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.

California Digital COVID-19 Vaccine Record

I previously wrote about a variety of ways that my COVID-19 vaccination could be documented. Since then, the state of California has implemented its own Digital COVID-19 Vaccine Record. To access these vaccine credentials, simply fill out your name, birthday, and either the cell phone or email address that you used when you received your COVID-19 vaccine. Also set a 4-digit PIN that you’ll later be asked to re-enter to retrieve your credentials. From there, you will either receive an email or text message with a link that is valid for 24 hours. Here’s what mine looks like:

In the FAQ, it is emphasized that this digital record is not a vaccine passport. Rather, it states, “You are not required to obtain a digital COVID-19 vaccine record. It is an optional means to obtain your COVID-19 vaccine information, and is the digital version of your paper vaccine card. It is one of the options to show proof of vaccination. The State will not be implementing a mandatory passport system in California.”

In August, I will be attending a conference in which a conference-specific vaccine passport will be required for all attendees. Perhaps I will discuss vaccine passports as the date approaches.

COVID-19 Digital Health Credentials

If you’ve received one of the COVID-19 vaccines, you might have realized that there are many ways to prove that you have been vaccinated. First there is the physical “COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card” with the logos from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Disease Control at the upper right. Here’s mine:

If you received your shot at a location where you normally receive healthcare, you might also be able to access your immunization records through a patient portal. Here’s what mine looks like from a desktop-based web browser. Note that it unfortunately does not list the dates, and there was a data entry error because for my second shot, I asked that it be injected into my RIGHT arm.

In some cases, your local city or county may have partnered with a 3rd party health information technology company to provide you with a digital version of your vaccination record that can be added to a mobile wallet. Los Angeles County has partnered with Healthvana on this effort, and I received a text message that my vaccination record was available to be added to my mobile wallet. Here are screenshots from my iPhone to illustrate what it looks like to retrieve my vaccine information from a mobile web browser and what the record looks like in Apple Wallet:

As if there weren’t enough options, if you have an iPhone and a healthcare provider that supports interoperable patient data through a “Blue Button” download, you could transfer your vaccination information and other health records to your Apple Health app. Follow these instructions to add your health data to Apple Health. Here’s what my immunization record looks like in Apple Health, both in human-readable summary view as well as the underlying data:

There is much discussion about vaccine passports nowadays which has given rise to many questions. Can we do it? Should we do it? Is it even legal? Without getting into a lengthy debate, suffice it to say that technologies have already been around for many years, and we’ve already been implementing digital health credentials to varying degrees for quite some time. For me, adding data related to COVID-19 vaccination simply represents a more comprehensive picture of my overall health data.

In addition to the discussion about vaccine credentials or passports, perhaps a bigger challenge is to figure out whether we can all agree on a common method to share health data. There is a saying that goes something like this: “The great thing about health IT standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.”

Disabling Windows 10 News and Interests

The Windows 10 News and Interests Widget was introduced with versions 2004 and 20H2 on April 28. A blog describes its features but does not mention its most useful feature: how to turn it off (I use Windows 10 strictly for work). To do this, right-click any blank space on the taskbar and select News and interests > Turn off.