Welcome To Virtual Reality

Practicing social distancing has become the new normal in an effort to decrease spread of the corona virus.  One of the interesting consequences of social distancing is the rise of meeting virtually.  We are seeing very few patients in the clinic.  Our appointments are almost exclusively done over telephone or video.  While some health systems have mature video visit infrastructure already setup, most don't leaving those systems scrambling to figure out how to deliver video visits to patients.  The urgency of the situation has greatly increased the speed at which these problems are being solved.  As we begin to offer people virtual visits and their acceptance increases, it will be interesting to see if this becomes a new normal in terms of delivering healthcare, and to what extent.

The other area where virtual meetings have increased is sports, specifically racing.  E-racing series were already a thing, and iRacing has been huge for years.  However, the forced shutdown of sports was a perfect catalyst to increase E-sports presence for the mainstream, and racing has jumped on board without hesitation.  NASCAR had an iRace last weekend at Homestead that attracted nearly a million viewers and Indycar is set to debut their virtual series today.  

Meeting virtually has been an option for years but the COVID-19 situation has forced virtual meetings to become more mainstream.  It will be interesting to see how much of this continues to occur once the pandemic calms down.  I can now reject your reality, and substitute my own.

Covid-19

Shockingly, Sinclair media and Youtube TV came to an agreement for the Fox regional sports networks.  I didn't think there was anyway that would happen considering previous deals with seemingly all other tv providers had not been renewed.  A few channels on the coasts were left out, but luckily I live in the middle of the country so we should continue to get the Pacers as well as Fox Sports Midwest.

This past week the Covid-19 virus released havoc on our society, altering work schedules and school schedules, as well as sports schedules.  With essentially all sports either delayed or cancelled, for the moment there is absolutely no benefit of having the regional sports networks.  I bring all of this up because with sports disappearing for the time being, it is amazing how open my evening and weekend schedules have become.  Sports play a central role in my personal schedule, and the absence of events leaves a huge void in my evenings.    I am going to try to take the opportunity to catch up on some TV I've been hoarding on the DVR or maybe pick up video games again.  While this is an opportunity to watch TV, like everyone else, I am looking forward to the virus slowing down and returning to normalcy.  I've never experienced anything quite like this before.

Sinclair Media and the Regional Sports Networks

Fox was forced to sell their regional sports networks (RSN) when it was acquired by Disney.  Sinclair media purchased the RSNs and has been playing hardball with the price since obtaining the channels.  The RSNs were pulled from Dish network and was one of the reasons why we switched from Dish to YouTube TV.  Last week we were notified that the Fox RSNs were being pulled from YouTube TV due to a contract dispute with Sinclair.  I knew this day would come at some point but was hoping it was further in the future than just 4 months after switching service providers.

The regional sports networks are important to us because they carry Pacers and Cardinals games, so having a TV service without them doesn't make a lot of sense for us.  Due to restrictive MLB blackout rules, we have to get MLB.TV regardless, but we would have no way to watch the Pacers if our carrier didn't have Fox Sports Indiana.  Not even subscribing to NBA League Pass works because they assume we can access Fox Sports Indiana and thus we are blacked out on that service.  

Luckily for us, I can access Fox Sports Go using my dad's DirecTV login.  I don't usually take other people's passwords but I don't feel bad about it in this case.  Since they initially announced the channels were being pulled from YouTube TV, they have since delayed removing the channels, leaving them on the guide while a deal is worked on.  But I am not enthusiastic that a deal will get signed.  The channels have been dropped from several carries since Sinclair came in charge.  They don't seem to be playing nice and carriers are not biting.  It will be interesting to see what happens when the DirecTV deal needs renewed since DirecTV seems to dominate the restaurant and bar scene and losing those locations would be huge to advertisers.  The availability to get the channels is dwindling, and there is a breaking point where advertisers and leagues will have to jump to another channel for their content.  I fear, however, that their endgame is to make the RSNs a premium channel so that they can charge to stream their own app.  More to come, I suppose.  In the meantime, I will enjoy the channel on YouTube TV or Fox Sports Go while I have access.

Ford v Ferrari

I'm a huge racing fan so this movie has been on my radar since I first heard about it in 2019.  I rented it as soon as it came available on Apple TV.  I was somewhat familiar with the back story: Ford tried to buy Ferrari, Ferrari balked, Ford got pissed and developed the GT40 and dominated Le Mans.  What I didn't know, however, was the internal friction that existed within Ford when developing the GT Le Mans program.  The movie does a great job of telling the story of how Carol Shelby, who is a bit of a wild guy, came to the dressed up Ford Motor Company and had racing success.   The movie makes the executives of Ford the main antagonist, which I didn't expect, essentially because Shelby and his main driver Ken Miles didn't fit the image Ford was looking for.  Beyond the couple of obligatory racing scenes where Miles is able to make a pass simply because he presses the throttle down a bit harder (why doesn't he just do this all of the time?), Ford v Ferrari is a really enjoyable movie.

Steam

When my former computer crashed, I started using my MacBook Air as my main computer.  When I bought the computer I wasn't playing games much and the small laptop was never purchased with the intention of being my main computer.  With that being said, it served its purpose well substituting for my fallen desktop.  Last year I bought an iMac to replace my MacBook Air as my main computer because the laptop was running out of hard drive space.  I am much more into gaming now than I was when I bout the MacBook, so I bought the iMac with gaming in mind.  In fact, I just about bought a Windows PC (this one, in fact) because of gaming.  However, I like MacOS and am heavily invested in Apple hardware throughout my house, so I went with the iMac.  Plus I love its huge 5K screen.

This has been my first experience with Steam.  While I still prefer to play games on consoles, certain strategy based games still have value to me on a computer because I prefer the mouse & keyboard interaction over a controller.  Unfortunately, SimCity and Cities: Skylines are both 32-bit and thus won't run on MacOS.  Hopefully this changes.  In the meantime, I decided to start playing Tropico 6.  More on that game in an upcoming post.  Steam has been a great experience.  Great games at great prices, and it keeps stats on your games and allows you to connect with other gamers and friends.  It's like having a whole new console to play.  I plan on playing future computer games through Steam, as long as they're available through the platform.

The Force Is With Me

With the release of Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker as well as The Mandalorian and baby Yoda, there has been a lot of fanfare surrounding Star Wars.  After finishing the first season of The Mandalorian, I caught the Star Wars fever and decided to watch the Star Wars films from the beginning.  As bad as Jar Jar and the CGI was in Episode 1, I enjoyed episodes 2 and 3.  Actually, I don't think I ever watched episode 3 until now. 

I had seen episodes 4 and 5 on numerous occasions, but I think I only saw episode 6 once or twice so it was mostly new to me, minus the ewoks.  I enjoyed episode 7 quite a bit but thought episode 8 was just OK.  I will likely wait for episode 9 to come to Disney+ before watching.

We got Disney+ for the kids, naturally. Disney+ opens up a ton of Star Wars content that I have never seen before.  After finishing episode 8, I wanted to see more.  I enjoyed the Clone Wars and stories around Anakin and Obi Wan so I decided to watch the animated series.  Plus, I read where it ties into the Mandalorian's story at some point.  I wasn't sure of my commitment of 6 seasons at first.   The first few episodes I thought were just OK, but they are getting better as season 1 progresses and I'm pretty much hooked now.  It is extra motivation that the final season is being released soon and the trailer looks awesome!

The Five Year Router

The last time I ran into a router problem, my devices were having intermittent connectivity issues.  This was the issues this time as well, except that it was isolated to one device only.  Interestingly, the switch from satellite to streaming TV wasn't what exposed the problem.  It was a treadmill of all things.  I knew my router wasn't pumping out the internet speeds we were paying for but didn't notice any change in performance unless I actually ran a "test my internet speed" test.

It seems like almost all devices are connected these days.  Sarah got a new treadmill that connects in order to show workout videos with trainers.  We placed it in the corner of the basement which seems to be a bit of an internet dead spot and it really struggled to stay connected, making it mostly useless.  Since we were only getting 30-40% of our advertised speed, and because routers for whatever reason seem to just quit working after a few years, I figured a new router would fix the problem, which it did.

As was the case last time I bought a router, the wireless technology has changed a lot in the past few years.  I really struggled to figure out which router I should buy.  The reviews are worthless.  Most routers have a handful of 5 star reviews, balanced out by a bunch of 1 or 2 star reviews.   My friend, who is a cybersecurity guy, gave me good advice: pick a price point and find one with decent reviews and get it.  That's essentially what I did.  However, there was a curveball that didn't exist the last time I bought a router: mesh networks.

I read quite a bit about mesh networks and thought it could possibly fix my basement dead spot problem where the treadmill sat.  As mentioned above, most mesh routers got mediocre reviews with a lot of complaints on the complexity of the setup.  After a lot of thinking (too much thinking for Sarah), we went with a traditional router which seems to work just fine.  I've come to the conclusion that unless your house is huge or you have extreme circumstances, a modern traditional router should be able to support your devices just fine.

The new router is able to deliver the internet speeds we pay for when testing next to the router, with diminishing speeds with distance but still at least twice as fast at all locations tested.  It fixed the treadmill issue and everything seems to be working better.  Also, the interface on this router is much better than my old router, allowing for easier setup of a guest network and I believe the security is better as well.

Routers are one of the most important technology devices you can own.  So much of your tech infrastructure relies on them so purchasing a good one is essential.  What I can't understand is the lifespan.  Why do these things start to crap out after 4-5 years?  And the way they die is odd for electronics - slowly with exacerbations of symptoms between periods of normal activity.  Most electronics just die, it's strange.  But I've learned that if your network is acting funny or is just slow and your router is old, it seems like buying a new one will fix the problem.