Habib and the Mars bar

I love this show!

Adithya Yegan Charitable Trust

So happy to have built a website for a friend of mine in Chennai, India.. who is running a food bank there along with his son:

That's it...

...as soon as this pandemic is over, I am heading to one of my favorite destinations of either England or Germany for a week out in the country.

Or I might just stick to a bunch of walking trails in one of many New Hampshire farms serving fresh donuts and coffee, ignore the firearms and pretend that I am in England. Woohoo!

Ignorance should be bliss

Between 2013 and 2016 (or thereabouts), I stopped reading the news completely. I remember those years as having some of the best mornings.. completely free of bad energy or any form of gloominess in my mood. Then, after a few events, one of them being trivia at a pub where I could not answer a single question regarding the American presidential candidates, etc., I realized that I had become completely ignorant on a lot of topics. So.. I got back into the scheme of things by starting to read the news daily. But to keep things simple, I decided to stick to just the BBC website to get all my news. I have no interest in American sports and so that worked out quite fine until...

Of course, now one hears about nothing but the ongoing virus pandemic. And, frankly, I was starting to get tired of reading the news. So about a couple of weeks ago, I stopped reading the news again but with a twist: I only read the news once a week.. just before I step out to do my weekly grocery shopping. This frequency of news reading seems to be just about right as it allows me to find out if any new restrictions regarding food shopping or travel or health are in place and whether people have started slaughtering each other yet. But the other six days? Ignorance is bliss.. as I have settled down into a pleasant yet efficient daily routine regardless of whether it is a week day or weekend.

Bliss.

Duly noted

Asstute readers of mine will duly note that the following sentences are comprised of technical jargon. And I most profoundly apologize for this intimate invasion into the deepest recesses of your brain tissue. Bear with me for two minutes as I explain the reasons immediately after.

In late January 2020, I started architecting a very important software data mapping tool and its associated components for a client. This client had a long-standing backlog of data integration issues with their clients that had come about from both being a small business that could not afford a dedicated software engineering team and by being stymied by thought processes revolving around an ancient company vision. So I decided that while I addressed immediate billable integration needs, I would do so in as generic a way as possible.. so that my efforts could be repeated and scaled out or up for subsequent integration needs for the client. I am 80% of the way there now.

My buddy the whiteboard. No, nothing proprietary is being shown here. I am too seasoned a pro to do that.

So why am I mentioning this? Because this has been a very, very absorbing project. So absorbing in fact that my previous day schedule of waking up at 5 AM and tucking kitty and myself in at 8 PM circa 2019.. has been convincingly replaced with an 8 AM to 12 AM schedule. Rather than listening to reason and stopping work exactly at 4 PM like I used to -- before Miss Univirus came to sing us all a lullaby -- I decided to give into logic and just plug at it until sleep beckons and/or kitty starts vigorously meowing wanting to play.

With not being able to drown my sorrows at the local watering hole every evening after work, I instead found myself stretching my neck at the computer on my home desk every evening as I delved deep into the innards of the .NET ecosystem in incisive attempts to solve the problems that arise every day in elegant yet optimized ways. Stackoverflow.com is my best buddy these days. I hope kitty did not hear that!! And my other buddy would be...

...a mini ham salad sandwich!

A mini ham salad sandwich!! Ok, I vary it with tuna or chicken salad. But a pound of any of these choices and a dozen sandwich rolls plus cut onions with brown mustard provide a week to 10 days of delectable little goody-gulping. Wash each down with a cuppa of black tea or chai with one sweetener and you have the makings of an in-home picnic. A pleasant break for the brain from the mental efforts imposed from architecting and writing software.

In other news, I finally have a decent workout system in place. Below is my current setup. A pair of adjustable dumbbells are on order. But everyone is facing delays and back-orders these days. Not to worry. Back to my teenage years growing up in India filled with body-weight push-ups, squats, etc. on the open terrace of an old house. More on my workouts in a future post. But, oh sunny days! I await thee so I can huff and puff on the balcony.

There's no setup, no.

A poem everyone

Time being whiled away.
While I think of vile things to say.
Try and rile me.. but nay.
You could end up in jail.
Don't rely on me for bail.
Let the current situation ail you.
And you can't sail into the blue
when it finally starts to flail.
Did I hit it on the nail?
Yay!

Time being whiled away..

Some great covideas for 2020

Observation #1: I have shopped at Shaw's twice in the last 10 days. The checkout folks will not touch your reusable bags and for a good reason.

Covidea #1: Continue this practice even after the current pandemic ends. So when the next pandemic rolls around, nothing special needs to be done. Push-back may come from lazy or disabled shoppers. Simply have a separate lane for these folks.. where the checkout person will wear proper gloves, mask, etc. before handling the reusable bags in this lane. Or, to keep it much simpler, continue maintaining special hours during which shopping can be done only by the elderly and disabled folk!

This is just a random picture.. of a spring snow storm that just started outside.

Observation #2: One of the supermarket's two entrances were closed. There was a police man stationed at the other entrance. He was ensuring that the store did not get overcrowded by allowing a shopper in only after an existing shopper from within the store had exited. I remember standing in line like that a few times back in the day when I was trying to get into nightclubs. I hated that experience!

Covidea #2: Make this standard practice if it looks like another pandemic may be on the horizon. How the transition from Police officer "Present" to "Not present" will be made remains to be seen. But I expect it will have to be done when there is a high amount of confidence that a pandemic is over and there will not be a spike seen in the upcoming weeks.

Observation #3: While shoppers kept a reasonable distance from each other while they were shopping, this was not at all possible once they finished their shopping and had to check out. Now everyone was much closer because of a need to congregate by the checkout counters.

Covidea #3a: Just like MassHighway uses a moving machine (zippers?) to adjust lanes on I-93 south of Boston on weekday mornings and evenings, put in place a dynamic system to accommodate shopping lane reconfiguration on weekday evenings, weekends, before snow storms, etc.

Copyright ABC10.. I guess.

Covidea #3b: Look into eliminating checkout lanes altogether by providing the ability to checkout while shopping. Instead, multiple entrances will be established in the perimeter of the store to minimize shopper proximity issues. When a shopper comes to the store, they use a store card or app to first pickup a cart with a checkout device right on it:

• When an item is placed in a cart, it is automatically checked out.
• To cancel an item, the item is simply returned from the cart to where it was picked up.
• Once the shopper has finished shopping, they "commit" their shopping through an app which will allow them to leave the store with the cart and then remove items from the cart. 

If a checked-in item leaves the cart for an extended period or a not yet checked-in item leaves the shelf and does not get into its original spot on the shelf -- example: one shopper steals from another shopper -- alarm and lights will go of in the appropriate locations while a beam will be zapped to the local police station with encrypted details about the offense. But more likely, a kid with freckles wielding a broomstick will show up first to eyeball the state of the union.

During pandemics, stockpiling of items can be prevented through this type of automation either during a particular shopping session or across multiple sessions for a given shopper.. now that their shopping history is on the cloud. Anyone smell a bit of communism in there? But remember that this is only during pandemics in order to not to deprive those who really need supplies or cannot get to shop as quickly or as often.. such as the elderly, single parents and disabled folk. This covidea should be an "All-in" strategy and should be implemented by all major stores at the same time. Otherwise, enough shoppers, realizing that they won't be able to stockpile if Covidea #3b were to be implemented, will soon put early adopters of this service out of business by shopping only at the "not-yet" adopters.

Covidea #3b is a huge ask, yes, but one that should prepare nations better for emergencies in the future: better initial preparation leads to less overall enforcement or running around during times of need. If that philosophy can be implemented in other areas such as healthcare and hospitality, pandemics would become non-events and fizzle out before they begin.

Observation #4: A few shoppers had on face masks and gloves. Stores had sanitizers affixed by each checkout lane. Some shoppers missed the sanitizers altogether as they were not very obvious.

Covidea #4: Keep the sanitizers where they are but have them light up with a ding when a shopper has finished paying. Shoppers who have on face masks and gloves will also have their rewards points bumped up. Shoppers will also get rewards points for wiping down carts and/or returning them to the cart cage.

Observation #x: ...

Covidea #x: ...

Observation #19: I found myself constantly surveying the shopper traffic inside the store in order to get the few items I needed without having to bump into other shoppers.

Covidea #19: If shoppers can tap and choose through an app what they need to buy on that particular shopping session before they get to the store and pick up the special cart -- a suggested shopping list could pop up based on their past shopping history, frequency, etc., for instance --, then the app can direct them to the next item they can pick up while having no or the least interaction with other shoppers en route to that item. This is also simply efficient, pandemic or not. This covidea goes.. um.. hand-in-hand with Covidea #3b.