Will Life Go Back to the Way it Was?

My wife and I just got back from our evening walk and the topic of conversation was how it will be impossible to go back to how things were before COVID-19. So why will it be impossible? I'm sure our reasons are just scratching the surface and there are many more but here is what we have come up with so far.

We Can Get by with Much Less Energy
I saw a news broadcast last night talking about how the amount of energy being used in the world is significantly less than before the virus. They mentioned that it is as if the entire country of India has disappeared from global energy usage. Think about that for a moment. It is as if 1.3 billion people suddenly disappeared. Some of that usage will pick back up once we emerge from the pandemic, but we have learned to save a significant amount of energy. Personally I am seeing a huge decrease in the money I am spend on energy costs. I want that to continue and will try to keep those costs down. I imagine others will do the same. Furthermore I think we will look for even more ways to reduce energy usage. I think we are all enjoying less pollution and cleaner air.

Not Everyone Needs to be in the Office All the Time
The company I work for has a culture of requiring everyone to be in the office all the time with very few exceptions. When we all started working from home, we had to quickly modify our infrastructure to allow so many people to work from home. This involved increasing the number of virtual private network (VPN) licenses and other networking enhancements. Now that we have the ability for everyone to work from home, I see more people doing so in the future.

Several weeks ago one of my coworkers remarked about how his wife works for a large software company and they discovered that productivity has gone up. I have not heard statistics for my own company but I feel like I have been significantly more productive. Part of it is that none of us want to lose our jobs with historically high unemployment and don't want to be seen as less productive.  So we are all putting in a bit more effort than we otherwise would.

We are Discovering We Need Different Hobbies
During this evening's walk, my wife mentioned a number of her friends have discovered they don't really have any hobbies other than shopping or eating out. When you can't do those things, life gets pretty bland rather quickly. Those friends are having to re-evaluate what they do with their spare time and are coming up with more fulfilling pursuits. Some of them are replacing shopping with service and are feeling a better sense of community even with social distancing.

Personally I am looking forward to visiting restaurants when they reopen. I probably won't visit them as often as I did before the pandemic though. I also know that a number of people are taking this opportunity to learn how to cook. Rumor has it that online cooking videos are receiving significant additional views. I see that trend continuing.

We are Discovering What Really Matters
With a severely limited social calendar we are discovering what really matters in our lives. Some people are missing being able to spend time with friends and family. Others are getting tired of watching movies and playing video games all the time. I have to confess that other than using a video game for guitar practice, I haven't played a regular video game in 2 months. Why? I find it more fulfilling to spend time with my wife, something I can't always do with my busy travel schedule.

I have never really been a huge fan of professional sports. I do enjoy going to a baseball game every once and while but don't actively watch sports on television. I'm sure certain people are really missing the lack of daily sports but I know a number of people are surprised that they are not missing sports more. I will be interested to find out if they permanently cut down on the amount of sports watched, return to pre-pandemic levels, or increase.

Face Masks are the New Normal
Whenever I travel to Japan, I am amazed at how people are responsible and will wear face masks while they are sick. This was a foreign concept in the United States that is now seen as being responsible. I am glad to see this custom practiced here and hope that it keeps me from contracting a number of illnesses. I hope that the number of colds I get each year is reduced because of more people wearing face masks.

More That I Missed
I am sure there are many more things that I have missed. During the walk with my wife I talked about how character-building experiences like this have changed me simply because I have survived them. Living through experiences like this changes the participants forever. Seeing as we are all living through this, we can all be expected to changed. Hopefully we all emerge better from the experience and not worse.

My New Favorite Tool: Raw Therapee

I am putting together another adventure video after almost a year of not making one. I have gone back and looked at my previous 3 videos and tried to figure out how to make them better. One way is to improve the quality of the photos and so I looked into doing some photo editing.

My daughter-in-law is a professional photographer and uses Adobe Lightroom to edit her photos. I wanted to find a free alternative and my son turned me onto Raw Therapee. I loaded it up onto my computer and started playing around with it. First I watched a tutorial on YouTube to see what the tool can do. Next I tried some of the things of I saw in the tutorial on a photo of my wife. I liked the outcome and so I edited a sunset photo from my most recent adventure trip. I didn't see much of a difference between my edits and the original and so I asked my wife and daughter to come see them. I put both images on the screen next to each other and asked which one they liked best. Both could see a huge difference between the photos. That convinced me to run all of my photos through Raw Therapee. Furthermore, my daughter pointed out what I had done and what made one image better than the other. It impressed me that she knew what I had done and proved to me that little adjustments do make a huge difference.

My only complaint with Raw Therapee is that I thought I was closer to getting the video created. Now I have to run 35 photos through the tool and see how I can make each one better. My hope is that I will be able to get quick enough with the program that I only need to spend a minute or two on each picture. Yes the first couple will take more time than that, but spending an extra hour on this project will be worth it.

If you take a lot of pictures that you want to share with others, I highly recommend downloading Raw Therapee and playing with it. Be sure to go through a quick tutorial as it is a powerful tool and you might not understand everything it can do for you. The tutorial I have linked above is only about 10-minutes long and goes through a lot very quickly. Now I hope my next adventure video shows some improvement over my previous ones.

Some Things Require Practice

This week my youngest son and I have been running the 3D printer almost non-stop. We have some PLA filament that needs to be used and so we are printing a bunch of fun little toys. As I type this, I am printing a spinner for my grandson. It may sound like a waste of PLA but there is a reason for doing the print other than just using up material that has a finite shelf life: practice.

Several weeks ago I volunteered to use my 3D printer to make some personal protection equipment for a hospital in California. I originally signed up to help and was asked a number of questions about my experience with my 3D printer. The organizers of the service project didn't want me getting in over my head and not be able to deliver on my commitment. Once they felt comfortable with my help, they sent me the assignment. Ultimately, did I have enough practice?

This past week I got a new computer for my home office. I will be using it for a number of different things and one of them is to help create 3D prints. I loaded up Ultimaker Cura which is used to prepare 3D models for print. In the past, I have sent models to my son and had him prepare them. Now I need to learn how to do it and so that is why I am practicing. It is not as simple as dropping an STL file into Cura and having it prepare the model. There are seemingly hundreds of parameters to tune. I think I have them pretty well dialed in based on some help from my son and so now it is time to give it a shot. Naturally I am starting with something small that only takes about an hour or so to print. If it doesn't turn out then I haven't really lost anything because I learned from the experience and can make adjustments.

I know I have lots to learn about 3D printing and so I will continue to print things. Practice is one of the best ways to learn something new. Remember that as you try to pick up a new skill: it may require practice. Don't let that scare you as it is just a part of learning.

Getting AirDrop to Work

My iPhone is getting full of pictures and I need to pull some off to store somewhere else. I could store them in iCloud but am not a fan of filling up my online space only to have to eventually figure out where to put the photos. It is much easier to transfer them to one of my computers instead.

A few days ago I tried to set up AirDrop from my phone to my Mac laptop. It should be really simple and I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. A quick Internet search says there are only 2 or 3 steps. It took a bit of digging on my part but I eventually figured it out.

Problem 1: Make sure you are logged into your Apple ID account
I recently updated the operating system on my laptop and it automatically logged me out of my Apple ID account. This account is what allows you to access iCloud and iTunes. It is required to tie all of your devices together. Once I logged in, things started working.

Unfortunately all of the instructions you will pull up on an Internet search assume you are already logged in with your Apple ID. I think I stumbled around for quite awhile until I came upon the solution. If you are having any problems, check this first.

Problem 2: Make sure your devices are on the same network
Every morning I go into my home office and log into my office's virtual private network or VPN so I can get at the company network. Remember that I am writing this during COVID-19 and have started my 6th week of working from home. I keep forgetting that when I am on the VPN, I lose access to some of my home devices. I can't log into my Linux server nor can I print to my color laser printer. The moment I disconnect from the VPN, my laptop can see all of those devices again. The same holds true for my iPhone.

I had a picture I wanted to put on my laptop this morning and couldn't figure out what was wrong. I had Bluetooth enabled for both devices and they could see each other but wouldn't connect. Then I remembered all of the problems I have trying to connect to my other home devices and I disconnected the VPN. Then everything started working correctly.

Typical Solutions
My 2 problems are very unique to me and so these may not be an issue for you. If you find yourself having trouble using AirDrop, you will want to try the usual solutions that can be found in any Internet search:

1. Make sure Bluetooth is turned on for both devices.
2. Click on the AirDrop link found on the left side of your finder window and set the "Allow me to be discovered by" to "Everyone". 
3. Make sure AirDrop is set up on your other device as well.

Hopefully one of the typical solutions will work for you and you don't have the same problems I do. However if you do, this list could be very helpful.

The Unpredictable Nature of Life

I am halfway through my 5th week of working from home because of COVID-19. When I first looked at the spreading of the virus, I didn't think it would get this bad in the United States. You could say that my predictions were a bit off. Anyone who remembers the movie Jurassic Park learned that "life finds a way." Unfortunately that is true with pandemics but it is also true with us humans.

I read an interesting article today about how the number of respirators that New York City needs is less than they projected. I'm glad to see that I am not the only one making prediction mistakes. Yesterday I read that the Governor of California sent several hundred respirators to New York on loan. One silver lining behind this world-wide pandemic is that we are learning that we can help each other and that is surprising a lot of people.

I think the idea of us helping each other is something nobody predicted. Last week I got an e-mail from MatterHackers asking if I would donate items printed on my 3D printer. I have a rather basic printer that is not very fast but I jumped at the idea of helping those around me. I added my name to the list and 2 days later got an e-mail with a specific item to help print: personal protective face shields. They gave me specific instructions including the STL file of what they wanted printed. Once I accepted the assignment I became responsible for slicing the design (putting it in a format my printer understood so I could print it), providing all of the raw materials, and committing to making 30 shields. It only takes my printer an hour to do each one and my printer has been running non-stop for the past 2 days. Ok, I did have to stop at midnight last night so I could go to sleep but then I woke up at 6:30 this morning and got it going again. I should be done with my batch around 3am tonight and I will ship the shields out tomorrow morning. They will head to California where they will be distributed to a hospital that will accept this particular design.

I am not the only one helping with this project as the goal is to provide 10,000 shields. MatterHackers is not the only organization helping out either. I have a buddy in California that is doing something similar for another group. He has three 3-D printers and all of them are being kept busy printing personal protection equipment for hospitals.

Yes COVID-19 is a nasty virus that has a long incubation period and is very contagious. Yes people are dying around the world. However we also have some really smart people working to limit the spread. We also have a lot of people banding together and helping each other. In all of the bad news, there is some really good news and I attribute it all to the unpredictable nature of life.

Who's Checking the Fact Checkers

Recently I found myself looking through a web article on costuming flaws that went unnoticed in some fairly popular movies. One of the goofs they recognized is from Django Unchained. I have never seen the movie but I understand one of the characters played by Jamie Foxx wears sunglasses. According to the "experts," sunglasses did not exist during that time period. They said sunglasses didn't appear until the 1920's or 1930's. Had I not recently done some research on the subject I would have believed them. Last summer I spent a week involved in a period re-enactment and did a lot of research on what cowboys and pioneers would have worn around the 1840's. I found some actual sunglasses from around 1845 so I know they existed in that time period. They were not very popular but they did exist. I guess the fact checkers got that one wrong.

Fast forward to the recent events and I spent some time scrolling through the latest CNN posts relating to COVID-19. They had an article talking about how President Trump is reluctant to enact a country-wide shelter-in-place order. He states that he does not want to do so as some states don't need one. CNN then inserted a fact that COVID-19 is found in all states, implying that all states should have a shelter-in-place order. I happen to live in one of those states that don't require a state-wide-shelter-in-place. Utah has close to 1000 cases but most of them are in Salt Lake with a few down in St. George. There is still a lot of parts of Utah unaffected by the virus. Should we punish the entire state? I don't think so. A lot of the state is very rural with very few people who are also notorious for not getting out much. Furthermore there are a lot of farms and we want all those people to go to work. Food is kind of important for us all. For the record, President Trump is correct in leaving the decision of shelter-in-place orders up to individual state governors. I wish CNN would realize that not everyone lives in cities and do a bit more fact checking before trying to force something on areas that don't need shelter-in-place orders.

Speaking of facts, what other things are the fact checkers getting wrong with COVID-19? Does anyone believe the numbers of people infected coming out of certain countries? China has admitted that they are not including those who test positive for COVID-19 but are asymptomatic. My guess is their numbers should be a lot higher. It has taken a while to create enough test kits to get everyone tested that wants one. Even in the United States, people have had to threaten legal action before getting tested. Now think about some of the other less wealthy countries and my guess is their numbers are very much under-represented.

A lot of people are relying on the daily tallies of new cases for COVID-19 to create models of how the disease is spreading throughout the world. If the numbers we have are wrong then so are the models. That means we don't really know what is happening. As we are getting better at diagnosing how many people are coming down sick, we might be tapering off but not know it. We may also be much worse than we realize. Fortunately the state of Utah has come out and said that we have enough test kits for anyone that has reason to believe they have been infected. My hope is that we can identify everyone that has been infected and keep the rest of us from getting sick.

On Sunday I had the pleasure of sitting down and reading the paper. Say what you will about a good old fashioned newspaper but they have editors that require extensive fact checking before they print an article. I only wished CNN would live up to most newspaper's standards. The paper had a great article on what is taking place in the world. It explained a few things that have been glossed over in many of the Internet articles. My point is that you have to be careful with the information you gather on the Internet and not believe everything you read.