Who else is...

[Seigmoraig]

AFK farming on the main computer while working at home on the laptop ?

[Generator]

If by that you mean "Actively playing and just moving the mouse on the work PC often enough so it doesn't go screen-saver" then yup!  🙂

[Snarky]

Driving a semi through metro traffic and sharing wisdom on the message boards

[Ironblade]

On 3/18/2020 at 4:57 PM, Snarky said:

Driving a semi through metro traffic and sharing wisdom on the message boards

For reals, or American Truck Simulator?

[Snarky]

54 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

For reals, or American Truck Simulator?

someone has to make their money driving those trucks, and everyone wants crap delivered lol.  Yes, for real.  Full size semi day cab, 48' trailer, steel and wood products, usually 500-5000 pd per item.  And the traffic.  ooof.  I will not say that trucking made me Snarky.  Let's just say everything has a purpose.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Game on gaming rig. RDP from workstation with two monitors into laptop so that I have the same functionality as being in the office. It's been a nice week.

Only downside was that my 1st beer of the day kept happening earlier and earlier.

[ZorkNemesis]

Man, I wish I could work from home like everyone else, but I work retail and there's no sign of us closing any time soon.

[Ironblade]

On 3/21/2020 at 6:02 PM, Snarky said:

someone has to make their money driving those trucks, and everyone wants crap delivered lol.  Yes, for real.  Full size semi day cab, 48' trailer, steel and wood products, usually 500-5000 pd per item.  And the traffic.  ooof.  I will not say that trucking made me Snarky.  Let's just say everything has a purpose.

Yeah, I know it's not fun.  I was Warehouse Manager at a distribution center selling specialty steel strip.  I loaded and unloaded most of the trucks.  The drivers didn't like our facility.  The building and parking lot were laid out when everyone used 48' trailers.  When 53' footers came along, it make backing up to our dock a bit challenging.  It was all about driver skill.  I watched one guy with a 53' foot trailer and full sleeper cab line it up perfectly on the first try.  It literally took him about 45 seconds to back up to the dock.  And I watched guys spend 40 minutes at it.

Anyway, answering the OP, I am lucky enough to have retired early so I get to do whatever I want all day.  🙂

[Snarky]

Lol yeah. A couple years driving Metro and my skills are definitely better. Portland OR is an old city and no tractor trailer does well here. There are tricks you can get pretty good with. But there is a physical limitation that you cannot get past as well

 

Oregon just issued a shelter in place order.  Trucking companies are exempt.  But most of the places i got coffee and/or emptied my bladder are looking like zombie apocalypse hit.
 

I found out we have had 100 automobile related deaths a day going back many years in this country. As a working driver this is not a shock to me.  But... why are we shutting down the entire country for far smaller numbers of Covid19 deaths? 

[DougGraves]

Because if you wait until a lot of people have died it is too late.  

[Snarky]

I just pulled in to a company i haul steel for. Usually 10,000 pounds a day. Sometimes 20-40.  I asked if i could use the reatroom. He directed me to use the one at the business next door ( not a public company orone i do business with). I asked “ will they let me?”  He says, straight face, “i don’t see why not.”  If the economy wasnt sliding into a depression i would have driven off. Dead serious. Turns out i need this job a few more days

Edited March 23, 2020 by Snarky

[Troo]

AFK farming should result in diminishing returns.

 

I don't get to play at work =(

[EmmySky]

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

I found out we have had 100 automobile related deaths a day going back many years in this country. As a working driver this is not a shock to me.  But... why are we shutting down the entire country for far smaller numbers of Covid19 deaths? 

It seems a reaction to the panic of people buying out the stores (and trying to put a stop to that) almost more than worry about the sickness or deaths.  Nobody cared this much about the flu or car wrecks or various other things that are just as deadly and often just as epidemic.

[Ironblade]

3 hours ago, Snarky said:

I found out we have had 100 automobile related deaths a day going back many years in this country. As a working driver this is not a shock to me.  But... why are we shutting down the entire country for far smaller numbers of Covid19 deaths? 

Well, DougGraves' response "Because if you wait until a lot of people have died it is too late. " is correct.

But there's also another response - because our current administration is incompetent and useless.  If we had gotten testing set up fast (like South Korea) did, we could have handled this without wrecking the economy (like South Korea did).  SK has tested a greater percentage of their population than any other country.  With the knowledge that gave them, they could selectively close businesses where an outbreak originated, quickly clear people who might have been exposed, etc.  They could use precise methods instead of "OMG SHUT DOWN THE WHOLE STATE!!!"

[Doc_Scorpion]

4 hours ago, EmmySky said:

Nobody cared this much about the flu or car wrecks or various other things that are just as deadly and often just as epidemic.

Bovine exhaust. 

We've spent decades busting out butts building ever safer cars.  When I was a kid, you still saw cars without seatbelts! (They'd only been made required on new cars when I was toddler.  More than a few were still on the road.)  Also in my lifetime airbags have been made required and crumple zones are so common they might as well be.  Etc... etc...

Flu?  Same deal.  We have a multibillion dollar a year industry dedicated to the sole task of ensuring the flu vaccine is as widely distributed as possible and as many deaths prevented as possible.  There are extensive campaigns on social media to remind people to get vaccinated and every store/pharmacy that provides shots puts up signage reminding people of their availability.  (Not to mention, no flu since the 1918 pandemic has spread nearly as far or fast as COVID-19.)

We, as a society, have spent untold numbers of dollars over a period of decades/the better part of a century caring precisely about those things you claim nobody cares about.  Is our response perfect?  No.  But we are trying.

The only way to believe that "nobody cares about these things" is either [removed because otherwise a mod will remove it for me] or to have been raised in a cave isolated from humanity until last week.

[Snarky]

I think the point is.    We do not stop the economy to a dead halt. Instead we allow a 16 year old to own a car and drive. Younger ownership for guns

 

cars kill. Guns kill.  People still go about their lives

 

flu kills.  Stop 🛑 everything. Hoard toilet paper. Hide

 

which is why i no longer believe it is the covid19 flu. I think it is the start of biological warfare that has escaped from a lab. I think that is why senators on the intel commissions are selling everything. They know the economy is not coming back

[ArchVileTerror]

[Lines]

3 hours ago, Snarky said:

Flu kills.  Stop 🛑 everything. Hoard toilet paper. Hide

 

which is why i no longer believe it is the covid19 flu.

Not meaning to add fuel to anything, but covid-19 is very dissimilar to flu. It transfers in the same way via coronavirus and shows similar symptoms because of how our immune systems respond, but its actual effect on the body is different and much, much more aggressive to those unable to fight it off.

 

I think the responses to create social distance is the right one. It will make the outbreak last longer, but that is kind of the point. A short outbreak, infecting approximately the same amount of people in a shorter amount of time, will tax our healthcare's ability to cope and treat infected patients. That's how people die. Stretching it out or letting it come and go in smaller phases means we'll be within our resources to cope.

 

Death toll isn't the only metric to compare here.

 

 

Edited March 24, 2020 by Lines

[Snarky]

A "Kaufman Retrograde"  From a Star Trek fighting game.  The tactic is to fly the Federation ships backward.  The photon torpedos face forward, so your enemy is taking time to get to you while facing your armament.  Worked decent against everyone and great against Romulans whose main weapon lost power over distance.  But the tactic was basically to make the enemy take longer to get to you as you fought them.

 

Also, slightly freaked that we are now surpassing 100 deaths a day in Covid19 illnesses.  This was my metric above for "we ignore this..."  That happened fast.  Where are we on the curve and the doctors are already screaming at us it will get worse before it gets better.  Again, the curve.  is it getting worse but at a lessening rate?  Or is it getting worse and still increasing in strength? I studied no medicine.  I have looked at math.  These are not good numbers.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Snarky

[SeraphimKensai]

I work for for a State Health Department in the U.S. and fully believe within a week the U.S. will have more confirmed cases than China has had, and we run the risk for exponentially more as time goes by. The U.S. politicians don't want to lockdown cities hard like China did, and with PPE shortages across the population things are going to get rough before they get better.

 

As boring as things will be for families, locking down for a month will likely flatten the spread. Wuhan is supposedly coming off lockdown tomorrow, and reports are in that Covid19 lingered on surfaces on the Diamond Princess cruise ship for up to 17 days before dying off.

 

I was talking about this Disease back in December with people and the attitude was that it's in China, it can't get us because we're Americans. That sense of American Exceptionalism might just be our undoing.

 

That all said, I'm an essential employee, so I won't be afk farming at home, but then again I have like 50 lvl 50s or so, so maybe when I get done with work tonight if I don't get mandatory overtime we can run some content, via online social distancing. BYOB.

Edited March 24, 2020 by SeraphimKensai

[Doc_Scorpion]

3 hours ago, Snarky said:

Again, the curve.  is it getting worse but at a lessening rate?  Or is it getting worse and still increasing in strength?

No, it's getting worse at an increasing rate.  The rate of change itself is increasing (that is, the curve is getting steeper).  Exponential growth is nasty that way.

And, even with harsh preventative measures, it will continue to get worse for some time before it get better.  (There's a lot of undetected cases out there due to a woeful shortage of testing capability.)  The future projections are...  not pretty.

[Snarky]

Right.  That is what i suspected.  The “leadership” from our political parties has been woefully short and misdirected it seems to me. The information, even from the portions of rhe news media who have sounded a warning tone for a while, have drastically failed to communicate the severity of the situation

 

i listen to NPR all the time in my semi.  Even this fairly educated and cautious group of journalists seemed to miss the gravity of this story. Only picking up on it a few weeks ago it seems.  Granted they were not saying the exact opposite of what was happening as some media talking heads have done, still i am surprised by the situation. As someone that listens to news all the time that is disturbing 

Edited March 24, 2020 by Snarky