Notes from the Underground

Since I am an "essential worker," I have been commuting to work in NY as usual until today.  Finally, I too have now been ordered to work from home.  Today marked Day #1 in my basement bunker and I am already on the verge of insanity.

I am thinking of doing a daily podcast of random thoughts from the bunker, but we will see how it goes.  For now, I'll stick to text.  I was going to call this Thoughts from the Bunker, but Wife thought of the much better title of Notes from the Underground.

1) A lomdish chakira: does twitter attract the largest collection of stupid people on earth, or is it that participating in twitter makes one stupid?  Teiku.

2) I took a picture of the subway car I was on Monday night:

Normal commuter traffic was nonexistent.  However, I want to assure you that the subways and the stations were still filled with the usual collection of homeless, drunks, druggies.  In fact, they felt even freer than usual to roam about. 

Can someone please explain to me why we are not seeing the homeless/wino/druggie population, who literally sleep in filth on the floor of subway stations, dropping like flies in the midst of this pandemic?  Just wondering.  Whatever it is in the stuff they are drinking or smoking, maybe it has therapeutic effects?

3) And on that topic, to the three NYC policemen who got in the same subway car as me Monday morning and simply ignored the bums sleeping across the benches at the end of the car -- good job keeping NY safe.  (I like to call the subway cars like that "sleeper cars."  You can close your eyes and imagine the long gone heyday of railroad travel -- that is, if you have an exceptionally good imagination.) 

4) The reason I am deemed an "essential worked" is because I work in IT.  On twitter (see #1 above) there was recently a trending hashtag where people thanked all the workers who continued to do their jobs during this crisis: doctors and nurses, of course, but even truckers, cashiers, etc.  Not ONE single person mentioned IT folks.  Ladies and gentlemen, do you think all this remote access that allows you to "work" (or send out tweets - see #1 again) from your bunker at home just happens by itself? 

5) Pro IT tip: if you intend to work from home and remote into your office computer and your IT staff is finally told they too will be working from home, clicking shutdown on your office computer as you head out the door is NOT a good idea.  When you call support and get put on hold, let me tell you what is going on: either A) everyone is laughing their heads off at your stupidity, or B) everyone is cursing like drunken sailors at you because someone will probably now have to go into the office to deal with your problem, because that's what we unappreciated (see #4 above) IT people do.

That's all for now...  everyone stay healthy and sane in your own bunkers and keep praying for this to end.