Trying To Keep Busy How About You

[liquid_wrench]

Raining and windy this weekend here in Northern Ohio, been working in my shop on my bike and 2 tractors and 2 riding mowers, getting them ready for the season. Lots of tree limbs to pickup in the yard. Still going to work 5 days a week, luckily we only have a small crew of 7 people in our rebuild facility. We tear down, rebuild, repair and paint machinery for paper bags, paper plates and paper cups and ship them to our other locations here in the states.

Wishing everyone the best... in these Very Concerning times for us all.
Be safe, be smart, be Prepared.

 

[joel]

I've been doing little things on my home honey do list.
Our puppy Jasper does his best to keep me on my feet.
We own / operate a auto service centre and with the stay at home order the car counts are way down as is the phone. So if you want to call please do so I can be sure the phone system isn't turned off.
Being self employed I don't have the option of unemployment payments.
I did tell our tech he may need to go on standby status.
I did bring the bike out of the storage room and was going install the hitch, but that started a small wave of customers coming in for service.
So maybe leaving it and the Bushtec trailer in a bay is what I needed to bring customers in.
Hope everyone is healthy. Keep your distance stay safe, and don't run out of toilet paper.

 

[fin_676]

I setup a home office on the kitchen table every morning and work from there most of the work i do is remotley from the office normally i am just working directly from home
biggest challenge is setting up customers to remote into their offices from home without leaving my kitchen
Building summer accomodation for my daughters guinea pigs, building a raised floor in the loft with extra insulation, grass has been cut cars washed, pond cleaned out
Allowed to go out to get food and medicine exercise and excercise pets
Expecting this situation to las 6 months so no bike riding this year no summer vacation etc etc

Brian

 

[STEVE07]

I am on the essential lit as we are a manufacturer. Unfortunately as of Friday only one of my dealers remains open. I have no choice but to lay off my guys and try to save myself. It is a very hard choice to make. On the bright side the weather turned nice for a while today and my wife and I got out for our first ride of the year, windy but great to be out.

 

[Joyflyin]

Tough times for a lot of people. I returned to work after hubby's hip replacement with a 20 something year old kid who stated right out of the box that he was pretty sure that his girlfriend had the virus. I was furious. I told my supervisor who did nothing, then I told a couple of the other guys that work with him and they told their manager. He got sent home. However, I sent another email to my director, stating my concerns of our company not allowing those of us who can to work from home. I work off a server based in Denver, CO. I work in Cincinnati, OH. No reason I need to go into an office with 80-100 people. I also stated that I have essentially been living like this for the last year. Constantly wiping things down and not making my decisions to go back to WV to visit my parents until usually my drive home from work on Friday evening due to my mother's health. I also have co-workers with parents in their upper 80's. My dad will be 79 soon, my mom just turned 75, both would not survive this. My mom could be killed by a common cold. . My husband just had a total hip replacement February 27th. So, between my parents & my husband, everyone in my immediate family are high risk and have underlying conditions that would make this virus very dangerous for them.

The next morning, one of the VP's of the company came down and asked me to come have a chat with him. I explained that we have one large group of people in the building that really need to work in the office. There are many smaller groups on the other end of the building that could easily work from home. Since there are so many of us with older parental units, bringing in everyone unnecessarily was pretty irresponsible. We should at least have an option with the current situation. So, that afternoon they came down and took us all into a meeting and stated that they were going to allow half of us to work from home, and the other half would come into the office. Most of the ones working from home are older and the ones I mentioned that had older parents. I am grateful that the VP I was talking to is one that is down to earth and actually listens.

Our gun store across the road has been insane for the last month. It has been super busy. We gave our guys the option to come in or not. So far only one has opted to not come in, he is older and has some underlying conditions. So, we are still doing well. No issues yet. I now know why the women in the 1950's stayed at home...because the cooking, cleaning & all the other household chores is a full time job...I am ready to go to a restaurant and have someone carry a meal to me and I don't have to prep all day...or clean up afterwards.

 

[RibEye]

Pretty much on personal hard lock-down here. I have an 88 year old father (with diabetes), and 83 year old step-mother (a recent cancer survivor). My wife and I are no longer young ourselves, and have some kind of persistent and strange bug (no lung involvement as of yet).

We are stocked up and squared away. Our counts are low in Tucson, at the moment, but I think, with such a long gestation period, the infection rate should spike in a couple of weeks. We are good for at least 3 months, as long as utilities stay up.

I have not fired up the RoadKing in a couple of years. I think I might begin to work, to get her up and running. I miss her.

Enjoy,
Rich P

 

[biscuit]

I think it is somewhat ironic that there is a Chinese saying- “May you live in interesting times”
I’m pretty sure that all of us are finding things “interesting” to say the least!
We too are housebound- venturing out only for shopping. And then very carefully.
Many many businesses have shut down and huge numbers of people are temporarily (or possibly permanently) idle.
Our daughter is now working from home so we have her 12 month old son to care for three days each week.
Wow, I’d forgotten how labour intensive a little crawler can be!
Cute though.
I still find it amazing the number of people who still wish to invade others’ ‘safe space’. You sanitise shopping trolley handles; ensure you do the same with your hands; consciously avoid touching your face, mouth, eyes; don’t handle any cash- pay by card etc etc: and some moron walks up behind you and attempts to brush past to grab more toilet paper( or whatever). No wonder this thing has spread so fast.

The nightmarish thing about this virus is that it doesn’t discriminate.
And currently there is no cure.
Sure, the infirm and the elderly are more susceptible- but younger fit and healthy people are dying too.
How frightening is it to look ahead and see 4,5 or 6 months of this Pandemic stretching out into the distance.
If you’re not scared of this or by this, by now, then maybe Charles Darwin’s theory of Evolution will ably assist you.

Many things will never,EVER be the same again- look at the poor souls who have died already: and those who are yet to pass that way; the survivors who have lost family and friends, all the people who have lost employment and livelihoods; the loss of one’s house when mortgages cannot be met; businesses going under; economies collapsing because NOBODY has money. All the pain and suffering and hardship to come.
It ain’t pretty.
And of course, look at the surge in ordinary people buying weapons. They aren’t expecting rational thinkers in the near future, are they?
It’s an almost endless list. And none of it is any good.

It is, most definitely, not just the actual virus to be afraid of..

Apologies if this offends anyone, but I really don’t see this being an “easy” fix for us all.
Hope for the best; but plan for the less happier outcome.
Stay safe all.

 

[gator508]

My wife and I get cabin fever and go for an occasional drive, been doing lots of yard work, tuned up the riding mower for the season.
We are well stocked with most goods but sooner or later we will have to venture out..carefully. About time to take out the bike and go for a ride maintaining social distance of course.

 

[Joyflyin]

Biscuit, you are so correct on so many points. Our news channels want to compare our future economy & unemployment to the Great Depression. I'm like how can you compare something we have never experienced to something that was completely different on so many levels. I even have a problem with the media comparing the US to some other countries. The US is a large land mass compared to most European countries. You could more realistically compare a state or a region of states to other countries. But that is what the media does. But this disease is very scary for sure.
But my message to everyone who is younger and not scared of this thing is to please consider others in this world and how your actions will affect them and those around them.
We have an 18 year old kid that works for us, and he actually called off today because his sister had a fever yesterday. I have to respect him for that since the age difference between he and I is 32 years. I'm the next youngest person at the store. All the other guys are 60's & 70's. So, we are all at a higher risk than he is. I'm glad he gets that.

I read nearly everything I can on this virus. I don't buy it all, however, I do consider many aspects of what I read as potentially true. Mainly due to the fact that the three most important people in my life are high risk. One fact that I do believe is that the potential of infection from one individual to another. I am reading that one individual can unknowingly spread this to an average of 3-10 individuals without knowing they are infected, depending on what I read. One of the early articles that I read stated that this has the potential to double its numbers every 6 days. Here in the states, we are now seeing a more rapid rate of doubling, I think mainly due to the amount of testing now being done. We doubled our death rate in two days over the weekend. So, this is very serious. Be careful out there!

 

[RibEye]

One important thing that makes this virus more worthy of concern than the flu is not necessarily the numbers. At the moment, the infection rate is nowhere near known. Testing is pretty much being limited to folks who are already manifesting significant symptoms. There is simply not enough testing capacity yet. Without a definitive infection rate, you cannot possibly produce a definitive death rate. The actual death rate, where adequate medical supplies and capacity remains available, shall likely be somewhat below 1%. This is not dismissable if you are one who dies, or if you are a person who cared deeply for someone who died.

Again, without a definitive infection rate, you can't produce a valid death rate. This will require very widespread testing, of asymptomatic as well as mildly symptomatic and gravely symptomatic people. That will be for the data analyzers, down the road. By the way, testing is not a very pleasant experience, in case you did not know this.

Testing does have a valid purpose, today. That is, for confirmed cases, who recover, who can return to the workplace, and to safely stepping up to help others, in various capacities. There is a question about this yet, but such folks should no longer be at risk of coming down again, or of infecting others. As this thing washes through, the numbers of the recovered, which are not being spoken about, as much as the sick and dying, such numbers of folks should parallel the infection rate, and mirror the spike, with a bit of a delay (exponential growth). If tested positive and recovered, then tested negative (twice over a 24 hour period, according to the latest CDC info), such folks can be "certified" as safe to return to business.

Now, having said all of that, what makes this virus more concerning that the flu, which may indeed kill comparatively more or less people, is the fact that this virus overwhelms medical and supply chain capacities, when it spikes. This causes the death rate to soar, as triage criteria begin to be applied, as to who gets treatment and who basically gets palliative care. The common flu is not advertised as overwhelming medical capacity, like this virus does. This is a justifiable cause for significant concern.

This thing WILL wash through. Now, how much damage it causes can be significantly affected by how we conduct ourselves with the passage of time. If we can just keep the infection rate down far enough, so that medical and supply chain capacites are not overwhelmed, that would surely be a good thing. "This too calls for the patient endurance..."

Rich P