Blog of Sam Fox

(Not page 3, popstar, politician, pornstar, or phoenix professional)

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New York

NYC coronavirus lockdown

Noticeable changes

  1. First day working remote
  2. We stay home and wait
  3. Stretching the legs & (some) social distancing
  4. Confirmation arrives, stocking up
  5. Finding routine in irregular times
  6. New challenges with the remote working
  7. Noticeable changes
  8. Finding a pattern
  9. COVID-19 Lock Down
  10. First week, check
  11. Weekend plans? You know stay away from people as much as possible.
  12. Game night as the pause begins
  13. Streets empty as everyone builds furniture and plays games
  14. Staying sane
  15. Keeping date night going
  16. Socializing remote
  17. Friday feeling? TGIF?
  18. House Parties not Street Parties
  19. Running in the rain
  20. Betting on unknowns
  21. Optimizing the lockdown life
  22. Community Support
  23. Virtual Social Closeness
  24. Friday night: Virtual Happy Hours & Games
  25. Four Weeks In
  26. Discovering the new exciting
  27. A Weekend Getaway in Quarantine
  28. Rain and games
  29. Looking for escapes
  30. Escape to the Country
  31. An upstate retreat for some ‘normalcy’
  32. Rediscovering New York as lockdown eases

Took a longer walk this morning in really nice warm weather. Made one stop at UPS to drop off a parcel, one woman in there ahead of us talking with the man behind the counter. The man and woman were discussing one of the variations of the only real conversation point right now. Everyone’s got one thing on their mind, but conversation can split in a few different strands from the central topic.  This particular topic captured a couple – how quiet it is generally, and what do you do in the evening? After a while you start to go to bed early..

The walk was actually quite eventful, more so than expected. As we passed Trader Joe’s supermarket, there was a line wrapped half way around the block and then right down to the bottom of the avenue. It’s hard to judge how many people were in the line given people applying social distancing but I’ve never seen anything like that, much least at 9am on a Wednesday. I don’t really understand it, the initial panic buying proved needless and we went food shopping on Saturday without an issue. There had been suggestions from city mayor of a more rigorous lockdown but that was quickly dismissed by NY governor.

Line for Trader Joes wraps round the block and down the avenue (Trader Joes not in picture but top and left)

Work has been incredibly busy today. With my tech client, demand has clearly been there for laptops as people adjust to new working environments and styles. For the first time since starting to work remote we started doing video conferencing instead of audio only. This was helpful in adding a new dimension to the day.

Social highlight of the day? The walk in the morning and then a short walk in the evening to buy some beer and watch Survivor then Shark Tank. Wednesday evening is normally our ‘date night’  – we try and keep it free every week to hang and do something together. Since it is Wednesday we ordered food in, first time for not cooking this week. It’s a small thing but it’s about trying to keep routine as usual as possible – making Wednesday feel different from other days.

Tweet of the day:

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NYC coronavirus lockdown

New challenges with the remote working

  1. First day working remote
  2. We stay home and wait
  3. Stretching the legs & (some) social distancing
  4. Confirmation arrives, stocking up
  5. Finding routine in irregular times
  6. New challenges with the remote working
  7. Noticeable changes
  8. Finding a pattern
  9. COVID-19 Lock Down
  10. First week, check
  11. Weekend plans? You know stay away from people as much as possible.
  12. Game night as the pause begins
  13. Streets empty as everyone builds furniture and plays games
  14. Staying sane
  15. Keeping date night going
  16. Socializing remote
  17. Friday feeling? TGIF?
  18. House Parties not Street Parties
  19. Running in the rain
  20. Betting on unknowns
  21. Optimizing the lockdown life
  22. Community Support
  23. Virtual Social Closeness
  24. Friday night: Virtual Happy Hours & Games
  25. Four Weeks In
  26. Discovering the new exciting
  27. A Weekend Getaway in Quarantine
  28. Rain and games
  29. Looking for escapes
  30. Escape to the Country
  31. An upstate retreat for some ‘normalcy’
  32. Rediscovering New York as lockdown eases

Danielle’s work was quiet today, which meant we had the TV on and a couple of laptops. Seemed to stretch the already dodgy internet beyond where it was happy. To solve for this I ordered a new router from Best Buy vs the crappy Spectrum provided. This in turn was the perfect lunchtime walk, a nice 20 minute stroll to Union Square.

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NYC coronavirus lockdown

Confirmation arrives, stocking up

  1. First day working remote
  2. We stay home and wait
  3. Stretching the legs & (some) social distancing
  4. Confirmation arrives, stocking up
  5. Finding routine in irregular times
  6. New challenges with the remote working
  7. Noticeable changes
  8. Finding a pattern
  9. COVID-19 Lock Down
  10. First week, check
  11. Weekend plans? You know stay away from people as much as possible.
  12. Game night as the pause begins
  13. Streets empty as everyone builds furniture and plays games
  14. Staying sane
  15. Keeping date night going
  16. Socializing remote
  17. Friday feeling? TGIF?
  18. House Parties not Street Parties
  19. Running in the rain
  20. Betting on unknowns
  21. Optimizing the lockdown life
  22. Community Support
  23. Virtual Social Closeness
  24. Friday night: Virtual Happy Hours & Games
  25. Four Weeks In
  26. Discovering the new exciting
  27. A Weekend Getaway in Quarantine
  28. Rain and games
  29. Looking for escapes
  30. Escape to the Country
  31. An upstate retreat for some ‘normalcy’
  32. Rediscovering New York as lockdown eases

Took a shorter walk today given yesterday’s walk was ¬20K steps. First stop was Barnes and Noble in Union Square to pickup a couple of books since we’re likely going to be locked down for a while. The bookshop was almost dead.Then we stopped by Irving Farm for a coffee and brunch sandwich.

Continue reading
NYC coronavirus lockdown

Stretching the legs & (some) social distancing

  1. First day working remote
  2. We stay home and wait
  3. Stretching the legs & (some) social distancing
  4. Confirmation arrives, stocking up
  5. Finding routine in irregular times
  6. New challenges with the remote working
  7. Noticeable changes
  8. Finding a pattern
  9. COVID-19 Lock Down
  10. First week, check
  11. Weekend plans? You know stay away from people as much as possible.
  12. Game night as the pause begins
  13. Streets empty as everyone builds furniture and plays games
  14. Staying sane
  15. Keeping date night going
  16. Socializing remote
  17. Friday feeling? TGIF?
  18. House Parties not Street Parties
  19. Running in the rain
  20. Betting on unknowns
  21. Optimizing the lockdown life
  22. Community Support
  23. Virtual Social Closeness
  24. Friday night: Virtual Happy Hours & Games
  25. Four Weeks In
  26. Discovering the new exciting
  27. A Weekend Getaway in Quarantine
  28. Rain and games
  29. Looking for escapes
  30. Escape to the Country
  31. An upstate retreat for some ‘normalcy’
  32. Rediscovering New York as lockdown eases

Today’s plan was to see a NYC FC MLS game, but that’s now been postponed. So too is the Premier League. Instead we took a long walk to the Upper East Side, with the weather gorgeous. Not feeling the gym past few days with everything going on (Update: As of Mon 16th 8pm all gyms must close)

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NYC coronavirus lockdown

First day working remote

  1. First day working remote
  2. We stay home and wait
  3. Stretching the legs & (some) social distancing
  4. Confirmation arrives, stocking up
  5. Finding routine in irregular times
  6. New challenges with the remote working
  7. Noticeable changes
  8. Finding a pattern
  9. COVID-19 Lock Down
  10. First week, check
  11. Weekend plans? You know stay away from people as much as possible.
  12. Game night as the pause begins
  13. Streets empty as everyone builds furniture and plays games
  14. Staying sane
  15. Keeping date night going
  16. Socializing remote
  17. Friday feeling? TGIF?
  18. House Parties not Street Parties
  19. Running in the rain
  20. Betting on unknowns
  21. Optimizing the lockdown life
  22. Community Support
  23. Virtual Social Closeness
  24. Friday night: Virtual Happy Hours & Games
  25. Four Weeks In
  26. Discovering the new exciting
  27. A Weekend Getaway in Quarantine
  28. Rain and games
  29. Looking for escapes
  30. Escape to the Country
  31. An upstate retreat for some ‘normalcy’
  32. Rediscovering New York as lockdown eases

Today the whole company did a trial WFH day to prepare for a potential coronavirus lockdown. The idea was to test if we can connect to the networks etc. For the most part everything worked OK, couple of VPN issues aside. Dell team had done an unofficial trial last Friday but it was different knowing the whole company WFH.

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New York, USA

(Better than Buzzfeed) Top 5 gigs seen in New York by an Englishman

Live music in New YorkI mentioned in my last post how I saw 43 bands last year, obviously a record I want to beat this year. While so far I’m not off to the best of starts – we’re now at the end of February and I have yet to get my gig on, I have just acquired Bruce Springsteen tickets for his last New York date on his current River tour (note I have a spare if you’re interested!). A couple of weeks ago I also stumbled on another impressive busking performance, a group called ‘Cover Story’. So, with gigs top of mind at the moment it seems like a good time to do a post on my top gigs in New York so far.

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New York, USA

2015 in numbers

Infographic of 2015

With 2015 well wrapped up and my unsuccessful attempts to keep this blog upto date, I am changing tact to come back to course. So, here is a wrap up of the last year in one blogpost, in numbers. Therefore in appropriate analytics esque fashion, click through for 2015 by numbers…

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New York, USA

Gone surfin’, surfin’ USA

New York - Empire StateFor the first time I can write this post from the comfort of my own apartment, having finally got internet installed in my apartment. As with most things so far there is a story attached to this which in good time I will get to. For now I will continue to document the journey here. Although the feature of this post will actually be New York..

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