Lee-Anne Got COVID

Lee-Anne was in Orlando, Florida attending the NOAH conference last week. NOAH stands for the National Organization of Albinism and Hypopigmentation. If I have somehow failed to mention it, Lee-Anne has albinism, which is a genetic condition that means her body doesn't produce pigment. People with albinism have pale skin, light hair and blue eyes, as well as some degree of vision loss.

The NOAH conference usually runs every other year but last time it got canceled because of COVID. They had virtual activities as a replacement and I attended some of them, but it's just not the same as in person. 2022 was the first time since the pandemic that the conference was able to be held. However, she still got COVID.

She came back last Monday evening, and on Tuesday noticed she had a sore throat. She took a rapid test and it came back positive. Since then I've been sleeping on the couch and we've been wearing masks in common areas. 

Her symptoms never got worse and it has now been five days since she's been symptomatic, which means she should be past her most infectious stage. I took a rapid test today and it came back negative, so hopefully I'm good.

It's surprising that I managed to dodge it, since apparently COVID is currently the most infectious common disease, this new strain outpacing measles for the title. Silver lining is that it's not as deadly as it used to be.

Because it's impossible to track the number of cases anymore, since people are taking rapid tests at home and not reporting results, policies are being decided based on hospitalizations. I don't think I mentioned it, but my organization reopened in its' usual limited capacity for what I think is the fourth time recently.

It's fortunate that she came back Tuesday evening, because I do in-person services Monday and Thursday, so this meant that I didn't have contact with any member afters connecting with her. I couldn't go in on Thursday, though.

There was an optometry conference recently, which we're aware of because Lee-Anne's family is rooted in optometry, and apparently 45% of the people that attended contracted COVID. It would be interesting to see what the results are for NOAH.

Rogers Shutdown

Last week I woke up and tried to say good morning to my coworkers over my work iPad, but found I couldn't get a signal. I switched over to Google chat on my work laptop but couldn't get a signal with it, either. Decided to disconnect and switch to data on the iPad, and still nothing. I went out to the Iron Horse Trail, sat on a bench and managed to connect with my personal cell phone using data, where I was able to connect with a few of my coworkers who were having similar difficulties.

The entire agency had been impacted. All our work phones were down. Turns out that one of Canada's largest networks had a nationwide shutdown. Canada is ruled by three major providers: Bell, Telus and Rogers. Even though there are a variety of other names, like Kudo, Fido, and Virgin, they tend to be owned by the big three. Even though I use a provider that is independent from them, it's still reliant on Rogers infrastructure, so I got shut down too. The reason I couldn't get data from my apartment is because I live in a basement and have a terrible connection other than WiFi. 

Our agency and my team sent an email explaining the situation, which is very ironic to explain why the Internet isn't working over email. Even though Rogers should hypothetically impact only one third of the connections, it felt like more than half of the people were impacted. We managed to host our usual group but only me and one other facilitator were able to be there, and I had to be outside and do it over my phone.

I wound up talking to a lot of people that were walking by on the trail. Somebody asked me if the Internet was back. Somebody asked me if I'd witnessed a car accident he'd just been in (I hadn't). Somebody sat down next to me and speculated about Russia attacking our satellite-based services.

I connected with someone from a country overseas (won't specify where, just for vague privacy reasons). They told me the Internet had been lost there as well and that they believed it was a worldwide phenomenon. Since I was just hearing this after that other guy was speculating about Russia attacking satellites, I was sufficiently spooked. Even though I'd been previously informed that it was just one Canadian company that had been taken down.

There were issues with people being able to contact emergency services. Business payment systems were down, relying on people to pay cash. Since the pandemic's initial concern with surface transmission and the subsequent call to get people to stop using cash, not too many people had it handy. 

I had to go somewhere after work, and I wondered if the light rail would be able to accept payment from me. It did, but at first it confirmed me as a University of Waterloo student (which I am, but I'm not attending enough courses to get a funded pass). The voiceover wasn't able to announce when the next train would arrive, but had a generic message about intervals between arrivals. Also, weirdly the machines had spat out a bunch of receipts on both ends. I also saw some electronic bus signs showing weird code instead of bus schedules. I guess Grand River Transit uses Rogers.

People got their connections back in intervals. My mother and brother got theirs back the following morning. We were disconnected for three days.

Canada has terrible service providers. We have some of the highest prices on the planet and we still managed a nationwide shutdown. Rogers has said it was triggered by a maintenance update. I don't know if that's a vague and veiled reason or if it was actually that mundane.

Microsoft New Fonts

This might be old news to a lot of people, but it hasn't been put into action yet. So let's talk about Microsoft's decision to change their default font.

In 2007, Calibri replaced Times New Roman as the default font in Word, and replaced Arial in Powerpoint, Excel, Outlook and Wordpad.  It was seen as an improvement on Times New Roman, the previous default, as Calibri was built for readability on computer screens while Times had its roots in print media, designed for the British newspaper, The Times in 1931. 

Times was chosen as the first default Word font because of its popularity and readability at the time, as well as its compatibility with then-current technology. After advancements in computer graphics, it just made sense to upgrade.

Arial, the other font replaced by Calibri, was developed to mimic Helvetica, a much loved font developed by the company Monotype. Arial was made as a go-around which could be used without having to pay Monotype.

Times New Roman is a serif font, with a robust, solid, and crisp look, while Arial is sans-serif, with softer and fuller curves and Calibri is a sans-serif with subtly rounded stems and corners.

Now, after fifteen years of dominance, Microsoft has chosen to dethrone Calibri. Reasons for the change are up to speculation. The stated explanation is simply that, "while Calibri has served its purpose well, it's time to evolve". Lucas DeGroot, the man responsible for developing the font, believes that the change has more to do with keeping up with contemporary tastes, than it does with readability. While that sounds a little salty, he claims to all for the change, saying that people can develop a distaste for default fonts due to their being overused and misused.

The new default font has yet to be determined. Five new potential replacements have been selected, and the choice will be made democratically. Microsoft is reaching out to the public to vote on which one they would like to see become the new default.

These are the candidates:

Bierstadt: A precise serif font suitable for grid-based typography, but meant to feel a bit more approachable and less institutional, with a "human touch". It is also the only serif font on the list

Grandview: Inspired by German road signage meant to be readable at a distance, this font is supposed to be "mechanical but elegant"

Seaford: The look for this one was inspired by armchairs, and is meant to have a gently organic and asymmetrical appearance.

Skeena: This one is described as being "quirky" with the most varied contrasts between thickness in its letters, and exceptionally high strokes

Tenorite: With exceptionally large dots, accents and punctuations, this fonts' creators said they were "craving something round, wide and crisp" and that they didn't "shy away from going large and circular".

As for my preference, I will say that I'm not fond of that weird typed "a" that Bierstadt and Grandview use (as well as the font I'm using now). I appreciate more consistency between commonly-used handwriting and typing. I guess the "a" is meant to be closer to cursive, but that style has fallen out of use. Makes more sense to model after the printed letter.

Grandview has the coolest inspiration though, and Lee-Anne has given it her vote as the one most legible to her as someone with low vision. While I don't like their "a", as someone who cares about accessibility, this is big points for this font.

Bierstadt gets some extra points too for being brave enough to be a serif font in a non-serif world.

I like Skeena's tilted "e" and it seems the most fun. Default fonts aren't really meant to be fun though.

DeGroot, creator of Calibri, votes for Seaford without giving much reasoning aside from saying it's "strong" and "nice" while not being absolutely neutral.

Tenorite doesn't seem eccentric enough to warrant the carnal description its' creators gave.

I guess my vote is for Grandview despite my misgivings about its' cursive-inspired "a" due to its accessibility.

First Doctor Visit in Ten Years

Last week I went to my family doctor for the first time in a decade. After moving to Kitchener I just never bothered to take myself off her roster. Every once in a while something would happen to remind me that I was still registered with her, such as when I got my COVID vaccinations. The person screening me would ask me if I had a family doctor, and I'd always have to think for a bit before being like, "Actually, yeah". 

At one point I decided that I should try to find a family doctor in Kitchener, but the system said it couldn't register me with someone new because I was already with someone. I kind of chickened out of unregistering with her because it's so hard to find a family doctor nowadays that I didn't want to give one up if I wasn't sure I could get a new one, even if the one I was with was in a different city.

I was surprised that she remembered who I was, although she told me that she didn't remember me with a beard. I told her that she likely would have seen me with it once, after I came back from Canada World Youth.

This turned out to be the case, because she looked up the record of my last visit with notes about what to follow up on. Last I'd talked to her she had recommended me to see a dermatologist about some multiplying, scaly red lesions that had manifested around my left ankle during my time abroad.

Back then, I was fresh out of Mali. I'd gotten an email from Canada World Youth saying that someone in my group had contracted cutaneous leishmaniasis, and that we should all get checked ASAP. I looked up the symptoms for the condition and it looked like what I had. 

In the email they said they couldn't disclose the identity of the person who had been diagnosed with it, but I knew someone that had these symptoms as well, so I sent him a message. I asked him if he was the one that had gotten the diagnosis, and he said that he was and that I should get checked.

So I went to my doctor (and this was the last time I would see her until now). She took a skin sample and recommended me to this dermatologist. But the guy canceled on me twice, pushing me way past the time limit that CWY suggested I get checked. When I finally did see him, he said that whatever I'd contracted, my body had fought it off before I'd seen him.

I told him "I think it might have been cutaneous leishmaniasis" and he shot me a dirty look. I know that medical professionals don't like it when patients play Dr. Google, and a 21 year old kid putting forward such an unusual diagnosis probably made me look like a hypochondriac. So I quickly told him that the reason I believed this was because I had been living in a village in West Africa, and someone else with the same symptoms had received this diagnosis. He just scoffed and chastised me for using such simple logic, telling me that just because someone else had something, didn't mean I had the same thing.

So now, coming back to the present, I'm sitting in my family doctor's office and she wants to go over the notes of this dermatologist. She reads them out loud, and the guy said he suspected I might have contracted cutaneous leishmaniasis from an insect bite in Mali!

So he made fun of me for putting forward that idea, and then he wrote it down as his own thought! I mean come on, I'm not a scholarly article, you don't have to cite me, but the fact that he would dismiss my thoughts verbally and claim them as his own kind of stinks.

It felt like a joke that took ten years to tell.

Encampment

There's a field near the Kitchener Go transit terminal where a number of homeless people have set up an encampment. I remember the first tent that went up. It was notable because it was in such a public space, and because it was flying a Canadian flag. I remember thinking that the flag was interesting, because it was a decoration meant to be seen by the public. Usually it seems like homeless people attempt to live on the edge of the public eye, not wanting to be invisible but not drawing too much attention to themselves either. Their lifestyles seem to be pragmatic and focused on survival. This act of self-expression seemed to go a bit beyond that.

Every time I would walk by that field, it seemed like there were a few more tents. They set out city garbage cans so they got waste disposal services, put out drying racks for their clothes, built planters and started growing community gardens. To me, the people look relatively clean, healthy and relaxed. I noticed that women live in the tent city. Due to an additional layer of vulnerability, female homeless people will often make extra efforts not to be seen, so to me this indicated that they felt safe in this setting. Last I saw the encampment, in addition to the Canadian flag there was a Wampum flag, an Indigenous rights flag, and another I didn't recognize. They had community spaces with chairs and tables with vases full of flowers.

I would go so far as to say the encampment looks nice.

There's a lot of talk about what to do with the tent city. Some people want them evicted, some people want them to be supplied with port-o-potties. By the count of an article I read, there are currently 52 tents on the property.

People that want them gone say the people living there are dangerous, that it smells like excrement, and that they leave needles everywhere. In theory I might believe the comments about the smell and needles. You have a large quantity of people living without plumbing or bathrooms, eventually it's going to develop a scent, and it's not hard to believe that some residents struggle with addiction. I doubt they vet their residents too hard or discriminate much. In practice though, I've been by there a lot and I've never noticed a smell or seen a needle.

As far as being dangerous, I think there isn't much of an argument for that. I think that people are less dangerous when they have a shared community and rely on one another for collaboration, when they have a reputation to protect, and when they have a place that they can feel somewhat safe. I understand the high concentration of this population is intimidating for some people, but if they were to be dispersed, there would still be just as many homeless people in the city. They would just be isolated and made desperate through further lack of resources, and with fewer means of defending themselves. I think that people in these situations are more dangerous.

It seems to me that the people who complain about the encampment aren't too concerned about safety, but rather they don't like our homeless population to be so visible. They don't want to think about the people who live among us in these conditions, and they would like them dispersed into smaller, easier-to-ignore groups.

I've heard homeless people talk about street life as being chaotic, and how you can't trust anyone. In comparison, the encampment wouldn't work except for a sense of community and collaboration. Residents of the tent city report feeling safer than in government funded shelters.

This call to evict the tent city kind of reminds me of our busking laws. To be allowed to play an instrument on the street, you need to get a busking license. This can prevent people who are already vulnerable from offering a service for their income, and reduces them to begging. I've never been sure why we want to enforce people to live in those conditions. Just like with that law, this call to get rid of the encampment feels like taking away the accomplishments of people who are already vulnerable.

My only qualm with the tent city is that it might lead people to become complacent, and think that it's okay that people live without plumbing, heat, or electricity. Shelter should be a basic human right, and if people see that they are capable of having some quality of life, it might disincentivize people to provide better alternatives. However, the visibility also might help draw attention to issues of homelessness.

With rent prices the way they are, we can expect a rise in our homeless population. The starting rent where I used to live was $940 a month. Now, the same place is going for $1700.

Unfortunately, the region has decided to evict the residents of the encampment at the end of the month. Shame.

Weekend in Guelph

We just passed the May 24 weekend, which is the traditional time to garden. Last year we attempted a little sunflower patch which was unsuccessful, and this year we're trying the exact same thing! Slightly different location, we're trying in the backyard instead of the front, and we're doing different types. Last year we did standard sunflowers, I think Lemon Queen, and this year we're trying to grow purple ones and Teddy Bears

Lemon Queen

Teddy Bear

Purple

None of these are flowers we've grown, just examples. I think I got the purple seeds for Christmas and Lee-Anne picked the Teddy Bears.

We planted flower bulbs last year and they've grown decently this year. We just got through daffodil season and now we have tulips.

For the long weekend, we went to Guelph. To be honest, not much went according to plan. We weren't able to book a room at the hotel we wanted, so we got one at a Days Inn. That was fine, it was just a little further out so it made it harder to get to my mom and brother's place.

I forgot to bring my mom's mother day/birthday present which was earlier in the month.

We went to My Kitty Cafe, where my mom and brother adopted their cat Cassidy. I think the place is in an awkward inbetween state in terms of their COVID measures. Before the pandemic, it was a proper cafe where you could eat and drink in the presence of cats without a strict time restraint. In the pandemic, only one group could go in at a time and it was restricted to 50 minutes. Now, there is still a time limit, but multiple groups can go in if the total number of people is under 10. Including us, there were three groups with a total of seven people during our timeslot. I feel like the time limit incentivizes people to go after the cats' attention as much as possible, which was okay when it was just one group at a time, but with the relaxed occupancy rules, it causes the cats to be a little over socialized, making them more reserved.

We still had a good time

They write the names of all the cats that have been adopted on the walls. Apparently Cassidy was the 886th.

It was a Pokemon Go Community Day, and both my mom and brother are super into it so it was cool that we got to play it together. Except, we only made it a little way up the street when we heard a hideous roar from the wind and a violent storm suddenly descended on us, ripping a tree branch out right in front of us. We had to run all the way home and when we got back the power was out. Apparently a bunch of branches fell on a bunch of transformers. We found a candle and lit it, and I hung up my shirt because we couldn't dry it right away with the power out. Usually I stay at the house, which would mean I'd have a spare set of clothes, but this time all my stuff was at the hotel (luckily Lee-Anne was at the mall and sheltered).

Here's a pic of some torn out tree branches.

I figured this was just a Guelph thing but apparently it hit Kitchener just as bad. In fact, if we'd been at home we would have lost power as well. The cats didn't need it though.

We were going to explore my old neighbourhood, but I found myself unexpectedly busy with school (for some reason, we had something due on a Sunday over a long weekend). We did manage to visit the University of Guelph Campus, although not far enough to visit the Arboretum.

We did get to see the Guelph Gryphon statue

ADHD Reassessment

Recently I got reassessed for ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder). When I was young, I was diagnosed with Inattentive ADD, now known as ADHD with Inattention. I've mentioned it on the blog before, but I think I actually deleted my comment on it.  One of my readers encouraged me not to talk about it publicly since I was looking for work at the time and this blog shows up as one of the first hits if you Google my name. He thought it would be better to not release that information in case a potential employer decided to do some background research. But now I'm comfortably employed at an agency which should really not discriminate for such things, and I wouldn't want to work for someone who would hold that against me, anyway.

When I was young, my grade 1 teacher thought I might have autism because of the way I would rock back and forth. That got disproven, and then people thought I might be deaf and blind, so they sent me to get checked and it turned out my senses were perfect. Eventually they landed on Inattentive ADD.

I spent some time in an alternative classroom in elementary and middle school and used an Independent Education Plan. Eventually I managed to catch up and haven't used any accommodations since highschool. Because of my eventual success, I came to wonder if the diagnosis still held weight, or if I just lagged in school because of some of my life circumstances growing up.

So I got reassessed. First they had me do a pre-assessment, which was just a series of questions. Based on my answers, it was decided that I could potentially have it, so they had me do five more tests. Based on those answers, they thought I was ready to have a verbal consultation. After talking to someone for about an hour, I was told that not only do I have the inattentive type, I am also hyperactive! So I'm now ADHD Combined. 

I had a going theory for awhile that the difference between Hyperactive and Inattentive ADHD was only the difference between introversion and extraversion. I'd never met a hyperactive introvert or an inattentive extravert before. I thought it was the difference between whether or not you pointed your chaos inward or out, and since I identify as an introvert, it made sense that I was the inattentive type.

This time I was told that because my behaviour wasn't disruptive in class, this could have led me to being misdiagnosed, because I clearly had a lot of energy that was trying to be put to use. This came through when I told her that one of the reasons I initially got assessed was because I couldn't stop rocking back and forth in class. I mentioned that I got put in a support group for hyperactives and even though I thought I was misplaced, the teacher pointed to me rolling a pen in and out of my shirt as an example of a hyperactive trait, which confused me about my identity. I mentioned how even now I pace back and forth all the time and Lee-Anne thinks I do it when I feel anxious, but that I also do it when I feel every other emotion. I told her about how I use a pocket calendar as an impromptu fidget toy during Zoom meetings, alternately fitting the keychain over my fingers and twisting the dial back and forth to help me concentrate.

Mom was really happy to hear this result. She said that she always knew I was hyperactive, and the reason I didn't get the diagnosis was because I was assessed based on my classroom behaviour. She said that if people saw me running back and forth to help me think like I did at home, I would have been labeled a hyperactive long ago.

It's not often talked about, but the world of ADHD is not kind to Inattentives. One thing that people love to say about ADHD is that it's the ideal way of thinking in hunter gatherer societies. So even if we're outdated and inconvenient in modern society, at least there was a time and place where we were valued. However, there are people that argue that this does not extend to Inattentives, and say that they have no present or historical value. I heard an initiative being made to redefine Inattentives with a new label, called "Sluggish Brain Disorder". Considering that many of the phrases used colloquially to mean unintelligent, such as idiot, moron, dumb, and even the R-word were all once clinical terms, you'd think they'd be more careful to choose a dignified phrase when coming up with new diagnoses. It doesn't take much imagination to find a way to make fun of someone for having "Sluggish Brain Disorder".

Inattentive types are more often female, and oftentimes girls and women struggle to be recognized for their symptoms. This could be indicative of sexism in the education system, and this reluctance to acknowledge the struggles of females could explain the distaste formal systems have for the Inattentive subtype.

They even rebranded the disorder from ADD to ADHD, so even people without hyperactivity have to include it in their label. Completely needless redefinition, which is more inaccurate and just serves to highlight Hyperactives more.

I still think I'm primarily Inattentive, and I think that this type benefits from a heightened level of imagination and an ability to hyperfocus on creative works. I don't think Inattentives are less valuable than Hyperactives.

I've received a prescription for medication. When I was a child, I was offered the option of meds but adamantly refused them. I thought it was unfair that everyone else could just be themselves, but I had to be chemically edited to be a decent human being. I felt that I would rather risk failure as myself, than be guaranteed success as whoever they wanted to change me into.

As I've grown, I've found myself knowing and working with people that I greatly respect who use meds, and I'm even in a romantic relationship with someone who uses them, so I've begun to reassess my feelings about them. I haven't tried them yet, I just received them yesterday.