I bought a box of N95 masks on Amazon to use (instead of my cotton cloth masks— that are apparently no longer cutting it against the Omicron variant).
The N95 masks are more difficult to put on than ones with ear loops .. and then there is the question of how many times they can be used before they should be discarded. (They cannot be washed in the washing machine).
The short answer: it depends. If the mask was used in a crowded place, or for a long time (say, 4 to 8 hours), it should probably be discarded.
There are a lot of fake N95 masks out there. I bought mine on Amazon; the brand is from US industrial giant Honeywell, but the box they came in confirms that the masks were made in China (by the Honeywell subsidiary there). Are they fake/ substandard? Who knows. Like a reviewer on Amazon says: ‘Everything’s made in China – get over it’. Sigh. [Infographic by John Blanchard for The San Francisco Chronicle]
This is Apple Watch Series 7, black aluminum 45mm case (smaller one is 41 mm), with the sport loop band. Yes, that’s actually the time! -1.42 pm. There are 7 main watch faces that can be configured with countless colors, or the watch face can be a picture, and so on. For now, I switched off the other five spots on the watch face that show things such as outside temperature, today’s date, messages, start/ stop music, and news flashes.
I have had my Apple watch for a week now.
It is essentially an iPhone extension, and as such has definitely helped me relax a little.
I have fewer thoughts of the form ‘Where’s my phone?’ or ‘Go get your phone!’ (upstairs) or ‘Go check your phone!’ (for messages).
The first few days after my operation, I took pain meds every 4 hours, and it was easy to lose track.
I put tasks on my Google calendar, and the reminders popped up on my wrist every four hours.
I’m still warming up to using all the other health-related trackers on the watch (sleep monitoring, heart rate, even blood oxygen levels).
Looks like we will have to wait until Wednesday Australia time for the final word from Australia’s immigration minister, Alex Hawke, regarding the fate of No Vax Djokovic.
There are reports that his travel declaration form (travel before the trip to Melbourne) was filled out incorrectly. He had in fact, traveled to Yugoslavia and Spain, which was not noted in his declaration. Then there are Twitterati that got a hold of the (now publicly available) QR-code of his Dec. 16 Covid test, scanned it, and says the test result show as negative, not positive. If one can believe that.
Here’s Team Canada (Brayden Schnur, Félix Auger Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov) taking the Canadian flag and the 2022 ATP Cup* that they had claimed on Sunday, for a jolly in Sydney Harbor. *A team competition between competing nations to kick-start the calendar year for the Association of Tennis Professionals. [Picture from @felixtennis on Twitter]
No organic (nor regular) whole milk left on the shelf. The shopper texted me a picture of a fancy lactose-free Omega-3 whole milk, which I was OK with. Among the other items I requested was a SLICED loaf of bread, though, which was also not available. He substituted it with an UNSLICED loaf without checking with me. Maybe I will just break chunks off and eat it that way :).
A Sunday night grocery run was not possible, so I had groceries delivered to my house for the first time.
I used my QFC account that I had used for pick-up at the (previous) height of the pandemic.
QFC uses Instacart, which means an Instacart person picks your items in the store, and then drives it out to your house.
I added a generous tip online with my order, and said to just leave my items by the door.
A text message notifies the customer that the items had been delivered.
It all went fine, for the most part.
Still, next time I will try delivery by Amazon Fresh, and see how that goes.
From Yahoo Sports:
The Victoria state government allows medical exemptions for people who tested positive for COVID-19 in the last six months. That’s why Djokovic received a medical exemption to play in the Australian Open. The event is hosted in Victoria, one of six states in the country.
Border authorities, however, did not accept Djokovic’s previous COVID-19 diagnosis as an acceptable reason for a medical exemption, leading to Djokovic being detained and his visa being canceled.
My opinion: Djokovic should just go home. Bye-bye.
Reported by Tennis Channel: in spite of testing positive on Dec. 16, Novak ‘No Vax’ Djokovic attended public events— sans mask— the very next day and the day after that. I think he is obnoxious, and I am indifferent to his self-inflicted dilemma.
Mon 1/10 (reported by @MetroSport on Twitter):
Judge Anthony Kelly declared that the government’s decision to cancel Djokovic’s visa was ‘unreasonable’ on the grounds that he had not been given time to speak with his lawyers or representatives from Tennis Australia after being detained, and overturned the cancellation.
That means that the judge’s call hinged on a technicality, concerning the way in which the border force implemented the rules, rather than an outright declaration that Djokovic should have been completely free to enter the country all along.
Now the ball is in the court of Australia’s immigration minister, Alex Hawke, who must decide whether to personally intervene and cancel Djokovic’s visa himself.
Fri 1/14: Immigration Minister Alex Hawke’s decision to cancel his visa was announced at 6 pm Melbourne time. Djokovic’s legal team is challenging the decision.
Sun 1/16: The Australian Federal Court upholds Hawke’s decision to cancel Novak Djokovic’s visa. The court panel returned their unanimous decision just a day before the World No. 1 was set to play his first match of the Australian Open. Djokovic will now be deported and will not compete in the tournament.
The iPhone’s Left Hand Only keyboard helps a little bit (QWERTY keys squished towards the left). A quantum leap of help, though, would be an Afrikaans language keyboard/ dictionary option to pick for sending Afrikaans texts. Of the 11 languages used in South Africa (Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, Swati, Tsonga, Tswana, Venḓa, Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans, English), the iMessage app supports ONE: English. Apple! You’re $3T global company. Help us out, please.
My butter dish now resides on the kitchen counter, and not in the fridge.
A hard block of butter is annoying for two hands, and absolutely does not cut it for a one-handed toast butterer.
I also discovered that there is a Left Hand Only keyboard setting for my iPhone.
A year later, some 800 rioters and insurrectionists have been indicted for the events at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Some have been tried, found guilty, and have started to serve lengthy jail terms. The Mobster-in-Chief is still the de facto leader of his party, though (the Republican Party National Committee Chair said that he is the leader, in August).
History will not forget, though — whether the disgraced, defeated former President pays a price or not.
Front page of the New York Times from a year ago: ‘Trump incites mob’ and ‘It’s part of his legacy’. Further down on the page “Americans at the Gates: The Trump Era’s Inevitable Denouement”. Looking back now, was it a denouement? (Denouement= the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved).
Illustration from ‘Essential Clinical Anesthesia’ published by Cambridge University Press.
My wrist operation went without a hitch. My forearm now has a splint and a casing with a thick bandage on, with four fingers sticking out. The recovery period is going to be three months, all told.
During the preparation for the surgery, the anesthesiologist explained to me that they were going to do a Bier’s block. ‘Nothing to do with beer— it’s named after a German doctor August Bier’, said he.
The Bier’s block involves the injection of a local anesthetic solution (such as lidocaine) into the arteries of an upper or lower extremity, from which the blood had been squeezed out, or drained by gravity. The careful application and use of two tourniquets isolate the bloodless and numbed arm or leg from the central circulation system.
There was scaffolding all along the front of Engine House No 3 last April, as I walked by on the way to my first Covid shot next door.
The building now shows off a fresh coat of paint, and restored red lettering on the front as well.
Engine House No 3 on Terry Avenue is an official historic landmark. The building served as a home for the local fire brigade until 1921. Over the years, Harborview Medical Center gradually grew up around it. The hospital continues to use the old station building to this day. ‘Foot Note’: I thought those red crosses are Maltese crosses, but they are not. They are cross pattée (‘footed crosses’), a type of Christian cross with arms that are narrow at the center, and often flared in a curve or straight line shape, to be broader at the perimeter. The form appeared first in very early medieval art.From 1890 to 1904, the Seattle Fire Department’s Engine House No. 3 stood in what is now the Chinatown/ International District. In 1904, it was replaced by a new Engine House No. 3 (this one), at the intersection of Terry Avenue and Alder Street, in what is now Yesler Terrace. This 1911 photo shows Engine House No. 3 in its heyday. Three fire wagons, with their crews and horses, stand in the station’s doorways on a rainy day. Handwritten on photograph: 5-11-1911. [Photo and text from Wikimedia Commons]
I injured my wrist on the tennis court some time ago.
An X-ray (done in November) had revealed that the two bones at the base of my thumb (the scaphoid and the lunate) are no longer snug against each other, but separated. This means that the ligament between them is torn.
So I’m going in for an outpatient operation on Wednesday to have the ligament repaired, and I have to present a negative Covid-19 test. I will get the results of the test tomorrow. I should be good to go. Fingers crossed.
The scene at the make-shift Covid testing booth at 319 Terry Avenue, outside Harborview Hospital. They are taking scheduled appointments only, so the line was short. I appreciated that they checked us in outside, with the walk-up window where the nasal swab was done, just a few steps away. (On top of it all there was an icy wind about. Any cold, flu or Covid viruses were surely blown to oblivion).
We are out of the freezing temperatures, and it started to rain steadily this afternoon.
That should take care of the remaining snow & ice on the streets and on the sidewalks.
Here’s Jackson St and 23rd Avenue at 9.15 pm tonight. I am making my Sunday night grocery run, and there ‘s the Amazon Fresh store, on the left. I will make a left turn, park in the empty parking garage, and shop in the empty store. (All right, not completely empty. There will be 5 or 6 other people, besides me).
Here is a series of stills from the ‘augmented reality’ streaming video called T-Mobile New Year’s at the Needle. (T-Mobile is the second-largest wireless carrier in the United States, with 106.9 million subscribers as of the end of Q3 last year. They are headquartered in Bellevue WA and Overland Park KS.)
Look for Sasquatch, the Pike Place Market neon signs, Jimi Hendrix, an orca, drink coffee and stay strong, Kraken hockey players and The Kraken itself.
Well, I never would have thought this.
It appears to me that we don’t have a word in Afrikaans for .. icicle.
I was stumped, and I stumped every online English-Afrikaans translator in my search for one.
The Dutch word is ijskegel (ice cone), and therefore I would go with yskegel in Afrikaans.
Drip, drip, drip. Icicles by my back door. Watch out below — for blobs of ice water, or little spears of ice, coming down.
Early on Thursday there was a little more white powder on the ground, that had sifted down in the wee hours of the morning.
The good news is that on Saturday we will hit a high of 37°F (3°C), and on Sunday a ‘toasty’ 43°F (6°C). That should liquefy a lot of the crystalline H₂O on the ground and on the streets.
Thursday morning at 10 am. We were above freezing for a few hours today, and may get there on Friday as well.
The $10-billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is on its way to Earth’s second “Lagrange point” (referred to as L2). It should get there in 26 more days. After that, it will be 5 more months before we will hopefully start to receive images from the telescope. (The temperatures on the telescope have to stabilize, and it has to be calibrated).
L2 is theoretically a point in space. In practice, it is a region some 500,000 mi (800,000 km) wide, in which objects can maintain a stationary position relative to Earth, with the barest minimum of propulsive force needed to keep them there.
Credit: Matthew Twombly My note: Earth will always be between JWST and the Sun, shielding it with what is called Earth’s magnetotail (the broad elongated extension of a planet’s magnetosphere on the side away from the Sun). The moon, of course, will still orbit Earth as it always does. (On the graphic, the moon’s current position just happens to be between JWST and Earth).
From Scientific American:
The most ambitious space telescope built to date is about to start peering at the universe through infrared eyes. The $10-billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is designed to see farther back in space and time than ever before, where light has been stretched by the expansion of space into much longer wavelengths. To see this faint light, the telescope must observe far from Earth and its contaminating light and heat. After launch, JWST will travel 1.5 million kilometers to Earth’s second “Lagrange point” (L2), a spot in space where the gravitational forces of our planet and the sun are roughly equal, creating a stable orbital location. This vantage point will allow JWST to orbit with its giant sunshield positioned between the telescope and the sun, Earth and moon, shielding the telescope and keeping it at a frigid –370 degrees Fahrenheit (-223 degrees Celsius).
Credit: Matthew Twombly (graphic); Heidi B. Hammel/Shari Lifson/Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (content consultants)
I had to go to a doctor’s appointment this morning.
I told myself ‘You can do it, don’t be a scaredy-cat’ (driving on the snowy, icy roads).
My car does not have snow tires, but the electric motor on the rear axle, plus another on the front axle, makes it an all-wheel drive. The wheels also have traction control (electronics that limit how much the wheels can spin, making it easier to drive on slippery surfaces).
I put a ‘scheduled departure’ into my Tesla app, a good practice in icy weather. That way the car is nicely warmed up inside, with the battery pre-conditioned (warmed up) as you get behind the wheel to drive out.
I was good to go.
The City of Seattle provides this handy map of the roads that had been plowed. The reds are streets with steep grades— big trouble if they have snow and ice on.Here’s the Eastlake Ave & Stewart St intersection. ‘NO TURN ON RED’ .. but is it red? The traffic light scones are all clogged with snow, and one can barely make them out. This could be trouble for Tesla’s ‘Full Self-driving’ mode: an edge case, as it is called. I would think the car would come to a stop, when the cameras cannot make out the color of the signal (assuming they would recognize the boom & light fixtures as a traffic light).This is 18th Avenue. Not a problem to drive on, as long as one goes nice and slow. The brakes can do only so much to stop the vehicle on a slippery surface. (Yes, my Model 3 has anti-lock brakes, but I have no intention of testing them out, if I can help it).
Seattle had 6 in. (15.2 cm) of snow as the sun came up this morning, and that was it, for now.
The sun was out in full force this morning for an hour or so.
The snow on my roof melted and was quickly made into icicles.
The high for the day was only 25 °F (-4 °C).
Looking east towards the Space Needle from 14th Avenue & Thomas, just as it was getting dark.
I measured 3.5 in (9 cm) of snow on the rail along the deck in my backyard at about 1 pm today.
We might get another 3 inches the next day or two, I think.
There were snow flurries all morning. Mr Squirrel came down from the tree, and ran in the snow along the top of the fence, even though it was just 25 °F (−4 °C) outside.Here’s 15th Avenue and Republican. Nice to have a Jeep to drive in the snow. Uncle Ike’s pot shop is open, as is the Hopvine bar, which is where the two guys on the right were headed. I guess they wanted to get out of the house.This is 16th Avenue at Republican. I spotted a snow plow truck last night, spewing salt onto some of the arterial roads to keep them clear as long as possible. I suspect that no longer works with 3+ inches of snow and freezing temperatures.
