Working from Home
The final working day of the first week spent in isolation at home. This week has actually gone quite quickly and I have managed to get a lot of work done, with today being no exception.
I finally managed to get around to sorting out our robotic backup drive and got Veritas working to backup our four filestores. Been meaning to do this for about four months so glad to get that one out of the way.
I spoke to a colleague of mine from our office in Milan and he was telling me just how bad it is over there. It looks like they will not be back in the office for months rather than weeks. Due to this, we went through a few call plans and I’ve had to reroute their main office line to the receptionist’s mobile phone as an emergency measure, to be reviewed next week.
I decommissioned an old web server and updated some engineering software in our SCCM system.
The day started with a Microsoft Teams conference and ended with one with the rest of the IT team. This week overall has gone well with us being able to carry out all the duties we had to without any real problems.
Cleaning
The wife started cleaning and sorting through things in the house today. Started on the kitchen and then moved into our four-year-olds bedroom. Now looks like we will be getting rid of half of the stuff in his bedroom tomorrow!
Trampoline
We wanted to buy a trampoline as our son has wanted one for a while and we thought that it might burn off some of his energy! We tried Amazon, Smyths and Argos but it looks like everyone else has had the same idea as they were all sold out.
We managed to find a new one on eBay in end the and that is being delivered on Tuesday next week, so it looks like I’ll be busy putting that together next week.
British Gas
I’ve been wanting to change over our gas and electric supplier for ages, but just never got round to it. Well this evening I got online and checked out some of the switching websites and it turned out that we could save £424.02 a year by transferring to British Gas, strangely enough I work for Centrica who own British Gas so we went ahead and have now started the switching process.
Winter Hill
There have been reports on the local news today that there is still a load of people going on walks in the hills across the Pennines and there has been a huge fire again at Winter Hill. Police have apparently found a large number of portable BBQ’s which is probably what has started the fires.
Big Cake
With it being the wife’s birthday yesterday, we just so happened to have a massive Costco cake. I had a slice tonight and it beat me, it was a big piece though…
Birmingham Airport
It has been announced today that Birmingham Airport is to have a facility built to act as a morgue for up to 1500 bodies.
Birmingham and Manchester Arenas
Today it was also announced that arenas in both Birmingham and Manchester arenas are to be turned into temporary hospitals to take and help with the large numbers of CoronaVirus cases.
CoronaVirus Hits Parliament
It has also been announced today that the top three people in the UK dealing with the CoronaVirus – have CoronaVirus. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Chief Medical Officer Chris Witty have all been tested and diagnosed with CoronaVirus today.
CoronaVirus Stats for Today
The number of deaths has gone up again today, but more worryingly, it has increased significantly. 185 deaths have been recorded in the last 24 hours taking the UK death toll up to 763 which is an increase of 31% on the previous day. The total infections are now up to 14,684.
Worldwide there are now 587,958 confirmed cases and 26,909 deaths in total.
Conclusion for Today
Conclusions from today are mostly that some people are absolute tools. Going for walks in the countryside and having BBQs in areas well known for grass fires when the country is on its knees with a pandemic is just unbelievable.
The reality of the situation that we find ourselves in is starting to hit home now with temporary morgues and hospitals having to be built. It is almost unbelievable and like something from a movie. But we carry on, day by day until we get through this.
