Hello /*cruel*/ World!
Hello! This is my very first ever blog post and I am very excited to start sharing some of my knowledge and experience with the world! This post is meant as a test post for me, a welcome for you, and a blast from the past for those reading this in the future. I also feel it's important to note, this is NOT an article to be cited for statistics and number information. There are many reports that can be found with a quick internet search that will give a much more reliable timeline and quantitative information. With that, I am not sure when you are reading this post, but the world right now is figurative and literal in flames. But lets get back to that after a quick introduction.
A Bit About Myself
So I'm not all that interesting unfortunately... My name is Alec, I grew up in the suburbs of colorado. I went to college in Boulder. I currently live in a suburb of Colorado... Like I said not all that interesting. I'm currently in graduate school for Electrical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines where I study wireless communication (think your cellphone). I like it, and hopefully only have a year left. If you'd like to know a little more about me, check out the about me page!
This blog is something I have thought about for quite a while. In the past few months, I have been at home and found I have a bit of extra time on my hands. Web development was something I decided to give a try. After a few online courses, I went ahead and created this website! I'll probably post something in the future also about the whole experience and how it went. For now though I figured I'd give blogging a try and see if anyone else in the world as interest in what I have to say! We'll see. I am definitely not a writer, and things I like to discuss get a little dry sometimes.
The rest of this post is more of a time capsule for some point in the future (along with some much needed writing practice) so read the rest if you are bored, otherwise read the news from the year 2020!
Oh How I Miss the Before Times
This year (2020) began seeming like any other year. Last year (2019) was pretty uneventful, it was just another year. Everyone had heard of the 'novel coronavirus' that was sweeping through china, but they are half way across the world! Like most people, I really didn't think it would ever be an issue. Slowly it made its way into europe, but at the beginning it literally just seemed like an agressively spreading common cold. I then remember reading an article about Italy where they were turning people away from hospitals because they were full. That was kind of terrifying.
By February/March, the virus was slowly starting to trickle into the US. It didn't make it into Colorado until later on. It of course made its way to colorado by infected tourists that didn't want to cancel their trips. Quickly after that, near everything in the state was shut down and companies were working remote by mid to late March. At the time, I was still taking a few of my grad school classes and classes went completely remote by the end of March for nearly every school. Quickly after that, unemployment in the US reached near 15% because stores, restaurants, gyms, and pretty much every other in person thing you could do had closed, except 'essential' business like grocery stores (although some other places like domino's pizza were also deemed essential... so who knows how that was decieded). This was all to hopefully spread the virus. The stock market took massive hits, but govornment bailouts quickly seemed to stabilize things (at least to a point).
Fast forward three (pretty boring) months and we are in June. Things have finally started opening up. My SO and I went to a restaurant the other day for the first time in months. It was nice to get out, but it's probably going to be quite a while before things go back to the way they were in the 'before times' (i.e. BC, i.e. Before Corona). At the restaurant it was kind of nice though. They have to limit capacity, but you can actually hear yourself (as opposed to being deafened by the table next to you). The waiters wear face-masks and the menu's typically involve a scanned QR code from your phone. Honestly though, it seems to be much more efficient to me and a bit of a nicer experience than it was. As I am writing this, cases are currently spiking in some states to record highs (thanks Florida, Texas, California, and Arizona) so we will see what the next few months have in store. I am hopeful that if people aren't complete dumbasses and follow the CDC guidance of not being too close to a ton of other people and WEARING A MASK (yes Karen I'm talking to you) then things will turn out fine. Who knows, maybe this will bring some nice changes to our world.
And Then There's the Rest
Looking back at news articles from 2020, you can see that it really was just a shit year. While coronavirus really was a global pandemic and took most of the news, there were a large number of other societal and natural disasters that happened.
Environmentally, the world is also going crazy. I swear it is just the earth trying to get rid of the virus that is mankind (ironically with a virus). There have been a number of freak storms and natural disasters that have caused damage across the US and the world. Also here's a new fun one... a species of asian giant hornets, otherwise known as 'murder hornets' made there way into the US earlier in the year. They are becoming a real issue for some ecosystems, but honestly I just hate bugs and they are wayyyyy to big for my liking.
We also still have another thing to look forward too at the end of the year, the presidential election. Now don't get me wrong, I love that we live in a democratic society, I just don't have a lot of affection for politicians. For some reason it seems like we always have an extremely undiverse set of candidates to choose between. It reminds me way to much of the Futurama episode "A Head in the Polls", with Jack Johnson debating against John Jackson.
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
Even though most things in the world right now are super depressing, some good has come out of this whole situation. Because the world went into a massive quarantine state, most jobs (including mine) shifted to 100% remote work. This made working a bit nicer along with saved time by removing my commute. By not having a commute, I typically have anywhere between an hour to two hours extra time in my day. This allowed me to pick up some new hobbies.
Initially quarantine I did next to nothing. Lots of TV mostly. Like i said previously, This gave me time to learn web development. I knew almost nothing about web front end development, so a fair amount of time was spent looking into different frameworks and tools for web development. Eventually I began building this site you are on now.
I also spent some of my time cooking more. This is something I had not really done in the past I home made some tortillas, lots of sauces, and even pasta! (without a pasta roller it was heinous... literally the worst thing ever). This cooking usually involved lots of butter too because who are we kidding, everything is better with a stick of butter. This also typically involved drinking lots of beer (because I love beer). As you can imagine, I gained a bit of weight and lost any muscle pretty quickly.
After realizing that I was getting a little chunky, I bought P90X3 (yea the same type of thing on the infomercials) and am not almost a month through it. I also unfortunately have reduced the unhealthy food intake to try and get into shape a bit faster. I have found though that I have really liked P90X, the Beachbody Online streaming service provides tons of structued classes (with a workout calendar) for way cheaper than any gym will ever cost.
Looking into the future
So overall, this year has been a mess. It will definitely be something historians look back on and just think "what the fuck". Assuming we don't get hit by an asteroid by the end of the year, things right now though seem to be slowly getting back to normal. Hopefully this time next year I will be on a beach in Bonaire!
Update September 2021
The world is still here! Things are definitely looking bright. A number of vaccines for COVID have been given out for the better part of this year so many people at this point are vaccinated. There is still lots of hesitancy, but hopefully between those who have gotten sick and recovered and those who have gotten vaccinated the virus will start to trickle away. The last few months cases have been surging a bit with the "Delta Variant" that seems to spread more easily, although it is hard to tell whats true with any media source nowadays (although some of the headlines from BBC about the US are a bit funny). If anything, all of the statistics and "studies" coming out of this have shown how easy it is to skew data to prove a point.
As for everything else, life seems to be getting somewhat back to normal (although it is definitely a "new" normal). We made it to Bonaire in June for an amazing week of diving (we were the first flight in since before covid). Ultimate Frisbee seasons started up again this year providing a nice break from work.