Working From Home - Impacts of Coronavirus

[james_s]

I like working from home and have thought at times that it would be nice to do it fulltime but now I'm wishing I could go into the office at least one day a week.

My car has not moved in close to a month, I went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription and stopped at the grocery store, that was the last time I went anywhere further than my mailbox. I've been thinking I should probably put a charger on the battery so it doesn't go dead and maybe move it a few feet so the tires don't get flat spots.

[rdl]

As far as cars go, you should probably drive them a bit every week, at least for long enough to charge up the battery and get the tires warm.

In other news, I heard on the radio last night that drinking on the job has increased to an estimated 38% due to so many now working at home because of the virus.

[coppice]

My car has not moved in close to a month, I went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription and stopped at the grocery store, that was the last time I went anywhere further than my mailbox. I've been thinking I should probably put a charger on the battery so it doesn't go dead and maybe move it a few feet so the tires don't get flat spots.

Many modern cars will have dead battery in under a month, because of all the little systems they have running continuously that haven't been designed to be ultra low power.

[nctnico]

As far as cars go, you should probably drive them a bit every week, at least for long enough to charge up the battery and get the tires warm.

Yes. You have to drive a car at least once a week. Because I'm mostly working from home anyway my car has been standing still for weeks and that resulted in flat spots on all tyres. Very annoying to drive with. I already had the rear tyres changed a couple of months ago.

[Electro Detective]

The queue outside our local supermarket looks long. Then you allow for the people in the queue being 3m apart, with a trolley between each person, and there really aren't that many people there.
It only takes a few minutes to get into the store. Within that store they have put a lot of yellow tape markers on the floor, to try to make people flow in particular directions, and help them to maintain some distance.

And still you get both parents out shopping, with the children running around uncontrolled.
And to top it off, one of the parents will walk up right next to you and shout across the store at their completely uncontrolled petri dishes.

There is no doubt they have many relatives littering living in many parts of Australia   

-----------------

Concerning cars: start them up once a week (avoid a freezing cold morning) let them idle and run for 15 to 30 minutes,
with an occasional accelerator press to keep it from flooding, stalling or over revving,
with NO heavy draw accessories on like heater, air con. lights etc 
radio iis ok if you can bear the noise they play and the childish toilet based coked idiot talk, and generic repetitive bs they spout 

Move the car a few inches to shift any flat spots on the tyres/tires/tar-errrs
and depending on the overall CCA condition of the battery, you're good to go for another week 

and PLEASE, unless you have a death wish or want to beat corona to the finish line,
do not perform this is in an enclosed garage or space  
i.e. take it outside and do it, then park the car back in when done..and turn off the engine asap! 

Yes, it's obvious and like 'Oh, DUH..' but there's always that one uninformed car newb
or lazy idiot that may take themselves out,
which would be bad timing as the Darwin Award Prize manufacturer is closed too,
due to the ever versatile multitasking Corona 




 

[Red Squirrel]

Hmmm never considered the tires getting flat spots.  Was thinking what do they do at dealerships, but guess those cars get moved a lot too to plow the lot and what not.

[OwO]

I guess being single helps for me. Been enjoying working from home.   I could get used to this. 

If you shave off your beard you will look like a cute girl 

[james_s]

My car has not moved in close to a month, I went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription and stopped at the grocery store, that was the last time I went anywhere further than my mailbox. I've been thinking I should probably put a charger on the battery so it doesn't go dead and maybe move it a few feet so the tires don't get flat spots.

Many modern cars will have dead battery in under a month, because of all the little systems they have running continuously that haven't been designed to be ultra low power.

Well my "modern" car is 30 years old, that and the '84 have both sat for months at a time in the past while I was driving the other. I let one sit for 6 months and the battery got a little weak but it was still enough to start it. Another advantage of older cars I suppose.

[SilverSolder]

I have a 30 year old car as well, it sits happily for 6 months of the year (winter).  -  I do put a small maintenance charger on it, since it makes the batteries last significantly longer if you don't let them run down.

The tires do get flat spots from standing, but it is normally "cured" after about a week of driving...

[SiliconWizard]

The tires do get flat spots from standing, but it is normally "cured" after about a week of driving...

Yes, I wouldn't fret about it too much for just a couple months. Battery either, at worst you'll have to recharge it.
Annoying but it's not the worst ahead of us. Recession will be much more of a problem for many.

[gorge441]

It doesn't affect me. Because of the corona, i have an extra responsibility to take care of my patients. In a pandemic situation, medical staffs have no time to rest.

[Red Squirrel]

I guess being single helps for me. Been enjoying working from home.   I could get used to this. 

If you shave off your beard you will look like a cute girl 

Haha yeah that's staying.   It was way longer before actually, I wanted to see how big it would get if I grow for a year.  Always had short hair and decided to grow it out about 2 years back.   I haven't been mistaken for a girl from behind yet, but it's bound to happen lol.

[Electro Detective]

The good news is no one will try to chat you up due to Social Distancing   

but that's no real guarantee, watch your back mate,
Corona fueled knuckleheads are everywhere, looking for an easy hookup   

[tszaboo]

As far as cars go, you should probably drive them a bit every week, at least for long enough to charge up the battery and get the tires warm.

Yes. You have to drive a car at least once a week. Because I'm mostly working from home anyway my car has been standing still for weeks and that resulted in flat spots on all tyres. Very annoying to drive with. I already had the rear tyres changed a couple of months ago.

I had a dead battery after two weeks. Although, there is only a small battery in the Prius (and probably needs replacing). It was enough to boot up the car, but not enough to start the hybrid system, parking break or any of the servos. Or to stop the car. And it started continuously beeping at me, no way to stop it. Funny times.

Its been a month since I started working from home. Been in the shops 3 times, once I could get a grocery pick-up. I've been working in the garden, and on the house to keep myself busy. Luckily I could do pretty much all of my office work from home. It seems to even go faster than usual.
Human contact is missing a lot. I feel depressed sometimes due the lack of it.This isolation is definitely teaching me things, and it is a life changing experience.

[nctnico]

The tires do get flat spots from standing, but it is normally "cured" after about a week of driving...

I tried that but it didn't work. And this was only after leaving the car unused for a couple of weeks. I've read some advice that putting an extra 0.5 bar of pressure in the tyres can help to prevent flat spots.

[SiliconWizard]

The tires do get flat spots from standing, but it is normally "cured" after about a week of driving...

I tried that but it didn't work. And this was only after leaving the car unused for a couple of weeks. I've read some advice that putting an extra 0.5 bar of pressure in the tyres can help to prevent flat spots.

Yeah, are you sure your tires were not slightly under-inflated to begin with?

[SiliconWizard]

This is one occasion where being an introvert is an advantage!  I spend most of the time on my own anyway, so this situation, in that respect, is no different for me!

Yes indeed, except that it's bound to make you even more of an introvert in the end. It certainly won't help. But maybe you're already introvert beyond repair, I don't know!

But seriously, I think the situation is going to damage our social skills and behaviors if it lasts, however introvert or extrovert we are.

You write like being an introvert is a bad thing to be fought against.

Oh nope. There was absolutely zero judgement there. And "introvert" is pretty vague. That can describe a whole spectrum of character traits. Past a certain degree, that can certainly make things harder in daily life, and as soon as it can make someone suffer, making it worse by isolating them is probably not the best thing they can experience. That was my point. Likewise, damaging people's social skills doesn't seem to be a good thing per se IMO. We are what we are - no problem. But isolating people is probably not going to help anything much except limit spreading viruses.

The only reason to fight against it is to be able to function in a society that persecutes the introverted. As society changes to require less and less direct interaction with others, being an introvert is an unbridled good.

Persecutes? I may have hit a sore sport here, or something, in which case I apologize. But I think this is a slight exxageration here.
I think by definition, a society is a group of people interacting with one another (else I don't think that would qualify as a society), so you can't blame "society" to favor social interactions. That's what it's all about in a way. But persecuting the introverts? Sounds like a bit much.

Lastly, I think we should make distinctions between things that look related but are not quite.
Being an introvert doesn't necessarily mean being solitary.
It doesn't necessarily mean you don't *need* social interaction - it can also just mean you're not good at it, but would suffer without it. So you may be an introvert but still suffer from this situation.

In the same vein - whether people are introvert, solitary or both, or anything in between, depriving people of their basic freedom of movement is something else entirely. Some may not suffer much from less direct social interaction, or even be kind of happy about it, but being trapped in your own home - I don't wish that to my worst enemy. So let's not confuse different aspects of this situation. IMHO.

[coppice]

The only reason to fight against it is to be able to function in a society that persecutes the introverted. As society changes to require less and less direct interaction with others, being an introvert is an unbridled good.

Persecutes? I may have hit a sore sport here, or something, in which case I apologize. But I think this is a slight exxageration here.

Persecutes is exactly the right word. Society takes people perfectly content with their own nature, and tries to indoctrinate them into feeling bad about what they are.

[Electro Detective]

A warm or hot day drive around will wake up any tyre flat spots,
and then a good bash down the freeway sitting on 80 kph will have them warmed up and rolling like new.
Done this like TOO MANY times, and the battery gets a good consistent revs 14.4v charge too. 

FAILS to watch out for:
Too low or high air pressure, different pressure on each tyre, or one may be punctured = slow leak

Tyre balance and wheel alignment out, causing vibration at certain speeds on the freeway
and or tyre squeals on hard turns or roundabouts

Damaged, bent or faulty wheel rim/s

Wrong type/size of cheap or used tyres for that car

Old battery or low on water,
loose crusty battery connections that 'look ok' is a punter favorite.. 

[Red Squirrel]

Well I took the truck for a ride today, got some gas for the snowblower since I was low, and there's a big storm coming tonight. 40cm+ with high winds so that will mean lot of drifts.   Added air to all the tires too since they were a bit low, I had a warning light and kept neglecting it. 

The only reason to fight against it is to be able to function in a society that persecutes the introverted. As society changes to require less and less direct interaction with others, being an introvert is an unbridled good.

Persecutes? I may have hit a sore sport here, or something, in which case I apologize. But I think this is a slight exxageration here.

Persecutes is exactly the right word. Society takes people perfectly content with their own nature, and tries to indoctrinate them into feeling bad about what they are.

That is true, as an introvert myself I see that a lot.

[EEVblog]

Working from home is terrible, I'm very tired. I work more than 8 hours, so my children spend all day in gadgets and this is very bad. I look forward to the day when schools will reopen.

Yep, home schooling is tough, let alone school holidays now when you can't take advantage of the usual school holiday activities and programs available.

[EEVblog]

A booming trade seems to be security. The local Coles supermarket has no less than three full time security guards controlling flow.

[james_s]

A booming trade seems to be security. The local Coles supermarket has no less than three full time security guards controlling flow.

That is very much temporary though. As soon as the threat of the virus passes all that security will dry up and there will still be huge numbers of unemployed.

[mansaxel]

I'm working from home full-time in precautionary isolation, and have been doing so since the very first days of March. Company took all remotable and critical competences and told them to stay home, and continue working.  I've been in to work twice in this time, both were for critical data network incidents, and meant solitary work in the middle of night. I can do almost all my work remotely, so this is business somewhat like, if not as, ususal.

In Sweden, schools aren't closed under the age of 13 (older ages are homework) so my children go to school. My parents are isolating and I'm shopping for them, while keeping distance. We've come to the conclusion that we've probably had the disease already, but fairly mild for all involved; myself mostly asymptotically, the wife spent a week with something like a bad cold; the children were home for a week with similar symptoms. All who are going to work or school of course observed the mandated post-symptom isolation protocols et c.

I must stress that we are getting -- so far -- mostly easily through this. As a family, because we all have work in insensitive organisations, and also, to some extent as a country. This is on a zoomed-out view; I have an ex-colleague who lost his mother (~85yo) to this some 10 days ago.  Shit is real. 

As for the different paths chosen by our authorities and others, I think it's down to our public office management model. Authorities in Sweden are largely omnipotent within the boundaries set by law and regulations. The government can't micro manage them on a case-by-case basis; it is explicitly forbidden. Therefore, what the scientists and other experts at the Population Health Authority (Folkhälsomyndigheten) say, is what we're working with, statistical insecurities and all.  Of course the government supports the work by introducing legislation, to help with restrictions, and to ensure we've got money to do this, as well as trying to support those businesses which of course will be hit.

Also, it is one of those times when having universal access to medical care for a society, without economical barriers to entry, is truly a common good. Sure, the system will experience extreme load conditions (which the exclusive private clinic in the hills will not see), but the nature of a pandemic is that you need to get the population through it as unscathed as possible, if for nothing else to have a society of minions to oppress afterwards.

[Bud]

A booming trade seems to be security. The local Coles supermarket has no less than three full time security guards controlling flow.

That is very much temporary though. As soon as the threat of the virus passes all that security will dry up and there will still be huge numbers of unemployed.

"As soon as" is not going to be any time soon though. I think those folks will have job for a good year.