Why you shouldn’t fear the CoronaVirus!

Paul
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Fear is out there

If you’ve been reading blogs, or listening to the news. The CoronaVirus is now considered a Pandemic by the World Health Organization.

What’s a Pandemic, you might be asking?

According to the World Health Organization, a pandemic is declared when a new disease for which people do not have immunity spreads around the world beyond expectations.

You’ve probably heard all the stories of people dieing or that there will be a toilet paper shortage!  Everything I have heard has been amusing to say the least.   I know the fear is real out there and people are doing every silly thing out there to protect themselves.   I am here to hopefully dispel some of these fears and show you how to approach this problem.  Now let’s make this clear, so you know what I am talking about.   I’m a First Aide Responder and I know about some of this because it’s my job to know.   So I am going to talk about this with statistics.

Statistics

Yes, I’ve said this really big word.   If you compare what is being reported right now to what some of the other information.   You might be able to not fear this as much.   Fear does some strange things to people actions and we should acknowledge that or we are all going to be experiencing The Walking Dead!   Either way, we are doomed if we don’t get a hold of our fears.

  • In 2018 we had 37,461 people killed in a Car crash.
  • Each year in the United States, more than 250,000 people have to seek care in a hospital due to pneumonia. Unfortunately, about 50,000 people die from pneumonia each year in the United States. (accord to the CDC and is 20%)
  • About 647,000 Americans die from heart disease each year.

As of writing this there is 125,813 cases of Coronaviruses, and 4,607 have died from this world wide.   Now if we do the math, we can see that is 3.23% for the entire world.  As you can see the percentages of people being killed by this new virus is low.   You really shouldn’t worry about this virus.

Preventive Measures

Most of the preventive measures people are saying actually work.   I however will tell you what I know and share with you my thoughts.

  • Wash your hands — This is the best way to avoid getting sick from this illness.   I don’t suggest using alcohol based hand sanitizers due to it drying out your hands and to much of this can make the virus more immune to it.   A good Hand wash with water and soap is the best way to wash this virus from your hands.
  • Avoid medical face masks —  I’ve seen it all people wear these wrong or wear them more than they should.   You are more likely to get symptoms of the illness when you wear a medical mask for too long due to your breathe having moisture and Bacteria just loves moisture.
  • Vitamin C and D — Taking your vitamins can help your body fight off this illness way faster than if you didn’t.   I’ve been doing this for years and haven’t gotten sick for very long.

These are just simple ways to avoid getting this virus and avoid having to worry about getting pneumonia which is one of the reasons why you die from the virus.   I am sure you’ve probably heard all this but it is true.  Are you afraid of this virus?  why not leave a comment and tell me what your thoughts are?

How the Coronavirus will effect your LDR!

Paul
Photo by Polina Tankilevitch from Pexels

CoronaVirus (COVID-19)

It’s undeniable that we’ve all heard about the Coronavirus and the impact that is going to come from being in a LDR the next few weeks to months maybe even years.   There is no telling how long this will last but I know it has an impact on me alone.   I know it is going to effect every area differently but I thought I would talk about this just a little.   If you’ve been under a rock or don’t know anything about this virus.   You can visit the CDC and find out even more about this virus.  If you are traveling you should check out the travel advisories from your current country or you can check out what the CDC advises people to avoid!

Cheaper Tickets?

I’ll say this much, the more talk there has been for this virus there seems to be a dramatic drop in prices for flights to and from places.   Even looking for the cheapest ticket for your needs could provide you with some great savings.   I have talked to people who have traveled as of recent and they see that the less people are traveling.   Although that will also bring on lay offs for people who are in the flying industries.

Work hassles!

If you haven’t needed to worry about this, it will only be time before you will.   Just like my work has there own policies in place where you wold need to be tested before you can come back to work.   This can be a hassle since you are traveling and could be coming from an international travel or you could be just traveling across the state.   I’ve heard companies are setting up some strict requirements for employees who are travel!  I am quite surprised at what Walmart is doing to help people not go to work!

If you are like me and you can’t afford to do some of these things, and are worried about the virus.  I’d recommend just waiting and seeing.   I plan on waiting to see what happens in the next coming months before I buy the tickets but if I can find a really cheap ticket in the coming months, I still might go see my Girlfriend.   What’s your plan?  Why not leave a comment and tell others how you plan to deal with this problematic virus and are you afraid of it?

How to decide when to go see your Girlfriend

Paul
Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

How do you know?

It’s always a question that I’ve heard from other Long Distance couples.   They always ask when do you know you want to go see this person you’ve been talking to for quite a while.   I’ve heard people say they have been talking for over a year and wanted to meet each.   My personal experience has been 7 months.   After talking with her for 2 or 3 months, I had to go see her.   So I did all the work to buy a plane ticket.   Each situation is different and you have to decide when you want the right time is for you.   I’m going to talk about how you will know when it’s time to meet!

You click!

This is the first way to know when you should move to meet that special someone.   You get to talking and know that you just click with them.   You can talk about almost anything and you enjoy just talking to them.   I personally will tell you that it was something that I felt I needed to do.   We just had way to much fun talking on video chats and texting each other constantly.  You’ll know what it happens that you will want to see if the relationship will go even further.

You smile more!

This one is almost always part of the experiences.  You start to smile more.   I started smiling more every time I thought about my girlfriend and we just had way to much teasing each other.  It will be different for each person but you will have friends and family see how happy you are.   Even though it can be different for couples this one seemed to be me from the very beginning.

If these sound like you, you are more than ready to go see the other person and buying that ticket or traveling to go see them.  I’m sure there are even more ways to know when you are ready.   This is a small blog post about my experiences and how I knew I wanted to go meet my girlfriend.   Each situation is different but I knew I had to go see her to see if we had the right chemistry in person.

Have you seen your other half?   How did you know?  Why not leave a comment and talk about how you knew for others to know your experiences?

 

3 Ways to Transfer Money Internationally

Paul
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Something To Consider!

Before I start talking about sending money abroad to friends or family.   The first thing I must at least point out and I have had this philosophy when I started dating in an LDR. Never send money to anyone until you have physically met them.   There are plenty of dating romance scams out there and until you’ve met them then you just don’t know if it’s a guy acting like a girl or someone who just wants you to be their ATM.   Either way, you’ll know quite well after you’ve met them how they will treat your gifts of money.   Either way, I always suggest that you be careful who you send your money to and trust fully until you know for sure.

Why send Money in an LDR?

There are plenty of reasons why you might be sending money to your Girlfriend/Boyfriend.   Each reasons can be a simple as wanting to help them out with expenses, especially if you are traveling internationally.   The plane ticket alone can be expensive to some.   So couples sometimes want to help the other person by help paying for the ticket or help when something comes up.   It could easily be that they want to save money for that wedding or save money together for a goal.   Long Distance Relationships have obstacles to over come and each one of them can be a challenge for just one person.  I reiterate, be careful who you send money to!

PayPal

The first way I can come up with is PayPal.   I’ve used PayPal in the past and they’ve done a good job at sending money to other countries and changing currencies.   I personally don’t like how much they charge to exchange the money to another currency but it has never failed with me.   I know it’s widely used world wide and can be very beneficial for most people.   I just don’t like the fees that are associated when you send money abroad.

TransferWise

TransferwiseI’ve started to use this because of some really good features.  You can have direct deposits into this account and the fees are really small compared to Paypal.   You can get a card for free to use abroad.   It acts almost like an actual bank card.  I recently got mine and I definitely will be trying this out when I go see my girlfriend in the future.  You also can send money directly to someones bank account if you have that information available.   The rates at which they charge you to exchange money is far smaller than anywhere I’ve seen and can save you money in the long run.  It’s works just as fast as anything else I’ve used.

Xoom

Xoom a PayPal ServiceXoom is part of Paypal but they tend to be far cheaper than PayPal and has some great services such as sending money the same day.  You can send money through direct deposit, have them pick it up or deliver the cash to them.  Xoom has some good features but they also have higher exchange rates and other fees that you will have to pay.   It is a good service and can be good for those who might need some way to send money.    I personally wouldn’t recommend this one.   I’d still go with Transferwise but they can be used for a lot of scenarios.

More +

There are several services that can transfer and exchange currency to send to friends and family.   I’ve only listed the ones that I’ve tried and thus it’s a short list of ways to do just that.   I am sure there are others and I encourage you to comment and tell people your experiences with these and other services that you’ve used to transfer money to your girlfriend/boyfriend .   Why not tell people about this post and tell them how they can transfer money internationally.

Installing Wine on Linux Mint (Cinnamon)

Paul
Wine on Linux Mint (Cinnamon)

Windows Programs

As you know not everything might be on Linux or ported to Linux. So what is a person to do when they find out that they need a particular program. Lately I have been wondering what Wine has been up to lately. I heard about Wine a few years ago, it wasn’t very stable and you had even more problems then you wanted with this little Linux program. Let’s back up and tell you what Wine is supposed to do. Wine allows Linux users to run Windows programs in a Virtual Windows Desktop like environment.   When you installed Linux you probably didn’t even think about the possibility that you might need program.  Wine is here for that one reason.

Don’t Wine about it

What’s Wine Good for?  It general it is used to play a lot of Windows Game on Linux.   From Spore, to Call of Duty, to probably even EVE.   I know most of these games will need a Good Graphics Processing Unit to play on Any system.   I’ve seen people play Sims 3 on Linux and run very Smoothly.  I personally use Wine for programs that I might need to fix Clients computers with.   Each users needs are a little bit different and most of the time may or may not work with Wine.  So you will need to know what you might need to try with Wine before going all in with Linux.   Wine has a great list of apps and programs that will work with it.   People have been trying programs and submitting them to Wine For review of how to make them work better.

More Stability

I’ve used Wine in the past few years I think the last time I played around with it was in 2015 but I had some difficulty installing it and using.   The Wine developers definitely got it more user friendly and now most things are working much better than before.   I even tried my Yumi Multiboot USB tool with Wine and seems to run just fine as long as you don’t use persistence option when you create an ISO on the USB.   Hopefully they will fix some of these issue but it might not be fixable due to Wine capabilities.

Do you use Wine?  Why Do you use it?  Have you left Windows behind?  Did you find it hard or easier to do so?  Why did you do that? Why not leave a comment and answer all these questions and tell me your experiences with Linux.