Day 3762 - Easter

You know something, I don't want to go back to normal. Normal wasn't that good. I'm not typically an optimistic person, but I see a unique opportunity in the days ahead. The world has been given a once in a lifetime chance to wipe the slate clean and start over. Everything has been so fundamentally disrupted that there is no reason to go back to what we were doing before.

Personally, I like the fact that everything has slowed down a bit. Streets are much quieter now. It's rare to hear an airplane overhead. They say crime is down in many cities. Maybe I'm imagining things but people even seem more polite. Who knows. Maybe we should have been staying six feet apart all along.

Easter is a time of rebirth. Why not give it a try. I'll be the first to admit that it won't be easy. If we continue our political bickering here in the United States it will be impossible. Don't the Democrats and the Republicans seem almost irrelevant now? They don't have the answer. It's time to stop blaming each other. The virus isn't Trump's fault or Pelosi's fault. It's a plague. I'd like to see a third person unaffiliated with any party come out of nowhere and capture the country's imagination. Neither party deserves to win at this point.

The problem with starting over is that your idea of a brighter future might be a lot different than mine. What would I do? Probably the same things I've been doing for years. I certainly don't find the answer in government. It's time to start taking personal responsibility for our own lives. Nobody owes you anything. Start eating healthy food. Get outside more. Quit smoking, vaping, and putting anything other than air into your lungs. So many of of our problems are caused by bad lifestyle choices. If we were a healthy nation both physically and mentally, the next few months would be a lot easier.

We need to realize that global pandemics are a consequence of a global economy. We need to think small again. A bunch of small economies, each making what they need for themselves ensures that nobody can bring the entire house of cards tumbling down. I hear people wondering why we don't have enough masks and gowns for doctors when we're the richest country in the world. Duh. We don't make anything anymore. The countries that actually make the masks and gowns have people dying too and are keeping their production for themselves.

It doesn't really matter what things cost if people have secure jobs and there is food on the table. When I was growing up every little town had a factory. We made everything here. Wouldn't you like to have those factories back now? Sure, your TV and sneakers would cost more, but who cares. The world is telling us, "you can pay me now or you can pay me later."

Back in the day it use to cost a lot more to fly, but was your last trip to a business meeting really even necessary? People used to fly me to Germany just to go to meetings. I didn't even speak German. It was silly. Lets get back to basics. Make the things you need. Use the things you need. Develop self-sufficiency as a person and as a country.

I like analogies. It is Easter. Maybe people are dying for our collective sins. We have an opportunity to start over as a society. Call it a resurrection if you will. We got so many things wrong, but there's no reason we can't get it right this time.

Nellie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3761

Fifty years ago today Apollo 13 started it's journey to the moon. We all know what happened a few days later. An explosion ripped the service module apart and the astronauts were rapidly losing oxygen and electrical power. The world held its breath as an amazing team of scientists and engineers did the impossible and brought the astronauts back alive. Even now, what they were able to accomplish with so few resources to work with is impressive. Hopefully, somewhere tonight there are other teams of doctors and scientists trying to unravel the mystery of the coronavirus against equally daunting odds.

I don't know if it is fair to compare the Apollo Program to medical research. During the Apollo 13 crisis, three lives were in jeopardy instead of millions. The three astronauts were part of the problem but there were also part of the solution. They were all extremely smart and resourceful. If they weren't, none of the solutions mission control proposed would have worked.

How do you eradicate something you know nothing about? The virus might as well be a species of tiny aliens. Here's how little we know. Everyone has been begging for mechanical ventilators for weeks. Now it turns out that 80% of the people who get put on a ventilator die. Doctors are starting to say that being on a ventilator might actually make the situation worse. There is anecdotal evidence that Germany has had far fewer deaths than other European countries because German doctors didn't think that high pressure mechanical ventilation worked. Along with increased testing, they tried other therapies.

It's kind of sad that most learning is accomplished through failure. That's how it works though. NASA learned an enormous amount after the Apollo 1 fire and Apollo 13 explosion. I imagine that doctors are learning more about how the virus behaves every day. I hope they get the ventilator situation sorted out soon. Ventilators work well for bacterial pneumonia. A ventilator is only used until the antibiotics kick in and the inflammation in the lungs begins to subside. Usually this is less than two days. This virus acts much differently and antibiotics don't work at all. A ventilator was never meant to be used for weeks at a time.

I know virtually nothing about medicine, but if I were writing a sci-fi thriller here's how all this would go down. Chinese scientists create the perfect bioweapon. It is extremely infectious and virtually undetectable until the damage is done. Since there are billions of people in China, the leadership decides that losing a million is a small price to pay for total world domination. They infect a large city and then let several hundred thousand scared residents escape to other parts of the world before making the rest of us aware that the virus even exists. Then they make a good show of stamping the virus out so the world won't blame them for anything. China emerges strong and the rest of the world is descimated without a shot being fired. It probably didn't happen this way, but it sure seems plausible. It still seems odd to me that there were no huge outbreaks in other Chinese cities. Somebody was very well prepared for this.

The United States wasn't prepared at all. Apparently we learned nothing from the anthrax scare right after 9/11. I'm convinced that we need to get back to the kind of country we were during the Apollo program. We were smart and resourceful then. Every single nut and bolt in the Apollo rockets was made right here in the United States. A huge percentage of what what we used everyday was made here as well. We didn't need China. Wouldn't you have rather have paid a little more for your flat screen TV than see the country go trillions of dollars in debt because of this debacle. I would have gladly paid 30% more for everything to avoid this mess.

I did find some toilet paper today. I guess that's a good thing. Janet will be watching Easter services on her iPad instead of going to church, but we'll still be having a smoked ham for Easter dinner. I love a smoked ham. I hope Easter and Passover is still a joyful time for those of you who believe. It's important to believe in something.

Tyson is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3760

I saw something interesting today. Google and Apple are teaming up to create a new app that can monitor up to three billion people and warn them if someone who has tested positive for the coronavirus is nearby. This is the death of privacy as we know it. Three billion people is one third of the entire world's population. The app is real and will very likely be available on your phone quite soon. I predict that this app will be very popular. I'll probably use it myself. Safety, or even the illusion of safety, almost always trumps civil liberties. Privacy actually disappeared quite a while ago. Google and Facebook know everything about us already. This new app just lets us eagerly opt in to a surveillance state that is already up and running in China.

It won't be long before people realize that others can easily be added to the master database. Sex offenders will be added first. Then will come a long list of people that everyone will argue about for years. Should people with a history of domestic violence be on the list? How about anyone who has committed a felony. There will be all sorts of lawsuits but nobody will be able to put the genie back in the bottle. Eventually commercial interests will want to get in on the action. If bad things can be tracked, why not good things. Match.com will introduce an app where your phone beeps when a suitable match walks nearby. Parents will be able to monitor their children and see if they are hanging around with the wrong crowd.

I'm convinced that the deaths from the coronavirus are only the tip of the iceberg. The big experiment we are undertaking now will fundamentally change society. We won't know for years whether we actually did the right thing. When you begin to suspect that anybody walking past you on the street could kill you just by breathing, I doubt that we will go back to trusting people very soon. Are you going to flinch when the first person who isn't a trusted friend tries to give you a hug? Our own country might fare worse than other countries because we are so politically divided. Jeez. We already don't trust anyone who doesn't agree with us. This virus will only make things worse.

I'm so glad I grew up when the world was comparatively normal. The duck and cover drills and backyard fallout shelters that were common when I was in grade school were nothing compared to this. I don't think that there had been a time in human history when we collectively decided to shut the entire world down. Even during the worst of both World Wars, society was still moving full speed ahead. This is new. It will be interesting to see what happens.

I can't wait to return to McDonald Observatory or get another chance to walk around on the pad at Launch Complex 41. Neither of these activities involve interacting with a lot of other people. Astronomy has always been a lonely profession and launch access at Kennedy Space Center is extremely restricted. I'm not looking forward to Happy Hour drinks or a night of clubbing, but I would like life to return to normal. Everyone has their own version of normal. A functioning society wasn't meant to live like this and at some point the cure will be worse than the disease.

I hope that all of you are staying safe. I'm enjoying getting to know Dawn better and am glad that she is completely unaware of how much the world has changed. I don't do much, but I'm going to continue as many of my normal habits and routines as I possible can. A sense of normalcy is important in uncertain times. I hope my phone doesn't start beeping the next time I see some of you.

Apollo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3759

There is very little to talk about these days unless you want to argue with someone. There is plenty to argue about because nobody really knows anything. Projections change daily. Strategies change daily. We are told to listen to the scientists, but so far they have surprisingly few answers. What seems strange about this virus is that we've been talking about biological warfare since I was a kid and yet we were completely blindsided by this pandemic. Didn't we know this would happen someday? I'm not saying that the coronavirus was a bioweapon, but at this point does it really make any difference? The simple truth is that we weren't ready for this. The preppers must feel a sense of vindication now. They were right all along.

When this is all over, the first thing I'm going to do is buy a case of N-95 masks, investigate solar power a bit more, drill a well, and maybe learn how to grow strawberries. Self reliance will be worth it's weight in gold in the future. My self reliant friends who always understood the importance of staying healthy, learned how to fix things at an early age, and appreciate the sound of silence seem to be the most sane right now. Most of them are doing fine. The ones who are totally freaking out still want to blame someone.

You can't blame a virus. It isn't even alive. I was as surprised as the next person that something like this happened, but I shouldn't have been. The signs were all there. Every major country has had secret labs where they've been concocting deadly pathogens for decades. The United States is no better than any other country. If you haven't heard about Plum Island you ought to read about it. It will frighten you. At least this bioweapons lab is an island. The government has been wanting to build another lab like this in Manhattan, Kansas within a few miles of the Kansas State football stadium. What could possibly go wrong?

After Chernobyl, the Union Carbide Cyanide gas leak, the Exxon Valdez, Fukushima, and the Deepwater Horizon fire did we really think we were up to the challenge of containing a deadly virus? Humans always overestimate their abilities. The virus will eventually run out of victims and burn itself out. Then everyone will congratulate each other on defeating it. We won't be ready for the next disaster though. We never are.

Honestly, I'm tired of talking about the virus. I'd rather talk about my roof or the next rocket launch I'm planning on attending. You get sucked into these conversations though because nobody is talking about anything else. I try to maintain a sense of normalcy. I still drink my morning smoothie. Janet and I still take Dawn for long morning walks. I'm still optimistic enough to think I'll still reach Day 5000 with this blog. Eventually I run out of toilet paper though and I realize that the world has gone  terribly wrong.

Livy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3758

I'm always curious about what is going on in my own industry. Have you noticed the enormous number of new commercials on TV lately? Everybody seems to have a brand new commercial about how their pizza is untouched by human hands after it leaves the oven or a message that you can still buy all your favorite things online. We're all in the together, these commercials say. How are these commercials even getting made? The last time I looked, most of my friends in the business were considered non-essential and are currently unemployed. It takes a lot more than ten people to produce most commercials and a lot of these new ones look pretty sophisticated. Is there an exemption I don't know about, or are a ton of people just ignoring the rules?

I've also wondered with all the news about infected cruise ships and aircraft carriers why anyone would think that it would be a good idea to send a ship to the rescue in New York City. What could possibly go wrong? At first the Navy said the hospital ship would only be used to relieve the pressure on other hospitals by taking non-coronavirus overflow patients. There were good reasons for this. I remember seeing an interview with the captain of the ship saying that it was next to impossible to disinfect a ship. Now, here we are only a few days later and the ship is taking Covid-19 patients. Go figure.

Who decides what is essential? I see roofers, lawn care services, and tree trimming companies continuing to work normally in my neighborhood. If anything, they are even busier than usual. If I owned a small neighborhood business, this would seem terribly unfair. Most of these little shops were struggling to stay in business on a good day and usually had only a few customers at a time. When you leave Walmart open and shut down all the little neighborhood businesses, it is going to destroy them. Personally, I'm glad that I am retired. I would be so mad if I were still trying to keep a business alive.

My big activity of the day was mowing the grass. I should have done this several weeks ago, but it has been too wet and rainy this Spring. The grass was tall and the mower really wasn't up to the job, but I got it done. Sometimes I like having an electric mower, but when the grass is tall I wish I still had a gas powered mower. At least my battery is still good. I've been keeping it inside all winter and it seemed to help.

Janet and I knew it was going to be hot today so we took Dawn on a very early walk. Like all our Dalmatians, she doesn't like the heat. The sunrise walk was actually very nice and Dawn loved the cool morning air, but the new schedule made eating breakfast even later than usual. Janet was already fixing her lunch by the time I finished drinking my smoothie. I should make a smaller smoothie, but I  like the recipe and can't be bothered to change the ingredients. Two eggs is easy. So is a whole banana. What would I do with a left over half of a banana?

It's pretty clear that this virus isn't going to bring us all together. It's a shame that our country is just as hopelessly divided as it ever was. I'm glad I'm not making the decisions. You'd probably hate them. I'm not going to argue with you though. If you like dogs, you're OK with me.

Cooper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3757

I keep wanting to say "Y'all are doing it wrong" when I hear all these suggestions about social distancing. I don't think extroverts have a clue about staying apart. Unfortunately, extroverts are making the rules. I actually think I was doing a much better job of keeping my distance before all the restrictions started. When most of the stores are closed, people just congregate at the few remaining open ones. I've never seen Lowes and Home Depot as busy as they are now. Did everyone start a home improvement project at the same time or do they just want to get out of the house?

Social distancing is much easier when you basically don't like people. I've never had a problem staying away from you guys. When you zig, I zag. I do all my shopping when you are at work. I love the gloomy, overcast days at the park when nobody is trying to barbecue or get a suntan. I don't even understand the concept of a virtual cocktail party on Zoom. Real cocktail parties were bad enough. Back when I had to attend parties for work, I would quickly find the host, make a little small talk and then quietly leave when nobody was looking.

You don't need to scream at me on Twitter to "just stay home" in all capital letters. Other than a walk in a nearly empty park with Dawn, I was home all day. I'm almost always home all day. I did get a lot done today. The weather was warm this afternoon so I pulled the big bucket of silicon up on the roof using a rope and made some more repairs. I must be doing a pretty decent job. We've had a lot of rain this Spring and the leak still hasn't returned. When today's repairs dry completely, I'll make another sweep of the roof and look for more weak spots.

Janet and I both washed our cars today, but they never left the driveway. I think one reason that mine was so dirty is that it has been sitting so long. At this time of year, the trees seem to shed a fine yellow powder that gets over everything. I'm not a botanist, but I think the yellow powder must be the  pollen inside the catkins that fall from our Oak trees. This is also the season when the ants and tent caterpillars arrive. I saw a ton of ants on the roof and a lot of them will end up getting trapped in the wet silicon. It serves these pesky ants right for trying to find a way into our kitchen.

I passed my security clearance to get a press pass for the upcoming Crew Dragon launch in late May or early June. I doubt that I'll get final approval for a while though. The folks at Kennedy Space Center are probably still trying to decide if the launch will even happen. I bet the two astronauts are already in quarantine though. NASA definitely doesn't want those two to get the virus. The Crew Dragon launch and the Mars 2020 Lander are still on schedule. Just about everything else at NASA has been put on hold. We'll see what happens. I'd still like to go cover this launch.

Tomorrow is Wednesday for those of you who have forgotten what day it is. It's easy to do. Like many of you, I need a project. Maybe I'll finally start uploading a bunch of new pictures to my Shutterstock account. Stock photography is a good way to make money even if you are confined to your house.

Molly is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3756

When the coronavirus started to become a serious threat, my first reaction was irritation. I was having the time of my life at McDonald Observatory and I was being sent home early. It made perfect sense for Jeff Davis county to remove all the outsiders as quickly as possible. If people started to get sick, there were very few doctors. Nevertheless it was frustrating to be leaving one of the safest places in the entire country to rejoin life in an urban hotspot.

As things started to deteriorate, my next reaction was not to let this virus ruin me like the financial crisis of 2008. It took me over a decade to get back to even after that debacle. I started making lists of stocks to buy when the market reached a bottom. I actually thought that this bottoming out might occur in less than a month. Boy, was I wrong on that one.

My thoughts have changed again. I'm pretty sure that despite heroic efforts around the world, a ton of people are going to die. You can't stop a plague. What we are witnessing is as bad or worse than the Spanish Flu of 1918. Time will only tell if it eventually rivals the Black Plague of the 1300's. Overpopulation, globalization, hyperconnectivity and centralized supply chains have combined to create a deadly stew that is spreading throughout the world like an uncontrolled wildfire. The loss of life is terrible, but I'm more worried about the end of civilization as we know it. There has to be an end game for all this. You simply can't shut the world down indefinitely and expect things to end well.

I believe the experts who say it will take well over a year to develop an effective vaccine. Who knows. The vaccine might not even work very well. Some flu vaccines are notoriously ineffective. What if summer comes and goes and there is still no effective treatment? How long is is even feasible to shut the world down? There is a breaking point. We just don't know what it is yet. At some point we are all going to have to decide whether saving lives or saving society is more important. Remember when most of Australia was on fire a few months ago? People were making all these heroic efforts to put the fires out, but what eventually ended things was rain. This virus will eventually run its course and disappear, but I don't think things will ever return to normal.

I guess the question now is what the new normal will look like. Forget about politics. Politicians aren't going to create the future. The virus is. I still think that nature has hit the reset button. The world wasn't sustainable for very long as it is today. At some point it would have all come crumbling down anyway. Now we don't really have the luxury of continuing to kick the can down the road for the next generation. Lets get it right this time. We can survive with 30% less people. I'm not sure how long we can survive if civilization crumbles.

I'm staying isolated, but the world keeps coming to me. The electricians came back today to finish the work they'd started several weeks ago. I stayed in the other end of the house with Dawn and thanked them when the wiring in the bathroom had been fixed. Electricians are considered an essential business and I'm not going to criticize anyone who is nice enough to help me out. I didn't ask these guys to come over though. They just did it on their own. They both seemed strangely unaware of the pandemic. I wiped everything down after they left and all is well. Dawn wasn't happy though. She doesn't like strangers in the house.

Paxton is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3755

Today was uneventful. In today's world, that's a good thing. We have plenty of food. There's a pot roast cooking in the slow cooker. Dawn is content and sleeping on the bed. If I turned off the television, I could easily imagine that everything was normal.

I miss going to the gym on Sunday. I was never a dedicated gym rat, but my exercise routine did make me feel like I was making an effort to stay healthy. Shooting baskets on the gym basketball court was fun too. My exercise mostly consists of walking now, with an occasional excursion to the roof to remove the standing water. It looks like we are going to have quite a few rain free days next week, so today was the logical day to clear the water away. As always, I was amazed at how much water still remained after the pumps quit working. It's hard to remove the water when the pumps get clogged. It's Spring and the pumps frequently get clogged with catkins that fall from our Oak trees.

I spent several hours clearing away the water today and in the process, discovered several new areas that need to be repaired. I wasn't surprised to find some damage. We've had record amounts of rain this Spring and water is relentless. If it sits for long enough, it eventually destroys the coating. Luckily, I still have plenty of silicon coating material. As soon as the roof gets dry enough, I will spend another afternoon making repairs. This is a seemingly endless process, but I can see the results almost immediately. My repairs either work or they don't. Eventually I still need a new roof, but it's probably wise to see if the world ends first.

Everything seems to be working smoothly in the park now. The city has reopened the parking lots, but banned parking in non-designated areas. This seems to work great on cool, overcast days like today. The park is never crowed on rainy days anyway. We'll see how things go on Easter Sunday next week. Joggers, people walking their dogs, and cyclists have never been a problem. Maybe the city should think about banning slacklining and hammocks. That would take care of the kids who like to hang out in large groups.

I think I finally found my lost e-mail from 2018 and 2019. It was located in an invisible file that I finally learned how to view. As soon as I can copy the mail to an archive and save it, I might find the nerve to erase the damaged hard drive and try to reformat it. There's certainly no hurry to do something so drastic. It's not like I'm in a hurry or anything. Working from an external drive has been fairly trouble free. The computer responds much slower now, but like I said, I'm not in a hurry.

I'm starting to hear a lot about the need to build herd immunity. Some say this is the only way to stop the virus. Others say that reducing quarantine restrictions to allow herd immunity to build among healthy people is too dangerous and will cause needless deaths. All I know is that herd immunity is a real thing. Animals can develop it and so can humans. If enough people develop immunity to a specific disease, they can indirectly protect the rest. It may take months or years for a large population to develop herd immunity, but if they are all in quarantine, this acquired immunity won't develop it at all. I have a feeling that this will be the big question in the months ahead. How can we quickly identify the healthy ones, so we can get the process started. We need the healthy people to keep the world running. Right now, we are all just treading water.

Angel is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3754

I try to go out for supplies once a week now. When I made my weekly run this morning, the world looked a lot different than it did last Saturday. For the first time I felt like I was walking around inside a Steven King novel. It was easy to sense that something apocalyptic was happening. Almost everyone was wearing masks. You could tell people's professions by the type of mask they wore. Men in the building trades were wearing well made masks that dry wall workers, painters, and woodworkers often use on the job. My own mask fell in this category. It was old and smelled of sawdust. I found a few in the tool shed and I'm sure I'd used them once while sanding something. Nobody was wearing a N-95 mask, but quite a few obviously came from medical supply rooms. I don't think hospital workers are stealing masks but I'm sure they are taking a few home for their families. Who could blame them. The only people I saw who weren't wearing a mask were the senior citizens who probably needed them most. The stores weren't crowded and everyone seemed very polite. People were methodical about their buying and didn't linger. I got the impression that everyone knew that things weren't going to return to normal for a very long time.

There weren't any problems with overcrowding in the parks today. It was cold and rainy and the streets we're virtually empty. Janet and I timed our walks between storm cells and managed to give Dawn a nice walk and get our daily exercise without getting too wet. Only the most dedicated runners and cyclists were out today. It was pretty nasty. Technically, I guess it is Spring, but it definitely felt like Winter is Coming today.

I have mixed feelings about the non-stop news coverage of the virus. I guess it's good to know what is going on, but there is no new information. People still don't know how this virus works or how to stop it. The talking heads just repeat the same information day after day. Unless you've been living under a rock, you already know to clean everything obsessively and to stay away from other people. Mostly what the news coverage does is stoke unnecessary fear. We should all be cautious and methodical but it won't help much to be fearful. The situation is what it is. This virus is like a runaway freight train. It will eventually run out of gas but we aren't going to stop it.

Janet and I are a good team when adversity strikes. I think we are going to be OK. I'm glad Dawn is with us. We had no idea that things would get this bad when we adopted her, but this is definitely not a good time for a dog to be alone in a kennel. I'm glad that Dalmatian Rescue has done such a great job of placing dogs this year. Six months ago we had dozens of dogs in the rescue program and now just about all of them have found their forever homes.

I didn't even bother to get gas today. At this rate a tank of gas will last me all year. I'm still having problems wrapping my head around the idea of exponential growth. Too many people seem to be dying unless we are all already infected. It would be nice to know how long it takes to show symptoms. Is is four days or four weeks? Nobody knows. When I have to venture out, I would like to be able to count the days until I felt safe in my house again.

Dottie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3753

Isn't it time we stopped calling this a pandemic and started calling it a plague? It's probably time we stopped blaming people for what has happened too. A plague is a force of nature. Like earthquakes, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions, I doubt that we'll be able to stop it. Humans have never been very successful at stopping a plague before. Even the medical experts will tell you that "flattening the curve" is a temporary measure at best. If people rebel at being confined before the virus has run its course, the disease will spring up all over again, just like a forest fire that wasn't completely extinguished.

At some point we will have to decide whether preserving the basic fabric of society is more important than saving lives. Maybe we can do both, but there is a breaking point. Civilization can survive with fewer people. It can't survive for long with mass chaos. Nobody is talking publicly about civil unrest, but behind the scenes, I bet leaders in every country are more worried about this than the disease itself. They know people want a return to normalcy and very few are looking forward to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome becoming our new reality.

I think we have to accept that life will never completely return to normal after this virus has burned itself out. The Black Plague in the 1300's fundamentally changed society. It took 200 years for Europe to fully recover. We are determining what the future will look like right now and I hope we get it right. You simply can't place the entire world on pause for very long and expect a good result.

I hope we are able to determine who is immune to the disease or has developed an immunity very quickly. We need these people to keep the world running. If we can reliably determine who is healthy and who is sick it will become much easier to help everybody. At the moment everyone is a potential carrier of the disease and nobody knows how to stop it.

Right now I'm just a bystander following rules set by people who probably don't have a clue what is really going on. Nobody knows what makes this virus so contagious or how to stop it. Unless someone makes a breakthrough discovery, we are just postponing the inevitable. It's not all bad. I'm actually enjoying the lighter traffic. I can finally get out of my driveway again. Unfortunately, there is no place to go.

I hope we all learn something from this. I've never been a fan of globalism. When the world becomes "too big to fail" what happens when it does fail? I think we are finding this out. We all need to become more familiar with the concept of redundancy. Complex machines like rockets and nuclear reactors usually have built-in redundancy. If the primary system fails, a back up system takes over immediately. So what would a redundant world look like? I think there would be lots and lots of small independent countries that were completely self sufficient. If one country screwed up and failed completely, the others wouldn't be affected and would continue on. Who would be the last ones standing if something really bad happened. Who knows? It could easily be the segment of civilization still living in mud huts.

No answers on anything today. We were still able to take our walk in the park and had a really nice dinner. That's probably enough for one day.

Lexi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3752

The park is open again. There was no explanation why it closed yesterday and no explanation why it reopened again this morning. I did notice a few overnight changes in the neighborhood. There were a ton of newly printed no parking signs warning people not to park on city streets or on the grass surrounding the park. This seems like a reasonable solution for reducing park traffic to me. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when city leaders were discussing the park last night. I wonder what caused them to abruptly reverse their position?

Banning vehicular traffic seems to be working. Just like Monday and Tuesday, there were very few people in the park this morning. I think today's solution is much better than yesterday's. The people walking their dogs in the neighborhood are happy. The joggers and cyclists are happy. The neighbors who were mad at people parking on their front lawns are probably happy too. I'm sure there are people in other parts of town who aren't happy, but they have their own parks to walk their dogs in. There are hundreds of parks in Dallas.

Maybe now that the city has solved the park problem, they can turn their attention to the fabric store problem. Every time I turn on the television I hear people encouraging us to make our own masks. There are lots of YouTube videos now with detailed instructions on how to make a good, reliable mask. There's only one problem. Our proactive county judge shut down all the fabric stores. Why are fabric stores considered a nonessential business when people are practically begging us to start making our own masks? It doesn't make sense.

I'm glad they haven't shut down the appliance repair shops yet. Our washing machine is working again. I managed to find an excellent repair shop after doing an extensive Google search. The repairman was very knowledgable and had exactly the part I needed. He was very polite, wore gloves, had a mask his wife made, and we both kept our distance. I felt like this was the way things were supposed to work.

I'm tempted to try fixing my computer myself. There are some excellent tutorials on how to replace my hard drive online and I think I could take the 27" iMac apart and successfully put it back together if I worked slowly and carefully. I've certainly got the time. There isn't much else to do these days. I'm actually getting used to working using the external hard drive. Once I master all the new little quirks, I may actually prefer working this way,

Last night was weird. There were two huge possums in the yard when we took Dawn out to pee before we went to bed. Dawn started to chase the possums and then she and the possums both became scared at the same time. The possums both climbed on tree limbs and froze in place. Possums have a habit of faking their own death in order to fend off predators. That's where the phrase playing possum comes from. I couldn't even scare the possums away. They refused to move. When we came back in the house there was a terrible smell. I thought something was on fire and Janet and I nervously searched the entire house looking for something that might be burning. It turned out that a big moth had flown into one of the halogen lamps in the living room and gotten fried.

Nothing weird happened today. All in all, today was a much better day than yesterday.

Miracle is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3751

Well this sucks. Our washing machine broke. I called my favorite repair shop and they're gone out of business. Damn. Their phone has been disconnected and their website has vanished. This was sudden and unexpected. The repairman I liked gave me his name once, but he doesn't seem to exist either. The only person I could find with that name lives in London. Obviously the world is facing much larger problems, but this isn't the best time to be dealing with a broken washing machine full of dirty clothes.

Dirty laundry wasn't today's only problem. The city closed our park. Why? Police with bullhorns were driving around telling people to go home this morning. I wonder what caused this? I doubt that it was a safety issue. The park was virtually empty on Monday and Tuesday. Just blocking the entrances to motorized vehicles on Sunday evening seemed to accomplish everything the city had been wanting. I can only guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were people who complained that anyone in our neighborhood could still walk to the park while they couldn't drive there. It's all or nothing for some people these days. Even on the busiest days a walk in the park is still ten times safer that going to the pharmacy or grocery store. People always stayed six feet apart when they passed on trails and if you were going the same direction you were usually several hundred yards apart. I don't know what this closure proves. The joggers and cyclists aren't going to stay inside all day. They will just start using city streets which is actually much less safe. A police officer told me that they didn't want to close the park, but had to because of a few knuckleheads. I didn't ask who he was referring to. I know it wasn't me.

Even Dawn had a bad day. We got the results of her urinalysis and she has urate crystals. The vet suspects that she may have a few small bladder stones as well. We're going to start by putting her on Allopurinol for a month and then do another urinalysis. Dalmatians are prone to having urate crystals and Allopurinol often helps cure the problem. Dash took the drug for years and it really helped. We may have to switch Dawn to a low purine diet as well. The food she eats now is fairly low in purines, but there are options with an even lower purine content. Unfortunately, most of them don't taste as good. We'll see what happens. We've definitely been through this before.

My temporary computer solution is far from perfect. If I were busy with work it would be driving me crazy. Apparently, some of the files that were lost when my hard drove crashed were those secret hidden files that record a successful software installation. I've had to reinstall several things today, including Microsoft Office. My version of Office is so old that you can't register it over the Internet. You have to call a special telephone number. You can imagine how long that took.

I eventually found an appliance repair company that is still making service calls. I was a little surprised that they agreed to come out tomorrow, but I'm glad things aren't shut down completely. Will the repairman arrive wearing a hazmat suit, or will he be oblivious to the pandemic and sneezing all over the place? Either way, I'll stay out of his way. I've learned that repairs go much faster when I leave the repairman alone.

Haley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3750

The world is starting to look like a Steven King novel. For the first time in years I was able to back out of the driveway during the afternoon rush hour without any worries about traffic. The streets were empty. I took some bills and a letter to my sister to the post office today and there were giant sheets of clear plastic hanging from the ceiling separating the postal employees from the customers. I saw no need to add to the madness and quickly dropped my mail in a letter box and left. I stopped by the bank on the way home and discovered that the lobby was closed but a drive thru window was still open. There were lots of cars at the drive thru, but I was already here, so I waited in line with everybody else. I guess a line of cars is social distancing. All the neighborhood stores and restaurants were closed and parking lots were empty. The lack of activity make me feel uneasy. In one empty parking lot there were two crazy people wandering around aimlessly and yelling loudly at nobody. Was this how The Stand started? I was glad to get back to my own house.

The park was almost empty this morning. Blocking the entrances has made a huge difference. I still saw my neighbors walking their dogs, along with a few cyclists and joggers, but that was it. It was almost like the old days before the city passed a big bond issue and decided to make the park a recreation destination. I enjoyed the solitude but I'm sure this is temporary. Someday the crowds will be back.

I don't know how she did it, but Janet managed to catch a urine sample from Dawn this morning. I haven't had any luck at all. Hopefully, Dawn doesn't have urate crystals or bladder stones. It is a common problem with Dalmatians and you often have to change their diet. Dawn really likes what we are feeding her now so I'd hate to have to switch to a different type of food.

Operating my computer from an external drive is going surprisingly well. The only problem is that the computer is painfully slow. If my company was still busy, fixing the damaged drive would be priority one. A slow computer doesn't seem to matter as much anymore. I'm equally slow. Just about the only thing I use the computer for anymore is writing the blog and storing Dalmatian pictures. I have a feeling that if I deleted all my old client files, I wouldn't even need a huge hard drive anymore.

When you hear on the news that 200,000 people in the United States could die from the virus, it makes you wonder whether you should leave the house at all. I guess you could have your groceries delivered, but who is actually delivering them? So few people are being tested that almost anyone could be a carrier. I still think long daily walks are healthy for both the body and the mind, but what do I know? What if the virus can be aerosolized and is floating around in the air? What if masks actually do work, but are still unavailable? Janet may be sewing masks instead of dog bandannas for next years Dalmatian Rescue gold tournament.

I'm starting to forget what day it is. They all seem the same.

Amy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3749

The park is still open to pedestrians and cyclists, but all entrances have been blocked and there are signs saying that the park is closed to motorized vehicles. This seems to be something that is going to be enforced. I saw lots of parking enforcement cars and an increased police presence in the neighborhood this morning. This is a good thing for all the locals who love to walk their dogs in the park. These new rules should drastically decrease traffic within the park without changing things for Dawn and the neighborhood dogs at all. I wouldn't mind seeing then traffic rule becoming permanent. The park has become way too crowded in recent years anyway.

I still feel like defending the vast majority of dog walkers, joggers, and cyclists I've seen during the past week. They have all been very polite and make sure to keep their distance. I still see a few kids who seem determined to hang out with their friends, but even these groups are small. I think the city still allows groups of fewer than ten people to gather. I've never seen more than five kids walking together. These young people should still not be hanging out with non-family members, but I don't think they are a danger to anyone else in the park. It's a very large park and there's plenty of room to keep your distance. I still worry a lot more about going to the grocery store.

Crowds certainly weren't a problem today. It was cold and it rained a lot. Luckily Janet and I were able to walk Dawn and get our steps in before the weather turned ugly. We did get a lot of rain though. I'm pleased that both pumps on the roof are still working and no new leaks have appeared. The forecast shows more rain ahead, so I'm not going to be able to remove the standing water for quite a while. Fingers crossed. I hope my repair work continues to hold up.

I've transfered all the files on my desktop computer to three smaller external drives, but still haven't gotten the nerve to erase the damaged disk and see if I might be able to reformat it. As long as I'm still able to access data on the drive I might as well postpone this effort anyway. Once I erase the disk, the data is gone forever and there still might be something I need.

This is not a good time to be a hypochondriac. The media keeps bombarding us with information about how to tell if you might have the virus. Since many of the early signs are exactly the same as the flu or other minor illnesses, it's easy to wonder. If you feel winded after a run or long walk you automatically start thinking about your lungs. Are the normal aches and pains of growing older a sign of something worse? Is the virus really airborne as some people speculate? I try not to obsess about these things and remind myself that I feel fine.

Seasonal allergies are a bitch too. I've had bad Spring allergies for as long as I can remember. This is the worst time of year, when everything is growing and there is pollen everywhere. I've done a good job at refraining from sneezing when another person is anywhere in the vicinity, but it doesn't seem natural. If you have allergies, you sneeze a lot.

We're living in a time that is going to be in the history books, just like World War II and the Great Depression. I have no idea how this will end, but I would have definitely preferred my retirement years to be a little more uneventful.

Sparky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3748

I spent a long time trying to salvage files today and reassemble them on an external hard drive so I can continue staring at a computer as I always do. I'm amazed at how prolific I've been over the years. There were hundreds of client folders filled with tens of thousands of work related files. There were even more pictures. Pictures and videos are what fills up a 4 terabyte hard drive. I was amazed to discover that I've taken over 50,000 Dalmatian pictures. Admittedly, some of the pictures are of other breeds. Dalmatian Rescue has been doing Santa Paw Christmas pictures for many years and I add thousands of Santa Photos to the folder every year. That still leaves a lot of Dalmatians though. Sometimes dogs aren't very cooperative. Occasionally I've had to take a 100 pictures to find one good enough to put on the website. There were thousands of pictures of Dot and Dash. It was kind of sad to see them fly by year after year on my screen as I was copying them to the new hard drive. I lead a solitary life, but you can't say I haven't been busy. I guess you can add over ten years of blog posts to everything else.

I guess the effort was worth it today. I've now got a working, bootable external drive that closely resembles what I had on the desktop computer. To get everything to fit on a much small drive, I threw away mountains of huge WeTransfer, Dropbox, and Zip files that clients sent me over the years. I almost always got way more input than I needed for writing jobs. I don't know why I saved all of my completed projects. Maybe it was just for nostalgia's sake. I actually liked working.

I'm starting to see tons of people posting on the Internet about how to cope with the coronavirus. It's tempting to add my own opinions, but few people would listen. As someone who chose social distancing as a lifestyle many years ago, I don't really have much to say about building a virtual community. I never even heard of Zoom until all this started. I'm not craving a hug either. Couldn't you all just learn to love isolation? It's actually very peaceful. Especially if you turn off the television and put away your phone.

I tend to take the long view on everything. That's why I like geology and astronomy so much. These fields study processes that take millions and even billions of years to complete. I keep hearing so much about global warming and destroying the planet. Do humans really think they can destroy the planet? The planet has been doing fine for billions of years. Humans are just a tiny blip in the grand scheme of things. Dinosaurs were around much longer than we've been here. What if plagues, ice ages, and the occasional asteroid strike are just nature's way of hitting the reset button. The coronavirus has only been around for a couple of months and already skies are starting to clear in many parts of the world. Life is slowing down. People are discovering that they don't have to spend hours each day on crowded freeways driving to work. Maybe we don't need all the things we compulsively buy. Maybe globalism wasn't such a great idea after. What if this was nature's plan all along? If we didn't have the wisdom and willpower to slow down on our own, she'd do it for us.

I hope the city doesn't shut down the parks. For the most part, all the walkers and cyclists have been acting vary responsibly and keeping their distance. If the city does close the parks, it won't be because of these people who love the outdoors. It will be because of the other people who are staying inside and complaining to the city on their phones about walkers and cyclists. Hey, don't try to shame me about social distancing. I'm the king of social distancing. I'm not going to get anywhere near you inside people. You're all batshit crazy.

Elliott is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3747

Finally, something has taken my attention away from the coronavirus. My main computer crashed late last night. What a giant pain. I'm having an almost impossible time salvaging 4 terabytes worth of data. Often you can restore a corrupted hard drive with special utility software, but this time I'm out of luck. The large hard drive is mechanically damaged and none of my disc utility software can save it. The computer won't boot up at all. It gets about halfway through the process and shuts off. To make matters even worse, all the Apple Stores in the country are closed right now. Who knows when stores will open again. Even smaller computer repair shops in Dallas are closed indefinitely.

I was finally able to copy some of the files on my damaged hard drive using an an emergency external start up disc. It's hard to copy 4 terabytes  of files though when you don't have another 4 terabyte drive. I think I managed to salvage my financial records and most of my photos and business files. A lot is lost forever though. I've still got my laptop, but it is only meant for travel and has a very small hard drive. I've lost most of my e-mail messages and a lot of my contacts. I shouldn't have any problems writing the blog, since I can post from both my laptop and my iPad. I imagine I could post from my phone as well, if the tiny virtual keyboard didn't drive me insane.

I was able to find fresh fruit at the grocery store. Actually, I was able to find just about everything on my list. The stores have done a pretty good job of restocking things, although there is still no toilet paper. There weren't a lot of people in the store when I went shopping this morning. I guess everyone has finally filled their homes with enough food and paper products to last until the next ice age. Not touching things is next to impossible. I wore some disposable latex gloves to get gas this morning because I've been reading that gas pumps are virus hotspots. I had to take the gloves off in the store though. The iPhone app I use to avoid the checkout line wouldn't work with the gloves on. When I finished shopping I completely forgot about the gloves and pushed my buggy out to the car with my bare hands. Lord knows how many times I've touched my face today.

I've seen a lot of couples where one person is wearing a mask and the other isn't. I see this in the park as well. Usually it is the wife that is wearing the mask. Nobody is sneezing though. I haven't heard anyone sneeze all week. This is a terrible time to have seasonal allergies. I'm always afraid I'm going to have to sneeze and I'll be thrown out of the store. So far, so good though. I haven't sneezed in public yet.

I finally know someone personally who has the virus. That didn't take long. This was a guy I met at a NASA event last year. He thinks he became infected at a business meeting a few weeks ago when he inadvertently shook the hand of a potential client who had flown in from out of town. The guy's wife has the virus too. Both are young and fairly healthy.

The park was full of people today. Everyone was keeping their distance, but it was clear that people were getting cabin fever. You can only stay inside for so long. It was a nice day and what else can you do when all the stores are closed? I hope things never get bad enough to require restricting outdoor movement. Some countries won't even let you walk your dog now. The people I see outdoors are doing the right thing. They are keeping their distance, while getting some much needed exercise.

Tomorrow, I'll return to salvaging as many files as I can before the damaged hard drive becomes completely inaccessible. I found a replacement drive on Amazon, but I don't know if I can install it myself. Fixing things on older Apple towers was easy. The new iMac models are much more difficult. Everything on my computer is crammed in a small space behind the 27" screen and is almost impossible to access or remove. Some parts are even glued together so you can't remove them. The last time I replaced a hard drive I had the folks at Experimac do the work. They've gone out of business though. All stores I like eventually go out of business.

So far, Janet and I are feeling fine. Hope that all of you are as well.

Doc is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3746

I finally heard from Sky and Telescope today. As I suspected, my manuscript wound up in the editor's spam folder again. I don't know why this happens so frequently, but it does make it difficult to communicate. At least the manuscript is in the right hands now and will be reviewed shortly. I really hope the editors like my article. I'll feel a lot more like an astronomy writer after I get a few things published.

Life still consists mostly of meals and long walks. It's easy for me to forget that it's been that way for a very long time. All I have to do is turn on the television and I'm easily convinced that I'm under a very restrictive quarantine. Maybe I'd go out to eat a little more often or wander around local shops when I'm bored, but basically I'll be living exactly the same way when the world returns to normal.

The pandemic has made me wonder about a few things. Why aren't they fixing the roads now? Traffic may never be this light again. I can't imaging that the construction workers would be in much danger. Most of them would be working alone inside their own excavators and bulldozers. This seems like a perfect opportunity to get some much needed work done without disrupting anything.

I also wonder whether we've gotten everything wrong about the virus. What if it was actually spreading around the globe much earlier than we currently believe. Maybe it spreads incredibly easily, but takes much longer than we think to register positive on current tests. Maybe all of us already have the virus but just don't know it. We really need to develop a reliable test to measure whether some of us already have antibodies to the virus. Right now we don't have a clue who actually is infected until they show up at the hospital. It's all about statistics. If a lot more people actually have the virus than we think, the mortality figures start to look less alarming.

I felt more comfortable walking Dawn in a harness today. She's actually learning to heal and walks very well on a leash, but she has a smaller head than our previous Dalmatians. In retrospect, it was pretty easy for her to slip out of her collar. Maybe we should investigate those wide collars that Greyhound owners often use.

Most of the people I see in the park are doing an excellent job of social distancing. The one exception seems to be young people who are still hanging out with their friends. I still see them walking in fairly large groups that are clearly not family members. It's still hard for me to understand people who don't enjoy being alone. It's peaceful being alone. I'm not going to judge, but I don't need a hug.

I will concede that petting a dog might be good for you. I'm enjoying having Dawn around. She is a difficult dog to get a urine sample from though. We've been following her around with a ladle every morning and haven't succeeded yet. Dawn squats very quickly and we haven't been quick enough to capture a sample. It's much easier to get a sample from a male dog. We do need another urinalysis though to figure out whether she has crystals.

I'm not looking forward to going to the grocery store tomorrow, but it's time to look for more fresh fruit. All I really need are strawberries and blueberries. I'll try to be quick.

Chloe is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day