Idle Rambling On A Monday Night -- October 20, 2020

This technology is so incredible. It never ceases to amaze me. Earlier this evening I wanted to call my wife who is helping with the new twins in Portland, OR. My telephone was in the other room and I was too lazy to get up out of my easy chair to fetch it. I could have asked "Alexa" to call "May." [Really cool, by the way. When I can't find my own cell phone in the house, I have Alexa call me. Works every time.] But, then, I thought, "Hey, the laptop is on my lap, just Facetime May." And there you have it ... a couple of seconds later, I'm "talking" to the twins. LOL. I can't even imagine what the newborn twins will be doing -- when it comes to technology -- in twenty years. 

Men and cooking. I don't know what it is about men and cooking in the kitchen. They seem to have an aversion to cooking in the kitchen, but they have no problem with grilling. That was my situation. I seldom cooked in the kitchen but I loved to grill. But now that I'm a geographic bachelor for a few months, it dawned on me: heat is heat. I'm now cooking in the kitchen. Tonight Cornish hens. I never knew it would be so easy. Literally less than ten minutes prep time; then, in the oven (the Cornish hen, not me) for an hour while I did other things, and that was it. Clean up was a snap. 

Chinese flu: I was going to add another note -- but then decided not to -- about Covid-19 tonight after I read this at Calculated Risk:

The US is now mostly reporting 700 thousand to 1 million tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, the percent positive needs to be well under 5% to really push down new infections (probably close to 1%), so the US still needs to increase the number of tests per day significantly (or take actions to push down the number of new infections).

There were 1,079,375 test results reported over the last 24 hours.

There were 57,148 positive tests. That's 5.3%.

Misuse of the internet. I frequently get a short note from a reader / family member / friend. If the sender sends the e-mail from their workplace, it often includes a signature block and a confidential statement / disclaimer several times longer than the message itself. I don't know if folks realize that that's against the internet law. It is a waste of broadband resources to use e-mail for a short, short note when a text message would suffice. By misusing e-mail when a text message could do just as well, one is contributing to global warming and we're all going to die a horrible death. A "friend of the earth" asked me to put this on the blog as a reminder. I'm just the messenger.