I still have to go into work (essential employee who *can’t* work from home) but luckily everyone else in my area is working from home. So still pretty isolated day to day.

Enjoying a lot of Apex right now, although I hopped back into D2 for IB and had way more fun than I thought I would!

Hey friends!

Been a little bit, but I still check the forums from time to time even though I don't play.

Got to play though Doom Eternal (enjoyed it!), probably the first gaming I've gotten to do in probably 6 months. It really was some sorely needed self-care, honestly.

So. COVID-19.

How are you?
Are you stuck at home?
Are you working?
Do you have ways to be social or keep monotony at bay? Still Raiding?
Do you need to vent?
Do you need anything?
Are you ok?

Sound off. Let your friends know how you're doing. People care about ya!

My wife has Asthma so we just started self-quarantining as soon as we realized what might happen. Fortunately we don't have many cases up here yet, but our goal is not to leave the house for as long as possible. That means cooking from the pantry as much as possible. Realistically we don't go out that much so not that much has really changed for us.

I haven't felt a desire to load up Destiny except maybe to play with some of you folks, but so far I've been able to play other games with people from here (Apex Legends, MCC). Keep safe everyone!

How are you?

That's a loaded question.

Are you stuck at home?
Are you working?

No and yes, I have a better job now but I'm still working retail. Hey, can't beat thousands of dollars in the bank.

Do you have ways to be social or keep monotony at bay? Still Raiding?

Hahahahaha. Social.

Do you need to vent?

No, thanks for asking though. I really needed it a while back when I lost someone but I got through it.

Do you need anything?

Nothing I'm likely to find here.

Are you ok?

I'll be fine.

Sound off. Let your friends know how you're doing. People care about ya!

What about you? We've had friction, or I've had friction with you, but I think it's noble to ask this so I'll ask you back. Are you alright?

Granted the circumstances could be better, but the weather is nice(ish), and my backlog has been calling me. My only real concern is food, as there are still shortages and large queues at most stores.

Inb4 something something socialism bad.

(over 200 just at the liquor store, but they are still open as an essential service)

That is some legal kung fu right there.

I kid because I love.

I mean, I've literally been pooping my whole life. I think I know a thing or two.

In fact, I'll be stopping there next year when I guide some guys on a section hike of part of the Appalachian Trail. They've got no gear and little experience, but somehow I got roped into getting them ready to do this. Should be interesting.

Today I joined the ranks of working from home. I'm not a homebody. I dont know how I will handle this.

If you liked the 2016 version, you'll enjoy Eternal (story is a bit more forward facing this go round, which is polarizing for some).

I very much did. Hard to say on the story front. I did like how things were presented in the last game, but I think the real reason I played was the combat, which seems at least as good so far, maybe better.

I played through on Ultra-Violence, got my shit kicked but made it through. Enjoyed the difficulty spikes quite a bit but then on a re-play on an easier difficulty found I enjoyed just tearing around the levels soooooo......
YMMV.

UV is how I did every previous DOOM so my intent is to do that here, too. So far it's been reasonably tough, but I haven't spent an hour redoing the same room or anything. Hopefully doable.

Glad you're doing OK. I figured you being a fellow IT guy would likely be fine and have stuff to do, yet not impact your day-to-day much.

Yep, just having to make a conscious effort to not go out for groceries and such.

Keep that balance in check and check on your family and extroverted friends!

Thanks for the reminder. An unfortunate consequence of not having much trouble so far is that I sometimes temporarily forget how much some of my friends' lives must feel very different right now.

A social interaction camel, you might say.

This describes me so very well. Can I steal it?

I’m glad you started this thread and checked in on everyone. I’m impressed that you followed up on every response individually. Stay well.

All the best, my friend.

Well that sounds kinda dark man. If you need to vent, even if it is here, you should do it. People here take a genuine interest in each other. It is a weird holding pattern for sure though.... groundhog day.

It's gonna get better! It just may not happen as fast as everyone wants it to.

Heh... Dark!?! Oh...I guess... yeah I can see it. I guess it's all relative. Point of it all is, I'm fine. And a Thank You for the nod. The simple gesture. I might not be where I want to be, but I'm exactly where I need to be. Plus, with all this madness and the inmates running the asylum, I'm probably in a better mindset then most. Possibly. Plausibly.

On the upside, now I have plenty more time to try and figure out long tolerated problems I have had with my PC for years. Hardware? Drivers? Overheating? Power Settings? Group Policy? Windows 10 Updates F*n everything up? It's a good time. Maybe I'll Reinstall Windows. Maybe I'll say F it and give Duel Boot a try with some Linux Distro (since I don't think I have the proper kit for a passthrough). No doubt, it should keep me plenty busy. Tests. So many tests. Aida64, Memtest, so on so on.

So if you see me playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, I'm probably doing something with (aka waiting for) my computer.

So. COVID-19.

How are you?

Rev is OK. Not much is different and day-to-day the only things are aren't 'normal' for me is that I wake up 5 minutes before my shift and login for work, and I can't go to the gym after which reallly is the only thing I miss right now.

We've been trying to buy a house and had a couple in early march fall through that would have been perfect LAN houses (which is the only reason I would want a house lol) but just didn't get them. Now the market is in this weird holding pattern.... hopeful that we'll find something when things stabilize and the market is less shy.

Are you stuck at home?

Mostly. I can do all my work from home. I have been out a couple of times to check things in the data center (temperatures, security etc) but beyond that I only go to get groceries or if the weather is nice, a motorcycle ride around country roads.

Are you working?

Yes, thankfully. I'm an IT guy and I work for state government so my job is more or less ensured right now and I'm considered 'essential' being the sole firewall admin for my agency (yay?) so as long as we're providing service to citizens, I have a job. I know many others do not, so even though I'm stressed from suddenly having to get all 1000 employees on VPN in like, a day, I have a paycheck and somehow am saving money in all this. I'm thankful. It could be so much worse, very easily.

Do you have ways to be social or keep monotony at bay? Still Raiding?

I am my own best friend.
A social interaction camel, you might say.

I still have projects I can work in my downtime that don't require going anywhere. I even squeezed in time for gaming which I have not done for months.

Do you need to vent?

I'm tired. For the past YEAR (professionally) I've been working on crisis after crisis, fought fire after fire, and in February completed a HUGE project that was looming all last year. I was ready for a break, and then this stuff happened and mentally, I just was not ready. Checked out. But I made it happen and did what was required. Professionally I'm just burned out. Overtime means nothing to me. Comp time is worthless because at this rate, I'll never get to take it lol.

I'm sick of people and politicians who didn't take this seriously. I'm sick of huge corporations and banks whining that they can't survive without help, knowing how many people need actual help. I'm irritated that the best our Federal Government could think to do is cut people a $1200 dollar check, like that is going to help. It is going to take MORE, and needs spread out over time. I'm sick of dipshit conspiracy theorists. I'm sick of idiot anti-vaxers. We're in this together folks, remember that.

I'm bummed that one causality in all of this is that my community Makerspace (think of like a gym, but instead it has a woodshop, laser cutters, welding, 3d printing etc) is closed and we've been notified is probably not going to survive after this is all done. While I'm not social much, this is one thing I DO have in terms of community and if it dies, I'll be really sad. I'm hopeful they'll survive or it will be replaced but not optimistic.

Do you need anything?

Not really. Just need to keep being active when can. A home workout is better than no workout. Also need to keep up the work\home balance (so far so good!)

Are you ok?

Yes.

Hey, Rev! Long time. Miss you guys!

We're all healthy. Life isn't that different than it was before this all started... with the exception of social gathering at night (and that actually turns out to matter).

No trivia nights. No plays. No talks at Town Hall (we volunteer there, so we end up seeing a half-dozen talks a month there, in normal times).

No Thursday night dinners with Nico.

No Sunday night movie nights.

We talked about 'remote watching', where everyone watches the show at the same time, but in their own home. We rejected that pretty quickly. I mean, 80% of the fun of watching stuff with other people is the other people.

Glad to hear you guys are OK. I legit had concerns with you being the part of the country you are. It hasn't been much a change for me, but my wife is way, way less OK with all this. She is a social butterfly and not enjoying being stuck at home. She's basically a golden retriever and I have to take her out for walkies.

Becky is busier than she's ever been; her work went from routine to crazy when this got bad. (She works for a bail fund - they're now totally focused on getting as many people out of pre-trial incarceration as possible, because jails are just incubators these days. You shouldn't be forced to be sick - or die - because you don't have money to bail yourself out.) She's being pretty careful, though - it's sort of amazing to see the new routine. She comes back inside, everything she wears goes right into the wash. Everything gets wiped down - the car (which I'm rarely in any more) smells like bleach all the time.

Glad she's OK and taking steps to protect herself. It is weird how this is affecting areas of society that people don't think about at first. Ohio has suspended most all court hearings but I don't know about those locked up waiting. Our Governor has been providing updates specifically for our prison systems which I found interesting....

I think once we come out the other side of this thing, maybe the best part is gonna be that everyone will be in the habit of washing their hands. I told someone yesterday, I've probably washed my hands more in the past 3 weeks than in the previous 25 years.

Gross.

But yeah, I agree and have said similar to folks. After all of this, we should be pros at washing hands after sneezing, coughing, using the bathroom etc.

Costco is STILL out of toilet paper. America, you're stupid.

Yep!

The stores around here are starting to have a supply of basic things again like canned foods, bread\milk. TP is hit and miss. FRESH FOOD IS EVERYWHERE.

We made the mistake of shopping for regular groceries like the day before our state leaders declared it was time to start winding things down... we just didn't think it would be as crazy as it ended up being.

I will say this: I'm proud that in the store we shop at, the candy and soda isle were like, untouched. Meaning, people were stocking up on healthy things and not Mountain Dew and Reese Eggs (which I only thought about doing) lol.