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COVID Diaries Pt. 27

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Apparently COVID is Over!

While I really wish for my title to be true, COVID is still causing issues.  China is locking down again which is affecting the supply chain, and cases are going up.  The good news is that hospitalizations are NOT going up, but we are still at the beginning of this blip, so I guess by the next time I write we’ll know more.

That said, in many places of the US, restrictions are gone.  No more mask mandates, no more distancing.  Massive festivals like Coachella went on as planned, and recently a federal judge ruled to end the mask mandate on public transportation like airplanes.

I can’t say that I’ve kept up all the measures either.  The wife and I recently went on a trip to Las Vegas for five days.  It was a party for one of my good friends who turned 70.  There was 30+ people in attendance.  It was after the major winter surge, and we’re vaccinated and boosted, so we decided that we would accept the risk. It was the first time on a plane since 2019.

Well, it was like the pandemic never existed in Vegas.

I’m sure it was pent up demand, but Vegas was busy, and you rarely saw a mask.  Crowds were shoulder to shoulder, restaurants were packed, and it was nice to be normal again.  It was nice, but it was so bizarre as well.  I’ve been a damn hermit for two years and rarely went anywhere other than work, so it was a shock to be around that many people again, but it felt good.

Even though it felt good, I just knew that a good percentage of those crowds were going to have COVID after that.  So, it’s mixed feelings.  I know we must start living our lives again, but I feel we’ve tried too early and each time it prolongs it a little more.   I’m just hoping that no strain turns bad, because it’s going to be extremely hard to shut anything down again.

Who knows, maybe this IS the end of COVID as a major threat. I can hope so, and hopefully it will just end up like a seasonal flu.   But I still think it will be a while before I can end this series. 

I will mention that while in Vegas, I got a stomach bug that kept me with intestinal distress and nausea the entire trip.  I barely ate anything and lost ten pounds.  If you know me, you know how much I love food and especially food in Vegas.  So that was a bummer.  What did I have?  No clue, but it lasted two weeks.  Did I get it from my first meal there?  Did I catch it immediately while not masked up?  I honestly couldn’t tell you, but it wasn’t pleasant.  We were still able to make the most of the trip, but I was pretty miserable for about ten days.  It would be good to forget that, but I figure it needs to be here for posterity.

Since the last time I wrote, a lot has happened, so I’ll lay it all out here. 

Gilbert Gottfried passed away.  My daughter also lost another friend to suicide.   Death has been busy these past years.

Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars and was allowed to stay and then won best actor.  It was disgusting to say the least.  Smith has been barred from attending for 10 years, yet he’s still allowed to be nominated and win.   The whole situation just sucked.  I’m just a bigger Chris Rock fan than I’ve ever been.  He handled it about as well as you could.

Bruce Willis was diagnosed with Aphasia, a brain disorder that messes with cognition and speech, and it’s likely he’s had it for quite some time.

Ketanji Brown Jackson was the first black woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court despite stiff opposition from the right.

Washington Commanders quarterback Dewayne Haskins died after being struck by a truck on the side of a highway.

There have been several more mass shootings as we’ve grown accustomed to, including one on the New York subway.

Russia’s war with Ukraine is still ongoing, with Russian soldiers being accused of many atrocities, and Russia has deported half a million Ukrainians to Russia and are holding them in camps as well.  Ukraine has been defending itself well however, even sinking the flagship of the Russian navy.  The Donbas region is where all the fighting is now taking place.

And lastly, it’s being reported today that Elon Musk is going to buy Twitter.  He wants to take it private and become an absolutist free speech platform.  I’m not sure that will end well at all, but his $44 BILLION dollars are going to give it a try.

I’m sorry but any one person being able to buy an entire platform that the world uses to communicate is too much power for an individual.  The only thing that I hope comes out of this are other viable alternatives.  Time will tell.

Keep fucking going.

Why Twitter Rules, a Rebuttal

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My friend and respected colleague Rob McDonagh just posted a rant on Why Twitter Sucks, and to me it seemed very much like the old codger saying “Get off my lawn” so I figured I would write why I think Twitter rules in a rebuttal to the fair Captain. So read his rant first, and then you can come back here. Ready? Good, lets begin:

  • There are No Unread Marks – Actually I agree with this, I would like it myself. But my guess is that there is a programmer somewhere who can work this out. It can’t be that hard. Also, follow your twitter stream in an RSS reader and you’ve got yourself unread marks.
  • People use twitter to say the Most Inane things – Very true, but many times I actually love these little details. It helps me keep in context the fact that people have a life outside the technology. Seeing that someone watches a certain TV show might make me take a look at that show myself. And more than once, seeing what someone was about to eat gave me a craving for the same thing. I like it. I guess if you don’t like people that post those things, you can always stop following them.
  • Conversations are disjointed – This is true too, but like Rob pointed out, if people used the proper conventions it’s much easier. And there are tools like Quotably that help in this regard.
  • 140 characters? – Yes, 140 characters. Deal. If you can’t then send an email or an IM. I find that having to condense what I’m going to tweet about into 140 characters makes things more concise and easier to handle. It’s a texting world, 140 characters is practically a novel to the kids these days.
  • No concept of stopping and starting a day – Okay, and this is a problem why? See, I think you have to view twitter in a certain perspective. If you consider Twitter to be a bar or a party, you can come and go as you want, and when you are there you are part of conversations, you might go to the bathroom and miss a conversation but that doesn’t mean you grill everyone on what you missed, you contribute to the people you are around at the time. Think of it as hanging out with a group of friends, and it becomes much easier to handle…
  • Twitter auto updating Facebook – Seriously, you are complaing about THIS? Both statuses (along with every other site with a status) is meant for you to post your current status. To me they are one and the same. Friends who are only on Facebook see the same thing as people who are only on Twitter. Everyone is updated equally. The fact that things like ping.fm can update statuses all over the place allows ease of use for the poster and allows users at ANY of the services to get the same information.
  • Responses that don’t make sense to people we don’t follow – I actually kinda LIKE this. You know why? Because on more than one occassion reading the reply lead me to read the original person’s tweet, and then in turn I started to follow them because they were interesting. I ignore the ones that don’t make sense or aren’t interesting to me. You need to be less obsessive compulsive about reading every little thing. Once again, think of it as a party where people are chatting. Think of the “don’t make sense” tweets as times when you walk up to a friend talking to a stranger and hear the tail end of a conversation. Maybe you jump in and meet someone new, or maybe you walk on by.
  • Spam in twitter – You’re getting nitpicky now. Of course, some people that can follow you are spammers, but if you don’t follow them, you don’t get spam IN Twitter. If you are talking about follow requests, you are diving too deep here.
  • People tweet instead of blogging – Yup, and it’s absolutely wonderful. There are many times I have a thought that I want to keep track of, but I don’t really have enough to base a full blog post on, so I tweet it. Sometimes the conversation in Twitter gets big enough to finally warrant a blog post, sometimes not. I find it increasingly harder to find time to fully blog, so being able to micro-blog on occassion is beneficial to me, and probably to many others. In fact, I bet there are some people for whom Twitter is a much better medium for them to share thoughts than a full-on blog.

Another reason I like twitter is because of my two best friends, Mike and Tim. They live several hours away, and I only get to see them a couple times a year (kinda like certain Lotusphere buddies.) Anyway, we can email and chat (and we do) but Twitter feels more like we are hanging out. One of us will say something, and we’ll respond to each other and rip on each other and stuff like that. I like knowing the details of what they guys are doing at work too. It really seems more like we are hanging out and chatting over a beer than anything else. To me, twitter has a more personal feel to it than pretty much any of the other “social” mechanisms out there.

Now take TwitNotes. Having that open in my sidebar simply rules. Much love to Mikkel for doing it for us. While I’m at work I live in the Notes client. Having to flip back and forth to a twitter client or the website gets annoying. Having it pop up in the Notes 8 sidebar is easy, and at a glance I can see the latest information. If I want to jump in, I can. 140 characters here and there is easy to do and not really a drain on productivity.

The other thing about Twitter is that I learn things I never would have by traditional means. Late last year, a tweet I responded to saved me about $500 in an electonics purchase. I know that Rob probably falls in that same boat there, and because of Twitter, he has $500 more in his pocket. To me, that’s enough to keep on using it right there.

So, in essence, I think Twitter rules. And I’ve thought so for awhile, but I couldn’t really explain it well until now. So thanks for that Captain, you’ve inspired me to put into words what I’ve been thinking for awhile! Twitter is like a large party where you are hanging out with friends, and if you treat it that way, it makes a lot more sense, and becomes a lot easier to manage in your head.

So what do you think? Does Twitter suck, or does Twitter rule?

I’m now tweeting up a storm

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Sorry for the silence for the last couple of weeks. I’ve had a lot of stuff going on getting ready for Lotusphere and the holidays. Some really cool stuff that I should be able to talk about soon.

In the meantime, I’ve also finally signed up for Twitter. I always thought that the microblogging of every little thing you do is kinda unnecessary, but the more I’ve played with Twitter, the more I’ve liked it. It’s nice to see quick updates from friends (and people in the industry.) Some things just aren’t full blog post worthy, so being able to read and post those type of things is really cool. In fact, Twitter played an important role in me getting a new toy for Christmas. In that sense, it’s already been worth the price of admission!

I’ll post a Twitter badge here soon, but if you want to follow me, you can do so here. Also, if you are Twittering too, let me know in the comments. Maybe I’ll start stalking following you too.