Just a short post to assure you that I'm still here. But my posting has primarily been private this year, notes for projects that I'm not ready or willing to share (at least not in their current frmat).

My dad turned 90 a week and a half ago. My sisters came in along with most of their families, and other relatives and friends were invited too, and we had upwards of 30 people here. Still recovering from that.

Rest of life hasn't changed much, including the ongoing financial crisis.
Okay, for this next bit of the project we return to the right side wall for the area above the French doors, and between them and the main back wall of the house. To go above the French doors I would need two trapezoids and an irregular pentagon. I cut the smaller trapezoid because it needed to go in first, and then went on to cut the second trapezoid. Except that somewhere in there I made a mistake in measurement, and the two sides that were supposed to abut each other weren't the same length -- off by about a centimeter. So I erred on the side of caution and recut the angle so those sides matched.

This turned out to be compounding the oops, as the mistake in measurement had led me to cutting the second trapezoid too short on that side. So now, after dry-fitting the two sections, I had a very skinny rhomboidal gap at the top of the panels. HEAVY SIGH. After very careful measurement I cut out two very skinny triangles, removed the right-hand trapezoid, inserted the one triangle and banged it into place with a bit of scrap 2x4 (that scrap got used as a hammer, or as something for a hammer to hit, multiple times during this project).

I fastened in the first trapezoid after that, put up the second trapezoid again and rested it on the flashing, then slowly moved it into place with my right hand while holding that second skinny triangle in place with my left hand. Everything went together neatly in the end, and while I had a really ugly 4-way intersection of two unsightly seams, I also knew that Caulk Covers A Multitude Of Sins, and this is one such.

Next I had to cut the pentagonal piece -- really just a rectangle with the upper left corner cut off. Measurement had to be careful here to the shiplapped side edge came JUST over the right side edge of the French door frame's side flashing. This way the edge of the long strip (between the doors and the main house) would mate up with it properly. Thankfully that went off without a hitch, and now that wall looked like this.


Porch, right side complete except to the right of the French doors, photo by me, 2023-06.


(Right side wall, all panels installed EXCEPT between the French doors and the main back wall of the house. Click to enlarge.)

Next I had to cut the small rectangle that would eventually go in the bottom corner up against the main house. Before I installed that I would need to make a cutout -- more on that later -- but I needed the piece cut so I could support the long strip without needing hands, while I used said hands to nail and screw that strip in place.

That ended up taking longer than I expected, as I had to take the long strip down a couple times and shave off the cut edge to match spots where the main wall of the house wasn't straight. (Settling is, after all, very much a thing after 50 years, and settling never happens evenly. NEVER.) But eventually, with the aid of that small rectangle, a rubber mallet, the sledgehammer, and the aforementioned scrap of 2x4, the long strip was correctly positioned and fastened in place. I then removed the bottom rectangle for measuring and cutting out the outlet box, but that's a story for another day.

At the end of that particular day here's what it looked like. Click on the thumbnail for the full size photo.


Porch, right side nearly complete, photo by me, 2023-06.


(Right side wall, all panels installed EXCEPT in the bottom corner nearest the wall of the house. Click to enlarge.)

Yet more to come.
When last we saw this project, it was the very beginning of June and the garage was full of painted Texture 1-11 panels. At that point I had 5.5 days, until early afternoon on June 7th, to get everything cut and installed. I had started back in late May by taking the angle of the roof with my bevel gauge, then grabbing some spare MDF I had lying around (left over from another project, as it usually happens), transferring that angle onto it, and cutting a small triangle so I now had a template with the correct angle.

The next step was to cut the first panel into the proper strips for the right side wall. Having already determined where the shiplapped factory side-edges of the panels were to be placed, I measured the widths of the two places there the panels went all the way to the floor, and cut the two sides of one panel off at those widths. This left me with a cut edge to wedge into the corner and shiplapped edges to abut the flashing around the French doors.

But those weren't the first pieces to get installed, oh no. I should explain... the original aluminum siding had white flashing around its edges. where it met the roof, the doors, and the screens. It made sense to leave that flashing intact. So to make this all work properly I had to slide each piece into the space between the flashings. This meant the first piece to go in had to be where the roof met the back (all-screen) wall, and then I had to work my way back to the house from there. So using that template I cut a nice triangle off one corner of the second panel, then a trapezoid off what was left, and slid those in to the area above the storm door and little screen. That got me to the corner where the porch meets the back wall of the family room.

As the photos from part 0 show, most of the backing that was installed way back when was plywood. Some of it (above the first floor level) appears to be cloth covered drywall. For fastening the Texture 1011 to the back I was using mostly 6-penny common nails, with 2-inch decking screws where necessary. We had these on hand which is why I chose to use them, but they were also the right things for the job. But let me tell you, driving those nails was TOUGH. I honestly had to get out a 3 or 4 pound sledgehammer to get them in. Yikes.

Having reached that point where I was about to install the panel between the screen and the French doors, I realized that to wedge that piece in I was going to have to bend the flashing next to the French door so it stuck out straight. I achieved this with various pliers and a great deal of effort, grunting, swearing, pain, and sweat. I didn't take a photo of the results but it sufficed to get the panel in. That panel wasn't quite tall enough for the entire gap, so another small rectangle was cut out to fill in the gap -- with a rectangular piece cut out of THAT to make room for the electrical outlet box down at the floor. I used scraps to fill in the gaps later.

I then had to bend the flashing back into its original place, which was accomplished using a mix of hand strength, the occasional pliers, and finishing it off by hammering it back into place with a rubber mallet -- or the aforementioned sledgehammer on a scrap piece of 2x4 if I really needed the extra force, which I did in spots.

And here is the result. Click on the thumbnail for the full size photo.


Porch, right side half installed, photo by me, 2023-06


(Right side wall, panels installed from the rear wall to the French doors. Click to enlarge.)

More to come.
So last time I had taken all the old siding and caulking off the back porch's side walls. My dad determined that it would be much faster and more economical to have the professional painter, who had done the laundry room (and various other rooms) earlier in the year, come back and paint the panels instead of paying for my time to paint them. I agreed with this assessment.

The one downside was that the painter couldn't get us into the schedule until the beginning of June, leaving me just six days of calendar time to get everything cut into shape and put up. But in the meantime I was able to get pricing on the Texture 1-11 panels from several different stores -- all three of the big chains that had stores locally (sorry Menards, you don't qualify) plus the small local chain (four or five stores in eastern PA) that we get most of our lumber from, and anywhere else in reasonable driving distance just in case. Lowe's had far and away the best price on them, I'm talking 1/4 to 1/3 cheaper than anywhere else. So off I went in late May after clearing out the back of the minivan. (And by clear, I mean removing the seats too.)

And... WIN! These 4 ft by 8 ft panels *could* be made to fit in the not quite 8ft long cabin of the minivan. It's actually about 7'8" long. Spare tire is propping them up in the rear so the panels are on a diagonal, which is how I got them to fit in the space.


Panels in van, photo by me, 2023-05


[Panels in the back of the van. Click the thumbnail to get the full-size photo.]

Earlier in May my dad and I had gone to the paint store to get the cans of primer and paint the painter said we'd need. On the first of June I moved the cars out of the garage, the painter came, and I helped him set up the painting station in the garage. Both sides of the panels were primed -- and with excellent timing, that process used up ALL the primer we'd gotten but I didn't need to go get more! Then the "show" sides of the panels were painted, and by the next morning they should be dry and ready to get cut up and placed.


Painted panels drying in the garage, photo by me, 2023-06-01


[Painted panels, drying in the garage. Sawing and placing to begin the next day. Click to enlarge.]

The next post in this series required a metric crapton of measuring and math before taking saw to wood. Details to come!
Back in May of last year I mentioned A New Project that I was doing. And I even took some photos as the project progressed. But there were technical issuess, and I have finally managed to get the photos to a place which, while possibly temporary, I can at least link to reliably, and if the photos' location should change I can just edit the links in these posts. (ETA 02Feb24: Uploading images actually worked this time, it had failed miserably a couple months ago.)

So.

My parents' back porch was built a little over a quarter century ago (mid to late 1990s) and, for some reason, the side walls were done up in basic white aluminum siding. The "front" wall which was adjacent to the kitchen and laundry room was done up in Texture 1-11 plyeood, painted white. I had painted that wall back in 2020 (having little better to do at the time). In the spring of 2023, Dad wanted to put a clock up on the porch, preferably on the side wall over the French doors, but mounting the clock on that old siding was not going to happen. So he decided the siding, which was showing its age, needed to come down and be replaced with something solid, and might as well go with Texture 1-11 to match the other existing wall.

I put in the low bid for doing the work, and got moving in the middle of May. My first task was to remove the old siding and caulking, and see what was under it. That took a couple of afternoons and one evening, and although I didn't take any "before" photos, here's what the side walls looked like after the siding came off.

ExpandClick on the cut for the rest of part 0, including three photos. )

Stay tuned, more photos to come.
Bit of a story to start this post.

When I was in first grade, back in New Jersey, I was befriended by a fourth grader. In retrospect this was weird as hell.

My world was, up to that point, mostly limited to my extended family and the families on our one-block-long street. Of the family members right in our neighborhood, I was the only one old enough to be in school yet; and while there were older kids on the block, they went to the Catholic school. So it's not like *they* would know any random fourth graders at the public school where I was attending. And fourth graders were on the second floor of the school, which was restricted to fourth grade and older ("You must be *this old* to ride this ride...") so it's not like we ever had a chance to see each other in passing, really. So it really was odd that this fourth grader should have any interest in hanging out with me. But he did, and being the sort of kid I was, I accepted this befriendment. We rarely saw each other except in the schoolyard before school; the timing of recesses and lunch hours meant we wouldn't cross paths then, and once school let out we were GONE. But for a year and change, this odd before-school friendship lasted.

Then for a month or so in the spring of second grade, I didn't see him in the schoolyard. Kids notice this stuff, but there were plenty of reasons why this might be -- including that his family might have moved away, something that was known to occur and that happened to ME three years later in the late winter of fifth grade.

But one morning the assistant principal sought me out before school.

Not that I had any idea why the assistant principal would have reason to know who I was, but I suspect he asked my teacher to point me out. Because he wanted to talk to me personally. And as gently as he could, he let me know that my friend had died; victim of an inoperable (by early 1970s standards anyway) brain tumor.

That was my first known exposure to cancer.

(It's possible that one of the two great-uncles who died when I was four years old had succumbed to cancer but I was too young at the time to be told any details. Deaths in the family before that, I was too young to remember, and there hadn't been any in the two-plus years since then. But I digress.)

Cancer has claimed the lives of many family members since then, and many friends as well. One of my undergrad classmates received his bachelor's degree posthomously thanks to cancer, that was a somber moment amongst the celebrations (and heavy rains). But while cancer has been a part of life pretty much all my life -- and while both my parents are cancer survivors, my mother more than once -- Big C had never hit this close to home since that sad morning in second grade. Until two and a half weeks ago.

My kid sister's husband was first diagnosed with colon cancer in 2020. He went in for his first colonoscopy since he'd just turned 50 and there were no known genetic risk factors. But that test revealed not just colon cancer, but Stage 4 colon cancer. And what might have been lesions on his liver from the cancer having metastasized. Lots of medical intervention was attempted. And, amazingly, it appeared to work. John's "numbers" dropped to near zero. They kept at it, trying to balance beating down the cancer with the fact that the treatments basically wiped him out.

The whole California branch of the family came east for Eldest Niece's wedding last October. John looked okay but he certainly got tired easily. He had to head to bed pretty early during the post-dinner part of the reception, which we all accepted as just SOP at the time. Then at some point in early summer last year (I think), they discovered that the cancer had spread to his lungs. Treatments were continued to see what could be done, but if we had to be honest with ourselves, we were playing for time now. I was hoping he'd make it until this coming summer to see their second child (Eldest Nephew) graduate from high school.

That wasn't to be. Monday before Christmas my kid sister called to say he was being transferred to home hospice care. That Friday morning, in his favorite chair, he finally let go.

Obituary for John Anthony Soper

It's been a rough few weeks. Not how any of us wanted to spend our winter holidays. "Middle" sister and her husband are flying out to SoCal for the memorial service. Kiddo was up this past weekend and we have worked out how to get his Grandma's laptop to display on the big TV, so next Monday we can watch the memorial service livestream that my middle sister's husband is setting up.

And slowly -- VERY slowly -- life will rebalance. But there is a huge hole in the family, and achieving that rebalance will not be an easy road.

#fuckcancer
...as of this past Friday, the 22nd of December, my kid sister is a widow.

RIP John Soper. His memorial service will be on the 15th, and given everyone's condition, we will be watching the livestream rather than going to the West Coast, unless circumstances change noticeably.

I have more to say about this, but not right now.
I know, like I didn't already have too many projects going on. But this one actually involves getting paid, and also has a deadline. This involves replacing the aluminum siding on the side walls of my parents' screened in back porch with plywood Texture 1-11 siding. The aluminum has been showing its age, and the wall against the main body of the house has been Texture 1-11 from the beginning of the porch.

There's a bit of geometry involved and I may end up cutting a test piece out of some spare MDF I have lying around. Anyway, I'm basically in charge of everything exccept painting, which my dad is subcontracting out to a pro we know who can do a much quicker (and somewhat better) job. (He did a bunch pf interior painting for the parents in the late winter and early spring.)

Photos and updates will get posted as things occur, though the first few things have already happened so I'll have to catch up during the rest of this week.
Quick update on my woodworking musings, first one in a year or so...

Quick links back to parts 1 and 2 of my series:
Part 1
Part 2

It had occurred to me this time last year that the side panels for the storage area could prove to be tricky. The way I would prefer to build them would be to cut grooves in the side boards that the bottom board would fit into, so small things would be much less likely to slip out. This, however, is not the easiest thing to do well with saws and chisels. (Power tools make this much easier but that's WAY out of my budget, and also I'd need a place to store them.) Cutting grooves and dadoes by hand is certainly doable, but there's a tool to make the process a lot more precise and less troublesome.

That tool is called a router plane. And they're ... not cheap.

One of the YouTubers I follow (Rex Krueger) has helped start a company on the side whose goal is to make more affordable tools where there appears to be a need for such. And I just saw his intro video for that company's new router plane kit. So here's the link to the item itself:

Compass Rose Router Plane Kit

I'm posting this in part because it is a bit of an update for this project which, for various Reasons, has slowed way down, and in part because it's a convenient place for me to park the link for when I have the ability to go obtain a kit, which I think I do want when I can manage it. And who knows, maybe someone else will see this and think "That looks neat, maybe I might want one too" -- unlikely, but you never know.
Happy 2023 everyone; also, Happy Asian Lunar New Year since we recently passed that holiday as well. This is a quick post to say that I'm still alive, unlike several family and friends who have passed away in the last 2-3 months. I'm also hunting in and around the metaphorical sofa cushions looking for a spare thousand bucks to get me through the next two weeks of bills, without actually expecting to find it.

Yes I have two or three story threads I've left hanging, and as my energy allows I'm still working on them, but don't have anything ready to post publicly yet. Hope you have a reasonably happy and prosperous new year.
This school year (2021-22), I am marking the 40th anniversary of my freshman year in undergrad. And right now, I am marking the approximate 40th anniversary of a very funny story regarding one of my classes.

This story is a bit complicated. Those of you who haven't read yesterday's background story should probably go read it here unless you're familiar with old-time "Big Iron" computer equipment (including punch cards, keypunches, et cetera) and the culture which grew up around it.

One of my activities in college was WCWM, the college radio station (89.1 FM back then, then it switched to 90.7, now it's 90.9, long unrelated story). And one of the folks I knew at the station was Marc, a computer science and psych double major. He was a senior in my freshman year. His senior project for Comp. Sci. was to write a full-screen editor for the new PR1ME system, which had *NO* full-screen editors available for it then. Marc's project was the very first one ever available on PR1MEs. It was called the Structured All-purpose Novice Editor, or SANE for short. Marc asked me to help beta-test it starting right after Spring Break, while I was taking FORTRAN (CompSci I).

Now the FORTRAN class still used punch cards, as did most of the computer classes back then (the PR1ME was new). And the keypunch machines were limited in number (you had to sign up for time slots to use them), clunky to use, and often malfunctioned. One might well be excused for thinking there had to be a better way.

Somewhere around late February, the computer center received and installed a HASP emulator which could connect the PR1ME to the IBM. You just sent a text file from the PR1ME to the IBM, and the IBM would process it as if the file were a deck of punch cards. Well, all us geeks who had term papers to write figured out pretty quickly that you could take a ready-to-print term paper, put the correct lines of JCL (Job Control Language) at the beginning and the end, and lo and behold you could print out your term paper on the dot-matrix printer... on 8.5"x11" white paper! (The reactions of the professors to THAT are a different story.)

I quickly figured out, y'know, if we can send term papers to that printer via the IBM, I bet I can tweak the JCL and make it send FORTRAN programs to the IBM just as if I'd punched up a deck of cards. Tweak tweak tweak, send it off, and Eureka! it worked!

Next step: For various reasons, the first version of SANE truncated all lines after 72 columns. That was absolutely fine by me, as it helped me write my FORTRAN programs for class without ever going too far on a line. So, instead of laboring over a clunky keypunch machine, I edited my programs using a full-screen editor, and sent them off without ever having to touch an actual punch-card, keypunch, or card reader. This increase in efficiency meant that I could do my FORTRAN classwork a lot faster, which was A Good Thing.

When it came time to turn in a project, though, there was a catch -- you were required to turn in a deck of punch-cards! Well, the prospect of having to go down to the keypunch machines was not appealing in the least. There *had* to be a better way. So I asked one of the computer operators (you got to know them pretty quickly) if there was an automated card-puncher. He answered "Yes, we've got a keypunch in the machine room that'll take a file from the IBM and punch it out on cards for you." So after a few false starts and multiple tweaks of the JCL, I was able to send my program to be punched onto cards, and the next day there was my deck of cards waiting in the "TO BE PICKED UP" set of pigeonholes. Yay!

The project was due a few days later; I tested the deck of cards to make sure it really did work, and turned it in on the due date. A week or so later, Dr. Southworth (my FORTRAN prof) handed back the graded assignments... but not mine. I went up to him after class and asked what was up. He said "Your punch cards don't have any printing along the top." I looked, and sure enough, no printing. I looked closer and saw faint marks on the cards in the shape of the characters, and said "Aha! The card-punch machine in the machine room needs to have its typewriter ribbon replaced, or at least re-inked." I'd said this aloud, and Doc Southworth slowly said "In the machine room? Why were you using the punch in the *machine room*?" So I had to explain to him what I'd been up to, using the fullscreen editor on the PR1ME to edit my programs and then sending them over the HASP link to run them on the IBM, or to get it punched out on a deck of cards. And he said "All right, I'll accept your assignment. But only if you show me how you did it, 'cause I want to be able to do it too."
This school year (2021-22), I am marking the 40th anniversary of my freshman year in undergrad. And right now, I am marking the approximate 40th anniversary of a very funny story regarding one of my classes.

By the way, this story really calls for an icon that says "I .LT.3 FORTRAN" -- if only I find pix of the correct typeface (IBM 1430 band printer). I'm planning to tell the actual story tomorrow (Wednesday, 6 April). But for this and some other related stories t come later, a but of background information is needed. Part 0 of this story series, as it were.

BACKGROUND:

Once upon a time at the College of William and Mary in Virginia (Chartered in 1693), the gathering place for computer users was a place called Jones Basement. The focus of our attention is the machine room (accessible only to operators and admins) and the printer room next to it.

During my freshman year, the primary machine was an IBM 370 mainframe; all programming classes were still being taught on it. They had just installed another machine, a PR1ME 750 supermini. For the entirety of my college career, the printer room contained three printers. One was an honest-to-pete PR1ME printer (for the PR1ME). One was a Printronics dot-matrix printer, which was always loaded with 8.5x11 white fanfold tractor-feed paper, and thus the only printer useful for printing out essays and term papers and such. (This is important later.) Between those two was the Behemoth -- an IBM 1430 band printer, capable of speeds unmatched by today's laser printers until the late 2000s. (And the 1430 is *still* faster than most modern inkjets.)

The 1430 was this BIIIIIG box -- I mean it was bigger than two large size people. We called it the Behemoth for a reason! The top was flat and level. When the printer ran out of paper, it would warn you with several seconds of beeping, and then the printer would obligingly open the top, which would then no longer be level. HUGE warning signs were posted about *never* *ever* leaving coffee cups on top of the 1430. (I can't IMAGINE why... >.> <.< )

The printer room contained one other piece of computer equipment: a card reader, whose function was to read the decks of punch cards that people brought in. For those of you who are now asking "What's a punch card?"... they're about 3-ish inches high by maybe 7-ish inches wide, made of much the same cardstock as manila folders. Each card was divided into a matrix, 80 columns wide and 12 rows high, of rectangles (taller than they were wide), which could have rectangular holes punched in them (or not). For text files each column represented a single character, so your standard card held a single line of text with a nominal maximum length of 80 characters. "*Nominal* maximum?" I hear you asking in the back. Yep... for any serious punch card user, the real maximum was 72 characters. Those of you who remember FORTRAN may remember that you always had to end your line of code by column 72. Why? Because IBM reserved the last 8 columns of an 80-column punch card for sequence numbers. This made your card deck easy to get back in order should you drop and scatter it on the floor; they even had machines that could re-sort a scattered card deck according to those sequence numbers... *IF* one had remembered to punch them in (or have them punched in later, which was also something the sorting machine could do).

For text files, in addition to the columns of coded holes-and-not-holes, the character would be printed along the top of the card above the corresponding column. Anyway, since most of the programming classes were still using punch cards, that card reader was a VERY important element in our lives. And there you have the printer room: a small room containing two band printers (one of them REALLY HUGE), one dot matrix printer, and one card reader. Each of which made a certain amount of noise. Put it all together and you got a pretty durn LOUD room.

(Here endeth the background. Story to come tomorrow.)
(Originally posted to my GoFundMe two days ago on Saturday. This is basically copied verbatim (modulo formatting), including the fundraising stuff at the end; I *was* posting to GoFundMe after all. Feel free to ignore those bits if you want. Link to the fundraiser will be provided in the comments and upon request.)

Real life rather overtook us for the last 10 days of August and all of September, and therefore it's only now at the start of October that I'm getting to my next installment of "SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 related PSA / traditional weblogging plus the usual begging post mashup" -- but to some extent that's all right, as the Science Magazine organization spent a couple weeks reorganizing their web and blog sites, and thus our favorite pharmacological chemist and blogger Derek Lowe was inactive for a chunk of August. Anyway, let's check out the COVID-related stuff that he talked about in his blog for Science, during August and roughly the first half of September.

A New Antibody-Dependent Enhancement Hypothesis

Keeping Up With the Coronavirus Variant Landscape

Awful Trials, With Awful Results

Vaccines Will Not Produce Worse Variants

mRNA's History- And Its Future

Enough of that for now; let's continue on to the usual PSA-and-begging part of this post. Unless you're a first-time reader of this type of post you can predict what comes next: the plea for those of you who are able to SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BUSINESSES. Some of these were "essential" and never closed during the initial lockdowns. Others, after having opened back up, are now trying to figure out the best safe ways, if any, to stay open as we move back and forth between varying levels of semi- (or even complete) lockdown, highly dependent on location. What these businesses tend to have in common is that locally owned and operated businesses generally give better "bang for the buck" when it comes to keeping the local economy moving. So please do what you can to help keep your local economy a little bit more afloat. Locally owned businesses are, and will continue to be, struggling to survive and get back on their feet, so please patronize them as much as you can. BUY LOCAL. Please however, do so in a safe manner, especially now. Keep on, or go back to, wearing masks and other protective equipment when going shopping in person, continue and even increase social distancing. Act intelligently, because I know you can.

ExpandRest of the begging stuff is behind the cut. )
(Originally posted to my GoFundMe earlier today, so I didn't bother to change the timestamp. This is basically copied verbatim (modulo formatting), including the fundraising stuff at the end; I *was* posting to GoFundMe after all. Feel free to ignore those bits if you want. Link to the fundraiser will be provided in the comments and upon request.)

Back in July, I said (or strongly implied) that it would be August before I got to covering Derek Lowe's July blog posts for "SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 related PSA / traditional weblogging meets the usual begging post" -- and not it's August, so let's check out the COVID-related stuff that our favorite pharmacological chemist and blogger talked about in his blog for Science Translational Medicine during the month of July.

An Update on Anti-Androgen Therapy for the Coronavirus

More on Vaccine Side Effects

Too Many Papers

How Well Does the J&J Vaccine Work Against the Delta Variant?

I'll cover Derek's August posts somewhere near the end of the month, and I might have the energy to put together a "links from all over" post before then (and wow is there ever a lot of COVID-related news). But for now let's move on to the usual PSA-and-begging part of this post. Frequent readers of these type of posts will be able to predict what comes next: the plea for those of you who are able to SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BUSINESSES. Some of these were "essential" and never closed during the initial lockdowns. Others, after having opened back up, are now trying to figure out the best safe ways, if any, to stay open as we move back and forth between varying levels of semi- (or even complete) lockdown, highly dependent on location. What these businesses tend to have in common is that locally owned and operated businesses generally give better "bang for the buck" when it comes to keeping the local economy moving. So please do what you can to help keep your local economy a little bit more afloat. Locally owned businesses are, and will continue to be, struggling to survive and get back on their feet, so please patronize them as much as you can. BUY LOCAL. Please however, do so in a safe manner, especially now. Keep on, or go back to, wearing masks and other protective equipment when going shopping in person, continue and even increase social distancing. Act intelligently, because I know you can.

ExpandRest of the begging stuff is behind the cut. )
(Originally posted to my GoFundMe earlier today, so I didn't bother to change the timestamp. This is basically copied verbatim (modulo formatting), including the fundraising stuff at the end; I *was* posting to GoFundMe after all. Feel free to ignore those bits if you want. Link to the fundraiser will be provided in the comments and upon request.)

Well, It has now been two full months since I last made one of these posts. June turned out to be even more crazy than I had expected, and July has been even more of a hot mess. I'm kind of amazed that I have time enough to put this together. Thus, for this episode of "SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 related PSA / traditional weblogging and the usual begging post mashup" I am taking the "easy" way out. Therefore, let's take a look at what COVID-related stuff pharmacological chemist and blogger Derek Lowe was talking about in his blog for Science Translational Medicine during the month of June.

Machine Learning Deserves Better Than This

Ivermectin As a COVID-19 Therapy

The Novavax Vaccine Data, and Spike Proteins in General

CureVac Comes Up Short

Drug Repurposing for Coronaviruses: Be Careful

I'll cover Derek's July posts in a couple of weeks; now it's time to move on to the usual PSA-and-begging part of this post. Unless you're a first-time reader of these type of posts, you pretty much know what comes next: the plea for those of you who are able to SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BUSINESSES. Some of these were "essential" and never closed during the lockdowns. Others, after having opened back up, are now trying to figure out the best safe ways to stay open as we move back and forth between varying levels of semi-lockdown, highly dependent on location. What these businesses have in common is that locally owned and operated businesses give better "bang for the buck" when it comes to keeping the local economy moving. So please do what you can to help keep your local economy a little bit more afloat. Locally owned businesses are, and will continue to be, struggling to survive and get back on their feet, so please patronize them as much as you can. BUY LOCAL. Please however, do so in a safe manner. Keep on wearing masks and other protective equipment when going shopping in person, continue social distancing. Act intelligently, because I know you can.

ExpandRest of the begging stuff is behind the cut. )
(Originally posted to my GoFundMe earlier today, so I didn't bother to change the timestamp. This is basically copied verbatim (modulo formatting), including the fundraising stuff at the end; I *was* posting to GoFundMe after all. Feel free to ignore those bits if you want. Link to the fundraiser will be provided in the comments and upon request.)

It's almost the end of May, and as predicted, it's been a crazy busy month on a number of fronts. (Though alas, not the job front.) So it is unsurprising that it's been over 3 weeks since the last installment of "SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 related PSA / traditional weblogging plus the usual begging post" and thus I must play a bit of catch-up. Warning: June looks to be just as busy, but I hope to get in at least a couple of these during that month! For now, let's take a look at what pharmacological chemist and blogger Derek Lowe has been talking about so far this month in his blog for Science Translational Medicine.

His most recent post points out that he's likely to continue decreasing the number of COVID-focused posts as time goes on:

A Word on Blog Topics

Here's one that's not really SARS-CoV-2 related but highlights one of the conundrums many folks in the sciences (especially the biological ones) face all the time:

Clearing Cellular Dead Wood

One opinion (from someone in the industry) on waiving intellectual property rights as a way to get more vaccines out there faster:

Waiving IP

The following article STARTS with "I’m going to regret writing about this..."

Coronavirus Origins

And to cap it off, here's a few more technically oriented posts.

Spike Protein Behavior

Integration Into the Human Genome?

An Outside Perspective

And now, as the prophecy (or at least the opening paragraph) foretold, it's time to move on to the usual PSA-and-begging part of this post. Regular readers of these tyoe of posts pretty much know what comes next: the plea for those of you who are able to SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BUSINESSES. Some of these were "essential" and never closed during the lockdowns. Others, after having opened back up, are now trying to figure out the best safe ways to stay open as we move back and forth between varying levels of semi-lockdown, highly dependent on location. What these businesses have in common is that locally owned and operated businesses give better "bang for the buck" when it comes to keeping the local economy moving. So please do what you can to help keep your local economy a little bit more afloat. Locally owned businesses are, and will continue to be, struggling to survive and get back on their feet, so please patronize them as much as you can. BUY LOCAL. Please however, do so in a safe manner. Keep on wearing masks and other protective equipment when going shopping in person, continue social distancing. Act intelligently, because I know you can.

ExpandRest of the begging stuff is behind the cut. )
(Originally posted to my GoFundMe earlier today, so I didn't bother to change the timestamp. This is basically copied verbatim (modulo formatting), including the fundraising stuff at the end; I *was* posting to GoFundMe after all. Feel free to ignore those bits if you want. Link to the fundraiser will be provided in the comments and upon request.)

Welcome to May! April was a very busy month for us outside of posting here, and the second half of the month was especially busy, so it's really no surprise that the latest episode of "SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 related PSA / traditional weblogging combined with the usual begging post" waited so long. Warning: May looks to be busy as well. For now, let's take a look at the second half of April with pharmacological chemist and blogger Derek Lowe and his blog for Science Translational Medicine,

Posts on topics more general but still related to RNA, vaccines against viral infections, and such...

Moderna’s Upcoming Clinical Trials

Great Malaria Vaccine News

And then we have the posts more specific to SARS-CoV-2:

A Look at Novavax

Brazil Rejects the Gamaleya Vaccine

Russian Vaccine Behavior

And one more post about mRNA, specifically relating to cancer treatments:

Two Steps to Activation

Time now to shift to the usual PSA-and-begging part of this post. Longtime readers of these tyoe of posts can easily guess what comes next: the plea for those of you who are able to SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BUSINESSES. Some of these were "essential" and never closed during the lockdowns. Others, after having opened back up, are now trying to figure out the best safe ways to stay open as we move back and forth between varying levels of semi-lockdown, highly dependent on location. What these businesses have in common is that locally owned and operated businesses give better "bang for the buck" when it comes to keeping the local economy moving. So please do what you can to help keep your local economy a little bit more afloat. Locally owned businesses are, and will continue to be, struggling to survive and get back on their feet, so please patronize them as much as you can. BUY LOCAL. Please however, do so in a safe manner. Keep on wearing masks and other protective equipment when going shopping in person, continue social distancing. Act intelligently, because I know you can.

ExpandRest of the begging stuff is behind the cut. )
(Originally posted to my GoFundMe earlier today, so I didn't bother to change the timestamp. This is basically copied verbatim (modulo formatting), including the fundraising stuff at the end; I *was* posting to GoFundMe after all. Feel free to ignore those bits if you want. Link to the fundraiser will be provided in the comments and upon request.)

Me last week: "... and then NEXT week I'll look at what he's blogged so far in April." Me this week: therefore, for this latest installment of "SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 related PSA / traditional weblogging plus the usual begging post mashup" I'll look at the first half of April with our intrepid pharmacological chemist and blogger Derek Lowe and his blog for Science Translational Medicine,

Posts on topics more general but still related to RNA, vaccines against viral infections, and such...

Mysteries in Human RNA

Watching mRNA Do Its Thing, In Living Cells

And then we have the posts more specific to SARS-CoV-2:

Getting Vaccinated

Vaccine Manufacturing Woes at Emergent

AZ/Oxford Calculations

Vaccine Efficacy Questions

Vaccine Side Effects Q and A

Merck Keeps Plowing On

Indeed, April's been a bit of a busy month on the vaccine and treatment front. After all that, let's shift to the usual PSA-and-begging part of this post. If this isn't your first time reading one of these tyoe of posts, you can guess what comes next: the plea for those of you who are able to SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BUSINESSES. Some of these were "essential" and never closed during the lockdowns. Others, after having opened back up, are now trying to stay open to what extent they can as the semi-lockdown is being tightened back up in response to pandemic surges. What these businesses have in common is that locally owned and operated businesses give better "bang for the buck" when it comes to keeping the local economy moving. So please do what you can to help keep your local economy a little bit more afloat. Locally owned businesses are, and will continue to be, struggling to survive and get back on their feet, so please patronize them as much as you can. BUY LOCAL. Please however, do so in a safe manner. Keep on wearing masks and other protective equipment when going shopping in person, continue social distancing. Act intelligently, because I know you can.

ExpandRest of the begging stuff is behind the cut. )
(Originally posted to my GoFundMe earlier today, so I didn't bother to change the timestamp. This is basically copied verbatim (modulo formatting), including the fundraising stuff at the end; I *was* posting to GoFundMe after all. Feel free to ignore those bits if you want. Link to the fundraiser will be provided in the comments and upon request.)

It's been a very busy past few weeks for me, what with preparations for Easter -- including the usual Large Pile Of Music To Sing, only this time around we've had to make recordings of everything and send it in to the choir director for mixing and synching and EQ-ing. On top of all that I have managed to get my first SARS-CoV-2 vaccine (Team Pfizer/BioNTech, if you're interested, but it was really up to the administering facility and no choice of mine). So, what with one thing and another, three ye^H^H weeks passed. Getting on for four, really. So this week in "SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 related PSA / traditional weblogging combined with the usual begging post" I'll look at the rest of March with our intrepid pharmacological chemist and blogger Derek Lowe and his blog for Science Translational Medicine, and then NEXT week I'll look at what he's blogged so far in April.

To the surprise of very few, the second half of March had a lot of alarums and excursions regarding the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine.

What is Going on With the AstraZeneca/Oxford Vaccine?

The Problem with COVID-19 Clinical Trials

AstraZeneca’s US Vaccine Trial Data

Blood Clots and the AZ Vaccine, Revisited

After those links, let's shift to the usual PSA-and-begging part of this post. Repeat readers can easily predict what comes next: the plea for those of you who are able to SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BUSINESSES. Some of these were "essential" and never closed during the lockdowns. Others, after having opened back up, are now trying to stay open to what extent they can as the semi-lockdown is being tightened back up in response to pandemic surges. What these businesses have in common is that locally owned and operated businesses give better "bang for the buck" when it comes to keeping the local economy moving. So please do what you can to help keep your local economy a little bit more afloat. Locally owned businesses are, and will continue to be, struggling to survive and get back on their feet, so please patronize them as much as you can. BUY LOCAL. Please however, do so in a safe manner. Keep on wearing masks and other protective equipment when going shopping in person, continue social distancing. Act intelligently, because I know you can.

ExpandRest of the begging stuff is behind the cut. )
(Originally posted to my GoFundMe earlier today, so I didn't bother to change the timestamp. This is basically copied verbatim (modulo formatting), including the fundraising stuff at the end; I *was* posting to GoFundMe after all. Feel free to ignore those bits if you want. Link to the fundraiser will be provided in the comments and upon request.)

Last week in "SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 related PSA / traditional weblogging combined with the usual begging post" I noted that "the first week of March got a bit busier on the COVID front but I'll save that for next week." Well, it's "next week" now, so let's go back to our intrepid pharmalogical chemist and blogger Derek Lowe and his blog for Science Translational Medicine, and see what he's discussed here in the first two weeks of March.

We start with a couple posts on mRNA vaccines in general, the first of which isn't really related to COVID-19 at all but is verrrrry interesting in itself.

A Malaria Vaccine Candidate

How to Administer RNA – And How to Do It Again

And here's a couple more SARS-CoV-2-specific posts.

Molnupiravir: Last of the Small-Molecule Coronavirus Hopes?

Androgen Receptors for COVID-19

Early March Vaccine Thoughts

And, unsurprisingly to my repeat readers, it is now time for the usual PSA-and-begging part of this post. The aforementioned repeat reader can easily guess what comes next: the plea for those of you who are able to SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BUSINESSES. Some of these were "essential" and never closed during the lockdowns. Others, after having opened back up, are now trying to stay open to what extent they can as the semi-lockdown is being tightened back up in response to pandemic surges. What these businesses have in common is that locally owned and operated businesses give better "bang for the buck" when it comes to keeping the local economy moving. So please do what you can to help keep your local economy a little bit more afloat. Locally owned businesses are, and will continue to be, struggling to survive and get back on their feet, so please patronize them as much as you can. BUY LOCAL. Please however, do so in a safe manner. Keep on wearing masks and other protective equipment when going shopping in person, continue social distancing. Act intelligently, because I know you can.

ExpandRest of the begging stuff is behind the cut. )
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