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Ask the Hive Mind: What IS the percentage of covid cases here? And what does it mean?

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Okay, for those of you who are competent with math: check this and tell me how crazy I am.

We are told, on a page at Wunderground, that as of today, June 5, 2020, Maricopa County, AZ, has seen 12,091 confirmed cases of covid 19, of which 432 resulted in death. (Maricopa County is home to the city of Phoenix and its many sprawling suburbs.)

What percentage of the county’s population do these figures represent?

Maricopa County supposedly had a population of 4.485 million, as of 2019.

Am I right in thinking you calculate a percentage by dividing x (the number you want to compare with the total) by y (the total number)? Thus to determine what percentage 5 is of 10, you divide 5 by 10 and then move the decimal point two spaces to the right: so  5/10 = .5 = 50%.

True?

If so, then would this calculation be correct?

4.485 million = 4,485,000 (correct??)
12,091/4,485,000 =.002695875
Move the decimal 2 characters to the right to get .269587%, or, rounding up, about .3%.

Three-tenths of a percent? That represents the total number of known cases as a percentage of total population, almost 4½ million people.

Can that possibly be right?

We are getting ourselves in a frantic sweat over an ailment that affects less than 1% of our population — a lot less. An ailment whose death rate is thought to be around 1.3% of those afflicted? Theoretically, then: of those 12,091 cases, 157 patients should have died — many of them already seriously ill or very elderly.

Now, this is 157 people we would prefer not to lose. However, in terms of the county’s total population, it would seem not to be much:

157 deaths/4,485,000 = .0035%
Am I right in thinking that is way less than 1%?

The actual number of covid-related deaths in Maricopa County, if published figures are correct, is 432, out of 12,091 known cases of covid-19. That’s 3.57% of covid sufferers, and .0096% of Maricopa County residents.

For .0096% of our metropolitan area’s entire population, we’re shutting down our economy, closing schools, and running around with decorative but not very effective cloth or paper masks strapped over our faces? We’re enduring such a panic that you can’t find a roll of toilet paper, that beef is selling for $22 a pound, that grocery shelves are half-empty, that you can’t buy a bottle of household cleanser…because 3.57% of our population may die of this dread disease?

That’s assuming the figure given for total cases is correct. Many may not have been reported, and some may have been misdiagnosed.

Now, it’s true: we would like not to lose any fraction of our people to some bizarre new virus. The death rate for influenza is estimated to be around .1%. That is much lower than some estimates for covid-19: possibly around .6%. Unless the death rate shown for Maricopa County is accurate, in which case we have a very sickly population or we have much better case reporting or national figures are pretty far off-base.

Meanwhile, we’re told that 70% of deaths from the disease here occur among residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities. That would explain the “very sickly” impression: Arizona has a LOT of elderly, because a lot of people retire here. We’re the home of the Del Webb’s Sun Cities, and Webb had a slew of imitators. Thirty-seven thousand people, with a median age of 73, live in Sun City alone, and that appears not to include Sun City West (24,535) and Sun City Grand (14,385). Or Sun Lakes (13,975). Westbrook Village…Pebble Creek…Robson Ranch…Sun City Festival…Leisure World…Verrado…the Trilogy developments…Ventana Lakes…and many more in and adjacent to Maricopa County. Plus all the “active retirement communities” in Tucson, Flagstaff, Yuma, and waypoints. And that doesn’t count the residents of apartment-like warehouses for old folks like the Beatitudes and the Terraces. Add them all up and you’ve got hundreds of thousands of people over the danger age of 60.  Indeed…many hundreds of thousands. All living together.

The mortality estimates are very vague, and as far as I can tell not provable — because no one knows for sure how many Americans have already been infected with covid, an unknown number asymptomatically. And no one really knows how many cases of the flu go unreported.

But still…one is left wondering: are we getting our panties in a twist for less cause than we imagine? What if that 3.57% death rate is artificially elevated because we have so many residents here who are in the high-risk over-60 set? And so many segregated in long-term care, life-care, and retirement venues?

What if, rather than locking down the entire community, we took a different tack, primarily targeting high-risk groups? With covid-19, we know the over-60 population is most at risk of dying. What if we locked down only retirement communities, nursing homes, and long-term care facilities?

That alone could knock the death rate down significantly.

We know children can be silent carriers — and of course we do know that every bug in heaven goes crazy in a school setting. So what if we closed schools during an epidemic? What if we trained teachers to instruct online, and always had the software available for online education?

We know that large gatherings spread the disease. What if we canceled athletic events and closed theaters and other crowd-gatherers during an epidemic?

And knowing that about gatherings, what if we closed down only those businesses that house workers in open-plan bull-pen settings, and had them move to the work-at-home mode? Businesses whose employees have their own offices and whose employers are willing to pay to disinfect work spaces every night could stay open.

Restaurants? Well…most of them serve up pretty unhealthy food, and it would be next to impossible to serve customers in a dining-setting without spreading bugs. So it seems more justifiable to close restaurants in time of plague. However…what if government funding were provided so restaurant owners and chains could install drive-up windows and hire delivery services during times of plague? It would give those businesses at least a shot at hanging on for the duration…and customers could get their junk-food, processed-food fix, even if they’d have to eat it at home, in the car, or at a park. And what if all restaurant employees had to be tested for the bug on a regular basis, like once a week?

Then we have the problem that our hospitals are overwhelmed by a deluge of sick and dying covid victims. Could the problem be not that everyone in sight is keeling over with the dread disease, but that our medical system leaves a lot to be desired? (But…we already knew that, eh?) If our medical system staggers when faced with illness in a tiny percentage of the population, what would happen if we had to cope with, say, a nuclear war? Even one bomb would disable a region’s hospitals. Bombs over several cities would wreak catastrophe in hospitals all over the nation.

What if we threw out the lunatic patchwork that is our medical care system, took insurance companies’ sticky fingers out of the picture, did the same for the hugely profitable and rapacious Big Pharma industries and lobbyists, and restored sanity to medical care in America? Could we not then manage to afford to supply our medical providers with enough protective gear to handle an epidemic, and build hospitals large enough and strong enough to cope with a sudden influx of dangerously ill patients?

Given that your chance of dying from this disease is fairly low unless you’re already sick or unless you’re elderly, it seems as though blanket shut-downs amount to over-kill. Targeting high-risk groups and high-risk activities would be more complex and expensive than just telling everyone to go home and stay home. But it would also be a lot less destructive to the economy and a lot less disruptive to our society.

Cleaning the rot out of our medical system would help a lot, too.

Are we coming at the whole covid-19 mess from the wrong direction?

Not Dead Yet…

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Nope, I haven’t croaked over from covid-19 yet (though the accursed ragweed allergy was so exuberant this spring I came within an inch of running to the doc to get tested). Haven’t been killed in any protests — yet (though the temptation to riot in the streets is great: see b’low…)

The past couple weeks have rendered me incommunicado with…gasp!…work. A large and interesting project from a client is in-house. I should have turned it back to her before this, but a few other small distractions arose. And I’m nuthin’ if not easily distracted.

Three typical distractions this morning:

Her Majesty

The current battle in the Ant Queen Wars is in full sway. Her Majesty’s soldiers took possession of the kitchen counter, a matter complicated by the fact that I supposedly am not going into grocery stores and Home Depot…and I have no ant traps. Ordered up a package of bait that seemed to be highly reviewed.

Junk! The Queen’s minions recognized that stuff for what it is. So now we have another brand on order from Amazon, one that I’ve used before and…why didn’t I order that in the first place? Ohhhh well.

I thought the troops were entering the field of battle through some opening in the Cave of the Dishwasher, and so this ayem planned to call the handyman to pull the washer out from under the counter so I could sprinkle some DE under there. But by the light of dawn, the laydeez trail became visible: they had discovered an entry beneath the security screen on the side door to the garage. From there they marched across the floor to the kitchen door, where they managed to penetrate to the battlefield despite a thick piece of insulation along the doorjamb.

This was good. DE is not something you want to sprinkle liberally around a kitchen, and especially not on a counter — not unless it’s food-grade DE. This is swimming-pool DE, not something you’d normally choose to play with. But in the garage? WGAS!

So I bombed the trails across both entryways, handily repelling that battalion.

***

Earlier, it was out the door with the hound. We got out at 5 a.m. — hot and muggy even at that hour. The weather we’re enjoying is what I would call July weather. Usually in June it does not reach 112, and June is normally quite dry, so that the mornings and evenings are highly tolerable.

Not so, now: an hour’s walk through whatever that is out there turns into an uncomfortable traipse.

As we’re trotting homeward, a crazy lady hauls up behind us, yapping away as loud as she can yap.

I hate that. Most women do not know how far their voices carry outdoors, and so even normal conversation can be annoying from quite a distance. But this wasn’t conversation — she was alone. Finally I realized she was talking to herself in a loud voice…. But no…she wasn’t talking, she was singing. Sort of. More like squawking. She was moving faster than the dog and I were walking (which was as fast as I could chug along), and so instead of falling back, she was gaining on us.

At the corner of Neighborhood Lane and Feeder Street NW is a house where I often stop to chat with the residents. Butch is usually out puttering in the yard or the garage, with his wife Marge coming and going. If I can get to them there’ll be some safety in numbers, and if we have to we can go inside their house until the lunatic moves on. I don’t see him in his usual domain, but expect he’s in the garage.

As we come abreast of their house, the garage door opens and out comes Marge. I ask if I can hang around for awhile, and we wait together until the Loony Tune goes around the corner and heads south on Feeder Street. By way of polite small talk, I ask how they’re doing, and SHE says she just got back from taking Butch to the hospital for brain surgery.

Say what? She’s pretty upset, and I can tell you that she’s one tough lady.

She says that several years ago, Butch had three small tumors called meningiomas removed from the tissue that surrounds the brain (the meninges…hence meningioma). She said two of them were benign but one was ambiguous — not quite cancer, but not NOT cancer, either. As a result, he went through forty rounds of radiation therapy!

Holy crap!

What had her most upset right this minute was that because of the covid terror, they wouldn’t let her go in with him, and they will not let her visit him.

***

And in other news of how national events touch our lives… When Ruby and I got home, I picked up yesterday’s mail delivery as we walked past the mailbox. What do I find in the day’s catch but a pretty little check-sized envelope from the Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service.

Hot DAYUM, think I: this must be the ballyhooed second stimulus check! Must drive this thing up to the CU the minute they open, since the money bin is running dry.

No.

Not so much.

Rip open the envelope and find A CAMPAIGN LETTER FROM THAT BASTARD TRUMP RAVING ON ABOUT HOW WONDERFULLY HE AND HIS FELLOW REPUBLICANS (who, yes, dear fellow Republicans, do carry around his mud on their shoes) HAVE WANGLED THIS MUNIFICENT $1200 PAYMENT FOR US.

Holy goddamn shit. Excuse my language but it’s mild compared to the phrases passing through my mind.

Yes. That Bastard used taxpayer dollars — that would be your money and my money — to crow on and on about the CARES Act “which I proudly signed into law.” He personally loves you so much that he is “pleased to notify you” that your $1,200 payment (which, BTW, arrived here two weeks ago) is on its way.

Well. Does that mean he’s sending another $1200? Or is he just so stump-dump unaware he doesn’t know the money has already been sent out? Or so goddamned outrageously corrupt that he figures he can get away with sending out campaign mail on the taxpayer dime?

How is it possible to express my rage with the present State of our Union? If it were not 104 degrees at 9:00 p.m., I would cheerfully join the rioting mobs. Only be sure to wear a football helmet. Did you see where a couple of cops shoved a 75-year-old man off his feet and busted his head on the pavement? They were about to walk away and leave him there, as you can tell by a bystander’s video, when several onlookers told them they’d better call an ambulance.

And how did you like Der Wannabe Führer waving a Holy Bible around (upside down, aptly enough) on the steps of a church whose clergy and members could not agree less with his bastardry?

Oh, dear God. No wonder I’m not getting anything done. Back to work!

Of Retail, Runners, Recession, and…Birds?

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Yesterday I ordered a few things from Costco via Instacart. One of these was a 50# bag of birdseed. I’d sent them a message that I’d have a wheelbarrow ready, so we could just slide the bag out of the runner’s car into that and I’d roll it into the backyard — with the exception of one young male, most of their runners seem to be willowy young women.

What shows up at the door are not one but two joyous, hefty, and energetic lesbians. I say, I’ll bring round the wheel barrow. One of the women says no problem, I’ll carry it…where do you want it? 

So I let them in the back gate and the gal lifts that massive, inert sack of bird seed and strolls into the backyard with it like it weighed about as much as a three-month-old. The other one is the chatty type, and so she and I are having a good time yakking. I end up thanking them mightily for the hauling job (and giving them a generous tip). The chatty one says they just moved down here from Vegas because they couldn’t make a living up there. They got laid off their jobs in those gilded precincts and started working for Instacart to keep food on the table…and not much food. She said Instacart has a minimum payment to their runners of $7 per trip. But time after time, they — the two wymmen — would get orders for something in the range of seven bucks. So that means that if Suzie Q orders $7 worth of goods from Sprouts, Instacart makes nothing on the transaction.

Nothing!!! Think o’ that!

And think of what it implies for the runner: Here in lovely Phoenix, it takes me about 10 minutes to drive to Costco…5 to park and hike into the store. A typical Costco store covers about three acres. Let’s see…hmmmm… You trot to the far end of the store and you buy a bag of toilet paper (if you can find it), picking up stuff along the way: 15 minutes. Now go back out, 5 minutes to the car, after standing in the check-out line about 8 minutes. Now another 15 minutes to get to the customer’s house… That’s almost an hour. Seven bucks an hour…and you pay for gas, wear & tear on your vehicle, and car insurance out of that. If I’m not mistaken, you’re now deep in negative territory…

Here Instacart has a minimum order of $35…or at least, that was what I understood. Maybe that’s a local policy? She said they were already doing better here than  they were in Vegas, anyway.

§ § §

A-A-A-N-D this morning it’s another amazing adventure here at the Funny Farm! 😀

Ruby wanders out into the front courtyard where what should she find but a baby bird on the ground. Looks like an infant mockingbird. Or thrasher, maybe. The bird panics when Ruby goes over and sniffs at it. I call the dog off and pick up the babe, literally seconds before the watering system kicks in.

It’s frantic.

Bring it into the house and tuck it into an old checkbook box.

My neighbor Joel is out in front, teaching his high-school kids online. I annoy him by breaking into whatever he’s doing — because I know he and his kids have rescued wild birds before and think maybe the high-school has some kind of program for said rescue. He says no, he took the last bird down to Liberty Wildlife… South of two freeways. South of the river. Deep in one of the dankest slums this side of Albuquerque.

Ohhhhkayyyyy…. I try to figure out if there’s an alternative.

…Not so much.

Secure the nestling inside the box with a loosely wrapped paper towel, so air can get in and (i hope…) the bird can’t get out. Fortunately, it’s too exhausted and terrorized to try to escape. Climb in the tank, tune in the cowboy station, and start drivin’ drivin’ drivin’…..

Ohhhhh dear God, i hate driving in Phoenix….

But it’s not the usual teeth-jarring horrible drive. Only two morons cut in front of me. One idiot marches purposefully against the red light across a major intersection. Two construction zones. One really sad, heartbreaking bum, so, sooooooo stoned, one would say stoned out of his head but he apparently was out of his head to begin with, and so skinny, like either he never eats or the meth really burns the calories for him or maybe a bit of both. One pimp, dressed to the nines with his hair dyed orange, strolling past a strip club. Two railroad crossings, thank God neither of them occupied by stalled freight trains. Only one 737 shriekin’ in low across south 24th Street. Traffic relatively light. All in all, not a bad day for a drive.

Get down there and find the place with no problem. There’s only one person in front of me at the drop-off window, also turning in a lost baby bird.

Chat with the staff. The front desk supervisor told me they’d probably take in a hundred baby birds today.

Why? There hasn’t been any wind to knock them out of their nests…whaaa?

“It’s just the season,” says he. This happens every spring. And, he added, Liberty Wildlife takes in TEN THOUSAND BABY BIRDS A YEAR!

Holy mackerel!

It’s a huge facility. I gave them a little donation.

And drivin’ away thought…..hhhhmmmmmm….. If I have to drop out of choir because of the covid sh*t, that would be a place to volunteer.

So I’ll keep that in mind.

10,000 lost chicks a year. Think of that!

The Great Freezer Renovation Project…

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Welp, yesterday I spent the afternoon shoveling out and cleaning the Funny Farm’s two freezers and inventorying the existing store of frozen foods. The stocking-up project has worked pretty well, so far. Got both the refrigerator freezer cabinet and the big chest freezer in the back of the house emptied out, cleaned through and through, and then repacked and organized sanely.

There was a lot more stuff in there than I realized. My son had bought a pork shoulder from Costco when I asked him to retrieve dog food makings. Lordie! HUGE!!! Once this was cut up and a chunk of it converted into dog food, I still was left with at least seven pounds of pork. Alas, though, only one package of boned chicken thighs remains, so somehow I’ll have to extract three more double-packets of those from Costco…or find a way to fake it. In addition, there’s one roll remaining of Freshpet dog food — figure I’d better get two more of those, which I can raid from Fry’s or AJ’s.

The dog food also contains a Costco “Normandy style” veggie mix and a cup of oatmeal — only about 1/3 package each of those remains. These, though, are easy to retrieve from Costco. Apparently the rationing applies mostly to paper goods and meats.

The situation with the human protein sources looks much better:

  • 7 pieces of steak
  • 2 1/2-racks of barbecued spare-ribs
  • 1 piece frozen cod
  • 12 pieces frozen salmon
  • 5 servings frozen shrimp
  • 3 servings frozen scallops
  • and a package of frozen mussels that, when steamed, will probably make at least two and possibly even four servings.

So that stash represents the backbone of 31 or 32 main meals. If I follow through with my plan to alternate vegetarian days with meat/fish days, said stash could in theory last about two months.

Then we have…

  • 3 pounds of butter, frozen
  • 12 pounds(!!!!!) of white and whole-wheat flour, plus about 1/3 pound imported Italian flour
  • much, much, MUCH more frozen veggies than I thought could possibly be in those freezers

Turns out there’s a small bonanza of frozen spinach, scattered among several packages. Dumped it all into one large Ziplock bag, and it just about filled the thing chuckablock full. There’s also about 8 to 10 servings, all told, of corn and peas, plus about 1/3 bag chard. To say nothing of the chard and lettuce and tomatoes growing in the yard…

LOL! I also found a treasure trove of home-made ice packs. Apparently every time I sprain something, I make a new ice pack, rather than bestirring myself to search for one that’s already in the freezer. Whenever I stumble back to normalcy, I toss the new ice pack into the back of the freezer. 😀

What can I say??? Some of these, I threw out (or, if they contained washcloths, deconstructed and laundered). Just put away enough to cope with the next little disaster.

So. There was whole lot more stuff in there than I expected. On Wednesday I’ll make a Costco run and hit the front door as they open (Costco restocks on Mondays and Tuesdays, meaning Wednesday is the optimal shopping day there). I’ll grab what I can to try to bring the dog-food makings up to snuff, and also try to score at least a rack of lamb, if nothing else. I understand they’re rationing paper supplies and meat. Then at the Fry’s on the way home, I’ll try to grab two or three more large rolls of Freshpet dog food for the hound…one of those lasts her about 12 days, so a total of three in the freezer would be almost 40 days’ worth of Fake Food for her, not counting about 7 weeks’ worth of real food (…assuming I can snab 3 double-packages of chicken from Costco). Even if I can’t, that kind of low-end chicken cut is the sort of thing you find in Mexican markets, so I may be able to nail the chicken from El Rancho.

Okay, that will give me about three months’ worth of meals for myself, about…what?…eight or ten bread loaves for myself, and during the summer when things are growing, easily three to four months’ worth of veggies.

So it looks like in the short run, rather than perishable foods what I really need to stash are beans, rice, pasta, and household goods (paper products, cleaning solutions, shampoo & conditioner, soap, and the like).

LOL! Don’t Get Old, Kids!

Do not do what I have done
In the house of the setting sun…

😀 Whatever you say about dotage, you do have to allow that it gets funnier and funnier the the further you journey into the House of the Setting Sun.

Yesterday I wrote an entire post about the corvid  [SQUACK!!] virus. That would the the one that looks a lot like this fella…

 

 

Planning Ahead: The NEXT Covid Epidemic

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So…as all of us already knew (except apparently the eager beavers intent on turning a few bucks by lifting the quarantine before it made sense to do so), we’re being told that by this fall we can expect a second wave of the covid-19 plague. From the git-go, epidemiologists have been predicting this — and suggesting it’s likely to be even worse than what we’ve seen so far.

While the dust is partly settled, anyone with half a brain should be preparing for this. A new flare-up will entail even more frantic stockpiling and hoarding, and even worse shortages of food and household goods than we’re already seeing. Now is the time to learn some lessons from the Mormons and build a stash of frozen and nonperishable foods to last at least three and preferably six months.

Basically, what they suggest is that you build up your cache a little at a time: when you go to the grocery store, buy what your family needs…and then some. In other words, if you would normally buy one week’s worth of food, buy two weeks’ worth. That is, buy an extra month’s worth of storeable rations every 30 days. Once you have enough to cover a year, keep it fresh by using a little and then replacing it with each shopping trip.

I think this is a good idea, but…we don’t have that much time.

What we here at the Funny Farm do have is $1200 stuffed in our pocket from Uncle Sam. I propose to use that money to begin building a store of food and necessaries that will last at least six months.

First off, it seems to me we have two categories of goods in this department: one is household items, and one is food items.

We know that when the panic buying began a couple months ago, the first thing people ran for was paper towels and toilet paper. Soooo…. Now that those things are available again, clearly they should be at the top of the list of things to stash in the storage closet. To that I would add batteries, propane, laundry detergent, dish detergent, window cleaner, soap, shampoo, disinfectant.

So, calculate how much you use over, say, a month, and buy six times that much. I personally don’t use all that much of these goods, so a single Costco junket could fill up the garage storage closet with enough  to last for half a year. If something is being rationed, then it’s a matter of visiting several stores a number of times, accruing as much as you can and stashing it in storage.

Don’t have enough room in your home to hold a six- to twelve-month supply of household goods? Well…what’s to stop you from renting a storage unit? Paper towels don’t have to be refrigerated, and neither do foods that are not fresh or frozen — that is, canned goods and dried foods such as rice, pasta, and beans. Find the space to keep the stuff you know you’re going to need in the near- and middling future, and get it now, while things are relatively quiet.

Now…food is somewhat more problematic. I have a chest freezer that, organized properly, will hold a fair amount of stuff, and of course the refrigerator in the kitchen also has a small freezer. I would be surprised if these two, together, would hold six months worth of meat, vegetables, and other perishables. But I sure intend to try. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll buy another freezer. Better to spend a chunk of your government dole on food ahead of time than have to thrash around to get your hands on enough to provide a decent diet. Or enough toilet paper… 😀

Too, consider that you don’t need perishable foods to create meals that provide protein and nutrients to keep you healthy, especially if you supplement your stores with some salad greens & veggies from the garden. A combination of legumes (such as beans or lentils) with rice produces the complete protein that you get from meat, chicken, or fish. My plan is to continue doing exactly what I’m doing now: alternate vegetarian days with meat-eating days. This means that instead of having to buy 180 days’ worth of meat and fish, I’ll only need 60 days’ worth, which even my small trunk freezer will hold. Creative vegetarian dishes are good to eat and usually cost a fraction of a meal with a meat entrée.

Especially now that the cost of meat has gone through the roof. At one local grocer here, I saw beefsteak on offer for $22 a pound!

Pet food would also need to be stashed. Early on in the covid panic, I made a grocery-store run for friends who were in their 90s. They were concerned, among other things, about getting their cat’s preferred chow.

Couldn’t find even a tiny can of it on the shelves of two supermarkets. Had to substitute…and with cats, heaven only knows if the critter will eat it. Soo…. In the course of stockpiling human food, it would be wise to build a store of pet food, too.

To feed the corgi for six months (she eats just under 1/2 pound a day), I’d need 13 or 14 large rolls of fancy commercial dog food….or 6 to 12 packages of Costco pork shoulder (depending on the package size) and 12 packages of boneless chicken thighs.  If you feed your dog kibble, you’d need to extrapolate 6 months’ worth from the amount you feed per day. I use kibble as treats, and so would probably need only one small bag.

So. This is going to be a project. Obviously I can’t bring that much stuff into the house in one swell foop. I’ll have to buy a little at a time over the next few weeks. Costco is rationing meat, so I may have to put my son up to buying pork shoulder and chicken thighs for the dog food.

A-n-n-n-d….just as I get this all figured out and a long-term list organized, Excel goes into a Spinning Mandala of Death! Dayum. I hate computers!

😀

Recovered most of it.

This is a project I need to start very soon. Step one, though, will be to clean out and organize the freezers!

 

 

The Great iPhone Project…

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So my son kindly gave me a brand-new iPhone for my birthday! Can you imagine!!??? <3

I never could learn how to operate the Android system. For the requisite cell phones we’re all pretty much required to drag around with us everywhere we go, I use a couple of cheapo flip phones powered by Tracfone minutes, one for the car and one to drop in a pocket when I walk the dog…if I remember. It’s been obvious for quite some time that I need to get a smartphone and learn to use it, but the truth is…I’m all learning-curved out.

True that: I just flat do not want to have to learn any new techno-tricks. But alas…I’m resigned.

That settled, this is really a cool little machine. It’s an iPhone SE, Apple’s attempt at making its phones more or less kinda affordable. And we’re told that the iPhone is a lot easier for the aging brain to grasp than are android devices.

We shall see. In the meantime… Apple does not provide a manual for its iPhone! I couldn’t even figure out how turn the damn thing on! My son demonstrated and…well…then what?

I have noooo idea.

So eventually it dawned on me that of course YouTube must have tutorials on how to work the thing, if I could figure out which video goes with this model. And yea verily: I found one that’s close enough. Thing is…well…it runs an hour and 46 minutes!

If these things are so damn complicated that it requires an hour and 46 minutes to explain how to operate one, why the HELL doesn’t Apple provide some instructions?

At any rate, yesterday I sat through about half of it. Pretty enlightening…at least I’ve got a fair idea of how to turn it on and what it’s supposed to do. Today I loafed, and lazily failed to glue myself to a computer. But did realize that probably Amazon sells manuals for the iPhone… and yea, again: there they are. Most of them self-published DIY affairs full of typos and bêtises, but at least they’re available. For…uh huh: 25 bucks!

So I ordered one from the “For Dummies” series, which usually are fairly clear and at least are edited by real editors.

These, I figure, will obviate my having to take endless notes on the YouTube guy’s video. I couldn’t write longhand fast enough to keep up with him and at the same time figure out what he was trying to say. Which tells you more about how long it’s been since I’ve written even a few words in longhand than about how fast he talks.

You can connect this phone to your wireless, which will provide enough functionality for me to try some of the tricks described in the video and the book. Once I’ve figured out how to turn it on and what to do with it, then I’ll buy it some minutes. There are several plans on various carriers, but I figure I might as well stay with Tracfone, since I have no complaints with them.

Tracfone has a one-year plan that provides 1500 minutes of yak-fest plus 1500 texts for $125, a far cry from Cox’s gouge for a VoIP “land line” (which it’s not, anymore). I doubt if I’m likely to spend 1500 minutes on the phone for the rest of my entire life! And since I’ve never texted anyone in my life nor do I feel any great need to, chances that I will indulge in 1500 of them are about nil. With this package, you also get “1.5 GB of Data at 4G LTE Speed,” whatever that means.

I like Tracfone because you’re not nailed into any kind of contract with them. You pay, and you’re done.

But not quite, exactly. These minutes they sell carry over. The little clamshell phones now have tens of thousands of minutes accumulated on them. If that occurs with the year-long plan, too, presumably over time I’ll have so much paid-for time I can gossip with everyone in the city.

Anyway, first things first. And the first thing is to connect it to the wireless (somehow…) and then figure out the basics of how to use it. THEN feed minutes into it.