Hope everyone is doing ok in this situation

[GibsonGM]

Doing OK in the boonies of Maine. Doubling the garden this year, which means cutting the sod out, pulling the loam back, and digging in to pull up the root mat, then putting the soil back.  Good clean fun!    The wife has the canning stuff ready - didn't get to do sap this year (we should have). 

We have cluster flies, but no box for them....I consider myself to be from the Brotherhood of the Mouse Skull, however (if you have owned an old farmhouse, you might 'get' that).  1860 here.

Ordered up enough stuff to stay busy for a while, including building Dead Astronaut's Cab Sim, something put off for too long!  Maybe will get back into recording a little.  Hope everyone stays well, and thanks Aron for your hard and generous work in continuing to help us feed our habit!

[italianguy63]

Got pretty bored finally.. we got in the car, and went for about an hour long drive along the rivers (we have 3 of them here), and the Ocean.. then back by Port Canaveral, and to the grocery store to pick up our "pre-shopped" supplies.. then back home.. made spaghetti, and now drinking beers..  It was a nice change.

[Fancy Lime]

I'm not doing ok here, but I have learned that is is ok to not be doing ok when the world is on fire.  ...

Wonderful grunge lyrics, so I had to feed them into talktotransformer. The AI is in it's Christian Rock phase:
"I'm not doing ok here, but I have learned that is is ok to not be doing ok when the world is on fire. Which you can see by those pictures. In this whole world, we are in bad shape. The world is on fire and we are not doing okay with that. My only hope is that my families faith will be restored. But I just don't see it. You all must believe in the Lord. He is able to raise up those who will help Him rebuild a ruined earth. Why don't you get off your high horse and just do what you are supposed to. If you are not interested in helping your local city, state, or country please get out. We need your help and your money. Stay away from"

Anyway, I agree very much with your statement! It's worth remembering that for most of human history, pandemics like these were slower to spread but much more deadly. All around the place where I grew up there are ruins in the forests. Remnants of villages that were just wiped out by the plague, famines, or wars some time in the past 3000 years.

Thanks for keeping the forum up Aron, building stuff is the only thing not breaking my heart and soul right now. Everything I do is gone. Gigs, tours, sessions, grants, lessons, festivals, repairs, studio gear, events...

I'm trying to keep my head up. Maybe the legion of crappy bars pretending to be venues, making money off of mediocre bands and their friends buying drugs, oops, I mean alcohol, will belly up out of here. Maybe the multitude of uninspired, unremarkable bands that fill those pseudo venues every night of the week will go back to the garage and go back to having fun, instead of being depressed by the impossibility of their rock 'n' roll aspirations, as they play too loud for no one at a bar they would never hang out at otherwise. Maybe we'll even go back to having actual folk music, you know, playing at home for yourself and family and friends and neighbors like we used for a million years. Maybe we'll start singing together again, like we used to for a million years. Ever sing with your friends? It's wonderful.
Maybe the days of 10,000 20 year olds puking in music festival BFIs will be over, maybe music festivals will be over, they're lousy with fluff and filler anyway. Maybe we'll make festivals about having fun, and they'll just happen to have music, instead of have corporate music festivals that are only about making a few Top 40 headliners money.
Maybe Behringer will go out of business. Maybe the DIY guitar pedal scene will go back to being about making stuff, instead of selling stuff. Maybe Guitar Center will go back to being a special place, instead of a place that reeks with the carrion of dead dreams, a rotten music "industry", and exploited international labor market. And Behringer.
Maybe the trust fund kids flooding the market with studios, labels, boutique guitar pedals, and modular synths will run out of patience and go back to yachts and sports cars instead of pretending to be interested in Buchlas and Neumanns. Maybe this will "thin the herd", maybe talented people will be in demand again.
Then again, maybe the only thing left standing after all this will be Drake, Coachella, and dentists with guitar collections. And Behringer.

Good rant! I hear you! And Behringer...

...

Also our town is in the middle of nowhere, so 75 miles doesn't even get me anywhere besides lakes or mountains

OK, now you got me jealous.


I just put the chilies in bigger pots. With real fresh horse shit and sand from the river because the garden center is still closed. Good dirty fun!

Stay safe, everyone!
Andy

[Mark Hammer]

I feel for those who live in small domiciles and don't have a car.  We're lucky.  The house ain't huge, but it's not an 850sqft-furnished-by-IKEA bachelor apartment, and we have a big yard and big unoccupied schoolyard behind us.  I can make silly noise at my end of the house and my wife can have her Zoom work-meetings at the other end, and we don't bother each other.  Our older son lives by himself in a 1-bedroom downtown, as does my sister.  Neither have cars and normally rely on public transit or Uber.  He has a high-end VR headset and plenty of games to keep busy with, and she has a cat.  But neither of them can go into a room in the house or a corner of the garden they haven't been in for ages and think "Hey, yeah, THIS place!".  Our son makes me pick him up from downtown occasionally so he can do his woodwork in the garage.  The other day he was thrilled just to rake up and bag leaves.

You'd think I would finally finish that blasted Hyperflange, but there are so many Youtubes to watch, comments to comment on, and podcasts to listen to that I'm getting less done these days, rather than more.  I gotta fix that.  I also have to find flour somewhere tomorrow.  Stores everywhere are out of the stuff.  I guess those who aren't soldering are baking.

[aron]

Yeah, it's so weird.... flour, toilet paper and hand sanitizer gone.
I made this short video recently....

https://vimeo.com/407482963

[davent]

I still find myself wishing for more hours in a day, been a self isolator, social distancer most of my life so even easier to accomplish that these days, always have endless things to keep me occupied.
dave

[soggybag]

I've been off the stompbox thing for a few years and just started it up again. I'm in SF but we're out by the ocean so it's pretty quiet. Me and my wife work from home and teen is going to school online. We're all home all day. It's pretty weird and hyper normal at the same time.

[EBK]

I'm not doing ok here

Anything we can do, Eric?  (PM if you want!)  Perhaps it's time some of us adopted some of this new-fangled tech the younglings use and do web chatz an' sh!t?  (Need a "young-dude" emoji.  Or an "old-dude-pretending-desperately-to-be-a-young-dude" emoji... )

Thanks, Marc.  You guys are doing a good job already helping me.  Keep posting build reports, asking interesting technical questions, and don't let that jokes thread dry up!

Anxiety and depression are my main difficulties.  Not a great combo during ideal times -- super shitty combo during a pandemic. 

My grandma died last week.  She was almost 100 years old, so it was likely going to happen sometime  relatively soon anyway, I suppose.  But, the messed up thing is that there will be no memorial service.  When people die during a pandemic, a different set of practical concerns come into play, and grieving is a different process. 

Everything is just so weird right now.  I'm on mandatory telework, and I am stunningly inefficient at it. 

That's all I'm going to write of my troubles.  I'm still building pedals, and I have watched all of Tiger King.  Those are positives.   

[Mark Hammer]

Maybe we'll learn to be patient again.

I recall listening to a radio show about European sodbusters.  They'd send the teenage son to North America, with $50 or something like that - generally, their life savings - to stake a claim on some farmland.  The kid, who would be all of 17, would take 3 weeks or more to cross the Atlantic on a ship.  He lands on the east coast, then takes a train west until he got to the prairies, a few weeks later.  He takes a few more weeks to scope out some workable land, and drops the money down on the land claim and sends for the rest of the family.  It takes even more weeks for the letter to find its way back to ma and pa in the old country, and they pack up everything and take a ship, then a train to where the kid is.  By now, it has been maybe 5-6 months since pa has seen his kid, who was trusted with nearly all the family's savings.  Never mind that it's going to take even longer until their farmland shows the first hint of providing a living for them.

And we're pissed because we can't hit the clubs this weekend.  Jeez.  I see someone commented on your video, aron, about how they want to fight back and claim their liberty and freedom.  Yeah, right.  Patience is a rare commodity.

[GibsonGM]

Patience IS a rare commodity...I'd wager that freedom is more rare still    So is working the way the pioneers or First Depression-era ppl like our grandparents did.

Maybe it's ok to say we'd like all of those things to be front and center, going forward!  They'll all certainly be required.   

People are incredibly spoiled, and generally squander those things anyway - they don't value them...I hope they learn how to after this.

[iainpunk]

Patience IS a rare commodity...I'd wager that freedom is more rare still

freedom is a state of mind, patience is a facet of the mind, and more patient people tend to be freer than impatient people are

i find that the quarantine affects me more than i expected. i am really used to be among friends, go out, go to rehearsal, volunteer at the bar/venue, volunteer as a scouting leader etc. and being constrained inside takes more of a toll on me than i expected, seeing only 7 people for weeks now drives me crazy.

i discovered that i can't work on a lot of projects because i don't have all the parts i would need, i ran out of enclosures, i have 2 jacks left and no income as long as we are confined in our homes.

i hope the rest of you do better in these horrid times,
cheers,
Iain

[cab42]

Both my wife and just need a computer (each) and an internet connection to work. In fact, this way of working is not that different from what I do everyday, I just do it from home. Since the finance crisis in 2008 everything has been remote anyway.

My wife and I have talked about how smooth everything has been going, considering the small house we live in. The biggest problem I can think of, is that my package with parts from Tayda has stranded somewhere, and I need those switches!! I also do miss my daily bicycle ride to work, though. Small problems, I know.

Denmark is opening slowly again. Schools and kindergartens opened last week. My youngest son started friday. They are split into groups of 10-12 kids with one teacher and using the school facilities and surroundings creatively.

The pressure on the health system has been much lower than expected. My oldest son had a minor kidney operation postponed until October when the pandemic started, but last week the hospital called, and he was operated yesterday.

It's another story with my brother in law. He's a engineer on a ship, and was supposed be home mid March, but they can't replace the crew as no one will let them leave the ship and the replacements are stuck at home.

[blackieNYC]

I'm actually still going to work.  I'm an engineer at a news organization with about 400 employees, working from home, and there's only 7 of us left in the office.  I'm alone on my floor, and I've started talking to myself.
Very glad to have a job - and to get out of the house.

Get well soon Etienne!

[GibsonGM]

Patience IS a rare commodity...I'd wager that freedom is more rare still

freedom is a state of mind, patience is a facet of the mind, and more patient people tend to be freer than impatient people are

i find that the quarantine affects me more than i expected. i am really used to be among friends, go out, go to rehearsal, volunteer at the bar/venue, volunteer as a scouting leader etc. and being constrained inside takes more of a toll on me than i expected, seeing only 7 people for weeks now drives me crazy.

i discovered that i can't work on a lot of projects because i don't have all the parts i would need, i ran out of enclosures, i have 2 jacks left and no income as long as we are confined in our homes.

i hope the rest of you do better in these horrid times,
cheers,
Iain

So...being restrained by government 'rules' (note that I don't say whether they are necessary, urgent, sensible etc., not judging) affects you in a negative way....but, if 'freedom is a state of mind', then why not just get in a cool state of mind at home, locked in, and then - aren't you happy and carefree?  Your post says you're not.  The 'state of mind' argument makes me wonder if convicts in prison can feel free, by using their minds.    I'm just adding to your post, Iain, not contradicting or arguing, by the way.  I hear ya!

The feelings you describe remind me of someone who feels like...maybe they've lost a bit of freedom, is all.  Especially the 'going crazy' part.  Most of us are more than willing to put some level of freedom aside in the face of a public health crisis, albeit temporarily...but NO place on earth that I know of has quarantined EVERYONE before this.  It's probably not really legal in the USA (need SCOTUS to weigh in, if a case is made).   This is one for the history books and courts.  And I really hope the courts DO take up the suspension of guaranteed rights which were violated in some places.   But not all (not here in my area of Maine, for example). 

I do think we avoided losing 4x, 8x the numbers by 'sheltering in place'...but we did lose something else, too.  Any more and this will be political, ha ha...enjoy the rest of the night.

[davent]

I cought C19 (presumed case, untested, because at the time I spoke to some professionals, they couldn't spare the tests) early-mid march, which wasn't fun. It was actually pretty brutal. Self-quarantine isn't fun either but necessary especially because I live in a pretty dense city.

Much better now, major symptoms mostly gone, aside from some lingering effects on my lungs, sense of taste/smell, some other small stuff. Have been working from home for a bit. Pretty crazy that my workplace managed to transition ~4000 employees to remote desktop/citrix in just a couple weeks!

Personal project-wise, have been working on making a modular lunetta synth!

Missed this! All the best going forward Etienne, fingers crossed you're now immune.
dave

[aron]

Yes Etienne, glad you are getting better. I found out a long time friend caught it in Sweden. He's in ICU and on ventilator :-(

[bluebunny]

Sorry to hear about your Grandma, Eric.  We can raise a glass to her memory.  I hear Rob's brewing something to fill that glass.  BTW, I am also ridiculously inefficient at the WFH thing (but no-one seems to notice).  My home office space is also where I keep all my instruments, so not all is bad. 

Hope your friend improves, Aron.  A workmate of mine caught it from his wife - she works for the health service.  They're both over it now, but it knocked them for six.  (Their 4 y/o daughter seemed unaffected?)  And glad to hear you're improving, Etienne, and keeping busy with SDIY.

[deadastronaut]

its not the lockdown thats doing my head in, its having mrs astro working from home.....

bless her little cotton somewhat annoying socks...

on the plus side she cooks a lot more now...yum.


and thankyou aron for this place....top man. stay safe. 

[antonis]

its not the lockdown thats doing my head in, its having mrs astro working from home.....

I'm not in the same situation, although my wife does work from home during quarantine (Biochemistry teacher..) while I keep working as usually  (Medical Supplies & Service) but I have more than 10 home calls per day for IT ultra high level communication problems..
(like UPS switched off unit, loose Screen cable, wireles mouse pad empty battery, Wi-Fi power cable unpluged, etc..)

[Fancy Lime]

To all those demanding their freedom back, I would like to say that freedom is not an unlimited absolute. In any type of society, one persons freedom necessarily infringes on another ones. I my freedom to go clubbing or get a haircut (not that I would do either of those things, ever, but you get the point) may endanger the safety of the vulnerable and thereby infringe on their freedom to even leave the house. Does my freedom to haircut trump your grandpas freedom to have a walk in the park? Does someones freedom to do business and make money trump someone else's freedom not to get infected with a potentially deadly disease as soon as they leave the house? Tough and uncomfortable questions, especially in democracies. We can't have all the freedoms due to external factors like the virus.

It is also worth mentioning that we gave up a LOT of freedoms after 9/11 in favor of security and some of those security measures are of very dubious benefit. Strange world, where the same people who have no problem with governments based on flimsy excuses, loose their $#!+ as soon as the Gommament dares impose measures that actually keep them save from a real and present danger.

Let's just hope everybody learns a little from this whole ordeal. I have not abandoned all hope yet, that humanity may emerge from this crisis a little wiser and more responsible. We'll see. It may also go the other way.

In the meantime, I also raise a commemorative glass to Eric's Grandma. If you can't have a memorial service in "real life", we can at least have a virtual one here. To Aron's friend and everyone else infected: Krya på dig snart!

And thanks to Aron for our virtual clubhouse!
Andy