Saturday 8/29/2020
About 9am I sat down at my desktop machine (because I like to do my serious work on the big screen) and set to work combining all the Safety Sitters documents into a single proposal to be reviewed by Rhonda and her Infection Control Czar, Angela. This comprised an overview proposal written by Marcia, and my instruction sheet for the sitters, and some collateral, like the sign to be placed on each table giving the rules (masks, no food or drink, only two people, don’t move the furniture). I used Open Office for a couple of reasons. It was all highly formatted and I have been having trouble getting Pages to do what I want, it just seems to… well never mind. And Open Office can save directly in .docx format for the PC-impaired reader.
Late in the day I got approvals on that from Marcia and Kim so I formally sent it on to Rhonda. Except of course I forgot to attach the actual document, so had to send it again. Grrrrrr.
So that was all done by 10:30 and my brain felt distinctly tired. So much thinking! Then I followed up on another issue, radio operations. We have an emergency radio on every floor, and at least some people on every floor are supposed to be trained in how to operate it. It ain’t rocket science for sure. You just pick the little doobie out of its charger, turn it on, set it to channel 3 (which it already is) (unless somebody turned it to channel 2 to eavesdrop on the housekeepers?), and that’s it. Push the talk button, say “This is the sixth floor checking in,” release the talk button, and wait for a response.
So I went to every floor to see if the radios were there. On most of the floors there is also a printed list of residents in each apartment, with those needing assistance in red. Not all floors. I have no idea who prepares these, need to find out. On some floors there was a printed “radio procedures” manual with illustrations. Not all floors, and not the same version on every floor. And on one floor (8) I couldn’t find the radio.
Somewhere in here I got an email from Declan, the first young person (of four or so) that I had invited to be a beta reader of the novel, saying he’d just finished a big move and was getting back into the book and liked it. So later I sent him an updated PDF, as I had added some material since April when he got it. I mean, it’s meaningless, it has been weeks since I heard from any agent so probably all my queries are dead. But whatever.
After lunch I tackled another volunteer issue. I’ve been using bit.ly to make readable URLs for the sign-up sheets for meal delivery and package reception. After all bit.ly/CHMD03 is a lot easier to read than http://www.slottr.com/sheets/18254036, right? Except there’s a new sheet each week for each task. So I was creating a new bit.ly link for each week (e.g. bit.ly/CHMD04). But why? Yesterday in the middle of a meeting I realized, hey, why don’t I have just two links per task, e.g. bit.ly/MDTHISWEEK and bit.ly/MDNEXTWEEK, and each week I’ll retarget them to the current and next sheets.
Nope. Bitly does not permit changing the destination address of a shortened URL. So not I spent I dunno felt like four hours but probably only 1, looking at all the URL shortening services (and there are many) finding one that is free, and allows editing the destination address. Turns out, none, but one, rlink.shop, has a fairly inexpensive “Pro” level that does. So signed up for that and created my links.
Then I realized that “this week” for package reception was about to run out. Next week’s sheet was already partly signed up, that’s good, but I need to create the one for the week after. So I did that.
You know, I don’t think I worked much harder (or indeed, much more productively) at my last real job, at Silicon Graphics in the 90s. Taking the rest of the day off, now.
Watched Midway. Mildly entertaining. Thought the CGI battles were overdone. Don’t believe the planes, the flack, were that dense. But what do I know?
Codgerville 