SafePassLA

If you live in or visit the county of Los Angeles, you should be aware of a vaccine verification program called SafePassLA which requires demonstration of proof of full COVID-19 vaccination for certain indoor locations and outdoor events. Examples of covered indoor locations include (but are not limited to):

• Food & Beverage Establishments (e.g., restaurants, fast food establishments, coffee shops, cafeterias, food courts)
• Gyms & Fitness Venues (e.g., yoga, dance studios, hotel gyms, any facility used for indoor fitness classes)
• Entertainment & Recreation Venues (e.g., shopping centers, movie theaters, bowling alleys, sports arenas, convention centers, museums)
• Personal Care Establishments (e.g., spas, hair/nail salons, barber shops)
• Indoor City Facilities (e.g., city hall, senior centers, recreation centers)

Additionally, for outdoor event venues, events with 5,000 to 9,999 attendees will require proof of vaccination OR a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of entry.

SafePassLA launched yesterday (November 8, 2021) with a focus on outreach and education. Enforcement will begin November 29, 2021. I would not be surprised if enforcement will be spotty, especially with small business owners who may not have the staffing to provide such enforcement, but you should be prepared in case you are asked to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Whatever you do, don’t be this guy.

To demonstrate proof of COVID-19 vaccination, you can certainly carry your white Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccination card with you, but there are other options that may be more convenient for you, especially if you carry your cell phone with you everywhere you go. One such option is to take a picture of your CDC vaccination card and store it on your phone. Another option is to use one of several mobile phone apps that provide digital vaccination records as listed here by the LA County Department of Public Health. Approved digital vaccination records are those made by Healthvana, Carbon Health, CommonPass, CLEAR Health Pass, and VaxYes.

I previously wrote about COVID-19 Digital Health Credentials, and I illustrated how you can add your Healthvana COVID-19 vaccination record to Apple Wallet. That will be my preferred method of showing proof of vaccination because it is convenient, and it will work even if I don’t have internet connectivity. As a backup, I already have my COVID-19 vaccination credentials loaded into CLEAR Health Pass, and I also have photo backups of my CDC vaccination card in Google Photos and as attachments in my personal email.

Advanced Google Searches

Chances are that you have searched the internet using Google and are familiar with its simplicity. Just type something and let Google find relevant content for you. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right?

There are times when you may want to further refine your searches in Google, and there are 2 approaches to doing that. The first approach is to type specific limiters into the Google search box. This works well if you already know what the parameters are and know the syntax for each.

The second approach is to use the Advanced Search page that provides a menu of options along with sample usages:

I think you’ll find it self-explanatory, so give it a try and hopefully you’ll level up your Google searches right away.

Also note that after you perform certain advanced searches, Google will auto-populate the proper syntax in its command line search for you. For example, if I populate the Advanced Search in this way:

all these words: ahsoka tano

none of these words: mandalorian

The resultant command line search will be:

ahsoka tano -mandalorian

The command line search syntax can come in handy if you want to apply advanced searches to other Google assets like Gmail, Google Images, Google Alerts, and any other Google site where you can enter a search string.

The Journey of a Rain Droplet

River Runner is a website that visualizes the path of a rain drop from any point in the contiguous United States to its end point (usually the ocean, sometimes the Great Lakes, Canada/Mexico, or another inland water feature). Its instructions are simple: “Click to drop a raindrop anywhere in the contiguous United States and watch where it ends up.”

To learn more about the data resources that are used to visualize the path of a raindrop, visit the River Runner GitHub site and the Hydro-Network Linked Data Index.

Apple Maps Guide - America’s National Parks

In recent years, Apple has celebrated the birthday of the National Park Service which was established when the Organic Act was signed into law on August 25, 1916. Last year’s Apple festivities included donations to the National Park Foundation based on selected usage of Apple Pay—details are described here.

This year marks the 105th birthday of the National Park Service, and Apple is doing something similar. Additionally, it has provided a link to an Apple Maps Guide that was created by the National Park Foundation which can be accessed here.

There are 63 locations in this guide, one for each national park. Each national park has a brief description along with a link to additional information on the National Park Foundation website.

More information about the Guides feature of Apple Maps can be found on the Apple Maps overview page, the Maps User Guide for macOS, the iPhone User Guide, or the iPad User Guide.

LAUSD COVID-19 School Report Card

Now that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has transitioned students back to full-time in-person instruction, it is important to monitor COVID-19 cases at each school. The LAUSD COVID-19 School Report Card serves this purpose.

Upon selecting a school in the upper right corner, it provides a dashboard summary of active COVID-19 cases among staff and students and characterizes how many of those cases come from school-based transmission. It also provides data on community case rates which are broken down into staff and student case rate, community case rate, and LA county case rate. Definitions of each metric are provided in a glossary below the dashboard. Cases from school-based transmission are defined as positive test cases that were determined to be epidemiologically linked through contact tracing. There is currently no detail provided regarding contact tracing methods, but I assume this is done manually. Unfortunately there does not appear to be an option to download the entire data set.

Of interest, the reporting statuses are listed as OPEN (no active positive cases that are epidemiologically linked), OPEN (2 or more active positive cases that are epidemiologically linked; all close contacts are in quarantine), or CLOSED (school closure determined by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health). As of right now, it is not clear what the contingency plan would be in the even of school closure, and I hope I don’t find out what it is.

LA County Hotspot Locator

There are many ways to access the internet when you’re away from home. Nowadays it seems that most people have wireless plans with (often unlimited) data. But for those of you who have caps on your wireless data plans or need wireless internet on your laptop or mobile devices, your best bet is to find a wireless hotspot. If you live in Los Angeles, you might benefit from the LA County Hotspot Locator.

It is an interactive map that shows WiFi locations throughout LA County, many of which are publicly available and free. In addition to zooming to your location or destination, you can also enter an address and specify a search radius. Happy surfing!

Spectrum Internet - Modem Activation

This morning we had experienced what seemed like yet another internet outage. Our Spectrum internet service has been spotty during the pandemic, and it came as no surprise that we lost internet again today. I decided to run through my typical troubleshooting steps to determine if the problem could have been due to my computer, the mesh router, modem, or ISP. When I attempted to reboot the NETGEAR C3000 cable modem/router, I discovered that all the lights were off, and despite toggling the power button and removing/inserting the power supply, I was unable to get the modem to work. Time to get a new modem.

Spectrum provides a list of authorized modems that are compatible with its network. Fortunately my local Costco warehouse had a NETGEAR CM1100 cable modem (modem only, no router; I don’t need a modem/router because I already have a mesh router) in stock, and it is listed by Spectrum as approved for internet speeds up to 1 Gbps.

I thought that replacing my modem should have been easy as plugging in the power supply, turning on the modem, and connecting the ethernet cable between my modem and mesh router. However, on my 2016 MacBook Pro running macOS 10.15.7 (Catalina), I was only getting speeds of 0.85 Mbps even though I subscribe to a 60 Mbps plan. On my mid-2007 iMac running Mac OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan), I saw the following pop-up window:

Although clicking the “Get Started” button returned me to the same screen resulting in an infinite loop, fortunately it provided a link to https://activate.spectrum.net/ at the bottom of the window which I visited via a web browser. After logging in, it told me that my modem was offline.

Clicking the 3 dots to the right of the modem icon gave me an option to replace my modem. Upon selecting that option, I entered the MAC address listed on the new modem. A few minutes later, my new modem was successfully activated, and I am back to normal internet speeds.