Day One Before the Shelter:
This is my first post. I hope to post more in the future, but I do have other commitments.
Today sometime around noon, Bay Area counties ordered a
shelter-in-place for the next few weeks. This is the greatest challenge for our
generation, claimed an elected official. He is talking for the Health Care professionals,
I hope.
Or maybe he is saying that because all sports seasons have
been cancelled, I think? Because our gyms will be closed? Because we won’t have
to sit in commute traffic? Because we will be forced to be on our computers and
watch tv and spend time with the people we live with?
I am sorry if you just joined a gym and were planning to
finally improve your life. You will need to find a way to work out, without a
gym, like everyone else that normally workouts at a gym. Hopefully the weather
will be nice and we can hike. But I’m sure you can find an online workout class
if you need it. What a great time to have bought a Peleton.
If this corona virus had happened, but in a different world,
and the NBA and March Madness wasn’t affected, most people would get through the
shelter-in-place watching basketball and maybe betting too much. The question now is how are the new sports betting companies doing? And the casinos?
Do they have a rainy day fund to survive a few months with no sports betting? Anyone
want to make a bet about which casinos will fold or consolidate?
If you binged watched before the shelter-in-place, well you
can still binge watch after the shelter-in-place. I’m guessing we have enough TV shows and movies to survive a four-year trip to Mars. Even if you did binge
watch a bunch before, I’m guessing you can still binge watch now. I/we still have the final season and a half of
Homeland. We’ve been pacing. We have to finish it before May, when our cheap
Showtime trial, thanks to American Express, runs out.
Maybe the fall season TV overall won’t be as good. But, I’m pretty sure all the TV shows of the next
few months have already been taped. And movies won’t be affected at all. The
virus will be way over, by the time it would affect the abundance of TV shows and movies-at least in my opinion.
Hopefully, you read. I have a bunch of books I haven’t read
on my book shelf, tons of magazines I refused to throw out. I even have two
books from the library that I am instructed not to return until it is confirmed
I don’t have the virus. So I can finally catch up on my reading.
If you play video games, before, I guess this is a great
time to play video games again. Maybe I’ll start again - I but I hope to do more
productive things. Although the real reason, I don’t play video games anymore
is that I am not that good at them they got too advanced for me.
Lastly, the commute. Every day in the bay area commuting is, let’s
just say, ridiculous. I know at least two people that commuted two hours each
way. How is it bad that they have to work from home for a couple of weeks? We spend so much of our time commuting, it will be nice to have more time.
I understand, people are concerned that we can’t handle this
forced shelter-in-place isolation. I understand if you are a health care worker
and exposed to the virus on a regular basis. I’ve got elderly parents. I frankly
don’t quite see what all the fuss is about - not about the virus, but the shelter-in-place.
I think our society, may be too prepared for this. All the binge TV watching.
Video games galore, which you can stream. Podcasts.
But I do think for
some, this would be a great time to test Andrew Yang’s idea of giving every citizen
$1,000 a month. See how it works. I think the thing some people
are most scared about is money. And maybe most of us, should take a forced stay-cation, so you can home school or just spend some quality time with your kids, or catch up on house work. I don't see the point of working now, if it is not necessary.
One final note, we are all praying that the internet doesn’t get
overloaded. Or you get ransomware. So I’ll end with a warning.
This shelter-in-place would be a terrible time to have a
ransomware attack on your computer or a cyber attack. Please be very careful.
Don’t answer unknown phone numbers. If it is important, they will leave a
message. If someone is sending you an email with anything that might be a phishing
email. Send it to phishing-report@us-cert.gov
or you can just forward it to someone you don’t like. Be very
careful with your computer usage. It would be a shame to have ransomware or a
computer virus at this time. Especially if you are working from home.
This is it for the day prior to the shelter in place. I hope
to keep you updated and let you know what happens.
Peace,
GCNOF
