Pandemic Journal, Day 557

Last year, I spent much of my birthday having my eyes examined, first in the ER at Good Samaritan Hospital and then at my ophthalmologist. All was well, but it was still a less-than-optimal way to spend a birthday (or any other day).

This year was more fun. I was the lay leader and board rep at Shabbat services this morning; Diane gave the d’var Torah, and we had enough people attend (via Zoom) to have a minyan. This afternoon, friends hosted an Open House in their sukkah. This evening, Diane and I went to La Pesca Blue for dinner, where I tried out the camera on my new phone again.

And on the way home, I stopped at Starbucks to collect my free birthday goodie (I usually miss out, since it’s only available on the one day, unlike most merchants who give you a week or two to increase the odds that you’ll come in).

A quiet birthday, yes, but that was just fine with me!

Pandemic Journal, Day 556

It was upgrade day today – UPS delivered a new top from LL Bean for Diane and new phones for both of us.

The upgrade process this year seemed easier than in years past – I followed a tip from John Gruber of Daring Fireball and did a phone-to-phone transfer instead of restoring the new phone from a backup of the old one – all of the data on the old phone transferred, as did logins and even the state of most apps. And there was no need to move the SIM; the new phones activated themselves on T-Mobile early in the setup process.

I was a little surprised that the transfer process didn’t bring over apps – the phone had to download them from the App Store (which it did all by itself). I was worried that I might lose RunFit, an app for my Wahoo TICKR heart rate strap, since they’d removed it from the App Store several years ago, but it came over just fine; I did lose an EXIF viewing app that had also vanished from the store, but I didn’t need it any more with the improvements to the Photos app in iOS 15.

I’ve only taken one photo with the new phone so far, of the sky after sunset; I don’t think it was any better than it would have been with the old phone, but here it is anyway, unedited.

The new phone has 5G – I just ran a test inside the house and got 85.2 Mbps down; I only got 60 MBps on the Wi-Fi. I tried outside where the phone showed the “5G UC” indicator and got 260 Mbps down – that’s speedy!

The new phones are not a life-changing improvement (and Diane isn’t sure losing the home button is an improvement at all!), but it’s nice to have them already (and we have two weeks to make up our minds).

Shabbat Shalom!

Pandemic Journal, Day 555

I was Toastmaster of the Day for today’s Silver Tongued Cats meeting, so I had to come up with a meeting theme. Sometimes, it’s easy to draw the theme from things happening in my life, but I didn’t think “Refactoring Python Code” made a good theme for this group. Other times, I choose a theme based on something that happened on that day in history, but nothing appealed to me. But as I was searching for ideas, I stumbled across National Love Your Files Week and had my theme: “This week is…”.

The Table Topics Master asked questions like “What makes a week good for you?” and “Do you think the weeks starts on Sunday or Monday?” and the Wordmaster picked “Timing” as the Word of the Day, so the meeting held together well.

I introduced a “special” week at each break in the meeting agenda, five in all. I also threw in a little information from the sponsor’s website – here were my choices:

National Love Your Files Week from Jan Jasper at Jasper Productivity Solutions:

I created this week to promote a positive attitude towards filing – whether paper or computer files. Filing gets a bad rap and it’s undeserved. A good filing system can actually be a powerful asset. People dislike filing because they’re doing it the hard way. If your file system is set up correctly, it’s easy to maintain and a pleasure to use.

International Week of Happiness at Work from Happy Office Academy in the Netherlands:

Everybody wants to be happy. Also at work. We spend a lot of time at work after all. Plus, when we are happy at work, we are likely to also be happier in the rest of our life. We believe that Happiness at Work should be on the list of top priorities of all organizations, big and small, national and international. That’s why we declared the last week of September, in 2021, 20 ”“ 26, the International Week of Happiness at Work. Join us!

International Clean Hands Week from the Henry the Hand Foundation and the Clean Hands Coalition:

We use International Clean Hands Week (3rd week of September annually) as our pivotal marketing strategy to raise awareness. Remember, we humans are the petri-dish that grow and multiply all seasonal flu, influenza-like illnesses, and even COVID-19. So if we all practiced vigilant hand hygiene and cross-contamination awareness, we would eliminate many preventable respiratory and foodborne infectious diseases.

Tolkien Week from the American Tolkien Society:

Tolkien fans celebrate Hobbit Day and Tolkien Week by throwing great feasts (often with seven meals) and sharing the joy and merriment of being with people that have the same interests. In honor of the Hobbits’ favorite choice of footwear, many fans also spend Hobbit Day barefoot.

National Indoor Plant Week from Interior Tropical Gardens:

National Indoor Plant Week is a week-long celebration of the perfect indoor air cleaner. Annually celebrated the third week in September, it was established to promote and increase public awareness of the importance of live plants in interior spaces. Remember, “the oxygen doesn’t arrive until the plants do!”

I’m giving a speech at next week’s meeting – maybe I’ll stretch this theme to cover that speech, or maybe I’ll talk about Python code. I’ve got days to decide!

Pandemic Journal, Day 554

I’m on the Shir Hadash Board this year; we have a monthly meeting on the third Wednesday of the month. This month, though, we had to postpone by a week to avoid having the meeting fall on Yom Kippur – and that put us squarely in the middle of Sukkot.

It is a commandment to dwell in the Sukkah (booth) – or at least to eat there during the holiday – so the Board had dinner together in the congregation’s Sukkah before our meeting. Dinner was supplied by Oren’s Hummus and it was quite tasty!

In a normal year, we would have each taken a turn at shaking the lulav and enjoying the scent of the etrog, but this year, that would have also involved gloves and hand sanitizer, so Rabbi Schwartz did it and we all watched.

The Board meeting was inside, with masks mandatory. Oh, well…back to reality.

Pandemic Journal, Day 553

I completed the trifecta of Apple upgrades overnight, installing WatchOS 8.0. So far, it’s the least satisfying of the upgrades. I can’t find the “Mindfulness” app (maybe because I deleted “Breathe” two releases ago?), and the News app is showing me stories from last week – but on the bright side, I can finally start more than one timer at once!

It’s been a while since we tried a new recipe, so this evening we made Whole-Wheat Pasta Salad with Walnuts and Feta Cheese from Food Network. Both of us thought it was on the bland side; I just read the comments on the website and got some ideas to try next time (using balsamic vinegar instead of red wine vinegar, adding more garlic, and including tomatoes all appeal). And the Times included a pointer to 24 low-fuss, high-flavor recipes in today’s afternoon wrap-up; some of those look promising for future experiments.