Last I heard South Carolina is supposed to be expanding their back to school plan after the 1st of the year. Any student that is virtual learning and isn't passing, is going back to school. Any student that want's to go back to school will be allowed to.
Edit: I should probably say that my county and school district is doing this. Not the state.
We (mid-Missouri) managed to get the elementary schools open for about four weeks but now they've been shut down again. Depending on the "second wave" severity the plan is to get the elementary and middle school kids back in class mid-January. Until then, it's remote "learning"...
I don't know what the public schools are doing, but the Diocesan schools are all open and plan to remain so. Because my daughter has a classmate with a positive test, all of our kids are on NTI and it's a slightly lesser disaster than it was in March. I can't imagine trying to do this long-term, though. Some classes (and teachers) are better at it than others, but having five people on conference calls at the same time in the same house is a bit rough. And I'm really wishing we could get fiber-to-the-premise instead of just -to-the-node. 50mbits might have been pretty slick back in "the day" but it's a bit rough when you're trying to stream three zoom video calls, VoIP and VDI, and then WebEx and VDI. There's absolutely no bandwidth left for me to also stream Burn Notice while I work.
Vajingo said:Patientzero said:In reply to John Welsh (Moderate Supporter) :
Got it.
My version of deer hunting involves driving 15 minutes from my house and sitting in the woods by myself.
That's how it's SUPPOSED to be done. A man hunts alone. Just you and the animal. Make it fair. Don't be a coward. I don't even think we should use guns. Tribal warfare all the way.
If I can't use a gun, I should be able to use something I whipped up in the garage myself. Which would still work, but the deer would suffer and id probably have to pick up a few pieces.
In reply to wae :
Oh you "only" have 50mb internet access? Tell me again how hard life is.
-Those of us stuck with 3mb hotspotted cellular or grossly overpriced old school 5mg satellite service as the only option.
TGMF said:In reply to wae :
Oh you "only" have 50mb internet access? Tell me again how hard life is.
-Those of us stuck with 3mb hotspotted cellular or grossly overpriced old school 5mg satellite service as the only option.
It's especially hard here at home since I've got a 500mbit connection over at the workshop since we've built out FttP that neighborhood. I guess that's the advantage to having poles instead of buried infrastructure.
I mean, you told me to tell you again....
The closures are coming in Cincinnati as well with Cincinnati Public shutting down in person till january. Clermont hasn't closed yet but it seems like that will follow shortly given the covid rates. Stay safe and buckle down. I expect my office will boot me to work from home by next week. Hopefully turn this into some more car project time as Rabbit and V have a variety of toys waiting to be installed.
stroker said:We (mid-Missouri) managed to get the elementary schools open for about four weeks but now they've been shut down again. Depending on the "second wave" severity the plan is to get the elementary and middle school kids back in class mid-January. Until then, it's remote "learning"...
Where are you at? I'm in Butler. Our schools are still open although several entire classes are out for quarantine.
TGMF said:In reply to wae :
Oh you "only" have 50mb internet access? Tell me again how hard life is.
-Those of us stuck with 3mb hotspotted cellular or grossly overpriced old school 5mg satellite service as the only option.
One does get to choose where they live. And accept the pros/cons from that decision.
I choose to live in a large metropolitan area so that I have certain amenities/infrastructure nearby. That also means I don't get to complain abou the traffic or number of people because I choose to live here.
wae said:50mbits might have been pretty slick back in "the day" but it's a bit rough when you're trying to stream three zoom video calls, VoIP and VDI, and then WebEx and VDI. There's absolutely no bandwidth left for me to also stream Burn Notice while I work.
Lets be realistic here for a second. The worst case zoom call (group video, HD) is 3Mbps. so 3 of those are 9Mbps. How much data is VoIP, Webex and VDI? Virtual Desktop seems to peak around 1Mbps.
Either A) your connection is underperforming or B) (more likely) its the other end that is the problem.
I frequently have these discussions with people I work with who want to get gig internet to make things faster. I point out to them that they are barely using 10% of their 100Mbps connection. And I also remind them how badly our work VPN is bottlenecked. Making the pipe 10x bigger at their house isn't going to increase the flow.
TGMF said:In reply to wae :
Oh you "only" have 50mb internet access? Tell me again how hard life is.
-Those of us stuck with 3mb hotspotted cellular or grossly overpriced old school 5mg satellite service as the only option.
There has been a concerted effort on the part of the telecos to oppose the spread of municipal broadband in the name of "free-markets". The reality is that there are so few players in the market that they don't compete and have little incentive to expand. At this point broadband is as important as power and arguably more important than phones and should be treated as a utility.
In reply to ProDarwin :
Honestly the upstream isn't all that bad most of the time - I think it's more the wireless network that's the problem. We have some sort of weird interference here at the house that I haven't been able to pinpoint and the WAP that we provide with our DSL-based IPTV setups is basically chinese crap. If I stream from my PC which has a hardwired connection it's not as bad.
An old friend of mine does a hunting camp trip every year around this time. While he did organize it this year as well, the number staying at the cabin is greatly reduced - only three this year. And I believe they are part of his "social bubble" of a few friends he sees somewhat regularly.
Me... the only person I've interacted with indoors has been my mother. Otherwise, I haven't really spent time with anyone inside since my last trip to NH for work some 3 months ago. Since separating my shoulder in a mtn bike crash, I haven't really seen anyone in the past month. Starting to go effing stir crazy... I'm basically "living" on YouTube Live Streams and the occasional Zoom or Teams meeting. Hell... I just spent 20 min B.S.ing with one of my coworkers via Teams as we both logged into a canceled meeting... As much as I dislike Facebook at times, it is also sometimes the only social interaction I'll have during the day.
I honestly have no idea what the local schools are doing.
84FSP said:The closures are coming in Cincinnati as well with Cincinnati Public shutting down in person till january. Clermont hasn't closed yet but it seems like that will follow shortly given the covid rates.
I've noticed more kids out in my neighborhood over lunch time, so I had just kind of assumed they were already out. Maybe it's just the ones who've had contact with someone with a positive test.
In reply to wae :
our DSL up is horrible. Down at 5 is decent enough to stream tv but the up at 0.4 is a little hard to take for uploading photos etc.
If the wife goes virtual again she will still have to drive 35 minutes across town to go to school so she can use their internet.
My District is out until at least January. We are really starting to see the effects on students mental health. Local private schools are doing in person.
I have my side of the building to myself 2-3 days a week................I crank loud punk rock to get me through.
I want no part of working from home..........human beings weren't meant to be isolated.
In reply to bobzilla :
The only thing that makes our DSL tolerable is that we're DSL from customer prem to the node. Our node is a little bit under 1,000 cable ft from our prem so it's about as fast as it can get.
TGMF said:In reply to wae :
Oh you "only" have 50mb internet access? Tell me again how hard life is.
-Those of us stuck with 3mb hotspotted cellular or grossly overpriced old school 5mg satellite service as the only option.
Sounds like Starlink's gonna be your saving grace- once those beta costs come down!
Not sure what the schools here are doing, but a teacher we talk with somewhat regularly (we see each other walking dogs) looks like he's about ready to spontaneously combust. He told me it is at least 2x a week that some [high school] student says that their parents said they don't need to wear masks, and it is a hoax, etc. If that is the case (and he has no reason to lie to me, so not sure why it would be anything else), I don't see how you can expect anything other than the high schools being closed.
In hindsight, I think that elementary schools, at least below 3rd grade, should have originally remained open based on what we're seeing as far as how they spread; I doubt that is the case anymore with how bad the outbreaks are getting.
We'll continue to hole up until we can get a vaccine, or at least the grandparents can. It'll be nice when my wife is able to get back to work, we've been struggling without her income.
Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:Since separating my shoulder in a mtn bike crash, I haven't really seen anyone in the past month.
Oh man, I missed that. Sorry to hear it.
My daughter's private K-8 here in NJ is case-free so far and continues 5 days/wk. I've mentioned before but: big areas changed to classrooms, lunch in homerooms, no activities that mix grades, very limited after school care, always masked up, 6 period days instead of 8. The big test will be the upcoming holidays.
The local school district has been a steady drip, drip of new cases. 6 announced today. They've been on a split 2 days in/3 days home schedule.
The mask thing is interesting. After the first week of complaining about it, she puts one on when she leaves the house and doesn't take it off until she's home.
wae said:In reply to ProDarwin :
Honestly the upstream isn't all that bad most of the time - I think it's more the wireless network that's the problem. We have some sort of weird interference here at the house that I haven't been able to pinpoint and the WAP that we provide with our DSL-based IPTV setups is basically chinese crap. If I stream from my PC which has a hardwired connection it's not as bad.
I have my WFH setup in the garage and was occasionally getting poor signal warnings and losing audio during meetings using teams. I would see max speeds of 30-40 mbps out there with our 100mbps service, and typically less especially when both kids have video calls for remote learning.
I had increased the service speeds and saw a little improvement, but I recently replaced our Netgear R8000 with an Orbi RBK50 mesh system and saw big improvement.
When I upgraded our service from 100Mbps to 400Mbps, and the cable co replaced the router. That jumped the speeds from 100 to 220ish, so less than advertised, but I also started noticing the second 5ghz radio vanish occasionally on the R8000 so I think I had a hardware issue.
I hated buying the Orbi, but after switching to it I'm seeing the download speed in excess of 400Mbps, so getting what I'm paying for now. I also find the wireless connections that used to be as low as 30mbps on the old router have gotten close to 400 mbps, even in the garage.
The two satellite system was probably overkill, but with plaster walls and appliances near the router I wanted to be sure I had got coverage and signal strength. My older son was still on WiFi at the bus stop this morning and that's about 4-5 houses away, so I think the signal is good.
wae said:In reply to ProDarwin :
Honestly the upstream isn't all that bad most of the time - I think it's more the wireless network that's the problem. We have some sort of weird interference here at the house that I haven't been able to pinpoint and the WAP that we provide with our DSL-based IPTV setups is basically chinese crap. If I stream from my PC which has a hardwired connection it's not as bad.
For some time, I've been struggling with the same thing. In the beginning, the Apple wireless hardware was really effective. Then is slowly died off- one component just going away.
Then I went with the base broadcaster (my modem has a strong signal) with one unit- but interference caused it to still have issues.
So I bailed on the single until repeater, and went with the small puck style. Not perfect, but MUCH better. Instead of being happy to get 20Mbs- I regularly get double that at the farthest point of the house. And next to the main router, it's 100Mbs.
Not sure which is the best small puck style, but I got the Comcast ones, as they were the best cost at the time (and that's the service I have- so it integrates into the base software, too).
Olemiss540 said:aircooled said:Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:Deer camp.
One time... in deer camp.....
You are all fools if you make light of the deer's capabilities to spread this pandemic. Remember the Herpes expansion in the early 90s? 85% were traced back to deer. Flu in the 1910s? Deer. The oil crisis in the 70's? Deer.
What do you think the masks are for?! So they dont recognize you. The fake news doesnt want to tell you the truth. 03Panther knows what's up.
This is true. Saw it on a YouTube video. Do your research sheep!
Back to the original topic for a moment. My older son is going hybrid (Voc HS), and they had a 2 week break of only remote (4 student cases in 2 weeks - contract tracing showed exposure occurred outside of school) but they started back in person last week.
My 6th grader has been full remote, but is supposed to start hybrid Thursday. I'm not sure that will happen since there is a school committee meeting tonight and one of the agenda items is delaying hybrid until January.
Ive been teaching auto classes on-campus since 9/14 iirc. Our program has a few hundred students and i can only personally think of two that have tested positive during this semester, although others were exposed and tested negative and some had it earlier in the year. Both the positives i know of were in my classes, but our policy is that if you didn't see them for at least 2 days preceding the test which ended up positive, you don't have to quarantine. So, i haven't quarantined either time. We've limited our class sizes to <6 by splitting classes into two groups which each come one day a week. Most groups are 4 or less and with absences its common to have 2 or 3 people show up to class in any given group. Absences went way up after midterm, dont know why although it correlates with the trend line of cases and might just be caution.
Anyway, we've planned this whole semester to go online-only after the Thanksgiving holiday, so I only have a week of in-person classes left to teach this semester. I haven't been nervous so far but the trend nationally is getting me close..
Anyway, as far as schools being in-person at all, i think most people fail to understand the reality that people birth kids the same way they buy things they can't afford. Most people realistically can't handle taking care of ALL their kids ALL the time without serious duress. I heard a stat in a meeting yesterday that there was a huge uptick in drinking problems in April that had mostly to do with school-age children being home. Even when I only streamed classes I would sometimes drive up to my office to stream from there just so i didnt have to be in the house with my one two year old child. In my case it's not even that she's distracting so much as it's a major guilt trip for me that she's able to see me, call to me, try to show me things and want my attention and me not be able to give it to her. That's kinda rough. I imagine almost everyone else with kids has it way worse than that and for some people it rises to the level of mental breakdowns. Which is funny, but not funny.
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