My colleges are still open, but we are preparing for the worst, like if someone sneaks over the stateline into Massachusetts over spring break. We are all supposed to install Cisco WebEx Meetings so that we can do video conferencing with our students, so I did that, forgetting that I have neither a camera nor a microphone attached to my main machine, which kind of defeats the purpose. (My laptop has a camera at least, but I'll have to remove the piece of tape I stuck over it. Not sure if it has a microphone, but I have a stand-alone mic I can use. It'll work out.)
WebEx has a major annoyance. It assumes you will always have lots of online meetings to attend every single day, so it always loads and presents itself right in the middle of your screen upon startup. There is no in-software option to turn this behavior off. The only option is to remove it from your startup options in the operating system. Who frackin' designs software like this anymore?!?
My agency is business as usual for now, but the division director told us at a (regularly scheduled) staff meeting yesterday that we should be ready to start teleworking on little or no advance notice. I'm already teleworking 2-3 times a week for medical reasons, and I recently put in a formal request to telework 4 days a week because commuting takes so much out of me.
On the other hand, I've also started the retirement process. I haven't officially committed to any particular day, but it feels momentous.
On the completely not related side, I felt that there are SOME on this board who might be interested in a bat tea set, available in aqua or pink.
Huh. Work just canceled a potluck scheduled for next week out of "an abundance of caution". I am mostly befuddled because I hadn't heard there was one scheduled.
I'm volunteering at the library bookstore today and the new person running things has decided we need two people per shift. Do not want. I enjoy talking to the customers about their books, but I also enjoy the quiet in between customers and the browsing time. I do not want to make small talk for 2 hours.
So, I just found out on Facebook that my old friend's partner's father has died of Covid-19. He was in one of the affected Seattle nursing homes.
Why do people think "what is your disability?" And "is there anything you can do about it?" is small talk?
Sending university students home seems RIDICULOUSLY short-sighted to me. Those students have already been exposed to each other. You don't contain a pandemic by suddenly putting thousands of potential disease vectors onto airplanes. The smart thing would be to implement on-campus Covid19 screenings and quarantine infected students.
(Giving students the *option* to attend classes remotely seems like a no-brainer that should have already been in place as a basic accessibility need.)
