Blah [teh internets]
Sep. 24th, 2020 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterNothing much to report right now.
The lymph nodes in my throat are a touch swollen. The last time this happened was late February/early March, where I came down with a head cold two days later. Did I catch It, back in March? I still don't know. Never had a fever, at least. Am I catching It now? I sure hope not. We've had more cases show up on campus recently, so I very well could be catching It.
I found an opened packet of some old zinc-cherry-echinacea throad lozenges and am dutifully applying them to my mouth. Allergy drugs, also. I skipped rowing to try and reduce my contact with other human beings. Also, sleep.
I also told my students they can switch over to online-only if they'd prefer.
I did come in to campus today, in large part so I can make sure the insects get taken care of for at least this week, in case things start to take a turn for the worse for me.
And I finally preemptively ordered a usb webcam and another external hard drive for home use.
I've been monitoring the price for webcams for a little while, now. This story is simultaneously trivial and troubling to me. I just got another of the same model that the college provided me with at the start of emergency remote teaching, because if nothing else I know that it works and how it works.
When I first checked prices, back in May or thereabouts, this model retailed for $70. In August, when I checked again, I could only find it for $140. Now the price is back down to $70. Le Target claimed to carry it, but when I tried to purchase it through their online shopping emporium, a later screen in the shopping process informed me that I was gravely mistaken if I thought I could buy it from them, tsk tsk, for they did not have it in stock.
When I went back to the Oogley's site, where I'd begun my desperate search, the Oogley itself offered to sell the webcam to me, as fulfilled by Le Target. Why not give it a try, I thought, resigned to the fact that I was spending yet more money just to be able to do my job come hell, high water, or infectious disease.
It appears to have worked, according to a shipping confirmation received toay.
The troubling part: what's going on with the online shopping landscape these days? What does it mean that one company's purchasing method seems to supersede the other's? Is this some sort of monopolistic collaboration between two large tech/retail entities to try and grab some shopping money away from other large tech/retail entities?
I'm not even going to get into the other trick S discovered when he went shopping for freezers via The Despot, which also seems to be an increasingly common one, where a website gives the appearance that a brick-and-mortar location has an object in stock, when in fact that brick-and-mortar location does not when you actually go to visit it in person and without having prearranged to purchase and pick up said object.
I continue to strongly dislike online shopping because it seems that "choice" is getting narrowed down to futilely picking among a handful of companies, none of which has anything even close to the kind of ethical standards I'd like to see, and none of which will allow any kind of meaningful interaction with the desired object ahead of the purchase.
Meanwhile, when S and I do have some free time, we often wind up watching one of a handful of DIY online TV channels, where the channel creators regularly thank their viewers and subscribers for their support and ask their viewers to consider contributing and subscribing.
I really don't want to go that route at all with my lecture videos, for a whole host of reasons. To give one small example, here's someone who has much less access to resources than I do but who is doing some incredible work that deserves more support for a billion reasons:
https://youtu.be/S4RYUYgqsK4
Seriously, you should listen to Cher.
So anyway, harumph to having to spend even more money just to do my job, in the midst of a period of time where we're trying to run full speed ahead at the windmill without any breaks.
I really hope the zinc lozenges work.
Back to grading.
The lymph nodes in my throat are a touch swollen. The last time this happened was late February/early March, where I came down with a head cold two days later. Did I catch It, back in March? I still don't know. Never had a fever, at least. Am I catching It now? I sure hope not. We've had more cases show up on campus recently, so I very well could be catching It.
I found an opened packet of some old zinc-cherry-echinacea throad lozenges and am dutifully applying them to my mouth. Allergy drugs, also. I skipped rowing to try and reduce my contact with other human beings. Also, sleep.
I also told my students they can switch over to online-only if they'd prefer.
I did come in to campus today, in large part so I can make sure the insects get taken care of for at least this week, in case things start to take a turn for the worse for me.
And I finally preemptively ordered a usb webcam and another external hard drive for home use.
I've been monitoring the price for webcams for a little while, now. This story is simultaneously trivial and troubling to me. I just got another of the same model that the college provided me with at the start of emergency remote teaching, because if nothing else I know that it works and how it works.
When I first checked prices, back in May or thereabouts, this model retailed for $70. In August, when I checked again, I could only find it for $140. Now the price is back down to $70. Le Target claimed to carry it, but when I tried to purchase it through their online shopping emporium, a later screen in the shopping process informed me that I was gravely mistaken if I thought I could buy it from them, tsk tsk, for they did not have it in stock.
When I went back to the Oogley's site, where I'd begun my desperate search, the Oogley itself offered to sell the webcam to me, as fulfilled by Le Target. Why not give it a try, I thought, resigned to the fact that I was spending yet more money just to be able to do my job come hell, high water, or infectious disease.
It appears to have worked, according to a shipping confirmation received toay.
The troubling part: what's going on with the online shopping landscape these days? What does it mean that one company's purchasing method seems to supersede the other's? Is this some sort of monopolistic collaboration between two large tech/retail entities to try and grab some shopping money away from other large tech/retail entities?
I'm not even going to get into the other trick S discovered when he went shopping for freezers via The Despot, which also seems to be an increasingly common one, where a website gives the appearance that a brick-and-mortar location has an object in stock, when in fact that brick-and-mortar location does not when you actually go to visit it in person and without having prearranged to purchase and pick up said object.
I continue to strongly dislike online shopping because it seems that "choice" is getting narrowed down to futilely picking among a handful of companies, none of which has anything even close to the kind of ethical standards I'd like to see, and none of which will allow any kind of meaningful interaction with the desired object ahead of the purchase.
Meanwhile, when S and I do have some free time, we often wind up watching one of a handful of DIY online TV channels, where the channel creators regularly thank their viewers and subscribers for their support and ask their viewers to consider contributing and subscribing.
I really don't want to go that route at all with my lecture videos, for a whole host of reasons. To give one small example, here's someone who has much less access to resources than I do but who is doing some incredible work that deserves more support for a billion reasons:
https://youtu.be/S4RYUYgqsK4
Seriously, you should listen to Cher.
So anyway, harumph to having to spend even more money just to do my job, in the midst of a period of time where we're trying to run full speed ahead at the windmill without any breaks.
I really hope the zinc lozenges work.
Back to grading.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-25 02:09 am (UTC)Here’s hoping it’s just a fall cold or leaf mold allergies.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-25 01:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-25 02:09 pm (UTC)Best of luck.