I run a hackerspace in Fresno, CA called Root Access. My side project is that we're making PPE and other things to help with various efforts -- face masks, face shields, scrub caps, ear savers, no-contact accessories, etc.
We're working with other local maker-y spaces on these efforts; we've picked up a few Ender 3's to help with the 3D printing and we have a small team of volunteers helping with sewing. So far we've distributed over 1,500 face masks to folks and healthcare workers in Fresno, San Diego, Idaho, and soon to a school in Uganda.
This is all on top of trying to keep our community engaged and hosting meetups and happy hours on Zoom. Also on top of my day job. I've never been so busy in my life, and I'm looking forward to a time when we can safely re-open and get back to building the community face-to-face.
I never got to meet JPB, but I was lucky enough to attend his keynote at PyCon 2014 in Montreal. It's a great talk, should you have a spare 45 minutes.
He is (indirectly) responsible for the existence of a hackerspace in Fresno, CA. Last year a few of us got together to talk about starting a chapter of the Electronic Frontier Alliance. That conversation morphed into, "fuck it, let's just start a hackerspace."
That was a great little corner of the universe to occupy. That was the first talk at the first conference to which Chelsea and I traveled. And also where my friendship with you began in earnest. Incredible.
As a parent, I get the emotional reaction. You want to provide the absolute best for your child, and this feels like a total missed opportunity.
But as someone who had cataract surgery as a newborn, please don't fret about it too much. I don't know how old your son is or when his surgery was, but bilateral aphakia is something that has become more of an inconvenience than anything else. It certainly shouldn't limit his options in life. (Unless his heart is set on joining the military, like I was. But, as they say, I really dodged a bullet there.)
Congenital cataracts run in my family and, as luck would have it, I inherited the condition from my Dad. I had both my lenses removed when I was an infant in the mid/late 80's. I wore both contacts and glasses until I was 5, when I was switched to just contacts with monovision. My correction is a bit higher, around +13, to get me about 20/35.
Luckily my daughter didn't inherit the condition, but it was a major concern throughout my wife's pregnancy. It's good to know it may not be an issue if we ever decide to have another.
That's interesting. My problem is that I suffer from a connective tissue disorder. And, as it happens, it was the connective tissue between the lens and eye that gave out.
Medical cannabis still exists in Colorado. You can still go to a doctor and get a recommendation, and many dispensaries will give a discount to qualified patients.
I started with Awesome in 2009 and switched to Qtile about a year later. Python is what I do all day every day, and it's really useful to be able to customize my environment in my favorite language. The other plus of Qtile being in Python is that it's much easier for me to contribute back to the project itself.
I'm not sure how Xmonad and AwesomeWM handle multiple monitors, but in Qtile you have a single set of groups (analagous to tags or workspaces) shared between your monitors, and each monitor displays one group.
Before you ration drinking water, you ban or ration washing cars, watering lawns, and laundry.
I live in Fresno, and we're not too far off from that. Come November, no one is allowed to water their lawns, and they're threatening to completely shut off the water to anyone who violates this multiple times.
