And now I’m a prepper

I’ve been sick lately. My youngest has had a cold, and I’ve had a mild symptoms the past few days. With that and the news on Twitter and the markets tanking over the last week, the Coronavirus is about all I can think of. I had met with a friend who had recently traveled to Thailand and had a “stomach bug” for a day before I met with him, but the cases out of Pattaya don’t match the timeline when they were there. So I guess it’s just a cold.

I’m marking eleven days on my calendar, given that’s how long it took Italy to go from five hundred cases to the lockdown of the entire country. We are not prepared here. The local school system is planning and doing a one question phone survey tomorrow, but the assistant director of my children’s daycare told me that there had been no discussion around closings yet. My wife and I are continuing to try and build up supplies. We’ve been buying extra food at the grocery store, and she stocked up on OTC medicines last time she went shopping.

Given the seriousness of this disease and how quickly it can spread, I’m debating whether it makes sense to self-quarantine. Yesterday I had a client’s site go down because of some hardware issues and I had to roll over there even though I wasn’t feeling completely well. I made sure to wash my hands several times and wasn’t coughing or anything, but I still feel guilty for having touched people’s keyboards. I have one project planned that I’ll have to deal with with this week, and then I’m staying away from client sites unless I absolutely have to. Not sure about school yet. One of my classes is a lecture-only class, and my professor is probably at-risk for complications, but I’ve heard nothing from the school as of yesterday.

So my wife and I will continue stocking up on non-perishables. Fresh fruits and vegetables are going to be a luxury if things go the way I fear, so we’ll probably be looking at a real attempt at growing vegetables this year.

The main concern is how we’re going to keep the kids occupied if we’re forced to hole up at the house for two weeks. The last thing I want them doing is watching TV the whole time. It will be hard keeping them busy without being hands on, at least for our youngest. I guess my main concern, selfishly, is that I’ll have a hard time finding uninterrupted blocks of time to do deep work during the day.


This week is technically spring break for me. I was hoping to use it to catch up on university work, which I’ll write more about later this week. I think I’ve said enough about COVID for the past few days. I want to write about a pod I listened to about Commercial Open Source Software companies, as it relates to possible post-university opportunities. Hopefully, I’ll be able to recuperate and focus on some of these projects, and start writing a new resume. I definitely feel that I’m closing the door on this previous chapter in my career. Each interaction with a client seems like it may be the last. I told a cold-email sales solicitor that I was planning on leaving the company after graduation, which makes it somewhat real in my head.

I am also done with Pennykoin, which clears up some brain cycles to focus on other things. I really need to move toward the things that are going to provide the best opportunity, and I haven’t believed in that project for some time. I was something for me to tinker around with an gain some familiarity with how blockchains and cryptocurrencies work, but it’s broken and I’ve got to move on.

I picked up a copy of The Future is Faster Than You Think last week and have been reading it in very small chunks. I want to give my brain time to process what I’m reading, and allow myself to let it sink in. There is a whole new world coming, and I want to approach it consciously, and point myself in the right direction. More to come.

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