Coronavirus

Who knows the mighty beginnings of this world wide plague virus.

Funny photo i just received from a US friend:

Gilbert wrote:

Funny photo i just received from a US friend:

Lol that's funny!!

Fat Freddy wrote:

Oh, believe me, I am just as pissed off with my employers as I am with the State of NJ. The way they handled this whole thing was so half-assed that I wouldn't be surprised if there's merit to your theory about them dicking us over to screw with the unemployment system.

In fact, just this morning after this latest round of frustration I literally said out loud to myself, "Y'know what? Just f**ing lay me off already and get it the f**k over with." That's how annoyed I am right now. I've been working via remote from my dining room table for eight f*ckin' weeks now. I have officially had enough of all of this sh*t. Seriously, if work called me tomorrow and said "We've decided to move on without you," I'd probably thank them.

One more rant incoming!

I have officially given up on getting any satisfaction from NJ Unemployment. I had my 12th and last "furlough" day this past week, so today I went to the dreaded web site and attempted to file a claim for that day. It told me flat out that I can not file any more claims at this time (!?) but did not elaborate as to why.

Soooooo, once again I went to the "contact us" link and drafted a lengthy, mostly polite email explaining that I have been furloughed for a total of 12 days, here are all the dates, I have submitted claims each and every fuckin time but have gotten no payments, no contact from the NJ Div Of Unemployment, no nothin.'

This is not the first such email I've sent them so I'm pretty sure that the only response I'll get will be an auto-generated message that is absolutely no help, as usual.

I tried again this past week to get someone at NJ Unemployment on the phone to find out if maybe there's something I have been doing wrong, or if I'm simply waiting at the back of a very long line... but geez, they don't even put you on hold anymore. Now when you call'em you get a recording that sez "Due to extremely high call volume, we cannot take your call right now, please try again later (hangs up)." After getting that recording about 25 times throughout the day on Wednesday (no shit) I simply gave up.

At this stage I think the only way to get a live human being to contact me would be to personally threaten the life of our esteemed Governor, but then that would probably result in a SWAT team crashing through my windows and taking me into custody, so I guess I'll just bite my lip and move on with my fuckin' life.

Thanks for nothing, job! Thanks for an additional nothing, State of New Jersey! Eat my ass with a spoon!

In an additional aggravating note, our company announced late last week that our newly minted CEO was let go, which I guess should worry me, but I've never had any contact with the guy so honestly I don't think I even give a fuck.

What galls me is that this motherf***er was on the job for less than a year (he came aboard in August of 2019), yet according to the news reports I read, he's eligible to receive a $7.5 million (!) golden parachute on his way out the door.  Geezus H. Crisp, if they wanna let me go I'd gladly take a hike for a quarter of that.

Meanwhile, I can't even get Unemployment to cough up 60 or 70 percent (or whatever the going rate is) of my daily rate for the days I was furloughed.

There's no justice, I tells ya!!!

During quarantine, I was able to use up the many assorted hotel soaps and shampoos I've amassed from many business trips over the years. So that's a plus.

So this is something that really pissed me off today. I made a delivery to a FRITO LAY plant and was shocked that not one single person was wearing a mask inside. They were wearing those really thin see through hair nets. This things don't even stop hair, why would they think it's acceptable to wear those in place of a mask? I wrote the governor, and plan on writing OSHA this weekend. Even worse was, I called this "covid-19" hotline to see if there was something I could do, and was told that even if the governor wanted to do anything, that I shouldn't expect much, because there isn't any type of plan in place to punish those that aren't following the rules.

I'm not one that really thinks most of these masks do shit anyways, but for people working in a very large plant that supplies massive amounts of food all over the country, I would hope they could do a little better than that. Hell, half the guys I saw weren't ever covering their faces with them, they just had them hanging around their necks.

I would strongly suggest you throw out any FRITO LAY products you might have in your cupboard. I plan on writing their corporate office this weekend too. I am definitely boycotting their product until I see something done. .

I can't understand how most people no longer observe any caution. I live in a summer touristic area, which means that there are lots of restaurants and pubs around here.

No social distancing, no masks... Nothing.

That's simply unacceptable.

I guess this topic will be revived soon.

Numbers of infections on the rise again everywhere around the globe...

Darren Travis of Sadus revealed via Facebook that he has been diagnosed with COVID-19.

Best wishes for a swift recovery.

Have schools resumed normally in your parts of the world?

Gilbert wrote:

Have schools resumed normally in your parts of the world?

My kid, age six, started the fall semester normal. Nothing unusual, except I understand they go staggered to the cantine for lunch, ie. not every class has lunch served at the same time. And you need to stay home if you have any flu symptoms.

Beyond that I think it's been quite normal. No face masks or anything.

Check out my new masks. Designed by the wife. It was a surprise from her:

Gilbert wrote:

Check out my new masks. Designed by the wife. It was a surprise from her:

In Maryland, we are back into the red zone restrictions which reduce hours at bars, occupancy limit and such.

I am wfh now until mid-2021 and am expecting wfh to be perm.