew b novak (all as a single word, no punctuation) at gmail
LOL i was able to deduce your email address using an old cribbage tournament thread together with the brackef.
Also, for anyone participating, two things of note:
1. Assume a general Matt-knowing public will be taking the surveys. So that'll include a fair number of my family members, but also lots of people who have no idea what, say, my mother's stroganoff tastes like.
2. Feel free to change your brackefs until Thursday night. I'll lock 'em in around 9 that night.
Vikings extend Cousins 2 more years,
thumbs down
Diggs to Buffalo for four picks.
What's up with that? They decided they are not SB contenders?
Decided? More like realized. This was decided long ago for the Vikings.
Not sure where folks are getting info, but our company has pointed out the Johns Hopkins site.
If you like a big, scary SITREP kind of display, this'll do.
Oy. Right off the bat, they need to label that front page dashboard as ‘Global Statistics.’
(mobile version only)
This may not have been wise. I'm watching numbers...growing.
1 in AK. Apparently none in YT or NT.
Should have moved to Yellowknife.
My institution just went defcon 5.
Mrs. Twayn got a work laptop on Friday and is part of a work from home pilot project that started today. I’ve given her my home office in the basement so she can use the big monitor and have her usual two screen work station while I’m working from the kitchen table. I’m also her new IT support guy, apparently.
And New Orleans will close bars tomorrow. Holy. Shit. This entire city is based on the port and tourism. The service industry will suffer huge. HUGE. Big league. Bigly.
As much as I want the idiots who decided to spring break anyway to go the eff home, we need to be able to support those who’s wage is earned through service / tips. This has enormous implications for the city that care forgot.
Small comfort, but at least they got their Mardis Gras bump.
No doubt. I’ve put on my tinfoil hat, so... I’m not convinced that the virus wasn’t raging here well before Mardi Gras. Dr. Chop and I were beyond sick the week before with symptoms resembling the flu, but with hallmarks of this virus. New Orleans economy would have collapsed without tourism over Mardi Gras. Still no word on Jazz Fest, which likely brings more money to town especially for the service industry.
In case you can’t tell, I’m a worried man. A very worried man.
I'm in a small pickle: I'm scheduled to be an election judge in tomorrow's primary, which they haven't postponed/cancelled and in fact sound like they won't. I don't want to vacate my duties, but the wife is a little apprehensive. I'm at a smallish precinct, with the main nominations mostly locked up, and you know, everything else, I'm guessing traffic won't be too heavy. Still, kind of wish they'd call the thing.
Hand sanitizer and neoprene gloves?
I'm surprised there hasn't been more talk of use of gloves for certain situations were interaction is somewhat required. Not a ton of protection, but at least the psychological effect of taking precautions and signaling to others that that is what we're doing and they should, too. I'm not going to touch my face with a glove on, most likely.
I got some for my wife to use when she's in other people's houses for real-estate duties (documenting, measuring and prepping for photos).
gloves don't do much for everyone else, though
Its a little nuts they aren't delaying this thing to give time to get mail in ballots sent out to everyone.
Uh oh, now it's come for Stringer Bell
Hopefully no one is chalking him off anytime soon.
The guy from the pog game?
One of my suggestions for Novak's bracket that didn't make his cut was "callback jokes from Spookymilk Survivor games"
I secondy second this idea
could that be an entire bracket?
I also didn't include "New Baby."
And now Tormund.
https://kstp.com/coronavirus/governor-tim-walz-likely-to-announce-bars-restaurants-to-close-in-fight-against-covid-19/5675679/
5pm tomorrow. We close.
Ugh.
I’m sorry. I hope you can ride this out.
Ditto. I hope we disrupt this and get you the help you need in the meantime.
Dang. At least here curbside is an option. Dang.
We got curbside, small consolation. Lots of tears around the joint tonight. You build something....
Sorry, man.
YMCA closed. Library district closed for a month; hopefully Scalzi's book 3 is available as an ebook.
We told staff to work from home today while the management team tried to figure stuff out.
We want to use MS Teams for collaborative work but...Citrix is our "administrator" (God knows why) and ... We can't create teams. WTF? And Citrix's customer service is shit (part of why we are trying to get rid of it), so they still have not responded to our requests to change settings.
And I can't get vendors to send us price quotes so I can get more laptops ordered. Something I tried to do a month ago, but my e.d. rejected at the time because he was worried about our budget. Now he's on board... 🤷♂️
as a newly appointed budget czar let me tell you about emergency spending.... holy balls.
Did you try using your credentials to create a new team? Also Slack's free tier is adequate, I'm in a couple of slacks with 300-500 people and we're not missing anything. I suppose I'm not sure if calling/video works in free tier, but Zoom is much better anyway.
Credentials? Dude, I am just the CIO. I don't actually control anything.
(Cal Dept of Tech is our O365 tenant and has all admin functions locked down; I have an IT staff of one and am highly dependent on external service providers.
looks like I maligned Citrix on this when it is actually CDT. Oh well. Both deserve discommendation.)
I just meant your email and password. I know nothing about CDT or how they set theirs up but I administer an Office365 team so it was just a suggestion. Anyone can create a team they admin from what I can see, but I'm also not one to prohibit people from using the tools that make their work easier. So Shrug.
We should be able to set up teams. It is a basic part of MS Teams functionality. But the administrators have chosen to not let us do that.
I've been trying to chase down the responsible people all day without luck.
One of the areas of law I studied a bunch in school was Health Law . Pandemics was even a major focus of at least one class, since there are actual government policies that can make a difference (like we're seeing), and somewhat interesting academic questions about restrictions of liberty vs. safety.
Anyway, one of the hats I wear is city attorney for a few different towns in the area. I spent a lot of time today working on local responses for those communities. I honestly never thought I'd use that part of my education in my practice, but... here we are. So weird.
#8 Safety
#9 Liberty
That's actually like a dozen of them, going back to debate.