Work from home - EXTENDED...

It's 8PM Tuesday night. I just logged in to work to finish up an acceptance criteria' document for the tester that will be testing my latest code change. I want to finish it up tonight so I can get it to her first thing tomorrow as I want to take the day off, or at least work till around 9AM when I hand over the team on-call duties to the next person.

Looking in my inbox there was an email from our CEO. They are extending our mandatory work from home (WFH) policy through May 31. May 31 is a Sunday with the next day being Monday June 1, 2020. If in fact we do go back into the office that Monday we will all have WFH for 11 weeks.

It does take some getting used to. I usually start work pretty early (like 5 or 5:30 AM to 6AM) and knock off around 3PM. My wife is a public school teacher and at the start of all this she was up pretty early as well, not as early as me though. As the weeks went on she discovered none of her students signed on till... "later on" (Kung Fu Panda quote). So, she started sleeping in a bit later and starting around 9 - 10 AM. This gave me several hours of quiet time which is nice.

So now we are into a pretty smooth groove. We both are stopping around Noon to have lunch together. It's really nice to eat with someone and be eating cooked food. I will say though... I am missing a 'very ocaisional' double cheeseburger from BK, parked next to a very well-shaded park listening to a podcast and doing a word-find puzzle #CreatureComfort. Life is long and we'll all be back into our old routines soon right?!

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JoeCubicle

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Cast iron pan surfacing

Call is quarantine boredom if you want. I've actually been wanting to smooth-out this pan for a long time. I have a set of wrenches for my right angle grinders but I'm missing ONE OF THEM! Guess which one... THE ONE I NEED! Anyway, I just got an adjustable wrench for my grinder to take off the worn out grinding wheel to put on this 80 grit flap-disc. So on with the project. I smoothed out a cast iron pan a few years ago with a paint stripping wheel that chucks up on a corded drill. It turned out great! I got this 10" pan about a year ago and have used it now and then for this and that but you don't really get the non-stick benefit till it is smooth on the inside. Well, now it is! If you don't have cast iron pans I suggest you get one or two. They're cheap and last forever. Smoothing one out does take some work, this took me about 45 minutes today but now it's done, now it's time to cook and eat my piggies!

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JoeCubicle

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Coronavirus Lockdown

Today was day 24 of working from home because of the Coronavirus lockdown. My wife and I got back from a trip to the hot spot of all hot spots in the US on Friday March 13 around 8 PM. We flew out to NYC to hang out with our daughter on March 7. We stayed in the city for three days in an AirBnB in a four floor walk up right on the Harlem border on Lexington Ave. Our daughter lives about 5 blocks away. We walked and trained around for three days, hitting many interesting sites, then took an Amtrak to CT where we stayed with my Aunt/Uncle for two days then drove my Dad's car we bought. All went well, very well in fact. The whole USA Coronavirus lockdown was literally just starting while we were leaving NYC. On the drive back to Nebraska we were getting all the news about the shutdowns and impending restrictions. It was a little stressful at times but all we could do was stay clean and wash our hands. We stayed one night just south of Cleveland Ohio, left at 7 AM and drove all day back. Sunday night I texted my boss that since we've been in NY I better work from home (WFH) for the following week. Little did I know that WFH rules are already in place...

Our daughter got out of NYC right after we left and stayed with her friend's family in the country at their house for three weeks then came home. She's been here at home with us since then. It's nice to have our whole family home during the lockdown.

Five weeks later, things are going well for all intents and purposes. The USA death from the Coronavirus toll just topped 22K. My wife and I are doing our part staying at home. Just yesterday we received out stimulus checks in our bank account. It looks like we will be working from home through at least the end of April. People are saying it will go through May and maybe mid June.

I guess we'll have to wait and see. In other news, we got 4 inches of heavy wet snow today. It is really pretty outside right now.



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JoeCubicle

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