Bryce Moore's Blog, page 89
May 14, 2020
Zoom-o-Rama
I’m in all-day Zoom meetings today and tomorrow, so no real time to craft anything noteworthy on the blog. I did take some time this week to figure out just how much I’m on Zoom these days. This week? 37 hours, and nine of those hours I’m in two Zoom meetings at the same time. So when I feel like I’m in one eternal Zoom meeting, I suppose there’s a good reason for that.
All of those 37 hours aren’t just for work. Some are church-related, some were for the online RPG group I did Tuesday evening, but the vast bulk of them are for work. I don’t know how much Zoom the rest of you are doing, but if some of you out there are doing even more than I am . . .
You have my pity.
My current eight hour Zoom fest is launching back up again now. I don’t think I’ll have time to post tomorrow (more Zoom), so have a great weekend everyone. Catch you on Monday.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
May 13, 2020
The Art of the Compromise
One of the things I dislike most about our current state of politics is how much it’s taken on the trappings of sports. I love me some sports, but we’re not playing a game with the country. This isn’t a situation where the Democrats face off against the Republicans to see who wins it all. It’s also not reality television. The ratings don’t matter, and arbitrary metrics are pretty much worthless.
We’re all in the same country. We all have to live with the choices we make as a nation. But these days, politics feels like it’s becoming more and more a situation where you need to not just defeat “the other side.” You can’t be happy until you’ve crushed your enemies, seen them driven before you, and heard the lamentations of their women.
Right now, there are two polemically opposed sides to the debate on the pandemic and economic catastrophe we’re going through. On the one side, there are people who are convinced we all need to stay inside and not come out again until 2025, and then only if we can be encased in a large plastic bubble at all times. On the other side, we’re not doing our patriotic duty until we go outside right this instant and start licking every object in sight (to show dominance over the virus), ideally while eating a Big Mac and spending money on a complete set of Make America Great Again his and hers pajamas and maybe shooting some guns into the air at the same time.
Obviously I’m taking those two sides to the extreme, but the point is clear. All of us fall somewhere between those two opinions. But the thing about living in a country with other people is that both sides matter. Even if you wished they didn’t. Even if you dreamed of a day when that other side just magically disappeared from the face of the earth, they’re still here, and their opinion still matters. They still vote. They’re still represented in Congress by people who agree with them.
So the only way we’re going to get anything useful done is through compromise. And it would help a lot if people stopped treating compromise like a dirty word. As if when you compromise on something, you’ve betrayed your base, or sold your soul. Of course, it doesn’t help that there are media outlets on both sides of the aisle ready to holler and shout about what a catastrophe the compromise is, and how it betrayed everything that was decent about this country. But if the compromise is any good, both sides of the news media will be upset about it these days.
I get that it’s easier to use a “they’re evil” brush to paint the people you don’t agree with. They’re either a bunch of corporate suits trying to drain the last drop of money from our working class, or a bunch of communist anarchists bent on robbing the good citizens of our nation. And yes, I believe there are people acting in bad faith on both sides of the aisle, but no, I don’t believe people walking around with Nazi flags are “generally good people.” The best I could say about such individuals is that they’re wildly misguided and dreadfully ill-informed.
I watch these Senate hearings, and I’m disappointed. Let down that even in this crisis, we’re still bickering over asinine things like “did we do a good job with testing?” No. I believe we can categorically state that we did a pretty awful job with testing, because if we’d done a half-decent job, we wouldn’t be where we are now. When you’ve already flunked the course for the year, why waste time debating whether or not you studied well for the midterm? Pick yourself up and move on.
I think we need to start opening up the country at a reasoned, measured pace. Faster than some would like, and slower than others would like. I think if people would just wear their masks and give each other some space, there’s a lot we could start doing. This insistence on no masks and no distancing and “this pandemic is fake” is frustrating to say the least, but it’s more frustrating because somehow wearing a mask has become a political statement. In our rush to prove how right one side is over the other, we’re throwing common sense out the window.
And I suppose that’s all I have to say about that.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
May 12, 2020
Quarantine Beard Update
Sometimes you set goals for yourself, not quite understanding their implications. “A beard that looks like I’ve been cosplaying Robin Williams in Jumanji” seems like such a straightforward goal. You just sit back and let nature take her course. Growing facial hair has never been a struggle for me. It still isn’t.
But dealing with that facial hair has proven to be more than I initially anticipated.
I don’t mind the heat much, since it’s still been plenty chilly here in Maine. (We had a couple of inches of snow the other day.) And I’ve never had the issues other people always cite for why they don’t like beards: it doesn’t itch. It doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bug Denisa. It’s just been fine to have, and I like how I look more with a beard than without one. (For a while, the beard was a nice cover for a double chin I’d been developing. I have no idea if that double chin is still hiding somewhere in the jungle that is my face these days, but my BMI would tend to suggest it’s gone away . . .)
But eating with a long beard? That’s been the biggest difficulty. Sure, I could trim back the mustache area, but that’s not really following the spirit of the goal, is it? Robin Williams wasn’t trimming his mustache in Jumanji, was he? No. He was running away from packs of lions and elephants and killer wasps as fast as his feet could carry him. I may be many things, but I am not, generally speaking, a quitter. Certainly not when it comes to goals.
However, let’s just say that my nightly cocoa banana shake has become . . . problematic. I’ve taken to carrying a handkerchief around with me so that I can wipe my beard down after every bite. It’s like I’m turning into some sort of dripping wet water buffalo, except instead of water, it’s cocoa banana shake. (How’s that for an image for you?)
The beard is now over 2.5 inches long, and it looks like I have at least a couple more weeks of quarantine before things might point to me heading back to my office. It’s not close to “braid it like Gimli” length yet, though if I end up being stuck at home through June or July, it might be.
Maybe I should just invest in a nice, reusable straw. That might deal with the milkshake problem . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
May 11, 2020
Quarantine Worship
Not that I’m worshiping quarantine. Rather, today’s post is about how people are continuing to worship in this time of social distancing. When this all began (six weeks ago? More or less), shifting over to social distancing from a religious perspective really wasn’t that difficult. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had made a switch in January 2019 that emphasized a learning curriculum that was to be done in the home as families. Up until that point, our church services each Sunday had run three hours. With that change, an hour was lopped off from that to counterbalance the new home-learning.
So when suddenly the church stopped all weekly gatherings completely, world-wide, it really wasn’t that shocking of a step. All the members already had a year’s worth of practice worshiping at home. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not the same as meeting with a congregation, but I’m just saying it wasn’t like religion screeched to a halt. My family continued to meet each Sunday, and life went on.
Of course, that was six weeks ago now. That’s a whole lot of Sundays to go with just home services, which is why I’ve been grateful that our local congregations have mostly shifted over to Zoom services now. For the past month or so, we all turn on our computers (or phone in) and have a couple of talks and some hymns, starting at 9:30 each Sunday morning. Yesterday we had around 100 people in attendance, I’d guesstimate. (There were around 50 people logged in to the meeting, but many of those were households like mine of 5 or more.)
Interestingly (for a church that generally does things fairly uniformly), I’ve been surprised to hear this isn’t a practice that’s being done by all Latter-day Saint congregations. Or even most of them, from my anecdotal evidence. I’ve talked to people across the country, and for many of them, church has stopped for all intents and purposes, other than the home-studying component. I had thought Maine was already fairly behind the times, technologically speaking. (Usually that’s definitely the case. Our internet speeds are muuuuuch slower up here, and many people are still using technology that’s ten or more years behind the rest of the nation.) So to have Maine congregations doing things that places with a better technological infrastructure aren’t . . . is strange.
But I’ve only spoken to a few people, and I wanted to spread the net a bit wider. So how about you. Whether or not you’re a Latter-day Saint, if you typically go to church services each Sunday, what have you been doing now? How are you continuing to worship in times of social distancing? I see some places suing governments, demanding their right to worship in person again. I for one have been grateful for ways to both practice my religion but do it in a safe manner. Are other denominations doing the same?
Inquiring minds want to know . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
May 8, 2020
Throwback Computer Games: Zork
I’ve been playing video games for quite some time. The other day, as I was watching my kids play Animal Crossing, I thought back to what things might have been like if I’d been stuck in quarantine for a couple of months back in 1985. I’m pretty sure that was before I got an Atari even. The only computer games I had to speak of were the ones on my dad’s old Heathkit computer. Green text on a black screen. We had Space Invaders (the only copy I could find right now is the Atari one, but close enough). Eliza. DND. And, of course, Zork.
I remember playing Zork a ton, though I’m not sure how many times I actually did. For those of you too lazy to click through and play the game (shame on you!), it’s a fully-text-based game. You wake up in the middle of a forest, standing in front of a white house. There are no instructions at first, and you have to just sort of try different commands until you figure out what you’re supposed to do. Go north. Go west. Look. That kind of thing.
If you’re patient and stick with it, you begin to figure out what to do. You find equipment, and you go exploring in a maze beneath the house. And . . . that’s about as far as I ever got. If I had been in quarantine, I wonder if I would have beaten Zork.
The world may never know.
The bottom line, however, is that I would have been a whoooooole lot more bored than my kids are. No Netflix. No internet. A limited supply of board games. Dealing with “what to do” would have been a very different story.
I bring that up not to tell my kids how lucky they have it. No, I’m much more concerned about myself. Today I am just grateful we have all these ways to distract ourselves. Because if I was stuck here in the house with nothing more than Zork, and my kids had the same next-to-nothing to do?
I think we’d all go crazy.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
May 7, 2020
COVID-19: A Uniquely American Disaster
I’m a fan of America. Born and raised here, and there are a ton of things about my country that I love. However, having lived abroad for more than two years, and having non-Americans for in-laws, I’ve had the chance to see what America looks like from the outside. How we’re often thought of and portrayed. No real big surprises there: the way we’re thought of is often the way we’d like to think of ourselves, though many of the things Americans prize as virtues are looked on by non-Americans as vices. Problems instead of assets.
That said, the American approach to challenges has often been to fall back on the things that brought us together in the first place: the sense of rugged individualism that inspired people to turn their back on their native countries and go give their fortunes a shot in the new world. The same sense that spurred people to leave the colonies and keep exploring westward. When World Wars came up, we did the same thing. There’s a reason we idolized the cowboy for years, and why so many of us now idolize superheroes. (What, really, is the difference between the Avengers and the Magnificent Seven, other than the trappings? When a problem arises, a few hardy souls step up and take care of that problem right on. Is a classic western that much different than an Iron Man movie?)
But as much as I love those aspects of American life and recognize how well they served us throughout our history, they are making us struggle with our response to COVID-19 in a way that’s fairly unique across the globe. We literally have people killing security guards for telling them to wear a mask. At a time of crisis, when most countries seem to be coming together, we’re splintering further apart. I’ve seen people on both sides of the debate ridicule the other side. Dismissing their arguments entirely, and often with a nasty insult to go with it. Right now, we have a president who’s going around saying, “The country needs to open, because we need to get our economy back on track. Some people will die, but that’s what we have to do.” And a good chunk of Americans are cheering him on. (True, other countries have had struggles in a similar vein (I’m looking at you, Brazil), but we seem to be taking it to the next level.)
Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve accepted mass casualties as “part of the price of freedom.” Not in war, but in schools and everyday life. The right to own guns trumps the right to live without fear of being shot, apparently, something well discussed in this op-ed in the New York Times that just came out.
There has been a rush to normalize death in this country. I’ve seen memes shared many times over the past month comparing COVID-19 deaths to other deaths. Sure, they argue, the pandemic has killed 265,929 people in the world this year (as of right now), but 169,807 people have died from the seasonal flu. 586,521 have died of HIV/AIDS. 2,865,485 have died of cancer. The world doesn’t shut down for those deaths. Why should we shut down for this disease?
We watched in horror as the disease ravaged northern Italy, worried it would come here. It’s now killed more than 2.5 times as many people in our country as it has in Italy, but we’re apparently ready to get back to work. It’s the American way of life.
Right now, I believe the most likely scenario for the way forward in America is that we go back to “normal.” There’s a token effort to keep social distancing in place, but when faced with the decision between allowing more people to die from this and staying in an economic slump, we will choose the deaths.
I’m not trying to say I don’t understand the desire to choose death. A ravaged economy is going to be disastrous. (Though I will say that there’s a good chance it’s a false dichotomy, and we’re actually choosing between A: “a ravaged economy and death” and B: “a ravaged economy.” Believing a mysterious, often invisible disease will just be ignored, and that we’ll all go out and start buying things again and going to the movies and sports at the same rate we did pre-COVID-19 is, perhaps, a bit idealistic. We don’t know how deadly COVID-19 really is, but we seem hell-bent on finding out. Here’s hoping our “Bet it all on red” approach turns out to be lucky.)
I *will* say that the predicament we find ourselves in is one largely of our own making. Sure, you can finger point to China or Europe as much as you’d like, but we had months go by as we watched China deal with this disease. Plenty of time as we watched Italy go through it as well. We didn’t do a whole lot to prepare for it, other than buy a metric ton of toilet paper. And now we’ve got some leaders trying to tell us these deaths were inevitable. That we did our best, and that’s it’s only through their ineptitude that things weren’t worse. (Seriously. Trump makes Inspector Clouseau look like a genius sometimes.)
When you look at the response to this in Asia, you see a model of what might have been. Lockdowns were strictly enforced. Contact tracing kicked into gear. People went along with what they were ordered to do, and now they’re reopening and look like they’re going to avoid the economic meltdown that’s facing us. There’s a normal for them to go back to that doesn’t involve “Everybody gets COVID-19 and let’s just hope it’s really not that bad.”
There’s a way forward for us that doesn’t resort to that. It involves everyone in the country wearing masks and not shooting each other over the order. It means we actually take the time necessary to get on top of the disease and stay there. To be patient and understand some prevention now will pay off in the future. But I honestly don’t think we’re capable of doing that. I think we’re reopening, and we’re going to see a resurgence of the disease. But instead of locking down again, I think we’re going to see people shrug and revert back to the hopes-and-prayers-and-price-of-being-free mentality many have fallen back on for other tragedies. I don’t think other countries will follow this same path. Most of them will come up with a compromise their populace is willing to follow, but for Americans raised for decades upon decades with a “we’re the best and we’ll go it alone” mentality, I just don’t think it’s in our character as a nation to shift out of that lane.
I suppose the good news is we’ll see first hand how bad this disease can really get. If we’re lucky, and it’s not that bad, then only a few hundred thousand people will die. If we’re not lucky, then the deaths will be up past a million. But by the time it’s getting that bad, the brakes will be off the train, and we’ll all just get to watch as we careen down the mountain and hope for the best.
So the question we have to ask ourselves is, “Do we feel lucky?”
Quoting a Clint Eastwood line in the face of possible disaster? It doesn’t get much more American than that.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
May 6, 2020
Quarantine Epic Fantasy Review: The Gods of Blood and Power
I first read Brian McClellan’s Powder Mage trilogy as it was published in 2013-2015. I don’t read a ton of military fantasy, but what I’ve read, I’ve really enjoyed (which leads me to wonder why I don’t read more of it . . .) Standouts have been the Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon and the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik. I added McClellan’s series to that list. I thoroughly enjoyed the way he jammed battle tactics and magic together. The whole series was thrilling, and I had a great time with it from beginning to end.
But life gets in the way. I saw he had another series come out in 2017. A sequel trilogy to the original trilogy. And I wanted to read it, but let’s be real: there are a lot of books out there, and I kept letting Gods of Blood and Powder slip further down in the To Be Read pile.
Until social distancing began, that is. Because if there’s one thing I wanted when this all began, it was a solid set of fantasy books to read. Something I could just dive into and not have to worry about what I was going to read next. Some real escape. I didn’t want to start anything that hasn’t been finished, because yuck, and there was this series by an author I’d really enjoyed before.
Perfect.
I read the trilogy in about two weeks, and I had a great time with it. It carries on some of the story lines from the first series without needing to already have read the first series for the second to make sense. It’s set in a world with four competing magic systems. There are the Privileged, who can use special gloves to do just about anything they want with magic. There are gods, which are . . . gods. There’s blood magic, which is mysterious and not quite understood by the main characters. And then there are Powder Mages: people who can basically use gunpowder like a drug to give them super strength and senses, as well as the ability to ignite powder from a distance. But of course, the majority of the world (similar in technology to the 1800s) doesn’t use magic at all, and McClellan does a good job choosing his narrators to give you a sense of the whole range of experiences.
The trilogy tells the tale of the city of Landfall, where a number of political and military efforts smash together and spread to engulf a continent in war. McClellan weaves action, intrigue, espionage, and military strategy into a compelling narrative that I had a great time reading. The content level does skew toward the adult side of things, though nowhere near Game of Thrones territory.
If you’re looking for a way to escape through reading for a while, I definitely recommend it. I gave the series as a whole an 8/10. Check it out.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
May 5, 2020
Upgrading Wifi Again (Differently)
I posted back at the beginning of social distancing about how I had made the switch to faster internet. In the subsequent five and a half weeks, I’ve continued to be happy with the decision. We consistently get faster speeds that what I’m paying for, and life has been pretty good on the internet front.
Except . . .
As is often the case with a bottleneck, when you clear it up, you discover there are other bottlenecks further down the line that are also problematic. And sometimes there are other technological issues that come up because of the fix you made in the first place.
In my case, both of these things happened. First, with the new internet came a new wifi network. This one has two flavors (5Ghz and 2.4Ghz). The 5Ghz wifi gave fantastic speeds (145mbps), but the 2.4Ghz one was more consistent further away. To make matters more complicated, the way I was delivering wifi to my movie room (on the other side of the house) was through powerline adapters. In theory, these work great. You plug in one side of it next to your modem and hook it up to that via ethernet. Then you plug in the matching pair to that adapter anywhere else in your house. It then gives out a wifi signal, using the copper wiring in your house to transmit the signal.
In practice, this has never been wonderful for my house. The electrical wiring in chez Bryce is old. (It comes with the territory of being an 1841 farm house, though (naturally) the wiring is newer than that . . .) The most I could get pre-network upgrade was around 2mbps up there. Post-network upgrade, I was topping off at 9mbps, and that’s if I was lucky. For some reason, the network switch had made it so the internet speeds in the addition were sometimes as low as .25mbps, and every now and then the wifi up there would just give up.
I could have worked on the problem. Done some troubleshooting to see what could be done about it. But since it had never been great to begin with, I wasn’t sure I wanted to devote a whole lot of time to the project. Plus, with two wifi signals now coming from downstairs (from the new modem) and another coming from the addition (from the powerline adapter), all my devices were getting thoroughly confused. They would bounce back and forth from signal to signal, and it was just a huge mess.
Something had to be done.
I’ll spare you the huge research path I went down, though it was fairly lengthy. I checked a slew of blogs and reviews and called a couple of techie friends as well, trying to determine what the best option for my house would be. I discovered some of my problem could be traced to these old, sturdy, 1841 farmhouse walls. Lath, plaster, and horsehair apparently do a number on wifi signals. The answer? A wifi mesh network.
In a nutshell, a mesh network sets up a blanket of wifi over an area. It has separate components that act to boost the wifi between them, bolstering signals and keeping them consistent. You just have one network you log on to, and then the mesh takes care of the rest, switching you from router to router, depending on signal strength. There are a number of different flavors out there (Google Nest, Amazon’s Eero, and then some from Linksys and Orbi and other models), but in the end I went with Eero.
It arrived yesterday. There are three basic models of Eeros: Eero Pro, Eero, and Eero Beacon. I got a Pro for my base station (as it enables Dynamic Frequency Shifting, which basically makes it so that the system shifts devices around on the network on the fly to ensure they all have the best speed possible, more or less), then three Eeros for my satellite stations. (They’re equipped with ethernet ports, so if I’d ever like to hardwire the stations together, or hook in something directly to a station and skip the wifi, I can.) Officially, my house should have just needed one or two satellites, but I got three because of plaster. The signals were weak, and I was worried two wouldn’t be enough to get it all the way to the addition.
Turns out I was right.
It took me about a half hour to set the whole thing up. Eero uses an app to do all of that, and I have to say it was remarkably pain free. Compared to some networking projects I’ve done before, this was bliss. And the end result has been fantastic. One network for all the devices. Speeds up in the addition are clocking in at over 125mbps, which is what I’m paying for. The signal is strong everywhere. I can check the status through the app at any time, and I can even tell who’s connected and how much bandwidth they’re using. I’m a very happy camper so far.
It did come with a price tag, of course. I paid $370 for the whole thing, which is less than I was worried I’d have to pay. I bought the Eero Pro refurbished, and then the three Eeros as part of a set. That brought the price down some, especially since the set was on sale for $180. (For a Nest with just two satellites, it would have been $350.)
Anyway. If any of you are in the same situation I was, maybe some of this will help you. Bottom line: I learned these days it’s not just the internet speeds you pay for that come into your house. A lot can be done with the networking you’ve got kicking around the walls of your home as well.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
May 4, 2020
Quarantine Movie Review: Contagion
Nothing says “stuck inside for the nth week of social distancing” like a good old fashioned pandemic movie, right? Right. So on Friday evening, Denisa and I sat down to watch 2011’s take on what 2020 might look like. The answer? Pretty scarily accurate in many ways.
If you haven’t already heard of the movie, it’s by Steven Soderbergh, the man who both won and lost the Oscar for Best Director in 2000 (by having Traffic beat Erin Brockovich, since he directed both). He also did the Oceans Eleven remakes. Contagion stars Matt Damon and a slew of others as they trace the global outbreak of a disease that starts in China and quickly spreads across the globe. Where people are mandated to stay at home, and immunity wristbands end up being issued, and there’s panic buying, and on and on.
Comfort fare for you quarantine date night? Not hardly, but eerie how much of it ends up feeling spot on.
Of course, the disease in Contagion is quite a bit deadlier, killing about 25% of the infected in spectacular, foaming-at-the-mouth-and-convulsing fashion. Then again, I think one of the things that’s so tricky about COVID-19 is the fact that it’s generally so subtle. Many people have it and don’t know they have it. When they do have it, they lose their sense of smell or taste. Their breathing becomes labored. It’s just in a (relatively) small portion of the populace that it becomes so deadly, and humans (being humans) are bad at assessing global impacts of something that doesn’t seem “that bad.”
In the film, the disease causes mass panic. Rioting. Looting. Fires. Daylight robbery and murder as people generally freak out about what’s coming. But there’s also the hydroxychloroquine-stand in (Forsythia) which some claim is the cure-all and others say does nothing. The leaders in Contagion’s America sit back and let the scientists do the speaking and the leading, as opposed to actively spreading disinformation and unrest. So in some ways the film was more pessimistic, but in other ways it was far too optimistic.
As I watched it, I reflected on how the goal is to avoid the mass panic of the movie. I really do believe that if we’d waited much longer for the lock down measures, we would have risked the disease really raging out of control. In Maine right now the big debate is how fast we should open up the economy. In my opinion, I’m happy we’re able to have this debate, as it seems easy to forget just a month ago we were worried our health care system would be overwhelmed and there’d be thousands of deaths.
Then again, because those thousands of deaths haven’t materialized, it’s easier for people to think they wouldn’t have materialized, even if we hadn’t locked things down as much as we did. In some ways, it feels like scientists are suddenly in the role dentists have traditionally played, warning the populace that cavities and gum disease don’t mess around, and that they really should brush and floss regularly. Meanwhile, the populace is saying “I didn’t have a cavity this check up, so I’m done with brushing and flossing for now, thanks very much.”
In any case, it was a very interesting “what if” experiment to watch. (My biggest critique was that the R value in the movie is just around 2, it seems, and I don’t think the disease would have spread that quickly with such a low R value. Funny how I’m informed enough now to at least have a mental debate with myself over something that 2011-me would have found super obscure.)
I gave the movie an 8.5/10. Probably higher than I would have outside a quarantine, but it’s got to get bonus points for showing how foreseeable so much of this was, and how avoidable a lot of it could have been. If only . . .
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May 1, 2020
Once More to the School Board Budget Breach
On Tuesday evening, our school board budget committee met to continue discussions for next year’s budget. And sure as the night follows day, the comment section in the local online paper went straight for the torches and pitchforks. (I imagine they each have a large glass case with a pitchfork next to their computer, boldly emblazoned in red with “IN CASE OF SCHOOL BUDGET BREAK GLASS.”)
It’s really important each year that we not let the comments section of The Daily Bulldog set the tone for our school budget debate. It’s too easy to shift the footing into areas that stop making sense. The knee-jerk objection this year is to the bottom line increase: $1.35 million.
I get it. That’s a lot of money, especially right now in these uncertain economic times. Granted, it’s only a 3.64% increase compared to last year’s budget, but the standard rate of inflation last year was around 2.2%, which means this does, indeed, raise the bottom line.
However, for those hardy souls willing to read beyond the third paragraph of the article, it’s quickly apparent that there’s more to this budget than the bottom line. (As is always the case.) Since the debate inevitably shifts to “This costs the local people more money,” let’s look at what the proposed budget would do to the actual local expenses.
On the whole, it would increase them by .45% (including Adult Education).
Of course, the way the overall cost is distributed throughout all the towns is dependent on a number of other factors, so the actual impact to each resident of different towns would be different. It’s listed in the article in paragraph form, but I’ll break it out into bullet points for clarity:
Chesterville: 2.39% decreaseFarmington: 1.46% decreaseIndustry: 2.64%New Sharon: 2.11%New Vineyard: 3.51%Starks: 6.88%Temple: 0.98%Vienna: 2.13%Weld: 3.42% decreaseWilton: 1.72%
(Note that the article in the Bulldog gets a bit muddled. I’m taking this directly from the school board budget presentation.)
Now, you could certainly debate how the costs are shared out among the different towns. I don’t know how that’s calculated, and I am not an accountant. (I believe it all comes down to overall town valuations and how they each compare to each other, but someone better in the know would have to speak to that.) But the bottom line is that over the past five years, the school budget has increased an average of .55% per year in terms of its cost to locals. (That includes this year.)
What’s more, it’s clear from the article that there are still areas that are up in the air: a $2-$2.5 million surplus from this year due to to the school shutdown, possible additional federal funds of $600,000, and discussion of the Success & Innovation Center’s funding.
But if you look at those comments, the school board might as well have proposed plating the toilets in the high school in solid gold. Most of the increase is being covered by the state. Don’t punish your local school district because you’re upset about state-level requirements and issues. Take that up with the state.
In last year’s vote, New Vineyard and Chesterville were the two towns to vote against the budget. (It passed with 909 yes votes and 445 nos.) Starks, which to my memory always sees the biggest increase year after year, approved it 50 to 5. Why? Because Starks tried to go it alone for a bit, and they realize the value of a solid school system.
These increases are far from egregious. For reference, New Sharon approved a 3.6% increase for its town budget at their annual town meeting this year. Farmington’s proposed increase was 6.2% before the world went into a tailspin. I’m not sure if it was voted through or not. I list those two examples just to show that the people who are going for the pitchforks for the school budget don’t seem to have the same passion about other areas of local taxes. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think they should. I haven’t seen anyone around me lining their pockets at the expense of tax payers. I think we live in a frugal spot of the country and the state. But that’s not what the budget hawks would have the populace believe when it comes to the school.
So when this comes up online or in your social circles, don’t let that $1.35 million increase go unchallenged. Does that mean this budget should go through as-is? No. It’s still being discussed, and it isn’t set in stone yet. If people continue to have concerns about specific line items (increased positions, or decreased positions for that matter), they should email their school board members or the superintendent.
But let’s put the pitchforks down for now.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
