Let’s face it. Touch-up painting is a must, especially in a household with children. A few years ago, we had some painting done, and as such, we had these large leftover cans of paint. You have all probably tried to do some touch-up, and the thought of getting that large paint can out, opening it, and the mess that gets made probably deters you from even trying?

Well, the Brush Cup is a simple solution to this problem.

For the past 10 years, I’ve been using Comcast / Xfinity for my broadband connection. Most recently we’ve upgraded to the 1 Gigabit service (1 Gigabit down and 40 MBps down). This has been ok. In addition to that, I’ve been exceeding the 1TB per month limit for the past few years, so I’ve been paying an additional $30/mo for unlimited data. The total bill is $130.

Now that’s expensive and the upload speed is not awesome.

But the issue I’ve faced is that every few days, my internet seems to drop for a few minutes. I can see my cable modem rebooting or whatever it does with the blinky lights. In addition to that, every few weeks there is an outage in my neighborhood (either scheduled or unscheduled) and when I’ve called Comcast to report this they are pretty customer-hostile and unhelpful and blame my modem (since it’s purchased and not rented from them).

With this pandemic, and with my children online for school, any kind of outage (even if a few minutes) is disruptive.

Hi 👋-

It’s been a while. As you have guessed I have not been updating OmarKnows. After skipping a few updates, I just decided there was too much going on in our lives and took a break. There is still too much going on in our lives. Our kids returned to school… virtually. It’s been a rather difficult transition.

We took a few vacations this summer and that was wonderful. It put some distance between the long and seemingly similar days. Our puppy Oliver has been a joy and we all love him dearly.

The summer brought issues of social and racial justice to the forefront and I’ve taken the opportunity to become more educated and learn more on this topic. This has intersected with my interest in the recent HBO series Watchman where I’m embarrassed to say I never heard of the Tusla massacre prior to watching the show. This reminds me of when I read A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. This was not the history of the United States that I learned in school. I’m happy my daughter is reading A People's History of American Empire at school.

The fall has now brought the horrendous effects of wildfires that are ravaging the west coast. Seattle was completely covered in smoke and haze - nothing like what California or Oregon were experiencing though. With few precious weekends of warm weather remaining, this added more challenge.

To top that all off, we have an election in a few months. My hope is that we can bring in 4 years of optimism and compassion back to the white house. There are so many people that are having a much more difficult summer than our family and deserve compassion, empathy, and support.

I’ve been keeping my brain busy this summer through my new hobby - Sewing. I have learned to make some pretty neat things such as small bags and wallets from my favorite material - Dyneema composite. I have also made some masks for my family and some dog products. Sewing has been a nice respite from everything. Sometime in the next few months, I’ll be putting up some of my products for sale. Well, we will see if we get to that - but I do have a new logo and brand for my stuff :-).

With that, I hope you are all doing well and staying safe. We’ll get through this. We are months away from the early distribution of a vaccine. I think our life post-Panedmic Apocalypse will be a better one built on much of the hardship and suffering we are all coping with.

For my first return to the newsletter, I have a few items to share.

I’ve sat at my keyboard for the last few weeks struggling to write words and move forward. One of the reasons that I write on this blog and through this newsletter is that it gives me great joy. The joy of doing research, trying new products, sharing my experiences with all of you - and also getting feedback that I love. I love hearing from you about what you like and what you’ve found that you also like.

Product reviews are a passion of mine and I love to share this.

However, the past few months have been so challenging on so many different levels. COVID-19 has placed us into a shared experience that’s different than our normal one.

I have learned that public health is no longer a luxury or individual concept - it’s a national and global issue. We are so connected to each other and this virus has taken advantage of our connective tissue to create incredible damage that has shown up to us as individuals, families, and communities in very different ways.

Spending so much time at home has caused us to take another look at some of the products in the house as well as food.

A few weeks ago we decided to get an Air Fryer. We’ve been cooking 6 nights a week since the stay at home order and I thought this would be a good time to make some things with a new gadget.

I purchased an Instant Pot Vortex 4-in-1 Air Fryer for no other reason that I like Instant Pot as a company and brand and the size and form factor was appealing. I plan to keep this on the counter at all times.

Since I wrote my last post, this Life with COVID-19 situation has only gotten harder and worse.

It’s been over 3 weeks now since I have worked from home and since my kids have been home from school. It feels like an eternity and it’s not anywhere close to over despite our president’s delusions that we’ll be back in church for Easter.

If you want to hear from a smart and rational human being about the COVID-19 situation and what our future holds - I highly suggest watching Bill Gates on the CNN Town Hall last week. Check out Part 4. Now you can ignore the White House Briefings forever cause you know everything you need to know about the incredible failure of the federal government. Please watch it and educate yourself about how we will come out of this - and the reflect on how we got here.

One thing Lora and I are trying hard to do - is to keep paying people for services and appointments even if we are not able to use them (housecleaning, trainer, etc). We are also trying to keep ordering take out from some of our favorite restaurants to help them stay in business. I hope you all find ways to support your communities.

My mood is not great. I am feeling Grief over all this. It didn’t occur to me that this feeling was a feeling of Grief until I read this article in Harvard Business Review. We are all processing this situation differently and for me, anticipatory grief is a prison I’m finding it hard to escape from.

OmarKnows purchases and acquisitions are also way down. But I do have some products I’d recommend to you in order to ease the new normal we are in.

In the last week, our lives have changed, and I expect they will continue to change. Here is the Seattle area the situation is pretty fluid, and I expect we are just an early example of what most of you will (or have) felt in the past week.

Many employers (who can) have asked their employees to work from home for the next several weeks. Many schools have closed for 5-6 weeks, are thinking of closing and have looked to online curriculum.

I have several emotions that I’ve gone through around:

• The certainty that I had around future plans (work and personal travel and vacations)

• The certainty that I can order and purchase nearly anything I want whenever I want

• The certainty that my kids will have a consistent schedule and attend school each day

• My own work routines and schedule

My feeling is that this situation has some of the effects and impacts of a natural disaster except in slow motion and world wide. The changes we’ve experienced are not sudden - they are evolving.

One thing is clear. The math tells the story of the number and the impact. Not impacted yet? You will be.

I don’t know what the future will hold, but I thought I would share how I had previously prepared for a natural disaster and what we’ve done and considered since the start of this situation.