The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

#ResilientTPA is a hashtag that Taylor Ralph, founder of REAL Building Consultants and all-round civic-minded guy, came up with. It’s about those of us who can better economically weather the COVID-19 crisis helping those in less stable circumstances. I think it’s a great idea.

Here’s what he posted earlier:

Earlier this week, chef Ferrell Alvarez, who’s behind the following local restaurants…

• The Rooster and the Till
• Nebraska Mini Mart
• Gallito Taqueria in Tampa and Lakeland

…had to close down all four restaurants and lay off most of his staff. It’s all detailed in this Tampa Bay Times article: Tampa Bay’s restaurants try to adapt to an unprecedented crisis.

He has a plan to bring back his employees, one by one if necessary, but this plan depends on staying afloat. He’s reworked his business model so that you can order from a downsized go-to menu featuring dishes from his restaurants, including:

• Gnocchi with short ribs from Rooster & The Till (I’ve had them; they’re excellent)
• Sloppy joe nachos from Nebraska Mini Mart
• Pork belly tacos from Gallito Taqueria

As summed up in the Tampa Bay Times article:

It’s a last-ditch effort to keep the restaurant afloat during the coronavirus pandemic, which has prompted federally mandated restrictions on restaurant operations and social distancing recommendations that are keeping diners at home. As COVID-19 continues to wreak unprecedented economic havoc on businesses everywhere, Tampa Bay restaurants and bars are scrambling to figure out a way to survive.

The project is called Rooster Redux — check it out on the Rooster and the Till site. Do a good deed and get some good food and place an order!

…but seriously, if you’re finding that your local “basic” supermarket is short on goods, go check out a nearby bodega or supermercado!

Tap the photo to see it at full size.

To help inspire people staying at home to go beyond the usual with their home-cooked meals, I’m starting a regular series of photos on the topic.

Today’s lunch was this salad with cabbage and lettuce, dried quinoa, sunflower seeds, a little shredded mozzarella, honey-mustard dressing, and Trader Joe’s “Everything But the Bagel” seasoning. Surrounding it is some salami-wrapped mozzarella. I added a hard-boiled egg to this mix after taking this photo (a last-minute addition). I made the same for Anitra, who’s also working from home.

Tap the photo to see it at full size.

Yesterday, I posted photos of my front porch home office on my tech blog Global Nerdy. The porch is my home office for the duration of social distancing. Anitra also works from home, and since her work requires her to be in teleconference meetings way more than mine, she has a much greater claim to the home office. Besides, Florida is lovely in March, and the view is spectacular!

I’ve seen a number of Facebook posts asking people to post the nth photo from their phone‘s camera roll, usually as a way to get a break from all the COVID-19 news. I thought I’d offer some photos to help.

Tap the photo to see it at full size.

I was a remote worker for nine years, from October 2008 to 2017. As a result, I’ve developed a bag of tricks and techniques to be effective while not working in person at an office. One of them is to not work in pajamas, but to do “the three S’s” and dress up. Tampa’s climate is well-suited to my collection of short-sleeved, button-up shirts, aloha shirts, and guayaberas. Shirts are my thing as much as scarves are my sister’s thing.

Tap the photo to see it at full size.

Where I work — Lilypad — the development team has a daily stand-up meeting every morning. For those of you who aren’t familiar with agile practices, a daily stand-up is a short meeting where the members of a team take turns telling the others what they accomplished yesterday, the tasks they plan to take on today, and if there are any impediments in their way. It helps to ensure that the team know what’s going on, and it helps keep them coordinated.

Akira, our scrum master (an agile team facilitator) is ill, and when that happens, I step in as Pretend Scrum Master. We’ve been holding the daily stand-up remotely via Google Hangouts, and I’ve been doing it with video as I stand in our front yard. It makes for a lovely backdrop.

Tap the photo to see it at full size.

Have a happy and productive Friday!

More details here, from the paper of a somewhat different record.

On Sunday, I wrote about my sister, Dr. Eileen deVilla, who is the Medical Officer for Health for the City of Toronto. Simply put, she’s the head of public health for Canada’s largest city and economic capital. This is a big responsibility, and with the COVID-19 pandemic, the work she does in coordinating the effort to combat the spread of COVID-19 is literally a matter of life and death.

I know this from my own experience as a developer evangelist: doing good work is important, but doing it in style gets the work noticed. Our Mom is a sharp dresser and so was Dad, and it’s a lesson that we both took to heart. For me, it’s nice shirts and the accordion, and for Eileen, it’s splendiferous scarves. At every news conference — and she’s been doing one daily for the past little while — she wears a different scarf.

Someone’s noticed the scarves and started a fan Twitter account — Dr. de Villa’s Scarf, or @de_scarf:

Let’s show my sister some love and appreciation for the work she does — let’s get that account past two thousand followers. Follow it now!

Also worth checking out

Want to see Eileen in action? There are plenty of videos featuring her on the City of Toronto’s channel of COVID-19 news releases, which I’ve included below.

Tuesday, March 12

Friday, March 13

Monday, March 16

Tuesday, March 17

Wednesday, March 18

Thursday, March 19

Hunkering down for a hurricane means staying indoors, hunkering down in your house’s designated safe room (the innermost room with the fewest windows, or better yet, without any windows), keeping all interior doors shut, losing power and eventually the food in your fridge and freezer from spoilage, and wind and flood damage.

Compared to all that, social distancing and sheltering in place, with working power, air conditioning, internet, running water, and being able to go outside (as long as we maintain distance) is a cakewalk.