I wanted to write about Australia’s COVID situation today. Sydney’s been locked down for almost three weeks, Melbourne and Brisbane are also sealed off from the world. Newcastle has somehow dodged COVID19 so far, which surprises me given the busy trade between Sydney and here.
Then I was going to explain in flowery detail why Australia lags so far behind on vaccines. Only about 10 per cent of Australians are vaccinated right now. AstraZeneca is basically a no-go here — only allowed for older people. And Pfizer is currently out.
The bigger problem is getting an appointment at all. I’ve been trying for weeks.
Back in May, I called my GP. He said they were still doing older people and I should try again end of June. I thought that was outrageous. Now they don’t take phone enquiries at all. Probably sick of having to fob people off constantly.
The online registrations don’t work either. I’ve tried repeatedly over the past few weeks. Either the promised SMS code never arrives, or comes half a day later (making registration impossible), or there are no appointments anyway.
A big vaccination hub is opening around the corner. Only three such centres in the entire state. So it’s a big deal. They’re supposed to have Pfizer. Online doesn’t work there either. First you spend hours entering data into forms. Then there’s no appointment for the second dose and the booking fails. You can’t book just the first dose.
A few days ago I finally managed to book with another GP for AstraZeneca, after agreeing about five times that I understood the risks. I was relieved.
Today, the call: Sorry, we have to cancel. We’re only allowed to give AstraZeneca to over-60s. Maybe try the new vaccination hub — they do Pfizer too.
Bloody hell. No wonder Australia’s vaccination rollout is stuck.
Right, now for the actual topic — backups (yawn). Anyone here just for Australia can tune out now. But this matters to me because my ThinkPad suddenly died today. That’s my main writing machine. Instead of “n” I got “4”, the spacebar became “0”. Completely useless.
I’d updated my Ubuntu kernel yesterday and apparently that broke something. Ubuntu’s Timeshift couldn’t fix the problem. Luckily I had a clone I’d made three weeks ago with Clonezilla. Everything’s restored now and I know I should clone my system more often. Because that actually works.
The obligatory question: You do backups, that’s nice. But what happens when your computer actually fails? Can you reliably restore your system?
Well? Do you know?
I hope it’s easier than getting a vaccine appointment here.
From the archives of reinergaertner.de, running since 1997. Translated with AI help and my questionable bilingual proofreading. If you spot a Germanismus — that’s a feature, not a bug.