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The Personal Blog of Stephen Sekula
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We are taking our home garden a bit more seriously this year. The pandemic, and poor health practices by shoppers at the local grocery store, have made it more important to offset time spent in the aisles by planting at home. If C-day was the day Texas’ leadership abandoned its […]

The vegetable aisle

Since things have been getting grim in Texas, mirrored in the COVID-19 rise in my own county (Collin), I thought it would be good to learn about one of the things that can help mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) without a vaccine. That thing is testing. Testing for […]

Testing vs. Recommendations: a Local Perspective

It is 50 days since Texas essentially ceded the battlefield (the human population) to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. By racing to open back up the economy, without first putting in place reliable metrics, benchmarks, and health investigation foundations, Texas abandoned its people mostly unarmed to an enemy. Thankfully, those of us […]

C+50

Not a Number

This is the second day in a row that Collin County, TX, has not reported or updated its COVID-19 case or death count (or any other statistics). It is – likely not coincidentally – two days since the State took over the handling of cases from the County. The question […]

Not a Number

For want of a photo-op for the President, the U.S. Attorney General ordered the forceful clearing of Lafayette Square last night ahead of curfew. This was all apparently so the President could awkwardly clutch a Bible and stand in front of a church. [1] Setting aside all the obvious things […]

Où est Lafayette?

It has been 26 days since “C-day,” the day when the Texas governor began ordering the reopening of public places and businesses. It began on May 1 with the reopening of retail workplaces at 25% capacity (but not bars, salons, etc. – office workplaces). Seven days later, salons and similar […]

C+26

It is one day since the Texas Governor allowed businesses to reopen at 25% capacity. It is one day since the national stay-at-home recommendation was ended. Families gather in athletic fields, in tight groups. People don’t move off the sidewalk when I pass. I have to swing way out into […]

C+1

Friday (tomorrow) is the day that Texas’s Governor allows all businesses to reopen, but only if they cap their in-house customers at 25% of capacity for their facility. So where is my county, Collin County, right now? Anticipating this “momentous” day of continuing to re-open businesses in Texas, Collin County […]

Racing toward 25%

(updated 4/26/2020 with demographic and testing data) Maybe it’s because Texas, as a state, sent signals that it was “okay” to behave like we used to. Maybe it’s because the President lied to the nation over, and over, and over again about the reality of COVID-19. Maybe it’s because people […]

The Virus Strikes Back

As I wrote several days ago, Zoom has become highly unstable on my desktop computer. I’ve tried everything, including switching from the KDE desktop environment to the XFWM one; switching off compositing; using all different versions of the NVIDIA drivers; swapping other NVIDIA cards into the system; different kinds of […]

The spice must flow

Awoke a few days ago to find a line of cat toys stretching from the master bedroom into the foyer of the house. The cats have started communicating by toy. This means something. 🙂

This means something

Until there is a vaccine, or enough testing and tracking capability to ensure new cases are spotted quickly and isolated, this is no time for Collin County to quit its effective social distancing protocols. The doubling time for COVID-19 cases now is 25 days; before social distancing went into effect, […]

No time to quit

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    August 24, 2026
    NASA’s Roman Telescope Enclosed in SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket Fairing https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/roman/2026/08/24/nasas-roman-telescope-enclosed-in-spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-fairing/ “Teams soon will transport Roman to SpaceX’s hangar at Launch Pad 39A, where […]
  • (no title)
    August 24, 2026
    I have been pretty fed up with Outlook since my current job forced me to start using it in 2022. However, I recently realized […]

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