LMGTFY

I was just browsing a new-to-me Discord server for Flight Simulator enthusiasts, when I ran across the term LMGTFY, and found myself laughing so hard I couldn’t see through the tears… I've Google-searched so many things, for myself, and for so many other people, that the "Let Me Google That For You" acronym really tickled my fancy.

Waiting game

A family member thought they had a cold for several days starting last week. They came to visit today, since their symptoms were mostly gone. Just to be sure, we asked them to use the at-home COVID-19 test kit we’d ordered a week ago, and the test came up positive. They didn’t believe it (“those lines were already there!”), so we had them test with the other kit to verify, and that one also came up positive. They headed home some of us went for a walk, but now we’re wondering if we’ll be coming down with it soon, and if so, how bad it will be. They always wear their mask when they visit, including this time, so it seems like there’s a good chance we were protected. Of course, they ran us out of both at-home tests, and the stores have been all out of them for weeks, so we ordered another 2-pack of tests, which should arrive in early February. And now we wait, hoping none of us come down with any symptoms. 

 

Update 1/25/2022: I realize a lot of people advocate for thinking positively, but today it was a relief to get a negative test result, after a close brush with COVID-19 last Monday. We used our only at-home test kit a week ago, to verify that we were exposed (they just had waning cold symptoms). Today we conveniently received some free test kits from USG and the State of Colorado, one of which we just used to see if we’d caught it, and it appears we may have dodged that bullet. I’ve read that these negative tests aren’t conclusive, but it’s an encouraging data point. Hooray for masks, distancing, hand washing, sanitizing, and all that jazz. The test was straightforward to use, as it was supplemented by an app that gave explicit instructions for each step, and registered the results. It even gave me the option to email the results to my physician, which was not helpful, as his office doesn’t do email.

Swiss Cheese Model

As the Omicron variant blossoms everywhere, I see too many people  blaming others for not doing one particular action, like masking or vaxxing, which they say is causing the problem. Then I see others asserting that one particular action isn’t that effective, so they shouldn't bother doing anything special. Someone on Twitter posted that *everyone* she knows that has caught COVID-19 lately, is fully vaccinated. She concludes that we shouldn't be putting such emphasis on vaccinations, and that Biden is wrong for calling it "a pandemic of the unvaccinated." It’s such a multi-faceted issue. Catching and spreading COVID-19 are bad, but lethality is the main issue, and a vaccination really helps at the end. In my mind, this continues to be a pandemic of the willfully ignorant. A “Swiss cheese approach” (the above diagram is just one example) to COVID-19 defense is effective, but too many people want to keep it too simple. Not unlike diets, anti-pandemic measures are only effective, if you follow them. 🤷‍♂️‬

Honda Y2022 Clock Bug

Uh, oh... It appears that the (Alpine?) clock display in my 2007 Honda  CR-V has a Y2022 bug. Every time I turn it on, the clock goes back to 2:00 on 1/1/2002. 

The buzz on the net suggests an integer overflow that hit on 1/1/2022. They may be manipulating date/time with a decimal number with a value yymmddHHMM as a 32-bit signed integer, in a form like: 

2112312359 for 2021/12/31 23:59, then
2201010001 for 2022 /01/01 00:01, but
2147483647 is the highest decimal number that can be represented. 

You'd think a software engineer would ask themself, when deciding how to store date/time in a variable, how large a date would fit in there. 

I've heard more recently, that someone heard back from Honda, who said they're investigating, and currently think the problem will resolve itself in August. If they're right about that, then the cause would clearly not be the overflow hypothesis. Maybe more related to a bug in handling GPS time 1024 week rollover.

I found this Wikipedia page that lists the known time representation bugs over the years, past and future. 

Exposure Notification

So, we agreed to participate in this effort (see the pic) awhile ago, to warn people about possible COVID-19 exposure, based on an app that ensures anonymity. Since we haven’t heard anything in many months, we’d wondered if it was even active in our area. Then we both received this alert this evening. 

 

Now we feel like we need to get tested, because we know something more than we would have, even though we have no symptoms. Thinking back to 6 days ago, we were out shopping at the time, so it’s possible we ran across an infected stranger, but maybe they were also masked? Heavy sigh. 

 

Of course, right now after all the holiday gatherings, there are many people looking to get tested, so all the at-home test kits are sold out, and the earliest testing appointment we can find is in three days, unless we want to pay $375 to get an expedited test. Oh well, so Tuesday it is…

 

Update Jan 2: We ran across an Urgent Care this morning, on the way to pick up breakfast, and were able to get in for a test at noon. They also wanted to charge a premium for a quick test, but we’re ok waiting a couple of days for the results. No symptoms, so no hurry, except that Jennefer would like to get back to her caregiving, and not worry about giving it to her clients. 

 

The PA recommended if this notification thing happens again, since we’re thrice vaccinated, maybe just be extra careful masking for 14 days, and if no symptoms show up, no harm no foul, and if they do, then get tested, to see if it’s COVID-19. That might be a reasonable course of action for this retiree, but Jennefer is adamant about protecting her caregiving clients from exposure, as best she can. So she finally got around to ordering some home test kits for possible future events like this.

 

Update Jan 3: No symptoms. No test results yet.

Don’t Start That Diet

There are some wise words in this article. Thanks to my big sister for sharing. 

Jennefer has been pointing out the absurd number of weight loss ads on TV, since Christmas. I didn’t even notice at first, as I am programmed to completely tune out the ads. 

I’ve always found myself so curious about what people are thinking, when they say they are “starting a diet,” and what they must’ve been doing, before they said, “that diet doesn’t work for me,“ as if there might exist the possibility that *any* diet doesn’t work. They *all* work, if we follow them, although some (most?) are not healthy for us. 

But we’re all different, and maybe I was just lucky, to be able to live the first 35 years of my life with an active lifestyle, and a body that loved to burn calories as fast as I ate them. So I had the luxury of being confused by the words and deeds of people who tried and failed to lose weight. 

Fast forward 35 years, and here’s my doctor telling me that my A1C might benefit by me losing 10% of my body weight. What? Me?? Well, yeah, thanks to our mutual plan to record our weights once a week, I realized I had been gaining roughly a pound a year, ever since I got married and started eating regular meals that were portioned out of love. And I also realized that one by one, the long list of fun physical recreational activities in which I had regularly participated, had slowly been reduced to zero. 

The one thing I had promised myself, was that if I ever decided to lose weight, it would be for life, so I would figure out what my diet and exercise needed to look like for the rest of my life, and “just” start doing that. Easy to say. But that moment did come 7 years ago, and so far, that approach is working for me. Fingers crossed, as I’ve seen a lot of people struggle with this, so I’m prepared to adapt as necessary. But for me, the approach of using a few smartphone apps to manage calories-in minus calories-out seems to be working. I was also very fortunate to fall into a relationship with a Nutrition major, who is willing to help me make better, more informed choices. Just lucky I guess. ❤️