COVID-19

February 11, 2021

A kind of funny story… back in 1968, parts of Chile were pretty disconnected from the rest of the world, and, more to the point, so were the people who were born, grew up, and worked there. For a lot of the workers there, they were born in small towns, and they remained in those small towns their entire lives. Some towns were only 40km from the coast, yet some of them, guys in their 20s, had never even been to the ocean. Accordingly, they weren’t too clued-in as to what exactly was going on in the world.

On June 6th, 1968, my uncle was in his office, sitting at his desk… also there was my dad… both of them discussing whatever. Then the phone rang, and my uncle picked it up… and it was a group of miners expressing their condolences… “We’re so sorry to hear the news”, they said, “It’s so sad, it’s so awful, him with his pregnant wife and everything…”

“What the hell are you talking about?”, asked my uncle.

“Your brother, of course.”

“What about him?”, asked my uncle, staring at my dad sitting across from him.

“Well, we heard he got shot and killed in Los Angeles yesterday.”

“That was Robert KENNEDY, you idiots! KENNEDY… not KEMENY!”.

Perhaps an innocent but somewhat amusing misunderstanding for some people who weren’t granted the benefit of the big picture.

But here’s something that’s not so funny… and it has to do with Robert Kennedy Jr… the aforementioned’s son… someone who certainly should have a good grip on reality.

He just got banned from Instagram, for promoting a whole bunch of anti-vax bullshit. But this guy is especially awful… because he lobbies Congress to give parents exemptions from state requirements that mandate vaccinations for children. He has an anti-vax Facebook page with over 300,000 followers… and yet… all of his children have been vaccinated. This is the worst kind of hypocrite on the planet… pandering to the masses; “elevating” themselves to the crowd they feel they need to reach. Vegans who secretly eat meat when no one’s looking. Environmentalists who throw all of their garbage and cardboard and food scraps into the same, landfilled-destined plastic garbage bags. Green Party members who drive 12-cylinder mega-fuel-injected super-turbo-charged Italian sports cars that get 2 miles to the gallon. Robert Kennedy Jr. They can all go to hell, pontificating their holier-than-though ideas while brazenly doing the exact opposite.

Speaking of vaccines, if you’ve been watching the bolded, inverse vaccination-percentage numbers near the top of the attached data, you’ll be disappointed to see that most of them went down. It’s because I adjusted the data… and because, for a while, all doses being dished out were first doses, and that’s what I was tracking. But now that the second doses are kicking in, it throws things off. The idea is to represent how many people have had at least one shot… not just simply shots divided by population… a number that doesn’t really mean much. Accordingly, the numbers have all gone down, and the more second doses that have already been injected, the bigger the change.

Well… not all. It was most interesting to see Quebec, the huge outlier… who have given out a total of… zero second shots. They’re really going all-in with their policy: Get as many first shots done as possible, and stretch that window for the second shot as far as possible and… hope fervently that enough doses show up in time when they’re needed.

Anyway, going forward, that’s what those bold inverted numbers mean; the percentage of the population that’s had at least one shot. B.C. is at 2.8%. Canada is at 2.5%. The U.S. is at 14.5%. For a bit of comparison… Israel is at 68%, the U.K. is at 21%, and Chile… even though they may not know the difference between the U.S. Attorney General and a local mining executive… is at over 7%, which puts them in the Top-10 in the world. Canada used to be in that Top-10, but we’re now we’re barely hanging on to our Top-40 position… sliding down the charts like a one-hit-wonder whose moment has come and gone.

We’re told that’ll change in the coming weeks. Let’s hope so.

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By |2021-02-11T17:03:27-08:00February 11th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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February 10, 2021

I must admit, it feels good not to be writing about Donald Trump. Because now, I read the news about the guy and my first thought is always, “Who cares”. Washington will have their hands full with the impeachment circus, and by the end of it it’s highly likely he’ll be acquitted… but through the motions they go.

I find it pathetic that the Republican Party hasn’t got the internal fortitude to figure out what’s really important to them; some of them cling on to their has-been demagogue for the simple reason that there’s still an army of misguided supporters out there. What they perhaps don’t realize is that those aren’t fellow Republicans. They’re cult followers. Jeez, if the events of January 6th can’t convince you of that, nothing can. Or, of course, they *do* realize that, and don’t care. Which is really far worse, when you consider the implications. Either way, I look forward to it all going away. And, hopefully, not coming back.

Sifting past the pages of all that nonsense for something relevant to write about in the few minutes I have to do so, I found an interesting story from the CDC claiming that double-masking can block 93% of potentially infectious particles. That number varies, depending how well you double-mask and how well knotted it’s done… but it’s drastically different than single masking in the 40-60% range. It’s a far cry seeing that published and possibly adhered to, as opposed to the aforementioned has-been demagogue who spent a year telling everyone masks are useless. For those who like math, the extrapolation of triple-masking goes to 97% and quadruple-masking 99%. Beyond that, it’s 100% because you probably can’t breathe.

Yeah, wear a mask or two… it makes a huge difference. I look around with some envy at places that had these mandates in place early and effectively… places where two-week mandatory quarantines don’t have exceptions and you pay for it yourself and you don’t complain; those are now the places that have bustling restaurants and crowded stadiums and no mask mandates. There are indeed places on the planet that are back to normal. The U.S. completely messed-up their opportunity, but that was because of colossally crappy leadership, right from the top, and right from the start. We’ve done a lot better here in Canada, but now that we’re a year into this thing, it’s not difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons. It could’ve been a lot better. In gambling terms, it’s called the “woulda coulda shoulda” – it’s what you hear from most frustrated horseplayers moments after the horses cross the finish line… I woulda bet the 6… I coulda bet the 4.

And yeah, we shoulda had masks everywhere… long ago.

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By |2021-02-10T17:05:17-08:00February 10th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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February 9, 2021

Let’s talk about something else entirely… at least for today.

Like Covid-19, it’s invisible to the naked eye. Like Trump, it’s wildly volatile. Like both of those things, its future is uncertain, but there’s plenty of speculation. What I’m talking about is Bitcoin.

Bitcoin (BTC) was born almost exactly 11 years ago, created by an entity known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Nobody’s too sure if that’s a real person, or a group of people, and/or whether that individual, if it is one, is still alive.

The first time I heard about Bitcoin was some time in 2010… from a friend I’d formerly worked with… a very smart guy, one of the best Linux/network admins I’ve ever met. Smart guy, but nobody took his touting of Bitcoin seriously. This was late 2010, and Bitcoins were worth less than a $1. The following year, they started going up in value… all the way to $20. He was very happy. Then the price crashed back down to a few dollars again. He was not so happy. It all still felt like something not to be taken seriously… but that started to change as time went on.

In late 2013, the world’s first Bitcoin ATM opened up… right here in Vancouver. It’s still there… in Waves Coffee, on the corner of Smithe and Howe.

Very cool. I went down there with $500, plugged it into that machine, and bought 2.5 Bitcoins. And when you buy BTC, there’s no tangible evidence of it… but then again, there’s no tangible evidence of your bank balance, except for what your phone or computer screen tells you. You just assume the little numbers translate to value. Like cash or stocks or gold or anything else with a number that describes what it’s worth. Then I bought a coffee and some food with it; Waves was one of the first places to accept Bitcoin for payment.

I dabbled with BTC over the years; for a while, I had my own mining rig… but it wasn’t anything too sophisticated. In fact, it was computer motherboard and three video cards all crammed into a milk crate. That thing ran hot… and loud. I was selling most of what I mined as quickly as I could… BTC was $400 at the time… and that was the mindset; create $ out of thin air and lock it in. Obviously, in hindsight, holding onto all of that would’ve made far more sense, but BTC back then, at least in my mind, was simply a new-fangled digital currency to be used like any other. And like any other, it’ll fluctuate… but never appreciate to levels of insanity. You wouldn’t expect a Canadian Dollar to suddenly be worth $2,000 U.S.; this was no different. Eventually, I shut it all down. Mining BTC becomes more difficult and more expensive as time goes on. Doing the math on how much energy I was consuming in this increasingly-difficult exercise implied it was no longer worthwhile. The garage, where it had been running, became much quieter and colder.

Except… it was different.

The first evidence of that was in 2013 when BTC shot-up to over $1,000 a coin… and it was because of currency restrictions imposed in Cyprus, during a financial crisis. People there were frantically trying to get their money out. In the old days, you’d try to do that by smuggling out gold or diamonds… but if you can seamlessly tap-tap-tap here and somewhere else in the world, someone else does the tap-tap-tap and now has all the money (and, of course, that someone else can also be you)… and no financial regulator was in the way… well, great. Even better, even if the financial regulator saw that transaction go by, they have no idea who did it. BTC became the de-facto currency of the Silk Road marketplace, a dark web Black Market site for purchasing all sorts of illegal goods.

When the Cypriot financial crisis sorted itself out, the BTC prices came back down to earth, but everyone took notice. Hmmm… forget buying coffees and croissants… if this thing can hold its value, given everything else it brings to the table… hmm…

What else does it bring to the table? It’s secure. So far, nobody has figured out how to hack it, though many have tried. The general consensus is that it’d take a very long time for all the computer power in the world at present to do so. The infrastructure is secure and transparent. Everyone can know what every wallet balance in the world is at – but not necessarily know to whom it belongs. Transactions are verified in real-time by multiple machines around the world. It all simply works. And who’s to say what a BTC is worth? Well, who decides what gold is worth? Or a diamond? It’s simple… it’s worth exactly what at this moment in time, someone is willing to pay for it while someone else is willing to part with it.

But perhaps the biggest intangible, the one thing this particular commodity brings to the table that no other one does is… that it’s finite. Given how it’s designed, only 21,000,000 BTCs will ever be mined. Around 18,500,000 have already been mined, but, like I said, it’s getting harder and harder. The last one won’t be mined till around 2140, and it’ll take decades for that last one to emerge.

Oil, gold, diamonds, wheat, sugar, cocoa, pork bellies… the earth always provides more. Nothing is infinite, but we’re nowhere close to running out of those things… we can always mine, grow or breed more. But not BTCs. So what happens when you have a trusted commodity where supply is known to be limited? You’d expect it would appreciate in value.

At this moment, a single BTC is worth $60,000. That coffee and chocolate croissant I bought way back when for 0.05 BTC? It cost me $3,000 in today’s dollars. That initial $500 in BTC I bought (and is now long gone) would be worth over $150,000… but if that makes you go ouch, consider the very first BTC transaction ever… two Papa John’s pizzas… worth about $30… for 10,000 BTC. That is, in today’s dollars, a six-hundred million dollar pizza. Sorry, two pizzas.

A lot could go wrong with BTC, which would vapourize all that value instantly. Someone could crack the encryption. Governments could conspire to shut it all down. A better crypto-currency could appear, and all the value would flood in that direction. Or… it could continue to appreciate forever. Some people are saying a single BTC could be worth $500,000 within a decade. Given its recent meteoric rise, who knows.

People also wonder what’ll happen after 2140, when there’s no more reward for being part of the network, since mining will have stopped. But in the same breath, the answer is obvious. Not our problem… just like in 2140, perhaps we’ll all have fusion-powered diamond-makers in our homes, or do-it-yourself alchemy kits for turning old pennies into gold. Not our present-day problem.

For now, the world has a trusted, unique, ubiquitous and accessible form of wealth storage that seems to find a little bit more of legitimacy every day. Recently, Elon Musk announced that Tesla would be accepting BTC for payment. And that Tesla holds $1.5 billion in BTC, just as a part of a diversified investment portfolio. And perhaps that’s what a well-diversified portfolio looks like in the future… cash, equities, bonds, gold, real-estate, commodities… and now, also… BTC.

As far as my friend is concerned, the one who was into BTC so early in the game… at some point, he cashed it all in (whatever “it’ is), bought a boat, and has been sailing around the world ever since.

** Disclaimer: I’m nobody’s idea of a registered investment advisor. None of the above is intended as advice; just interesting info. Should you choose to dabble in BTC, do so at your own risk. Past returns are never indicative of future whatever yadda yadda…

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By |2021-02-09T17:03:00-08:00February 9th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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February 8, 2021

A brief word regarding the SuperBowl… it takes both teams to show up for it to be a great game. Tampa Bay, their defence and, of course, Tom Brady all showed up. The somewhat crippled Kansas City offensive line also showed up, but you can’t blame them… the balance of power when two powerhouse teams go at it is very delicate; it doesn’t take much to make a big difference. Accordingly, that, plus the entire KC offense not having a great day (two dropped TD passes are just a small part of it) equals a well-deserved rout by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And further cementing the fact that 43-year-old Tom Brady, the SuperBowl MVP, whether you love or hate the guy, is unquestionably the greatest QB the NFL has ever seen. And that is the last you’ll hear about NFL football from me for a very long time.

A brief word re the NHL and the Vancouver Canucks… here’s everything good to say about the team at present:

Moving on to what’s important… today we get a numbers “refresh”, and they echo the recent trend… and they keep right along with what I, and everyone else who watches numbers carefully, have been saying… it’s looking pretty good.

I was wrong about the SuperBowl, but so far have been right about the very simplistic assumption that “the worst will be over after the last week of January” – simply because the effects of the holiday season will already have taken effect, and now with warmer weather coming, things should improve… and with vaccines ramping up, and… etc etc.

So… the coldest weather of the year is coming this week. The hail and snow that showed up today is a good reminder… there’s a long way to go. The vaccine rollout has been disappointing; not what we expected. Family Day, Lunar New Year… and the effects of everyone who attended SuperBowl parties are two weeks away, and then some. And, of course, the far-more contagious variants now in our midst. Everything in this paragraph could conspire to wreck those beautiful downward trends we’re seeing everywhere… cases, hospitalizations, deaths.

For what we’re battling at the moment, and the way we’re battling it, it’s working. Some second-wave drop-offs (like in Alberta) have been as drastic as the rise that led to their peaks. But the key to that is that even though it’s working for now, there’s a nervous trigger-finger on harsher lockdown measures… because what we may end up dealing with is not a third wave of this pandemic; it would be a first wave of a new one… one that blows-up numbers far quicker. At least we’d have a huge head-start in fighting it, because we’d only be months (if not weeks) away from vaccines. A silver lining to this is that by the time most of us get a vaccine, it’ll likely be primed to be more effective for some of these newer strains.

All that being said, ideally, we don’t get to that point.

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By |2021-02-08T17:04:29-08:00February 8th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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February 7, 2021

Just a few brief words because I’m watching… the SuperBowl… and I’m not the only one. The data sources for Canadian vaccinations and hospitalizations are all down, and I’m guessing the IT guys are all busy till after 6. No worries; updated numbers tomorrow.

It’s funny watching and listening and reading the lead-up to the game, by all sorts of companies who apparently aren’t allowed to say “SuperBowl” without paying for the privilege… so it’s “The Big Game” or “The Championship Game”. If you saw some advertising and were wondering what the heck it was all about, it’s this.

For what it’s worth, similar thing… The Kentucky Derby was called exactly that for over a hundred years… until it became “The Kentucky Derby Presented by YUM Brands”… and I guess YUM paid a lot for that, because they demanded it be phrased like that everywhere. You couldn’t say Kentucky Derby without the rest of it.

Anyway, back to football… it remains to be seen what happens, but Tom Brady, the oldest (43) player to ever play in a Big Game/Championship Game/SuperBowl… may well be on his way to leading his team to victory. Or not. Still a half of football to go.

Either way, the secret’s out. Patriots coach Bill Belichick may be good coach, but he wasn’t the key. He never was. The Patriots were 12-4 last year, 7-9 this year. The Buccaneers were 7-9 last year, 12-5 this year. What changed? Tom Brady… hopping from the Patriots to the Bucs. Pretty simple… win or lose, you have to hand it to the guy: Greatest Of All Time

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By |2021-02-07T17:03:02-08:00February 7th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , |5 Comments
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February 6, 2021

The only thing more brief than today’s update might be tomorrow’s… not just because it’s the usual incomplete weekend numbers, but also… it was a beautiful day… and a long, sunny-yet-freezing-cold bike ride was it order… and it’s interesting to people-watch as you whizz by… everything from large groups of mask-less people, to solitary souls standing in the middle of nowhere… wearing a mask.

At the moment, we are in the midst of restrictions that puzzle some people, but it’s really very easy. Sometimes, the only way to get what you want to is to over-reach, because that’s potentially the only way people will get it.

Like, Dr. Henry says no SuperBowl parties… but what she really means is, don’t get together in crowded, stuffy, over-crowded living rooms to watch it. She could’ve said, “Go ahead and have SuperBowl parties… just be sure to wear masks at all times and keep 6 feet of distance”… but she didn’t, because a lot of people would’ve stopped reading after the first 6 words. Or… would’ve had the intention of following those rules but we can all imagine what it’d look like an hour into the game. So – it’s the strong over-reach, and that’s that. At least it’s clear.

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By |2021-02-06T17:04:19-08:00February 6th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , |2 Comments
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February 5, 2021

At some point after this weekend, the streets of some impoverished nations will be filled with people wearing colourful shirts of this weekend’s SuperBowl’s losing team.

You may have noticed that about ten seconds after a championship game is concluded, the winning team is already smiling and celebrating and spraying champagne all over each other while already wearing t-shits and ballcaps and other paraphernalia branded with their victory. Indeed, some of that stuff sometimes makes its way to the sidelines before the game is even over if it’s a blowout; a few minutes before the end of the game, you may already see some of it. You’d have to assume all of that was already pre-printed (correct) which means there must be all of that pre-printed bling branded with the losing team as well (correct again). So… what happens to all the losing jerseys?

There are charities that gather them all and donate them to needy countries. The people in these places barely know that the NFL is, and even if they do, probably don’t care. You won’t see many t-shirts in Seattle celebrating the Seahawk’s SuperBowl XLVIII over the Patriots, but you might in places like Zambia, Armenia, Nicaragua and Romania. You would have been seeing them in Seattle had Pete Carroll decided to allow Russell Wilson to just hand the freaking ball to Marshawn Lynch, the best running back in the game at the time who, from the one yard line, almost certainly would’ve run it in for the winning touchdown and… yay Seahawks and… wait, what just happened. Still too soon.

Many years ago, I paid $800 for two little laptops from an initiative called OLPC – One Laptop Per Child. These cool little Linux-based indestructible hand-crankable laptops were meant to wind up in the hands of every child in Africa at the eventual cost of $100 each. For my $800, I got two of them… and two random kids in Africa got them as well.

Also, many years ago, I bought three indestructible soccer balls. They’re a little harder than most, but they’re un-puncturable… and indeed, more than ten years later, they’re still kicking around here (haha) – and hopefully, so are the three that wound up in the streets of Africa somewhere, as a result of the same sort of “buy one here and kid in Africa gets one too” plan. I hope somewhere, there’s a kid kicking around one of those balls while wearing a Canucks Stanley Cup Champions 2011 t-shirt.

This is all good in that someone that can afford something overpays, so that someone else somewhere where they couldn’t afford it benefits as well.

But today… well, it’s weird to think of Canada being on the receiving end of that sort of arrangement, but here we are. Canada, last April, signed on to the United Nations COVAX plan to get 2 billion doses of vaccine to impoverished nations. The rich counties pony-up and pay for vaccine to get manufactured… for themselves, and for those countries that can’t afford it. Laptops, soccer balls, vaccine. Same deal.

But given the bottom-of-the-totem-pole treatment we’re getting with respect to vaccine delivery (we just recently learned that we’ll be getting even less Moderna than the already-less Moderna we’d learned about last week) – and, also, I know… the bottom of the totem pole is reserved for the important part of the story – the least important stuff is that the top – I’m just using the colloquial expression… ok, where was I…

… so… we, Canada, are now intending to draw from the COVAX supply… because we’re short. Canada is the only G7 country to do. Hey, gimme back one of those laptops… I need three. Hey, my soccer ball broke… gimme one back. I’m not sure it’s appropriate as much as I’m not sure it’s not. We paid $440 million into COVAX in September, and perhaps that should entitle us to at least what we were promised. On the flipside, people are people everywhere in the world and everyone deserves this vaccine, and I’d certainly back an infrastructure that distributes it fairly. There are people in Africa who’d prefer the vaccine… instead of the losing Tampa Bay Bucs (sorry Tom Brady fans) jerseys.

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By |2021-02-05T17:03:37-08:00February 5th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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February 4, 2021

Appropriate for sympathizing with the world’s smallest violin is the guy who decided to go visit a friend in North Carolina, took the wrong test on the way back (rapid test, which offers more false negatives than the government-required PCR test), and found himself stuck in a Toronto hotel, whining to the world about how unfair it is. I will gloss over the facts, because there’s something near the bottom of the story that’s just as important.

Indisputable is that this guy traveled to North Carolina to visit a friend, restrictions on non-essential travel notwithstanding. Canada requires proof of a negative PCR test, taken within the last 72 hours, to allow boarding onto a Canadian-bound plane… or, upon arrival. The guy should not have been allowed on a plane to begin with, but he was. And so, when he landed in Toronto, his answers with respect to quarantine were inadequate… and he was taken to what he describes as a detention centre. It was actually an airport hotel, where he was “incarcerated” for 60 hours.

He laments he’s out $130 for the useless test. He laments he could see Tim Horton’s, Harvey’s, Subway and Swiss Chalet from his 9th-floor room, but wasn’t allowed to order from them. He was stuck with the government-issued free food instead of that potential gourmet offering. And… he got in under the cut-off, so you and I paid for his hotel, food and internet.

The reporter reached out to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) to generate some outrage to add to the story, but the CCLA seems to be in agreement with the government. Their Director of Fundamental Freedoms, when asked to comment, replied, “If you take a look at section 4, it seems to deem a person without a proper test to be someone who is unable to quarantine themselves (s. 4(1)(a)), and then in s. 4(2) says that those who are unable to quarantine themselves must follow certain directions related to quarantine, which I think would include the requirement to quarantine in a hotel like the situations you describe”.

Basically, this guy made his own tax-subsidized bed, and then he had to lie in it… having neither a valid test result nor a quarantine plan upon his return.

But what bothers me most about this story is another quote from this poor, unfortunate soul who was stuck for three days with his warm bed and free food and free internet… with respect to the other eight people from the same flight taken to that hotel: “Some cried and said they would lose their jobs or didn’t have babysitters.” In other words, those other eight people also had the same idea as our hero: to hell with quarantine; it’s not in our plans.

You don’t have to agree with the rules, but you have to understand that they’re there for a reason, and that they’re clearly being taken seriously by the people enforcing them. Perhaps you shoul do the same. Or not. Up to you… but… play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

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By |2021-02-04T17:03:22-08:00February 4th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , |7 Comments
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February 3, 2021

While I will always endeavour to post these numbers and charts every day around 5pm, the quality and quantity of the accompanying text (ie this) may suffer a bit for a while… as a bunch of real-world responsibilities enter the picture… a bunch of projects which will require lot of time and attention, at least for a little while.

I have a rule of thumb I use with everything that has a distant finish line. How long will it take? How much will it cost? It’s simple. You ask that question of the people involved…then take the estimate, double it… and add 20%.

The $20,000 project that’s supposed to take 3 weeks? … will cost $40,000 and take close to 7 weeks. See? Simple.

What’s interesting is that I’ve been on both sides of that. When I was doing the low-level grunt work, I somehow always underestimated the big picture… usually because I had my head wrapped around what I thought was whole thing… and thought I had a clear idea of exactly what needed doing and how long it’d take. It’s easy when you know what to expect, but, of course… the world throws a lot of unexpectedness into things, the result being… double+20%.

Funny thing… back in the day, at BCIT, they tried to teach that with a bit of real-world experience. Teams were thrown together, and you had to figure out how to make it work. Except that’s not where I learned that lesson; I learned a very different lesson.

Ostensibly, the lesson to learn was that when you work with a team, you will run into issues that span the spectrum of issues… personal, business, financial, time, lack of accountability… you name it: Here’s what the real world looks like.

Except… I lucked out… our team of four did everything – perfectly. We scored 100% on every single project, and every project was handed in well-ahead of the deadline. What was the secret? I’ve written about it before, but I’ll say it again; surround yourself with excellent people… and then let them do their thing.

We were building software, and everything that’s supposed to go along with a polished final product; the sort of thing the real world would demand. We were individually so good at each of our tasks that we could rely on each other and not worry about any other aspect than our own.

In our case, I would write the entire program. There were no whiteboard meetings, design documents or delegation of “you code this, I’ll code that”. I would wrap my head around it, sit down and then just do it. Then I would hand it off to the guy who did the pseudocode, which in theory is supposed to come before any programming… like the blueprints, before your pour the concrete, let alone start building. But in this case, the cart came before the horse; the building was complete, and then, his skill at drawing those blueprints was impressive; a perfect match. Then, someone else from the team did the software version of interior design on the building, making it all look pretty and user friendly. And finally, the last person did all the documentation on every aspect of constructing and operating the software/building. It all came together beautifully, so much so that on a few occasions I didn’t even see the final product until moments before it was handed in. I’d done my part weeks earlier and forgotten about it, but now my name was on this magnificent binder of art and documentation and, buried somewhere deep, my contribution. Always, one hundred percent. One of these days, I will write about the award-winning final project we did for the RCMP… and how the RCMP screwed us over.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a short paragraph explaining why I won’t be writing as much in the near future. I set aside 15 minutes to write it, but numerous interruptions and phone calls… guess how long it took… yeah, you guessed it… but here’s the math. 15+15+(20% x 15) equals… 33 minutes. Started at 4:30pm. Now it’s 5:03pm… perfect.

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By |2021-02-03T17:03:05-08:00February 3rd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , |6 Comments
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February 2, 2021

Happy Groundhog Day! Happy Groundhog Day! – and if that little repeat doesn’t make sense to you, it’s time for you to emerge from your own gopher hole, and forget about shadows… just go see the movie… and, also, if you haven’t seen the movie, you might not want to read all of this because it’ll spoil it for you. And if you’re thinking “Who cares, I’m never going to see the movie”… that’s a bad way to look at it… because it’s a good movie. A great movie. In fact, so great… that it’s been selected by the U.S. Library of Congress to be included for permanent preservation in the National Film Registry.

The film isn’t really about Groundhog Day; it just so happens that its repeated events take place on this particular day. It could have been any other holiday… or just some regular Tuesday. And, like most worthwhile films, it touches on many different things; some obvious and some subtle.

Many days of this pandemic have felt exactly like what Phil Connors (Bill Murray in the movie) went through… the same repetitive pattern, day after day after day. Certainly, initially, in the movie, Phil embraced the novelty of having day after day to pursue whatever he wanted… with no consequences. He did more than make crafts and bake sourdough and watch Tiger King, but same idea… and, no matter what, back to 6am the next day. The same next day.

Eventually, he got sick and tired and depressed of it all… but even killing himself didn’t work. Back to a perpetual cycle of day after day… but let’s be clear… this wasn’t a few weeks or months into it… it was years; possibly decades.

Eventually, after all of that, he emerged with some clarity… that if he’s stuck in the same day forever, why not make the best of it for other people, if not himself. He fixes a flat tire. He saves a guy choking to death. He catches a kid falling out of a tree. He lights someone’s cigarette without being asked. On a touching note, he continually and persistently tries to save a man’s life, yet no matter what he tries, it’s to no avail. And that’s just touching the surface of it. There’s a lot of discussion regarding exactly how long Phil replayed that day. Some estimates are in the range of 34 years… more than 12,000 times. No matter what. No matter where. No way out of that town, and no way out of that day… no matter what he tried.

It was eventually living through a “perfect” day that gets him out of his loop. From a spiritual point of view, in Judaism, there’s a concept of “repairing the world”, and that by doing a good deed (a “Mitzvah”) you release a spark of holy energy to the universe… and if everyone went around doing good deeds all the time, we’d all benefit. Certainly, on that particular day, Phil lit a forest fire of reparation.

Like the movie, there’s an end to the pandemic… and like the end of the movie, when we eventually get there, it’ll be happy… but we can all sympathize with Phil. If we didn’t quite get it the first time we ever watched the movie, we certainly do now. I recall watching an interview after Schindler’s List came out… and one of the Schindler Jews who survived The Holocaust was in the audience. She was asked after if she thought the movie was too long. “The real thing was longer”, she replied. Yep. Understood.

And back to today… in a very pandemically-themed ceremony (Groundhog Punxsutawney Phil was wearing a mask), the official little guy came out and saw his shadow… so, as far as Pennsylvania is concerned… six more weeks of winter. On the other hand, Ontario’s Wiarton Willie saw no shadow, so it’s an early spring for them. Here in B.C., I’m not sure we have an official groundhog to make the call, so I’ll do it – and it’s very easy, because unless we hit one of our annual 20 days of sunshine (which obviously today we didn’t), it’ll be cloudy and gray, which means no shadow, which means an early Spring. Great! I can’t wait to go… nowhere.

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By |2021-02-02T17:05:03-08:00February 2nd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Space & Astronomy|Tags: , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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