Tag: Zoom

Sunday May 17th, 2020

F has had a busy social life via Zoom today: Color Guard met; she’s currently playing games on-line for a friend’s birthday party, and she had calls with Dungeons & Dragons friends as well.

S had Religious School over Zoom, too. It should have been two hours, starting today, but we overslept. He still got in and was there for about an hour and a half. But that’s okay: during the first half hour, they experienced technical issues due to changes on Zoom’s end. However, the Rabbi’s son helped work out the kinks and they were up and running by 11 am. So basically, B missed the tech drama.

I also had a busy social life today, primarily involving the front yard. Jessica came over to garden. We talked through the living room window. She said it’s hard to live alone, particularly now. We agreed I’d text once a day, just to check in and make sure she’s okay. She is in her early sixties, and healthy, but it doesn’t hurt to have someone checking up on her regularly. If I get into the habit of doing it at the same time every day, I’ll remember.

Sabrina came by to drop off stuff for us to store. She moved her flight home to tomorrow. The amount of things we are storing for her really isn’t a lot. I have not yet tried to find places for her things in the house, but I’m not concerned about the space.

Sabrina and I talked for a while about work, her return home, and the two food trucks that pulled up in front of her house (the place where she rents.) One was an ice cream truck and the other, a Prosecco truck. She wanted both. People flocked to both trucks, however, and bunched together. They seemed to forget themselves and social distancing. They stood too close. When some of them received their ice cream, they removed their masks to eat it, without backing away from everyone else. Sabrina worried folks were unsafe; she called the police. They sent an officer over to remind people to abide by social distancing standards.

It’s difficult. We all miss life before the virus.

Sabrina felt dizzy while talking to me outside. She stood in the sidewalk, in the sun, and I was up in the driveway closer to the front door. I fetched her a thermos with ice water and a bleached wipe-y. I left those in the driveway, so she could get it. She was dehydrated and finished the ice water. I brought her a second one. She forgets to drink enough. That is one thing about life in LA that she is still adjusting to: it is much easier to get dehydrated here. By the time she left, I gave her a third glass to drink on the road.

Speaking of dehydrating, I pureed a bunch of loquats, put them in a veggie dryer and made fruit leather. It tastes good!

Tomorrow, back to karate exercises and running on the treadmill.

Friday May 15th, 2020

I may have work for at least another two weeks. Our head visual effects supervisor, who also leads our business unit, said everyone will have two weeks’ notice.

Yesterday morning, I thought I would have a lot of data entry to do during my lunch break. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Only about eight parents responded to the email I sent out requesting contact information to hold Religious School over Zoom. I will have to scour my emails and meeting notes for contact information. That will take a while and is a much bigger job than transferring data from email to a spreadsheet.

This morning, I woke up thinking about solutions for this problem. I came up with a few different ideas for how to approach the problem. Later today, I’ll call the Rabbi.

We could email all the classroom Zoom meetings to all the parents for whom I only have email addresses. Or we could setup a “triage” Zoom session for any one not already contacted by their child’s teacher. Based on their child’s age or grade, I’d direct them to the proper Zoom class session.

Another option would be to send out the teachers’ email addresses to the parents, and tell them they have to contact their child’s teacher directly in order to participate.

One thing I know for sure: I am the worst secretary ever: not organized unless I’m forced to be, resentful of tedious tasks and bad with names. If I were not a volunteer, I would be so fired!

Maybe for the fall, I’ll write a PySide widget as a standalone and have people do actual “computer” registration, rather than our usual paper-based registration. The widget could send email to a Temple email address. I’d write a second widget to receive the emails, collate them into a list and generate a spreadsheet. It could also generate a tab-delineated text version that could be imported into any spreadsheet program. But basically, have it all digital up front. I could setup a little database system that is super-simple and compatible with whatever other programs they have, but it could operate all on its own. I can make a table widget, that’s editable, that could display the data, too. And the Temple would own the code itself.

Oh, and I forgot the purpose of this blog: I did do push-ups, sit-ups and squats both yesterday after work, and this morning. I am a responsible karateka; if only I could convince everyone at the Temple to substitute push-ups for, say, challah or sit-ups for all those cookies the Sisterhood provides, or squats instead of watered down grape juice. We could count in Hebrew as we exercise! Then Japanese! Then, because we do live in Southern California, Spanish! We’d be fit, trilingual and versed in Judaism!