deathmtn

Day 1 of Remote Learning is already rough. Seesaw is still terrible. And it’s actually not really Day 1. Wednesday is a day we’ve always been remote, even when we were going in person.

20 burpees, 12 pull-ups, 5-3-1 deadlifts, except I didn’t up the weight on the last set because my back felt off.

Good final dental checkup on a dental plan. Teeth are firm. Gums continue to recede, but at a slow enough rate that I don’t need surgery in the next year.

Cambridge among group calling on governor: Roll back reopening, support closed business

Here, it is apparent that the council has no idea what the city manager is doing:

Despite the increasing pressure from councillors, DePasquale didn’t mention the letter but did give hints of its goals.

DePasquale, the city manager, has been resisting calls to shut down indoor dining for weeks from the city council, without explaining why. The city manager is not elected. He is supposed to report to the city council, which is elected. He is, again, acting like an unelected mayor here.

That is apparently not the only part of the city government they have no idea about:

Monday was the third council meeting when councillors sought a shutdown of indoor dining and gyms. It carried more weight than before because the public schools will end their limited in-person sessions after Wednesday, since the rate of new coronavirus cases has exceeded a preset trigger point. And councillors found out only last week that the Expert Advisory Panel, a group of volunteer scientists that city officials often point to when talking about Covid-19 policies, had voted in favor of ending indoor dining, gyms and similar indoor business activities on Nov. 12. Councillors didn’t know about the vote because the city didn’t post minutes of the panel’s meetings from late October and November until Dec. 1.

DePasquale is apparently proud of the job the city has done with the coronavirus:

“It’s not an accident that our numbers are where they are. And I do think that’s because of the work of the Cambridge Public Health Department, our advisory committee and the city team. And I just think somehow that I’m not trying to be defensive, but that gets lost on Monday nights. And I have to be the one to remind the public that I’m really proud of the effort the city, my team and the advisory committee has done to make Cambridge one of the safest – if not the safest – city in the state,” DePasquale, in a rare personal comment.

Cambridge has had 2,447 cases of COVID-19 as of 2020-12-09. It is a city of about 120,000 people. The province of Nova Scotia in Canada has had 1,383 cases as of 2020-12-09. It contains within it Halifax, a city of about 403,000 people.

10-4-4-4-4-12. Long break after the first set because the company I was on hold with picked up.

I've been trying to get in one commit per day on my project during December and imagined that I'd pick up the pace after that. I somehow forgot that one commit can take several hours. Or even days.

It's more than I thought initially, but on average, it's still a manageable pace. This is about how much programming I want to do when I'm retired, I think.

I finished watching Jia Zhangke, A Guy From Fenyang, which I’ve been watching in bits over several lunchtimes. It’s a documentary about a filmmaker in China whose movies are usually banned from theaters by the Chinese government, so his work has gotten around by DVD, pirated and otherwise.

I knew nothing about him and have not heard of this films. I just saw it on one of the shelves in Kanopy and thought, hey, why not.

It touches on quite a few subjects, ranging from life in rural China, to filmmaking, and making huge dams, most of which I know nothing about, so it was a good watch for me. I recommend it if you want something informative but not excruciating. It’s likely free through your library system.

Trying to write a basic melodic (electric) guitar song. Feel weird to not have a comfortable bed of chugga-chugga around.

34-minute run, 12 pull-ups.

Idea for the world's most boring podcast: ON CONFLICT, the podcast in which DBAs debate the issues currently cascading through the database community

Good ol’ WWII. The good war that everyone loved!

The treatment of blacks in the American military during World War II was made all the more bitter by the fact that the United States was at war with a German regime that preached a doctrine of racial hierarchy. This cruel irony was not lost on black soldiers. On a crowded troop train in Texas, one reported that “the colored soldiers were fed behind a Jim Crow curtain at one end of the dining car. In the main section, along with the white folks, a group of German war prisoners dined—and no doubt fed their illusions of race superiority on that Jim Crow curtain.”

From The Fire Is Upon Us

I've been doing pretty well working in a room without heat, using the right clothing and hot drinks, but this morning, I've come close to the limit, which is around 52˚F. Not shivering or anything, but my fingers are distractingly cold. Fortunately, the day is only going to get warmer.

I pulled apart my old Mac Mini with which I couldn’t figure out anything to do. It was really refreshing to open up a computer without having to worry about losing screws or accidentally snap something. I started an art project with it. It is indeed corny, but fun.