Tweaking QoS on the edge
With everyone home – and working on the internet – I’ve made some changes to the QoS to make sure things keep working well.
Video streaming gets bumped down; behind VOIP and work VPN traffic. That should help a bit.
COVID work from home – week 2 – 16 – 22 March
Sunday – FUD and misinformation spreading on WhatsApp, more rationing at the shops, distancing, empty shelves. Federal major disaster declared in Washington; unlocking funds and resources.
Saturday – no shelter in place for the state, Everett issues stay at home, folk are out at beaches and parks – so shelter in place must be coming soon. Similar around the world. A real lack of PPE for hospitals. Still ten days behind Italy – where another 800 died. Some brutal reports coming in from NYC and NOLA.
Friday – calls for food rationing in the UK (looks like a combination of JIT stock management and a move from eating out to eating at home), tax deadlines pushed out. CollegeBoard announced that AP tests will be short and online. That’s a relief here.
Washington confirmed cases per million is slowing – looks like a week of the slowing trend. This again from Mark Handley. Still ten days behind Italy.
Thursday – empty shelves in stores, rationing. US State Dept basically tells US citizens to come home. UK schools opening for kids of key workers.
Wednesday – US/Canada border closing for non-essential crossings, Eurovision cancelled (!), UK stores limiting quantities of food and cleaning products. UK schools closed indefinitely and exams cancelled.
Tuesday Mark Handley is now breaking out US State data – this from 16 March. WA is 10 days behind Italy right now – and still ahead of most of the rest of the states. It’s going to get bad, quickly.
Work from home has been extended from end of March to “foreseeable future”. CA and KS schools probably closed until the new school year (KS schools closed earlier, agricultural heritage).
Monday was more productive. I ventured into the deserted office on Friday to pick up a docking station – and now I have my work laptop connected to dual 4K screens – which means I can use all of that screen real estate, write and research more effectively.
Canada closed the borders to most (looks like US citizens are still allowed), Bay Area moved to shelter in place, UK Gov sent out ventilator blue prints to manufacturing (Rolls Royce, Airbus, etc).
Local and global coverage for future reference.
| Seattle Times | BBC | Guardian | |
| 16 March | here | here | here |
| 17 March | here | here | here |
| 18 March | here | here | here |
| 19 March | here | here | here |
| 20 March | here | here | here |
| 21 March | here | here | here |
| 22 March | here | here | here |
WA State COVID cases
Washington State DOH have been reporting confirmed cases since early February – and analysis shows this is exponential.
Update: 18 March – data up to 17 March shows that the rate of increase is slowing. This could be a net positive; or just a limiting factor of tests and testing capacity. Time will tell.
Data from WA DOH – collected daily.
Log trendline shows some 10,000 positive by around 22 March, 100,000 by 29 March. Staggering numbers – and likely to be depressed (i.e. delayed) by the lack of testing kits and testing capacity. UW Virology as an example has been running flat out and maximum capacity testing local and national samples.
Global and regional trends are available at the ever excellent JHU dashboard and this from Mark Handley at UCL.
COVID work from home – week 1 – 9 – 15 March
Work has been ok – I’ve been used to working remote, from home and using the technology for decades. Some coaching on best practices for the larger team – but it’s been ok. Certainly less productive – but ok.
A few folk started drifting back to the office; that should be discouraged. I travelled in early on Friday 13 March to pick up a docking station to be most productive. Traffic was exceptionally light.
Local businesses are struggling and closing. Seattle restaurants and bars are closing – for at least the spring. Many will probably not be back. Events have been cancelled for the foreseeable future – soccer, concerts, school events – everything. Public libraries in Seattle and King County closed on Friday 13 March. Large gatherings of more than 250 people across Washington state have been banned.
I discussed pulling the kids out of school early in the week. My personal preference would have been earlier – but they started the isolation on Thursday 12 March. Most of the local school districts started announcing full closures on Thursday 12; Issaquah School District declared on Thursday afternoon. There was significant pressure from local parents to close schools. The Governer announced a limited area school closure on Thursday 12 March – and extended this to statewide on Friday 13 March.
Continued coverage from The Seattle Times.
COVID early March
March 1 – 7
Most of this week I was in the office, running an architecture workshop in a closed conference room. Certainly no social distancing.
There was a slow build up of coronavirus news. March 2 – 18 cases locally, March 3 – 27 people locally tested positive. Most of these were centred on a care home in Kirkland. There were a couple of school closures based on early positive tests. Kirkland and Redmond saw a cluster of first responders with symptoms after responding to the care home.
March 2 also saw the Governer of Washington, Jay Inslee, declare a state of emergency.
From the afternoon of Friday 6th the decision was made to work from home; this was initially somewhat voluntary and quickly morphed into a mandated request to work from home and distance.
Continued shortages and panic buying – with long lines reported, and bare shelves for toilet paper, hand sanitiser, bleach and the like.
A local, Issaquah, nursing home had more residents test positive during the week. This is in addition to one reported last week (March 6).
The Seattle Times made all coronavirus news free and not paywalled. This will become a useful archive and reference for the realtime local news.
March 1
Recent Comments