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I am still working on India time. It is now after midnight. I am still working while writing this too.

Before returning to work, Susie and I met Mariah at Rock Wood Fired Pizza place. Susie had a late lunch before, just appetizers for her. Sweet pizza dough and some chips and dip. I had a calzone, and Mariah had a small pizza. We had a different waiter this time, but most of the staff knew us.

It was the first time I used the bathroom at the Rock and walked into a man not wearing any mask. I stepped back like he was a vampire appearing. He did not know why I would not let him hold the door for me and then realized he did not have a mask on. He apologized. I was still in shock to accept his words, and he quickly left. I then used the facility and washed my hands with great care. I used a paper towel to open the door. Yikes!

Work was full of emergency after emergency. I started at 7ish, and meetings started, and I was helping to get some changes done. It was just a day of herding cats explaining that we need the fixes to anyone and everyone who would listen.

I am tolerating my new medications for high blood pressure and cholesterol. I feel like I am a water filter now. I am still having some nausea and I felt unwell right after dinner and then I was better.

I will not cover much of this as it was just a long and busy day: endless Zoom meetings and texts and slack channel updates, still ongoing now.

I am too tired to do much more.

18,412 people were vaccinated yesterday in Oregon. This number may increase as it takes 72 hours to post all the counts. The Wednesday counts were increased from the low numbers I reported yesterday.

1,705 people in the USA are reported to have died today from Covid-19.

I picked ‘Tis the Old Ship of Zion for today.

I started at 6ish this morning and went to 4 with only a few 30 min breaks. I made lunch between meetings and was rushing the whole time. I had a salad and chicken noodle soup from a can that I shared with Susie. I got her some peanut butter toast to make it a more filling lunch.

I managed to attend the online ASUG (American SAP User Group) for Enterprise Architecture today over lunch. It was good to see Todd Lutz and Peter Keller, who I have presented together at many SAP conferences. It was, of course, a Zoom meeting.

The project I am working on is started to reaching real deliverables and facing some challenges. This means that an architect, like me, is needed everywhere all the time. So I had 8 hours of Zoom calls today! Some were booked over other calls making me late for some.

I am also facing new medications for high blood pressure and cholesterol that I started yesterday. The side effects are different than my previous meds, and I nearly relived my oatmeal breakfast. I did manage to hold it together. The headache, nausea, and endless stops to the bathroom did ease-up this afternoon. Ugh!

However, the dizziness and fuzziness are gone. My thinking seems clearer and more like myself. But I will not have oatmeal Thursday morning!

Work was full of items for me to work on all simultaneously—the usual about this point in a project.

I disconnected my USB-powered monitor from my Raspberry Pi and used it as an extra monitor for work. I have to do some vendor patch (OSS note to those who speak SAP) with complex manual instructions. I put the instructions up on one screen while I made the coding and setting changes on the other. I ran into procedure issues. I think I can resolve them, but I will likely try to fix it this coming morning.

I was so busy I had to get out another screen!

I stopped at 4ish and rested a bit. I seem more tired than normal. Again, this may be new medications or the long hours working Portland and India times. Or even that it is time change week.

I boiled a corned beef today for nearly three hours and then baked it for 45 minutes. Perfect! I dumped most of the water and put red potatoes, carrots, one sliced onion, and a cabbage head cut into large pieces with more water. So Irish styled dinner today. I cut the corned beef against the grain, of course. I managed to slip this in before another meeting.

Susie and I enjoyed dinner while watching the PBS BBC news. I only saw about 1/2 the news as I might have nodded off. I put the oldie shows Susie likes and went and took a nap and read a bit.

I have to work again at 9ish, India morning.

Only 7,849 people were vaccinated in Oregon yesterday. This is less than half the normal count. These numbers may be low as it takes 72 hours for all the values to be collected and posted.

1,288 people died from Covid-19 today in the USA. The numbers are still staying high.

It was a sunny cool day and the local woodpecker is hammering my metal chimney. I yelled up the fireplace and he left (it is a male that hammers metal to summon mates and to tell the other males to move-on).

In the Garden by Johnny Cash just seemed a good song for a crazy day when you can only look out the window.

I got started at 6:30, even with my alarm going off at 6. I just rolled over for a bit. Trying to get through the time change. My first Zoom meeting was an alignment meet between a software vendor and Nike and is India and Beaverton based people. This followed with hours and hours of more Zoom meetings. I was triple-booked a couple of times, and meetings appeared dynamically too. So a crazy meeting-filled morning.

Susie was up at 7:30 for her 9ish appointment with Zerida for hair, nails, etc. We moved this to Tuesday. Susie’s driver was on time.

I ordered lunch from Ma-Now Thai, Massaman Cury–my usual. Susie brought back a Chicken McNugget Happy meal, her fav with apples.

I was doing e-paperwork and Zoom meetings all afternoon with a couple 30 minutes breaks. I had a few architectural meetings as we are now getting down to deadlines, and items must be decided. I was done about 5ish. I did slip out to get my prescriptions; more from yesterday.

We also slipped in a walk for Susie between meetings down our street. It was a sunny cold day. By late afternoon it was warmer. Susie walked about 1/3, and then I pushed her back on her walker–it has a seat and wheels.

I made Schwann’s baked potato skins with cheese and bacon for Susie, and I had a salad and sneaked maybe two potato skins. Corwin ordered Mexican and had it delivered.

I did some work on my Raspberry Pi 400. I wanted to write a program to get the CPU temperature in Python. I found an example that did not work in Python3, but I worked out the issue and can finish it tomorrow. I plan to get my “space lobster” robot control program working soon on the 400. I will then take the code and install it on another Raspberry Pi built into a boat. More on that later.

AdaFruit package arrived today. I have all the parts to build an inductively charged item embedded in resin—so more crafty work to come.

I am back online at 9 with India morning (now an hour earlier for India–9:30AM instead of a more pleasant 10:30AM). We are having a working session on a very detailed conversion process.

A very long day!

13,529 people were vaccinated in Oregon yesterday. This number will likely increase as it takes 72 hours for the counts to be all collected.

1,248 people in the USA died today from the infection.

I found this hymn for the late 1800s that is pleasant, My Faith Looks Up to Thee–Methodist Hymnal 452. I think I have sung it before, but I do not remember it well, just the “Savior divine!” phrase.

Today I took the day off. I was up about 7ish and put in my out-of-office on and finished the end-of-week e-paperwork. I did the dishes and made a light breakfast for me and coffee. I have my first doctor check-up since the Convid-19 emergency. I did a blood draw and other labs on Friday and read the results online. I had a mental list of items to bring to the doctor. I drove over to the local office.

I was a bit early, so I spent a few minutes in the car reading the news.

After the normal process of finding some paper to sign, even after I did all the online forms and even scanned and uploaded my insurance card, I started my appointment. The doc had an EKG done, and we changed most of my medications and found some more—the usual for a 55+ guy in a high-stress job. My EKG was fine. It was a long appointment, as I expected. I have follow-ups in a month.

I picked up a fish sandwich for myself and Susie’s fav of McDonald’s Happy Meal with six-piece Chicken McNuggets with apples. My flounder sandwich was from Popeye’s and spicy.

Once home, I went back to the Raspberry Pi (RP) I set up this morning. An RP is a single-board Linux computer that is inexpensive and mostly open source and open hardware. I found this newer version fast enough for the work I have in mind. I have a 400, a Pi built into a keyboard, and wanted to start some project to control some motors. I managed to get it running attached to my nice 15″ screen that runs on USB-C and then powered the Raspberry Pi from the screen.

I discovered that I needed to install the full package as the RP 400 was only a base install. I loaded the rest of the normal install for RP and now used Visual Studio for Python coding. I copied a small program I have out in public (GitHub Repo alohawild/python_class) for using a Monty Carlo to calculate the value of pi. Kind of cute to do on an RP. I managed to get it to run and prove that I had set-up Python development. I will try to find some more time to do more work in Python soon.

Susie had a dentist appointment today also. I got her there and then managed to get most of my prescriptions while waiting for her. A few had to wait a day for RiteAid to have the drug. I should have my new blood pressure and cholesterol control prescription by noon on Tuesday. As my doctor and I both agree, 2021 is not the year to ignore medical recommendations!

Susie finished her cleaning at the dentist without any events.

We had a strange power surge and outage. There was a large bang too outside. It seems yet-another-transformer exploded. Our endless rain shortens the life expectancy of various electrical equipment. My charger for my laptop seems to be running strangely now–it might have been zapped. I will keep an eye on it.

I got pizza and salad for dinner at Papa Murphy’s Take and Bake Pizza. You get an uncooked pizza and take it home to bake. I also got the Chopped Chicken Ceasar Salad; it is the Ides of March, after all.

Tonight we played Roll20 online Dungeons and Dragons 5E. We continued on with the adventuring in the Mad Mage’s Dungeon. The players decided, now 13th level, to turn over the defeated lich’s phylactery to the water genie, gaining the treasure as a reward. Next, they plan to fight the other genie and take its treasure. This plan worked, and the other genie surrendered after it was badly injured.

The adventurers then headed down into the creepy and spooky next level. They are in a dark dwarf worked-out mine where the walls are bleeding, and the air has a breeze that smells of roses and brimstone. Ominous.

15,529 people were vaccinated in Oregon yesterday.

785 people in the USA died from Corvid-19 today. The numbers appear to show a reduction.

I picked Morning Has Broken for today.

It is rainy gray here, and the rain is sideways. It can hit you in the face. It is also the first day of time-change, Spring Forward; we are all suffering from the day passing by faster than expected. I talked to a friend, and she is having trouble getting motivated; it is a good day for a book and a warm cup of tea, and a blanket.

Time change day just sucks.

I reset all the locks before going to bed and woke at 6ish this morning. I closed my eyes for what I know was only seconds, and it was 9:50ish! I got up before I blinked, and it was Monday! I have too much to do, and life is just too short to sleep the day away.

I did the dishes. They were piled high. The dishwasher was full of clean dishes. I thus unloaded it and then reloaded it. How so few can produce so many dirty dishes so fast is a mystery I have found no explanation.

I then put away all the terrain and figures for Frostgrave. The newest items, 3D printed items from 3DEgos in California, need to be primed and painted gray. I am out of gray primer spray paint.

So off shopping. Stopped by Rainy Day Games, the local gaming store a few miles away, and they have no gray primer.

I go grocery shopping. I pick up all I believe we need, including paper products and even wipes are back in stock! I filled my cart. I then had to wait as Safeway does not want you to use humans to check you out. Previously, I spent 45 minutes learning how to be a checker at the manual check stand. I had to get help multiple times as items need various codes to be purchased or set them down wrong. I was not going to enjoy this for a full load. I tweeted a complaint, and Safeway finally opened another lane; I doubt my tweet helped. I did get a reply to my tweet about 30 minutes later asking what store I was at, obviously a robot, and I replied that the information was in the tweet (I had used the location pin on the tweet).

My last place was Lowell’s, as I needed a new air filter for the furnace. I replace them often. This time I spent big money and bought a $30+ filter that is 4 inches thick. I have used only one-inch standard filters so far. This huge thing was going to upgrade our air quality. I got the smaller ones if I needed to replace the huge one suddenly, two-pack for under twenty bucks.

I drove home, and we installed all the goodies. The new filter went in with difficulty. I think I will remove it in pieces in a few months, but we have super filtering for now.

Corwin ordered Mexican from a local place, and we ate that while watching the old SciFi Stargate movie. I forgot how good the movie was. It is also full of cigarette smoking–I had not noticed before.

I had to go back to work at 9ish as we are still running conversions. I also applied a vendor patch, an OSS note for those who know SAP, and it hit a previous upgrade patch, a TCI for those who know SAP, and I am not sure what to do. I sent an email for folks to look to SAP for help.

I also went online to the Army Painter website and ordered my gray primer paint. It is free shipping from them; Amazon sells the same paint for 2x cost.

So I am writing this while I am logged into work and have to stop and listen and talk.

15,530 people, including Susie, received that vaccine for Covid-19 yesterday. Just under 5,400, Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine was given on this day. Oregon is now ramping up this vaccine.

Deaths in the USA today was only 629. Let us hope this is real and not caused by reporting timing, and we will see a high number tomorrow.

I think I know this hymn, My Faith Looks Up to Thee–Methodist Hymnal #452. Each line ends with a conclusion phrase that I kind of like.