COVID work from home – week 9 – 4 May – 10 May

Weekend – it’s been weeks since I tracked the WA coronavirus numbers – mainly because there are great websites tracking the data, secondarily because the data reporting and metrics were so broken in early/mid-April.

Here’s the current (9 May) numbers from The Seattle Times. Curve of reported cases peaked in early April, about 10 days later for the reported death rate. The baseline is still quite high. I hope the weekend (sunny, warm, lifted restrictions, Mothers’ Day) doesn’t lead to an explosion of new cases in 2 weeks time.

Friday – 75th anniversary of VE Day, muted celebrations in UK. Coronavirus positive tests in White House staff.

Thursday – WA State is slowly opening back up. Traffic is increasing. Almost 15% unemployment rate in the US. Truly staggering.

Wednesday – another long day. Work, calls, lunch, calls, dinner, running Zoom call for the local Dems. Looks like online meetings are going to be a thing throughout the summer at least.

Tuesday – 250k deaths globally. US is arguing around models, lockdown and what next. French re-testing shows a positive COVID-19 test in late December.

Monday – I added the weeks. This is Week 9 of working from home, social distancing and isolation.

The daily routine is pretty similar for the work week; get up, coffee, breakfast, talk to the kids. They do school work (Teams, writing, exam prep) and I work in my office. I run a daily team stand up at 0930 daily which is informal scrum-like: what did you do last, what are you doing today, what do you need help on. Communications is a tad scattered with email, Skype for Business (yes, old), Slack and TFS/ADO comments. I’ve been trying to do informal “tune of the day” in a non-work, social Slack channel for about 8 weeks. Friday afternoon is voluntary team Happy Hour, turn up in Slack with video and a beverage.

I’ve noted that the informal drive-by questions have all turned into 30 minute calls. It’s back-to-back calls most days – so there’s some discipline needed to block out time.

Local and global coverage for future reference.