Quarantine-Blogging: New Desk, Who Dis?

[azurelunatic]

My main computermachine has been down since, um, January.
I don't think I've gone into much detail about the power outage? But that was a thing.
My brain tends to work a little slower when I don't have all my proper assistive devices around, so it took a while to think that I should bring the computer back up. Plus, it was slow to the point of crashing Trillian every time I switched windows in Chrome, so it was sort of a lower priority thing.
Then Belovedest brought a cold home from the library. It was a nasty little cold that caused a terrible sore throat. They were doing not so great over the weekend, but were well enough to go back to work on Monday.
At some point I realized that I was getting sick with it. That resulted in a fun ER trip and a new type of inhaler.
Then Belovedest got jury duty.
As I started recovering energy from the cold and the jury duty, I started thinking about getting organized. I re-filed my papers and started clearing off my desk.
Belovedest ordered some RAM, and then I didn't want to set up the machine again if I just had to unplug it and take it apart, so I waited and tried to clear the desk some more. (It's amazing how, in an ADHD household, flat surfaces collect Stuff.)
It arrived on ... Thursday? ... and Belovedest popped it in. Success! They tried plugging it in, and it POSTed fine.

It took me two additional days to get the desk sorted and such. Complicating this is that my desk is a small, wobbly IKEA table. There's very little place to put all the things one needs to hand when one's living at one's desk.

But finally, today, I snagged one of the TV trays and stacked the things that should probably go there (for now) on it, and swapped out my keyboard for the better keyboard that I inherited (look, when your boss tells you that the fancy keyboard is going in e-waste unless it should fall off a truck between now and the inventory, you do a thing), and ... my computermachine works!

I have two monitors, more or less the same size. The current keyboard is The Dream(TM): a Kinesis Freestyle 2, with available middle-lift attachments. Due to Murderface Slinky Sausage Escape Calico Kitty being a woman who tries to get into technology, I have erected the structural barrier of a pair of little glass shelves over each half of the keyboard. This is *fantastic* because it lets me put the little charger unit and a stand for my phone and the Wacom tablet (and my dinner) literally on top of the keyboard without causing a problem. I have an uninteresting optical corded mouse to the right, on an interesting metal mousepad with two different textured sides and little rubber feet. The mouse cord is in a gumbite that hopefully keeps it from getting slammed under the speaker and shortening my available mouse reach.

I posted a picture on Twitter.

Steph did a timeline of Personal Shenanigans in context of The Epidemic, and it was enlightening. I might do similar, especially after this evening's conversation with cleverthylacine.

Having the good keyboard means that I can chat much faster, which means I can chat with more people. So I've been catching up on some of my social life.

cleverthylacine is holed up awaiting test results in San Francisco. She's pretty sure she's got it. We compared her current symptoms and my symptoms from the dreadful cold at the end of January, and ... suffice to say that when I have a reasonable opportunity to get an antibody test done, I'd like to do that.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Due to Murderface Slinky Sausage Escape Calico Kitty being a woman who tries to get into technology

*gigglefit*

…I am still pretty sure I would have noticed getting coronavirus? and if Silver brought it home and you got it, well before any of us realized it was a thing to try to avoid getting (or anyway I hadn't yet), then how did I not get it?

[azurelunatic]

I still have some, but not all, of the brutal handwashing drilled into me from the bakery. I know I've back-slid quite a bit, but I'm definitely better at handwashing than your average bear.

You *also* don't have the same number of underlying conditions that I do (you have the Shit Lungs, I have Shit Lungs plus some more things) and you did get Moderately Concerning Lurgy around about the same time I got Very Concerning Lurgy.

I suspect we won't know the answer until tests are a reasonable thing for people to get.

[alexseanchai]

true true

also one of the symptoms I keep seeing people mentioning is feeling really super cold? I was piling on fewer blankets last winter than this winter, and I don't think the thermostat settings changed. wasn't paying attention to outdoor temps, though.

[azurelunatic]

The day you were hella light sensitive and crumpled on the floor of the bathroom was very close to when I went to the hospital. And you were absolutely flattened a couple days around that.

[alexseanchai]

this is true

and here I thought I was just hella dehydrated

…which it might still just be that

[pengolodh_sc]

Loss of sense of smell and taste (to the point of a mother not being able to smell her baby's full and ripe diaper, for instance) is reported as widespread among those infected - in Norway, doctors are going to the news telling people to look out for that.

[azurelunatic]

Quoth Belovedest at some point during this spring: "I'm sure it smells lovely, if one's nose can smell things."

[batrachian]

Hooray the technology!

Good to hear from you <3

[darkemeralds]

That computer setup is awesome.

Crossing fingers on your eventual test--that you can get one, and that it proves negative, or a mild case.

[azurelunatic]

I'm feeling much better now, but I live in Washington State now, my partner is a public librarian, and I went to the emergency room with the worst bronchitis of my life at the end of January.

[darkemeralds]

I'm seeing quite a few stories of the worst bronchitis or the most severe flu in people's lives, well prior to the supposed "first case" in the US. Do you have any sense that your illness was COVID-19?

[azurelunatic]

If cleverthylacine's is, then mine probably was as well.

From a logistical standpoint, there was an outbreak in Kirkland very close to that time. My partner is a childrens' librarian, and is apt to bring home a case of whatever is going around in the community.

I am certain that I would have had at least a close encounter with death if I hadn't got medical care.

[darkemeralds]

Then I'm so very glad that medical care was available to you!

[sara]

My housemate had a horrible flu in late January after a plane trip from LA to Seattle that we've been really wondering about. Coughing, aches, intermittent exhaustion...on the other hand, nobody else in the house got it.

[azurelunatic]

We'd thought that Alex didn't get what the rest of the household had, but they did get *something*. I'm going back through several forms of documentation and trying to assemble a calendar.

[redsixwing]

Congratulations on the working computermachine!

I'm glad you got the care you needed, when you did. This Extremely Dismaying Situation is better for having your writing in it.

[azurelunatic]

Thank you.

The friend who I compared symptoms with ultimately tested negative for covid-19, so I'm assuming that the thing I had with the same symptom progression was also something else, and I will have to continue high isolation efforts.