It's been 2020 for a while now, huh? In my first update of the year, I suppose I should acknowledge the global pandemic and financial crisis. My family seems to have mostly evaded the worst of the problems facing American society. One of the big bosses at my workplace caught the virus in February. I may have had it in March, but there were no tests for the poverty-stricken back then, so I had no way to find out whether it was COVID-19 or just the normal flu. Either way, I didn't have any lingering symptoms. My boss's symptoms coincided with chronic health conditions he already suffered from, so it's impossible to say whether he's worse for wear from the infection in the long term.

My family members and I were all considered "essential workers," and thankfully none of us has gotten sick on the job yet. (Even if what I had was the coronavirus, I wouldn't have gotten it at work, as I was working from home at the time.) I'm the first of us to be financially impacted, as my hours were cut to zero as of yesterday. Specifically, I was told that I have one more week at reduced hours before I am effectively unemployed. However, if business picks up, they do want to increase my hours as their finances allow. That's understandable. I'm counting myself lucky to have worked as much as I have up until now.

I'm going to apply to a job with my university. The requirements are "knows HTML and can learn a PHP framework quickly," which I feel describes me perfectly. Hopefully they choose me, and I can continue to eke out a small living while taking classes. What a way to start a new school… Well, at least my transfer process went smoothly…

I'd like to get back to both translating Japanese songs and working on my HTML Lessons page soon. I've also been working out the chords to some songs on ukulele. I might as well archive the results of my struggles on this site while I'm at it. I hope everyone who's been following this site up until now has been healthy and safe, and that we can use our technology skills in small ways to help our friends stay connected. I don't know if I'll blog a lot, since I'm taking quarantine seriously and thus living a very boring life, but maybe I'll pop in now and again to talk about school. Take care!