the mellow tigger's musings

Back when I was working into the evening hours and on Thursdays, I volunteered to work on tomorrow's national holiday, June 19th. Later, I switched schedules to have Thursday/Friday as my "weekend". I was reminded today that I'm working tomorrow, which was a good thing because I completely forgot about this obligation.

Oopsie!

With only 1 day for recovery on Friday, next week will seem a long haul. Hopefully there will be a lot fewer calls tomorrow, but I have my doubts. No prior holiday has seemed like a "holiday" when I worked it. The day was always busier than usual because many fewer people were taking calls. It was more like half the ticket volume, with a lot fewer than half of the people available. The whole world is 24x7x365 now, so there's no such thing as "holiday" any more. Everybody expects service at all times.

Quotes from Ernestine, the phone operator, are not really a good model for behavior on the job. (Hence the humor of them.) Quotes from Lily Tomlin, however, are quite helpful.

Happy winter solstice 2024. From here, the days start getting longer again. I feel like we're all going to need the "good news" where we can find it in 2025.

I've mentioned the Timberborn game a few times over the years. It's still in early access, but I'm looking forward to its official release soon. I'll leave you with this holiday greeting from their recent patch notes.

There's too much going on in the world and in my area of it, so today I'll share only Good News.

The first week of school has ended, and the pace of work is finally slowing. The high point was a long ticket where the phone caller said, "Don't leave me!" as I tried to exit politely after solving the main issue for them. By the end of the call, I helped a 75-year-old woman with signing up for her very first course at the university. It's a nice reminder that I, too, might someday return to college.

I've had a broken screen on my Pixel 4a phone for several years. A few days ago, it finally started causing problems when it wouldn't recognize touches on the screen to unlock it. I need it a few times each day for multifactor authentication at work. Today, since I didn't work due to USA holiday, I rode the bus to Best Buy in Roseville to buy a new Pixel 9 and switch my phone SIM card to it. It's up and running again, although not everything is reconnected. Among the first things to reconnect was the multifactor authentication. It was an expensive purchase but definitely an improvement over my last phone. Bonus 1: I learned that there's a single bus route (no transfers!) that goes straight from my area to that distant shopping area. Bonus 2: I saw during the round trip not just 1 but 2 people in masks!

The big news is this: Researchers might have found what causes the clots by SARS-CoV-2. I mentioned last year that the spike protein seemed to be the culprit, but it wasn't clear why. Now, this new research says that "fibrin binds to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, forming proinflammatory blood clots that drive systemic thromboinflammation and neuropathology in COVID-19." That's really big news. If they know the mechanism, then they can find counteracting agents. There's a lot more to that study, but I'm still exhausted and can't really follow it at the moment. I'm hoping to learn if it's the S1 or the S2 protein, or both together, that causes the clots. Still, though... this discovery is very good news.