Zoom Wedding

[yogi]

The current Corona Virus pandemic is likely to leave it's effects long after it becomes history. Many things now are being done remotely in isolation to avoid contact with potential donors of the dreaded disease. Perhaps the most profound aftereffect will be how people earn their livings. Where it is practical to do so people are now working at home, for example. This caused a surge in the purchase of new computers, an up tick in the need for network security, and and a new mindset regarding one's work environment. All those things are good. Also, making use of existing technology, visits to the doctor are now frequently virtual experiences when that is practical. Social gatherings have been conducted in this pandemic age with mixed results. The kids on my block didn't have a formal graduation ceremony this year, but instead had posters in their front yard announcing their accomplishments. The gal a few doors down apparently had a birthday where a couple dozen of her friends drove by in a mini-parade style, honking horns and displaying banners. The parade halted in front of her house while people got out of their car - one at a time - to drop gifts off on her front porch. I don't know how, or if, the coming school year will be conducted, but a lot of preparation is being made for remote learning.

Then, there are the virtual weddings. The last of the nephews in my wife's family is getting married about a month from today. This was all going to happen in Utica, Illinois, which is nearly a five hour drive for us. We would have to book at least one night in the local hotel and more likely two. As the numbers increased in places that have opened up more to the public, so have the incidents of new corona virus cases. This is not a coincidence and it had me a bit worried about the wedding trip we were obligated to make. Yesterday, however, we received a notice that the wedding had been canceled. Well, the big party was canceled, but apparently the kids are still going to make their vows. In lieu of a wedding reception we are all encouraged to set up a Zoom app on our computers and join in the celebration that way. I was relieved to get that notice, but my sympathies run deep for the soon to be newlyweds. You only have one opportunity in your life to be married the first time, and these kids must for the good of all involved forfeit the pomp and circumstance that goes with it.

I don't have Zoom and never had a reason to use it. I'm not sure it would even work on Windows 7 given there is no built in camera or mic in that system. I do have such things but am not certain how it will interface with an app I never used, or trusted for that matter. But even if it all goes smoothly, exactly how does one have a wedding in virtual space? This is going to be one of the most noteworthy weddings I never attended.

[Kellemora]

My granddaughter graduated high school this year, and they had a private party at home, plus the whole school got together to do a major drive through to most of the graduates homes. They couldn't do all of course, but tried.
You probably heard more about it than I did, since it was in the Parkway School District in St. Louis County.

I've never used Zoom. In fact, I only just heard about it a few months ago.
I don't have a camera on my computers, the laptop does but has tape over it, hi hi, and I rarely use the laptop for anything.
I did have a microphone on this computer and a chat program, been so long since I used it, I don't even remember which one it was I used. Gone after I did a clean install of a new OS. I think my mike might be laying on the floor between the desks, hi hi.

[yogi]

Prior to the arrival of smartphones the popular way to do video calls was with Yahoo. It wasn't the only way to go, but it was very popular and worked nearly all the time. It's one of the few things about Yahoo that I actually liked. I have an external webcam and microphone and back in the Yahoo days they were plugged in all the time. But, then, Yahoo went belly up and got bought out by people that trashed the program. They got hacked big time too and all my contacts were lost because of it. So, I abandoned Yahoo but kept the mic and camera for making short videos to sent to relatives and friends.

Along comes Microsoft with Skype. That had a better front end than Yahoo. I did video calls to various parts of the world; the most exotic was a call between myself and some young lady in Thailand. There was a lot of network lag something like the old simplex radios that could only speak in one direction at a time. Eventually Skype got better and is full of whizz-bang features today. It's totally invasive, which was a given in that it's a Microsoft invention, and for some reason it was not popular as was Yahoo.

Now comes Google and Hangouts. As is often the case with Google they wait until everybody else makes a demand for technology and then jump into the game. Hangouts was not as cumbersome as Skype so that I uninstalled Microsoft's brainchild and to this day use Hangouts for Instant messaging. They too have video capability and phone numbers, but I never went that route because I now have a clever phone that does it all much better. Hangouts is for texting IM only in my case. G-mail now incorporates it into their control panel so that initiating a video conference call is about as easy as sending e-mail.

None of the above, except Yahoo, was very good at multicasting. That's where Zoom and it's brothers come into play. If you need something more sophisticated than instant messaging and you need to do it in a crowd, Zoom has that capability. This wedding thing is the ideal situation for using a Zoom-like program. A moderator would be nice to coordinate things and I can see an entire industry opening up for virtual weddings, birthdays, and bar mitzvahs. LOL It wold be the virtual equivalent of a DJ at the wedding reception. We'll see how this wedding plays out. It could be interesting, or it could be a bust.

[Kellemora]

Back in 2000 and 2001 when my wife and I were dating, we used a voice chat program which worked amazingly well.
It did not have video of course which was fine with us, we saved a lot of money on phone bills, hi hi.

Seems we made good use of IRC also, Internet Relay Chat.

Debi's Schmartz-Fone lets her show herself to others she is talking to, but rarely turns on that feature.
While her niece Pam always has hers turned on, hi hi.

I don't try to keep up with all the new fancy ways of doing things.
I'm content sitting at my keyboard and using the landline phone through VOIP for the things I need or want.

[yogi]

It's hard to say how long this pandemic will persist, or if another one is imminent next season. But, as long as we are forced to quarantine and self-isolate, the use of technology will take a deeper hold on the public consciousness. None of this video communication is high tech nor is it really new. It's all been around for dozens of years. Nobody but kids used to use it, but that is all changing. Some day the pandemic will be gone, but the attraction to the high tech way of doing things will have a foothold. I personally think that people are getting very comfortable with the idea of working from home, and that requires some technical sophistication. It will be interesting to see how many return to the office and how many stay home by design. Same goes for education. Your need for such things is limited to non-existent. I'm pretty much in the same situation. The difference is that I have the time to get involved with learning new stuff. So, I do.

[Kellemora]

Personally, I think they have blown this virus way out of proportion.

My wife works at a hardware store as a cashier, so yes she worries.
But by the same token, she asks nearly every customer if they know anyone who was affected by the virus.
Maybe 2 in 100 will know of someone who lives up in North Knoxville, but don't really know anyone personally.
And of those 2, one may know someone a little better who got over it fairly quickly.

I've asked at my doctors office, and they said of all their patients, less than 15 had the virus, and only 1 of those ended up being hospitalized over it, but recovered fast and were sent home.

The couple of deaths in North Knoxville supposedly related to the virus were older folks with severe medical conditions which could have taken them at any time as it was. But since they did test positive at the time of death, they are reported as a Covid-19 death.

My sister who works at a hospital, now doing home health, says that regardless of why a person dies, even a bullet to the head, if they test positive, they are listed as a Covid-19 death, so the numbers reported by here hospital are greatly skewed.

Debi talks to several of her relatives each week as well. And the only one who knew of someone with the virus lives in South Carolina, in a major city, not the suburbs, and then it was only an employee who worked in a different building before the shut-down. They too survived with no side affects.

Also the supposed increase in cases might have to do with the number being tested has increased exponentially.
And we have heard that many who test positive are a-symptomatic, meaning they are not sick.

If the virus is so easy to catch, why are not the protesters and rioters all sick?

[yogi]

I must admit that a lot of people are thinking in ways similar to you regarding the pandemic. Think about the logic involved. One point you make is in a suggestion that the number of cases being reported are due to the increase in number of tests being performed. That certainly is true and it certainly does not negate all the people who are testing positive. And, if the tests are not being applied as comprehensively as they could be, then that means the number of cases reported are understated. It's a lot worse than the published numbers would indicate because not everyone is being tested, or wants to be.

Today's count of verified virus cases is reported to be 3,416,428 nationwide. That's roughly 1% of the population, and as we know not everybody is being tested. 135,991 deaths due to the virus is today's total, which is 3.9% of the cases reported. There is a margin of error, but that will not affect the percentages.

I agree that those numbers are pretty slim. I'm not Dirty Harry, yet I got to ask you, "Are you feeling lucky?"

[Kellemora]

On Monday, July 6th, two girls and one guy where my wife works got tested, all three tested positive, but all were classified A-symptomatic.
On Monday, July 13th, the two girls not only tested negative, the test also showed no antibodies, which means they never had Covid-19 at all.
The guy tested negative, but with antibodies, which means he must have had Covid previously.
Also on July 13th, two other part-time students were tested, and both showed positive so are laid off for a week, maybe two weeks, because they were symptomatic with a slight fever.

Debi was tested but not with the nose swab test used on the others, due to polyps. For her they do the throat culture test which has to be sent out. It is a private local lab so they are not collecting DNA for the government. The store only puts a number on the test kit they send in, so no employee identifying stuff goes to the lab. So far, her's has come back negative every time. Then too, because of her age, she is being super careful about everything. She doesn't want to bring anything home for me to catch. Heck, she gets undressed the second she gets home and her clothes go into the washing machine.
She has gone through at least 5 quart bottles of 91% alcohol since this started, and has 3 spray bottles of the stuff sitting around the house too, hi hi. Our house almost smells like a hospital, hi hi. Except the bathroom and hallway outside the bathroom smells like a Lysol manufacturing plant, hi hi.
Now my office, nothing has changed up here, still smells like a smokers bar complete with cobwebs and dog hair, hi hi.

[yogi]

I guess I'm an old softie. That happens when you spend 75 years just trying to stay alive. No, it wasn't an effort for a vast majority of that time, but there are several near death experiences that made me think about what the heck I'm doing here. This deep thinking increased once I got married and started to raise a family. Not only did I need to survive personally, but much of what I did was to help my wife and children survive as well. It's all pretty normal stuff. Not much of it is traumatic. But then, something unexpected happens as life is wont to do to you. Maybe one of your kids has to go on suicide watch. At that point any hard shell a young invincible bread winner might have suddenly becomes permeable. Contrary to popular belief, the longer you live, the harder your life experiences become, the weaker your psyche grows. Old people become conservative minded for a reason. The lesson learned is that it's better to avoid a problem than to spend a lot of time trying to fix it. So it is with this covid virus. No I don't like the mask, the isolation, the social distancing, or the empty shelves in the store that once was overloaded with stock. My chances of falling victim to this disease are slim ... 1% if you believe the numbers I published above. My chances of dying from it are 4% of that 1% which isn't much at all. But I'm an old curmudgeon after all. I don't need to be down and out in an ICU hoping to save my life for another disaster down the road, even if the odds are minimal that such a thing would happen. So no. I don't feel lucky. I'm doing all I can to protect myself and my wife - both kids live in one of those high spiking states by the way. Maybe I'm being foolish to be concerned about it. I don't think so. I do stare in wonder at those folks who are flaunting the system and doing nothing to protect themselves ... or protect me from their ignorance.

[Kellemora]

Believe me Yogi, I understand completely.

I had a fully stocked 13 foot long pantry I built and my old house.
Here we built an 8 foot long pantry and it is packed solid.
We didn't have to worry about the TP issue, since we always bought by the case, and was actually a whole case ahead of the game on TP, hi hi.
Buying nearly everything by the case has worked great for me and makes shopping so much simpler. As long as your pantry is well organized on both the selection side and overstock side. Easy to see where a case is missing so you pick up another.

Also, being twice a widower, and dealing with the health issues of others, and being there for them.
Plus after moving south and being the primary caretaker for Debi's mom after her dad suddenly passed away.
I have more experience taking care of the sick than I ever wanted to learn.
But who will take care of me? I hope Debi survives me, because she has a son who can take her in.

As far as the Virus goes. I get up, go up to my office by 8 am and don't come back down to the house until after 9 pm, except for a short hop for lunch and dinner. I really never go anywhere. Debi does most of the shopping on the way home from work on the days she works early shift. I'm only out to help pick up the stuff we buy in bulk, and that's about it.

She does worry about possibly bringing the virus home with her, so as I said, she strips the minute she gets home and everything goes in the washing machine. Then she even wipes that down with alcohol, hi hi.

[yogi]

If I didn't have such a poor attitude about the governance of this country, I might be stressed out by the blatant trivialization our fearless leader is trying to force upon this pandemic. It does bother me that our leadership is so irresponsible, but I also recall dear mom's advice regarding such situations, "Consider the source." As unlikely as it seems at the moment, this crisis will pass and I (most likely you too) will survive it all unscathed. About the only sure thing I know is that we must all do everything possible to protect ourselves. Nobody else will do it for us.

The prospect of being alone in our old age isn't a pleasant matter to think about. I've talked to and wrote letters to a few of my last remaining aunts and uncles and the same topic always comes up eventually. They all passed on and their survivors, where there were any, managed to deal with it one way or another. It would be easier to have some assurance that there actually is an afterlife in which we can look back on what is going on here and now and be amused by it. If not amused, certainly disinterested because there are greater things to be concerned about. But, there is no such assurance. We prepare for a timely departure as best we can. The game changes when we are the last ones standing. I for one am amazed at how long I have lived and probably will make it well into next week if the weather holds out. LOL It's best for me to assume I will transition alone and unattended. It's just a matter of accepting the resignation it all implies. It may not happen that way, but like the afterlife I don't have any idea how the end game will play out. Furthermore, I can do nothing to direct it from this point in time. So what is there left to do in preparation? I'm very conscious of the inevitable, but I don't see much I can to to affect the outcome. That's why I tell you I've taken to be an existentialist. Works for me, but your mileage may vary.

[Kellemora]

From my point of view, I've seen nothing but good come out of the current president and nothing but bad out of the former president.

I don't plan to die anytime soon, but have all the arrangements done for when it does happen.

We've had some pandemic every election year for as many years as I can remember back.
Why this one is so blown out of proportion is utterly amazing to watch.

[yogi]

I have an idea.
Let's take a vote on it come next November.
The outcome should be quite revealing.

[Kellemora]

What are we voting on? The Pandemic, Our Lifespan, or Who Will Be El Presidente?

I was talking to my RN Sister in Springfield the other day, and she shed some light on the Coronavirus tests for me.
She said their are seven strains of Coronavirus, actually six, but one is divided into two groups, so that makes seven.
The testing devices for Covid-19 will detect as positive four of the seven strains, one of those is the common cold.
The only two of concern are SARS-COV-2 and Covid-19, all the rest will self-eliminate like getting over a cold.
SARS-COV-2 is now considered rare, so Covid-19 is the one of most concern.
Out of 100 positive tests, only around 2 to 3 turn out to be Covid-19.
Covid-19 has specific symptoms and if you are not showing those symptoms you are classified A-Symptomatic, but possibly contagious. Which she said is a bunch of hogwash. A positive test with no symptoms should have never been counted as Covid-19, but the hospital is required to report ALL positive tests, even though they know the tests are not accurate as to which strain.

If this report is accurate, North Dakota I think it was, never shut down businesses or schools, and they have the lowest Covid-19 rate of any state. Could be it just hasn't reached their yet, or it could be it is not the problem the poly-tick-ians have made it out to be.

[yogi]

North Dakota is a perfect example of how statistics, and the number of opportunities available, play into the epidemic. You got me wondering now if your Sister in Springfield happens to be an epidemiologist? Or, working with one? She seems to be quite familiar with the classifications of viruses. But then, most front line health care providers are good at what they were trained to do.

[Kellemora]

Most nurses know more than the doctors they work for. I learned that long ago!
They also have to handle all the crap the doctors won't deal with, and in many cases have no idea how to in the first place.

My sister should have retired about 5 years ago, but they needed more nurses for their home health division. So for several years, she has been handling folks who are too sick to go see the doctor who of course does not make house calls.
Although I said she is an RN, she is actually far advanced from that, so it is actually demeaning to call her an RN.
I think her actual title is DNP. Because of her schooling an experience, she was an APRN for a while, PMC for a while.
I'm fairly certain she has the highest nursing certificate possible, which is Oncology, well above Hospice, and others. So in a way doing Home Health is well below her pay grade, but I think she only handles pre-Hospice and Hospice level patients.
I do know she makes a bundle of money, hi hi.

[yogi]

It used to be a couple years in nursing school would get you an RN certification. While that still is possible it's not much more valuable than getting certified to be a janitor. Nurses today without degrees get to do all the grunt work and that's about it. There is indeed a plethora of advanced training that is available after you become an RN. Each level has it's own alphabet of designations for their specialty. I'm not sure one specialty is higher ranked than another. Does a psychiatric nurse rate above or below an oncology nurse? I dunno. They both are very important.

You could be right about some doctors not dealing with all the practical issues involved with healthcare. There are a lot of them. But, the doctors are good enough to hire the right nurses for their particular practice. They would be dead in the water without the support of a good nursing staff. I asked about your sister's background because it takes more than being a registered nurse to fully appreciate how viruses work and propagate. That's where the epidemiologist comes in. Then, too, they operate on the theoretical end of the spectrum, while nurses are in the trenches. I'm not sure it's worth learning any of it, but I do know healthcare is a critical service.

[Kellemora]

Yeppers, nurses are a major key element in health care, no doubt about that.

The only reason my sister is still working past retirement is because of the shortage of nurses qualified to do what she does.
I know she worked in Surgery for a long while, and in the ER for another long while, and doing that while still taking college classes.
One time when I visited her at her main home, on the way back from the John I took a peek inside her office. One wall was literally covered with certificates in frames.

My late wife was also an RN with a couple of degrees higher, but she quit doing nursing to become a medical transcriptionist, and for that she had to keep four different licenses current, so was often going to take classes or attend seminars also. Ironically, being raised with father who was a butcher, she often knew more about meats and the various cuts than many of the chain stores butchers. I sorta miss that because she knew which cuts sold for pennies while the same cut sold under another name fetched big bucks. Just depended on which way they sliced it.

[yogi]

My wife's mom was a pediatric nurse until she retired. She didn't want to move on. It's a real heartbreak to have to deal with infants that don't come out right, but for the most part it's a happy department of the hospital to work in.

Let me assure you that I would not be here typing this if it was not for a nurse doing her job, and then some. About a dozen years ago the doctor I had was kind of laid back. My wife, being exposed to a healthcare provider all her life, didn't care for this guy because, well, she says she didn't trust him. He was not the kind of guy who explained things in detail, and overlooked a few details once in a while. While he was a friendly sort of doctor his bedside manner was aloof and distant. I kind of liked that because I don't like dealing with doctors in the first place. Visits with him were always short and sweet.

By coincident, this doctor was trained by the previous doctor I had when I lived elsewhere. He was surprised to see his old mentor as being my previous primary care physician. Unfortunately he didn't pick up much of what I liked about the old doctor. However, he was all into training med students. Each visit he would ask if I would want to talk to the med student, who actually was a doctor in training, before I talked to him. I agreed most of the time because all the student did is what the nurse would normally do. He got some background and verified my records and asked if there was anything I wanted to discuss with the real doctor. The nurse was always present during this session; just to be sure he got it right or something. LOL This one particular visit I mentioned casually that I had some discomfort in my nether region but wasn't too concerned about it. OK, no problem. After a while my regular doctor enters and asks the trainee what he found out. Everything he told my doctor was correct. He was happy and about to dismiss me when the nurse spoke up. She was concerned that I mentioned the discomfort even though I played it down. A few questions later my doctor decided to order a PSA test. It came back way out of whack. I was in the last stage of prostate cancer.

That visit was in September. I had surgery the following December. The surgeon was sure that it would be fatal if the surgery was delayed another month or two. I'm here 12 years later because some nurse took note of a casual comment I made; she is responsible for saving my life. Sometimes I wish I could look her up and thank her properly, but she left the practice about the time I had the surgery.

[Kellemora]

Wow, I'm glad they caught it in time. Hope there were no residual affect to deal with down the road.

I went to my pediatrician until I was in my 30s, and he forced me to go to another doctor.
He found one for me who let me go see him on a day he was normally closed to do bookwork.
We hit it off great from the git go. The only thing about him was, he was a proctologist, so every visit meant I got a seat reaming, hi hi. But this turned out to be a good thing, because he found a couple of things that never show up in urine or blood tests as quickly as they do at the back door, hi hi.

I've been fairly healthy most of my life and up until my first unexpected heart attack. Which was followed shortly thereafter with a second heart attack which really took the wind out of my sails. I have to exercise three days a week to keep my heart from failing, keep that muscle pumping, and to keep fluid from building up around my heart, which is the main problem my dad had after his heart attack. This is what eventually killed him, enlarged heart that kept getting weaker. Drugs and exercise is keeping mine from doing the same thing. So it is something I cannot skip doing.

As far as my current doctors, I like the almost a doctor nurse who takes care of me the best. Forget what she is called, PMA or something like that. She only has two more years of school before she can start her internship, so will probably be gone in a couple of years.