Living life by the numbers

Let’s play this week by the numbers. At 5 p.m. Sunday, Floyd County had 416 known cases of COVID-19 cases in this Coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 300,000 nationwide.

In statehouses around the United States, members of the Electoral College should case 306 votes for president-elect Joe Biden and 236 for defeated Donald Trump. After the counts were completed after the Nov. 3 presidential election, Biden won by more than 7 million votes.

Our daily driver, a 2002 Jeep Liberty, has just shy of 200,000 miles on its 3.6 liter V-6. Wife Amy’s “fun driver,” a 2009 Mini-Cooper a little over 35,000 miles. My 2009 Harley has over 100,000 miles on the odometer and her 2014 Can-Am just over 5,000.

Our primary video camera normally captures moving images at 24 frames a second, the speed used for a “film-like” appearance. It can also shoot at 60 frames a second for slow motion scenes.

My primary sports camera, a Canon DX-1 has more than 600,000 shutter activations on it, which is not difficult with a DSLR that can shoot up to 12 frames a second. The camera will need an overhaul in about 100,000 more shots.

Our still and video files take up more than 50 terabytes of disk space on multiple hard drivers. We have several hundred thousand film negatives and slides stored here and in a storage facility in Fairfax, Va.

Apple started installation of their latest computer operating system, called Big Sur, on our primary MacPro desktop on Saturday. It took seven hours and 46 minutes, not counting the dozen or so “updates” of various programs and hardware attachments needed to work with the upgrade.

And, oh yes, Tuesday marks 41 years of marriage to Amy. Thursday celebrates (or consoles) 73 years on planet Earth. My daughter is 30 years younger than me. Those are the numbers that matter.

© 2004-2022 Blue Ridge Muse

© 2021 Blue Ridge Muse