keep moving

Working from home; they've had one confirmed case of COVID in my town, and the presumptive case they had on Monday appears to have been ruled out, at least according to the town web site.

For those of you looking for a little auditory chill while you work from home or shelter in place or otherwise do things that involve not interacting with other folks in meatspace, may I suggest a visit to mynoise.net? All kinds of online sound generators to run in the background and help keep things on an even keel, including simulated coffeeshop and chatter noises, space sounds, and nature background noises. From the Swiss audiologist who gave us Purrli, the internet cat purr generator.

My office has been working on getting people the equipment necessary to work from home for two weeks at a stretch if self-quarantine is required. This has meant me sending a lot of emails to our primary vendor asking for quotes on five of the tiniest desktop boxes I've ever seen, two flatscreen monitors per box- can I just say how much I love flatscreen monitors? When I first did DR for the Red Cross we had to deal with CRT monitors in our disaster response centers, and the shipping/packing/unpacking/setup was HORRIFIC- five HDMI cables and five DisplayPort cables at a time.

Monday the emails went out saying that we'd be testing mass work-from-home. For the remainder of this week it'd be four people from the main trading floor at a time. Next week, everyone would WFH on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The week after that, video teleconferencing testing would begin.

Yesterday the email went out saying we could work from home the remainder of this week at our own discretion so long as we cleared it with our managers and made a point of actually doing our jobs/letting the manager know if we were going to be away from the computer for a significant length of time.

I'm working from home today and tomorrow. At least I don't have to lug my sorry ass down to the bus stop and then onto the subway. It cuts into my Cornell Lab of Ornithology birdwatching- I take species tallies during the time between leaving the house and getting on the bus, and then again during the time between getting off the T and reaching the office, which is how I got the American Woodcock on my life list. But I'll deal, esp. if it means I don't have to take cough suppressant to pass for a fit member of civil society. If nothing else I can make my own coffee in the French press.

(I buy both whole beans and pre-ground beans. Whole beans mostly get stored in the freezer and used when I want to use my Moka pot. Pre-ground ones are used in the French press, because I have never had ground coffee sit around long enough to notice a difference in taste when I make it in the French press. I do, however, commit one act of coffee adulteration: I will use the hand grinder to add either cardamom pods or cacao nibs to the mix. Turns out that adding about seven or eight grams of ground cacao nibs to 52ish grams of ground coffee in the French press produces a very nice mocha approximation, at least by my standards. I just have to be careful 'cos the nibs are way fattier than coffee beans and it can gunk up the grinder if I'm not careful.)