How is everyone keeping sane?

Moscow is on an increasing lockdown, public and road transport will be regulated by electronic pass system starting at 15 April. My job allows teleworking, so I will probably wait a week or two, go through the nCov test and go to my mother living in rurals. I have very few activities outside of my house and very few non-internet contacts and I have no close relatives who are at risk so I am chilling.

"How is everyone keeping sane?" - not watching any TV is key to sanity even when there are no active pandemics.


I totally have no bright ideas right now except that I need to buy a stockpile of favourite snacks in the distant groceries which won't be legally accessible for me by 15th .

Edited by Alt Bass 2020-04-11 11:27 PM

You're absolutely right about that. Quit watching in 2008, couldn't be happier. Any shows I catch, I watch online. Those are very rare, and few between. And if I do watch something, it's usually some show from the 70's through the 90's.

Good you're staying safe, Alt Bass. Hope everyone stays safe through this. Honestly, I don't know what to believe. I hear of people dying, some governments are saying it's bad while others aren't. The U.K. has downgraded the Corona Virus threat, the U.S. says it's projections of how many will die were overblown.

Not watching TV or more specifically consuming media is an important way to keep your mental health. I've self limiting to 30 minutes in the morning and that's it.

If you find yourself glued to the news or doom and gloom coming through some social media feed or another. Stop, put it down and get away from it. It's just going to mess with your head.

Porn, watch porn. Then watch Corona coverage. I find that uplifting. Porn makes me feel sad and inadequate.

There goes the PG13

Alt Bass, in the late 80s I worked at the US Embassy in Moscow and lived near the Proletarskaya metro station. I can't imagine what lockdown would have been like in Moscow back then compared to now.

Late 80s were the least totalitarian years of USSR. I imagine that if this exact virus emerged at those years there simply would be not such a big need for severe lockdown because population density and mobility were by far smaller. IMO if it happened at those years the primary problem would be incompetence of government.

Edited by Alt Bass 2020-04-13 8:13 PM

I managed to install Windows 2000 on a thin client. In the middle of installing ReactOS on an older Core 2 Duo PC, writing things on my 320LX as well. Am doing goods overall.

That's not a server appliance, it's a standard Wyse terminal with a compact keyboard. It's a CherryG80-11900LUMEU-2 to be exact. These were pretty standard for PoS use or anywhere that there was little space and no room for an external mouse. Ergonomically very poor of course. The keyboard would go on a 19" rack tray as it's 414mm wide or on a crash cart, but proper server room keyboards are usually on draws



Windows 2000 has a boot floppy set to allow boot install. USB FDD or UFD with floppy emulation will allow you to use them to run a clean install. I have images somewhere if you need them.

Don't forget to patch it! https://www.hpcfactor.com/qlink/?linkID=147

Cool! I walked past the US Embassy in Moscow a few years ago. Can't imagine what it was like back then.

I spent the first 2 weeks tinkering with my j720 and mp900c...specifically going down the rabbit hole of setting up the Flashair sdcard/wifi combo.To me, they're very much like a jigsaw puzzle...lots of dead end trials and finally success. This was followed by comparing the built in wifi lucent and aironet WEP based 11mbs cards with an old wep router and NAS storage...in some ways they are similar in thru-put at times. This was followed with revisiting the ESP32 microcontroller and programming web pages and storing files using SPIFFS (file system)...the usual turn the built-in LED on and off from the Jornada or Mobilepro.

I loaded loads of wikipedia files---mega zillions on the huge 30 GB partitions (2 each per 64 GB cards) on the Flashair in the j720 card slot (pcmcia to sdcard converter)---wirelessly from my HP mega powered laptop. You know, cruise the net for javascript tutorials, wikipedia and save from the laptop directly to the flashair on the j720. Then later just relax with the J720 reading up on whatever...latest on drosophila fruit flies, cytokinesis, Eutruscan history, octopus life cycle, geologic time scale (cambrian, ordovician, silurian, devonion, carboniferous, permian [extinction],triassic, jurassic, cretaceous, etc.)

The tinkering puzzle part kept me busy, the articles kept me entertained...with little or no time to watch TV news... IcksNay on the corona brew, yet a glass of red wine in the afternoon after a 15 mile ebike ride on the sidewalks up the foothills of Highway 74 to the wildlife refuge with spring flowers and dirt biking on the trails for 1/2 mile...with the bonus of coasting back downhill for 40 minutes back to the desert condo (this was going to be my vacation for 2 weeks before the lockdown).

But, hey, maybe Rich has a better idea...

Edited by joval 2020-04-14 3:57 PM

When I was there (87-89) we were still primarily in the old embassy building; they were using the housing and common areas in the new embassy building (only a block or two away), while Navy CBs worked around the clock to find and remove bugs from the new office building itself (the US agreed to let the Soviets pre-fabricate the new building off-site, and surprise, it was riddled with bugs).

I just stepped foot outside for the first time in three-ish weeks. It was a ghost town, tumbleweeds and all. All stores have plastic sneeze guards at the registers, buses have closed off the front area and only accept payments made through an app or online. I think I'll just stay inside. I *could* survive the Corona-virus, but since it's not Gluten Free™, I don't want to chance it.

Anyway, needless to say I don't think anyone is sane anymore.

Wow, I haven't been on that stretch of California 74 for years. Some nice views of the desert below - including the Borrego Valley on the south side, west of the Salton Sea. I used to do a lot of dirt bike riding on state park property in that area with my brother and sister before my brother passed away in 2018. Not the same kind of dirt bike, though - it's a gasoline-powered motorcycle. Still have the bike but haven't ridden it since then even though it's street legal. (I am dreaming of getting an e-bike too, but again not the same kind - I'm looking at electric-powered enduro [street and dirt] motorcycles.)

Didn't know you were a bike rider CEGeek. I was born on a cycle I think. Cruised Hwy 1 and 101 in your state many many times as nearly every interstate in the US. Back then it was on my Suzuki GT 750… the old "Buffalo."

But my real love was trail riding. Hodaka 100, Suzuki 125 Duster, Yamaha 175 Enduro…the old machines that had dual shocks on the swingarm before the more efficient single shock of today's machines…