I found my journal, here are the contents, this was mandated by our elective course in lieu of the project we were supposed to do, likely a presentation. I cant remember. This was during my final year of undergrad. Please note, any and all sentiments I have expressed within the journal were purely products of their time.
3/20/20
Time: 10:06 PM
Temperature: 81F with light rain
Worldwide infections: 274,180
US infections: 19,285
Virginia infections: 120 active/122 confirmed
Worldwide Recovered: 87,991
Deaths: 11,375
Entry:
Today was hot, with a high of 88F, and dry. We got quite a bit done, such as changing the lawnmower oil for both the push mower and the riding mower. The power went out for ~1 hour presumably due to the high wind (20-30 mph gusts). There is no active quarantine or shelter in place order, however it is widely encouraged to remain at home. The US in its infinite wisdom still has a very low testing rate compared to other countries. As of now, daily routines are rather quotidian, except for the radio station (NPR) and the constant news about the COVID 19, and the increasing infection rate (see exponents, they aren’t that hard to grasp, I don’t see what’s so hard to understand that no action = more infected).
The background of the radio does provide an ominous undertone, stock crash notwithstanding. From what is understood (despite a seemingly miniscule amount of data), most deaths are older folks, while many hospitalizations are younger. This disease has been aptly nicknamed the “boomer remover” by the younger lads, much to the chagrin of their parents. Our professors have begun to email us about the transition to online courses, which clearly must be difficult to transition their entire semester to an online format. There is not only a toilet paper shortage (this disease does NOT give you the shits [except for ~3% of cases], so what the hell guys), but also meat, bread and potatoes are facing high demand (though not a shortage).
This is presumably due to the high caloric content and the ability to keep for long periods of time (but they didn’t go after canned goods? Are people really this dumb…). So far, the countries that have quarantines in place are Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Fiji, France, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, Morocco, The Philippines, The Czech Rep. Spain, Venezuela, and the US. Within the US, California has quarantined the state, Nevada as a per county basis and NY with the entire state. Most businesses are paralyzed, save for delivery companies and Amazon (>mfw drone delivered chicken tendies).
3/21/20
Time: 10:22 PM
Temp: 50 F, cloudy
Worldwide infections: 305,234
US infections: 26,138
Virginia infections: 154 active, 156 confirmed, 2 death
Worldwide recovered: 92,335
Deaths: 13,031
Entry:
Nothing new to report. Another day of finishing up a mid-term take home from last week, and gaming, particularly warframe and some game using NOX android emulator. Online classes begin Sunday, and it’s rather clear that this is the first time that this is being done.
3/23/20
Time: 9:05 PM
Temp: 48F Cloudy
WW Infections: 378,547
US Infections: 43,901
VA Infections: 254, 7 deaths
Deaths: 16,505
WW Recovered: 100,982
Entry:
NOX got uninstalled because it’s a buggy piece of shit, so I tried out bluestacks, and its still a buggy piece of shit because apparently screen rotation crashes an app that uses portrait mode by default. Devs need to get on that.
Two days ago, Hayden and I tried to help Casey, it went a bit like this:
“Hey, get on teamspeak”
“why”
“Casey needs help installing GPU drivers”
>has no clue what GPU it is
Casey: “I’ll Just install both”
“No, don’t do that”
>proceeds to install both
>bricks computer
>does system restore
how does a person manage this?
Hayden tells me this is worse than the time that Casey tried to start his car, and instead of using the key, pulled on the lever that turns on your windshield wipers.
The next day, on 2/22/23, to go get dinner at Thai Top Ten, the entire shopping centre in Glen Allen was empty, except for 5 tesla owners. We assumed that they gave us excess food because they would close on Monday for the foreseeable future. Nobody was there, save for the staff, and all the chairs were stacked to one side. On the TV was CNN with a counter of infections, in a similar arrangement to what has been presented here. Petsmart was empty except for a few cars and O’Charley’s was shuttered.
Very creepy. This Monday, 3/23/20 we began online classes. The first of the bunch was a molecular biology course which has powerpoints with a voiceover. I didn’t have to wake up early and can go about it at my leisure. The next course was a senior integrative course called “Issues in Education”. Obviously, it was the first time anyone did this and we used Zoom, a video conferencing software. I lack a webcam but have a mic. The remainder of the semester will be cumbersome.
Fortunately, I have my trusty gaming rig, and am a pc hardware collector, so I have plenty of things to keep occupied aside from schoolwork should a national or local quarantine go live. I’ve overclocked my 5930k to 4.5 ghz, so processing power isn’t a concern. The GTX 980 is more than enough to handle most games, considering many major releases have been delayed or outright cancelled, I doubt I will need to upgrade. Same with the 16 gb of DDR4, problem is the shitty memory controller on Haswell E cpu’s means that 3200 mhz is unstable. 2800 it is. For some reason my NVMe drive is being stupid and will hang at 100% usage and then crash the computer using some games.
I will have to figure that out, and I’ve got literally all the time in the world to do so. I could put it to work with a folding@home workload, maybe contribute to the pool of existing computers helping out with finding a COVID 19 vaccine, though that’s what I have my other hardware for. Unfortunately, a garbage extra PSU and no thermal paste is not really helpful. I may have to order some.
There really should be a national quarantine, NY and Washington are getting blitzed by this stupid virus, and not enacting any super aggro responses because “muh economy” is quite possibly the biggest boomer tier move I have ever seen. This is your countrymen you should be looking after, damn the GDP, that’s just some neocon meme anyways.
I’m going out on a limb and guessing that the R0 is quite a good deal higher than the estimated 2.3. R0 isn’t everything clearly, because things like quarantines or social isolation can nerf that value, but the higher=harder to contain. The congressional inaction is unnecessary. Like what’s going on up their lads? Are you having some reddit circle jerk during a global pandemic? Quit fondling each other’s dicks and do something.
3/26/20
Time: 10:35 PM
Temp: 55F Cloudy
WW Infections: 531,708
US Infections: 85,505
VA Infections: 468
Deaths: 24,053
WW Recovered: 122,203
Entry:
PSU is likely failing; I probed the +3.3v rail and it gave me -3.42v. The maximum tolerance is -3.46. I may need to replace it, hence those odd crashes in warframe. The US overtook China/Italy today, which is usually not a good sign. The professors are still somewhat struggling with transitioning to online classes due to the rapid nature of the situation. The current inaction has to have been one of the dumbest ways a pandemic has started. Great job everyone, you all get a gold star for an award of idiocy. Absolute pillocks the lot of you. The past 3 days were not particularly of interest. Mostly the same routine. Get up, do the class thing, walk the dog, have too much free time, and not enough toilet paper. Tomorrow, I will make tacos and margaritas since ABC is apparently considered “Essential”.
3/28/20
Time: 11:37 PM
Temp: 60F clear
WW Infections: 664,608
US Infections: 124,377
VA Infections: 740
Deaths: 30,846
Recovered: 140,156
Entry:
Rates of infections has increased quite a bit, though this is to be expected because that’s how math works. Something along the lines of two plus two is four minus one that’s three, quick mafs. Me, and some 5 of the other lads got halo reach on steam and dicked around for a few hours last night. We got dabbed on by dudes who had at least 500+ hours in the game, but that’s not our fault. It is actually the best port, windowed borderless is amazing, and 144hz+ support is icing on the cake.
3/31/20
Time: 12:47 AM
Temp: 61F cloudy
WW Infections: 785,979
US Infections: 164,539
VA Infections: 1020
Deaths: 37,810
Recovered: 165,889
Entry:
WWZ was free on epic games, a zombie game during the time of a pandemic, no time like the present. The governor has instituted a stay at home order, so I’ll just mail my extra GPU to Casey because he’s still having issues. The MFAT (major field assessment test) required for my graduation has been cancelled, not that I was planning to study anyways, end of semester stuff. All the days of the week so far have just become “days”.
Not Monday, Tuesday, etc, just days. For obvious reasons, the original date we could get our stuff back from the dorms, April 10th is now not that date, and instead some unspecified date off in the ether of the unknown. Fortunately, all I had was a toothbrush, some shampoo, clothes a printer and a wifi router that I was going to use to try to setup a honeypot network in the dorms. I was tempted to bring some spare hardware and assemble a cryptocurrency mining rig there, but I wasn’t about to get kicked out of the dorms for something dumb like that. Fortunately, a virus kicked us all out of the dorms, so I didn’t have to.
4/3/20
Time: 11:59 PM
Temp: 60F partly cloudy
WW Infections: 1,099,389
US Infections: 277,953
VA Infections: 2,012
Deaths: 58,901
Recovered: 266,603
Entry:
Who would win, the world’s best medical systems and a solid economy or a small spiky boi. The battle that nobody asked for and we got anyways. Surprisingly, online classes go by quick, but gaming goes by slow. The opposite of what normally happens. This year will likely go down in history as the biggest shitpost that ever existed on this side of the Mississippi. I expect numerous comparisons to be made, like this year being /b/ personified, or /r9k/, rotten bong water, etc, etc.
4/6/20
WW Infections: 1,347,676
US Infections: 368,079
VA Infections: 2,878
Deaths: 74,744
Recovered: 277:331
Entry:
Boring and the same. That is what this stay at home boils down to, though likely better than short of breath and on a ventilator. I mailed Casey my known working GTX 660 a few days ago and he confirmed it was working. He is supposed to mail me back the r9 270. Why it was getting a black screen on driver install, could be many things. Possibly user error, possibly corrupted vbios, or hardware fault.
Either way, we’ll see hopefully. I also recently installed the loudest texture pack for Minecraft. Legend says that my ears are still bleeding to this day. My friend Derrick who went shopping noticed that boomers were being dumbasses when they were out and standing right behind him in whole foods. Not saying its natural selection, but that’s how natural selection works.
That’s probably why the outbreak is as it is in the US, because boomers are dumbasses, full stop.
4/14/20
WW Infections: 2,000,000
US infections: 610,000
VA infections: 6,182
Deaths: 126,557
Recovered: 485,917
Entry:
Screw writing on a daily basis, there is not much to report from day to day. In fact, the overall change is nil from the first day of the stay at home order. I just got back into playing TF2 (team fortress 2) after like 6 months of not playing. I main Pyro, but am competent at sniper, soldier, and demoman. Getting back into the groove of sniper is like I never left. 25 headshots in one 2fort round, and a 20 killstreak, I still got it. I may go on a pubstomping rampage this weekend, or not, depends.
4/24/2020
WW infections: 2,800,000
US Infections: 900,000
VA infections: 11,600
Deaths: 195,920
Recovered: 781,000
Entry:
Big gamer president said we should all inject bleach and chlorox to defeat the virus. Clearly this is the best solution. Inject 20cc of bleach directly into the tip of my dick and I am now immune to a novel coronavirus, how innovative is that?
In other weirdness, CSGO and TF2 had their source codes leaked. Any evidence of any remote code execution I think is purely anecdotal as of now, but this development is somewhat concerning. I probably won’t play on it for a bit, I did get back into playing Minecraft of all things, why? No idea, just some urge.
I had some computer oddities as well the other night, not of
my own fault. Apparently, MSI decided to make X99 super clunky. the pcie
allocation is asinine on this thing. By default, for a single GPU, the top and
E3 slot runs at x16, with the bottom two at x8. Funny thing is if anything is
populated in E5, the bandwidths of all full length pcie slots drop to x8
because the board thinks it’s a triple GPU setup, even if it’s only a Wi-Fi
card populating the slot. The 5930k is a 40-lane processor, so by all measures,
the slots should not drop down by half the bandwidth. I had to troubleshoot for
several hours to discover this (apparently the board had such a fit that the
GPU would fail to initialize for a few times, leading me to think that it was
either the PCIE slot or the GPU going bad). The setup therefore could only be
arranged as GPU,
wifi card in x1 slot and SSD in E6.
5/4/2020
WW Infections: 3,560,000
US Infections: 1,171,000
VA Infections: 20,000
Deaths: 250,000
Recovered: 1,143,700
Entry:
Ive finally begun to finish my major assignments to close out quite possibly the dumbest way a semester has been disrupted. I was going to sign up for a presentation slot on Wednesday for ecology, but I need that time to work on my molecular biology exam. After that Well, I don’t know. Restrictions are getting lifted, but something tells me that is going to be a stupid idea. Either way, the semester is done, and I can graduate and get on with my life. Unfortunately the economy is in such a shite state that its anyone’s guess what will happen. For all the stupidity this pandemic has brought, there are good things that I see.
1) Online classes for an entire semester are very feasible
2) Deliveries for alcohol also feasible
3) Handshakes are stupid and should be banned into oblivion
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