the CARES act runs out of money this afternoon. According to covidloantracker.com, 5% of applicants have received PPP loans, 3.5% have received EIDL grants. I've filled out six PPP loan applications. Our EIDL application number is 57,xxx - the last one I saw was 1,192,xxx. The SBA sent us a nice email telling us that our EIDL grant wouldn't be $10k, it would be $1k per employee and since my wife pays herself through draws, that's $5k. Two different organizations have said our application is pending but one of them has a website that 502s when you try to update anything. It's all a lie. All of it. It's all a lie. Fuckin' a solid week of paperwork - painstakingly copying reports out of Square into official IRS stationary because Who Run Bartertown and it's all a lie. There's $3.5T in loan applications for $350b in money. I needed to believe this lie. Someone on twitter pointed out that everyone's feeling good right now because we're in the eye of the hurricane - the short-term pain has passed overhead and all the damage and destruction it hath wrought are before us to measure. But the long-term pain has yet to show itself. I got in a pissing match with a couple realtors over in the town's facebook group. Someone asked "is this a good time to buy a house?" And fuckin' of course it is. Just ask a realtor. One of them went as far as saying that the economy was down, would be down for the next nine months, but Seattle is strong so of course NOW is the time to buy. I mean fuck, the stock market is making money for someone, right? Chase had given out $108b worth of that $350b as of last week and my bank wasn't even taking applications yet. Then they said they'd email us when they were, but they didn't, and their window was closed 24 hours after they said it was open. Speaking as an actual small business, actually doing healthcare, giving babies their shots and keeping women out of maternity wards so that there's more room for COVID patients? None of this shit is trickling down to me.
Hopefully a load off your shoulders to test negative!
Busy month. Finally, I moved out and live alone. It's a small, spartan one-bedroom apartment technically located outside the city, and therefore rented for adequately cheap. The biggest gripe is the lack of oven, but I've arranged for Remoska. Gonna use that South-facing window and plant some vegetables this weekend, too. I stopped learning Italian after six months. Understand enough to get some use out of it, don't plan on ever speaking it, and that's fine with me. One near-pass on New Year's resolution isn't that bad. One of my students has been getting on my nerves almost since the semester started, and it'll be best for the other TA to examine them. Poor incorrigible dumbass. As a rule, I go easy on non-STEMs as long as they're trying. The same can't be said about my colleague. Got my thesis topic accepted and started writing. I was also selected for a grant placement at our interdisciplinary research group. The last couple of weeks were dramatastic, to say the least, but I'm slowly distancing myself from bullshit and regain some much-needed clarity.
There's a technology called nano tracking analysis that I use to quantify what's there. It essentially works by scattering laser light, then watching the Brownian motion of the center of the scatter point. The other popular technique is call resistive pulse sensing. Both work pretty well.
Yes that is the unit. The dosing here is obviously sort of a guess, because there's no animal testing to fall back on. We've done some dose ranging in other disease models, so we're kind of going by that plus some extra for a fudge factor. I've done enough tox work that I have a lot of confidence in the safety, so I don't think overdosing is a problem beyond waste. The lung is one of the prime targets for this and similar therapies, so hopefully we'll see an effect. The bar is low, so any bit will help.
My whisky collection is growing, NZ Govt considers alcohol delivery an essential if it can be contact-less. My parents had their 35th wedding anniversary last week so we had a ZOOM meeting with the family to raise a glass to them - was a bit odd but very nice to do. Work has all but ceased, I've volunteered to help other departments cause I'm bored as shit. Finished the Final Fantasy 7 Remake over Easter, 36 hours and I didn't do much outside of story based things so eventually I'll go back to properly flesh it out, but I fucking loved what I got from it all the same. Our Govt is looking at easing restrictions, but only slightly, after we hit our four week lockdown period next Thursday. I might even be able to go back to the office! 9 deaths is 9 too many for any time, but it's a tiny number compared to what it could have been. Proud of my fellow Kiwis for putting in all the hard work needed. Holy shit I miss the gym.
Ye 9, none more confirmed today during the daily 1pm address thankfully. We expect some more as there is a cluster or two at retirement homes, but I'm increasingly thankful our Govt acted quickly and made the most of the info and time they had on hand. It's not going to be great, but fuck it could have been so much worse.
Turkey Good morning Pubski. On Monday, I went to a nearby, but socially distancing, supermarket. I was thinking of buying some Butterball turkey dogs, but since it was the day after an Easter in which large families stayed apart, I noticed a sale on fresh young turkeys. A 17-pound seasoned Butterball turkey was priced at $15 - about the cost of two PACs of turkey dogs. Under the $15 label was the original label: $40. So dinner last night (and for the next week): turkey. Plus I’ll deliver some to my mom and daughter and freeze some for future sandwiches. There was even lots for my tenant, a post doc from - uh huh, Turkey.
Got a cheap, but quality cast iron pan and moka pot. I should have done this sooner. Finally understand why both my brothers passed on a full set of pots/pans hand-me-downs. Also figuring out I need a gameplan when cooking raw fish. My salmon game is trash.
A classic here is in a bowl with white rice, avocado, green onion, and toasted sesame seeds. Do some kind of teryiaki-ish glaze for it! Or do it up lemon and fresh herbs/dill with oven roasted asparagus and potatoes (bonus points for those tiny multicolor "new" potatoes; they get so creamy when roasted). Another variation is I'll rub chicken thighs in salt and pepper and sear them, take them out to sit and add more butter and cook some mushrooms in the same pan. Make a cream sauce, add the mushrooms and fond from the searing pan, pour over the chicken. Good with bread or pasta and pretty much any green veggie.
Hey Pubski, long time no see! With all this time at home I've been getting back into blogging, and my most recent series of posts is something about Hubski (& Pubski in particular). So I thought I'd share part 2 of 3 and see what ya'll think / get some feedback as I work on the next one. However, I guess after periods of inactivity, I'm treated as a new user, so I can't post the link yet here. Maybe next week then lol!
Work is going surprisingly well. My whole company (except shipping) is working remotely. Leadership took a 10% pay cut to make sure nobody else had to. (Yet.) My boss and I are honest with each other that we have about 2-3 hours of work a day (at most), and are spending the rest of our time on other projects. Even so, my team is going to be the only profitable operation in the company for this month (and probably the next two). But still... the economic writing is on the wall. I expect an across-the-board pay cut by May 1, and layoffs by June. I'll be in the first round of layoffs, since most government contracting has been suspended, so my core role will be easy for them to cut (and keep three other people on instead, kuz I'm expensive). But that'll give me the summer off. I live well within my means, so even just getting unemployment, I'll be fine. And, if the business ramps up again, I know they will hire me back. My Mom turns an incredibly vibrant 74 today. I swear she's like a 50-year old. (And I'm 51, so I know of what I speak!) I'm hosting a Zoom video chat for her and all her friends this evening. I expect we will have people from all around the world joining in! It'll be a hoot. And a pain in the ass, as I help a bunch of 70-year old women try to navigate video chat! :-) Everyone in my circle is well, and continues to follow strict social distancing and sanitation steps. Lost a friend of a friend last night to a heart attack... a guy I had planned to get to know, once we got back from vacation... but that can't happen now. At least I have some of his art to celebrate his talent.
Every so often I come across a reminder that we’re all out there still. Video calls to friends, biking with friends, celebrating a roommates birthday by making a cake and having a fire since we couldn’t invite people over. But I’m still not feeling whole. I think it’s work and relationship related? And Covid, duh. Works got me in a place right now where I’m being asked to be both an individual contributor and focus on managing my four employees while recruiting for a 5th...the scales will tip in two weeks but it’s kind of hellish trying to do both. Which in turn results in having to go in on night shift and explain to your girlfriend why you can’t spend time together watching a movie like we had planned. That conversation never seems to go well
I have dipped under the first round of layoff limbo, or possibly stepped over accidentally, because I'm not sure why I got to the other side. But I'm probably fine for another week and a half until the next pay period ends. In January it really looked like our time to shine and climb out of a two year revenue slump. Our old president announced his retirement at an all-hands covid19 meeting, and now the acting president is regularly emailing 2 sentences of information wrapped in 8 paragraphs of doom and gloom. He has made it crystal clear the company will weather this storm sustainably without sacrificing any company values. (By firing as many as necessary.) ((Consistent with values!)) ((((((Yay
Long Easter weekend - took Friday off, and Monday was a national holiday. Spent the four days painting a bunch of walls and getting some new furniture. Only need to do a second layer of color on two of the walls and we're done. We picked two colors that turned out amazing; one greyed deep green color with a hint of blue, and one blue-gray color. It not only makes the place feel much more our own, but changing up the space also makes quarantine a bit easier by not getting bored of these walls. Also had a phenomenally enjoyable run today. The Nike app has a few guided runs with Headspace, and while the Nike coach is annoyingly coach-y, the combination of running and (Andy Puddicombe's) wholesome mindfulness works really well for me. It was an interval training; a warmup, 2 intervals at 4/10 effort level, 2 intervals at 6/10 effort and 2 intervals at 9/10 with a final Do Whatever interval. I have no frame of reference whether my pace is any good, but I'm happy with how I did.
Man I fuckin’ hate interval training, it’s kind of like the adult version of “eating your vegetables”. Should build that back into the schedule, need to get the strength running up a bit. Been running more hills in my city since the trails are closed, which helps. The interval groups look good, but you probably want to work on consistency within each lap. 30ish second gaps are a lot for paced efforts from lap to lap.
tell me more! do i download the nike app, or the thing called headspace, or some other completely unknown quantity? i usually struggle through my miles with muse or the killers or something and it's worn out its welcome (in 2015) edit: "nike run club"?
Yeah it's in the Nike Run Club app, under Guided Runs. There's a lot of them, and if you scroll down while browsing a particular guided run, it'll have a suggested Spotify playlist to accompany the run even. (Music will be automatically ducked when the coach talks.)
It makes a real difference to have someone egging you on/encouraging you in a run. I have found it will help get me out the door and help me to keep going especially if my mood isn't in the right place. On other days I have found Coach Bennett plain annoying! I do think some of his audio guided runs are more annoying than others. The "Don't wanna run run" has helped me a lot. (Ha! And I've probably only played it once! But the day I did, I truly did not want to run, and I actually ran really well once it was on. So I think, it taught me something.)
I could see Mount Baker from my house a few days ago. For reference, that’s about 170 driving miles. Insane, first time since I moved here I can remember that kind of visibility.
Came through at 1:30 AM. Does this mean we can't complain about our leaders until we're broke again?