The last few months have definitely been, on a global basis, the most challenging months in recent human history. As Americans, our comfortable and privileged first-world life (which I rarely took for granted) has suddenly and without warning switched to a harder mode. Nationwide, supply chains have become strained, nearly 100,000 are dead, over 1.6 million are sick, and millions more are without work. Here in Ohio, our unemployment system, a crucial social safety net meant to protect workers from the catastrophe of job loss, has been in a failure state for months as people who lost jobs two months ago still have not seen dime one of their benefits. I am thankful every day that I retain my health and gainful employment.
A short time before the crisis hit, I acquired a 3D printer. Very early in the crisis, I connected with a local group of 3D printer owners working with a local county EMS system to produce 3D printed masks which require less filter material to use, allowing thin PPE supplies to be stretched further. I was able to print 39 masks before my printer suffered a breakdown by way of a broken thermistor. All together, our group produced over 1,000 masks, and we are still on standby in case of a resurgence. My wife and I have also been participating in Stanford University’s Folding@Home initiative, using our spare GPU power to help run protein folding simulations relevant to finding effective treatments for COVID-19.
Since the beginning of the year, I have lost an additional 35 pounds on top of the 40 pounds I had already lost the 18 months prior. This has been healthy, sustainable weight loss backed by gradual and permanent changes in diet and exercise habits. Physically, I feel healthier than I have in years and have been seeing many positive changes in my body as a result of my efforts. Lots of yardwork helps.
Dehoarder 2 has also seen many positive changes over the past few months. The all-important Home Inspection event has had a significant overhaul. In addition to the letter grades received for each area of the home, the inspector will now specifically call out the three worst areas that need attention. Interest charges on unpaid fines are gone as is partial payment of fines, simplifying things.
New items have appeared, some of them inspired by current events. For example, you will now find hoarded rolls of toilet paper stacked and scattered about.
Under the hood, the game has seen a much needed and long-overdue architectural overhaul. I won’t bore with the gory details of this surgery here, but will summarize that the game logic is now MUCH more loosely coupled to the Unity game engine, increasing robustness, ability to unit test, and ability to support modding. Loading time has been improved by an order of magnitude as well.
I’ve been thinking a lot regarding GDEX… Right now GDEX is scheduled for September 18th through the 20th. Normally I would have already registered by now, however, due to the ongoing crisis I have not yet done so. We are still at a point in Ohio where gatherings of more than 10 people are strongly discouraged, and I am starting to see communities cancel Labor Day gatherings that will be occurring just two weeks prior. With the current trajectory of the crisis, I frankly do not see myself or my wife being comfortable among a large, ambulatory crowd of people numbering in the thousands in four months time, if we can even find that many willing attendees this year. The optimist in me is still holding out some hope that maybe, somehow, we get our act together nationally in that four months and stamp this thing out, but the realist in me tells me that is very unlikely to happen. I think a far more reasonable hope is that GDEX announces soon a contingency plan for a virtual event.
With this I take my leave until next time, hoping that everyone manages to find their new groove among all of this chaos.