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Just a brief update to let you in on what I have been up to. I have some of the main price guide pages laid out and starting to wire everything together to make those pages functional. I am using a new design so it takes time to lay it out and make sense. I am not trying for total perfection since I am trying to get the site out to every one as soon as possible and will push updates over time to add more and fix things. Next up will be the Brickfolio so that I can get the site active for you all to have access to your data again. Today I am actually working on updating the Amazon code. I received call from Amazon on Friday asking me to please upgrade and convert my code to their new API. I really appreciate that they did that. I have known about it and they sent quite a few emails, but the fact that they reached out was very cool. I need to get this done or they will shut down any of the code that helps the daily deals feed (whether you love or hate it).

Some news from the Netherlands. Most people are getting pretty scared here, but many are also not taking it too seriously. My family mostly stays indoors and keeps distance from people, except my sister and her husband who are both working at a hospital in the big city. We had a zoom call with the whole family today and what they told us is pretty scary. In the Netherlands we will likely within 2 weeks have a huge spike in Intensive Care (IC) cases that will overflow the system. This has many side effects that are the reason the situation is so dire: - Mortalility rate of severe cases is really high and they are on IC for 2-4 weeks. This is much longer than people are usually in IC - Other people that need IC will not be able to when it is full. -Many people will be able not receive necessary treatment which on a population scale will lead to additional deaths - Life extension treatments for older people and people with terminal illnesses are already shutting down. This whole crisis reminds me of something I saw happening at a beach in Portugal years back. On this beach there is a pier that extends into the sea with a beach next to it. I could stand on top of this pier and see most of the beach from top-down. The tide was coming in, but people were still sitting very close to the water and did not move away. Some people, mostly mothers, were already moving their blankets and stuff further down the beach, but others remained at their spot. (this was not a busy beach, so easy to get a new spot). The water was getting closer and closer, but people did not budge. You could see people getting slightly wet that still kept lying at their spot, until suddenly, a big wave came in and all the people close to the water got drenched and had to scrape to save their stuff. This happened every day (I was planning my beach walks around specific times for this. Does this make me a bad person? ) This showed to me that even things that are super easy to predict, the tide for example :), are still hard to grasp for many people. In short, we're going to learn a hard lesson here and hopefully be more like the people that prepare before it happens. Stay safe all! Build some sets (I build palace cinema yesterday) and see you on the other end! We all knew this could happen some day, so let's hope we can get through it in an okay shape. Avoid direct contact with the elderly and distance from people in general. SHARING IS NOT CARING

Yep...No doubt. Whether you love or hate the president, most have to admit that this crisis was ignored because of impeachment. Now, they are attacking him for this crisis ad nauseam. Time for all of us to work together here.

^ i am shocked that with everything going on , people have the time to : A; Produce this crap B: Post this crap This isn't the time to place blame, and there is never a time for such, well like i said, crap

I don't know about Ed's opinion, but perhaps this thread would be more productive and conducive if we reverted away from the political attacks and discussion and talked about how we (realistically) as both an online community and members of our respective physical communities, could come together and help the people who's lives have already been disrupted by this. for example one of my favorite charities to contribute to (and by far the most productive with a $ I've seen) is www.ripmedicaldebt.org With thousands of people facing unexpected medical bills due to this situation perhaps this might interest some of you to contribute. Any other helpful thoughts on how to face this as a unified nation/community?

Wuhan was all over the news during january. By january 15th they were already reporting the first American infected in Wuhan. But yeah...

This will not kill Main Street. Some businesses near us have already adapted either through offering curbside or delivery. Sure some will suffer or go away, but during times like these natural selection will be abundant. Could you imagine if this Virus was more deadly or even air born? Darwin says those ignoring the caution signs would be the first to go. I tend to agree with him after witnessing people’s actions reactions this week. If under the correct right guidance, kids should be learning a hell of a lot from this. There is a big difference between panicking and acting calm while this situation plays out. Humans may have many pitfalls, but we are resilient. We have made it through worse, and will we get through this global Pandemic, together. Distanced more than 6ft apart, but together nonetheless.

It's all opinion. I thought it was a worthwhile read. I'm not passing judgement. I read and recommend all sorts of articles. I am trying to be more upbeat than some. What I can tell you is that the media is biased and love to hype this virus because death and drama sells. Johns Hopkins Coronavirus tracker? That is just f*cked up if you think about it. There is so much false information out there. People are looking at Italy as what is to come here, yet there are now questions as to how Italian officials are classifying deaths and enforcing policies. The truth lies somewhere in between.

And if you want to calculate how many TP rolls you will need ; https://howmuchtoiletpaper.com

I seem to get lucky and stumble upon a nice local bulk lot every now and then. The last one I bought had a few unopened sets mixed in. This was one of them. I sold my Gunship on eBay a couple weeks ago. $460 shipped. Any guess on who my buyer was........?? Toycentric. He must have sold his phantom stock on Amazon for $525-$550ish and he hired me to fulfill his order. Fingers crossed his buyer doesn’t pull a fast one on him, because then it will come back on me. He’s bought from me a couple of dozen times over the past couple of years with no issues, so I’m not terribly concerned. As soon as he gives me one sniff of trouble though he’s getting blocked.

That is just a nature of governments. Their actions tend to be draconian one way or the other since they have to enact "one size fits all" policies. On the other hand, most of US population are just dumb and or ignorant. Something has to be catastrophic or drastic to get their attention. Even then, we have those spring breakers filling up the beaches in FL and those dumb kids licking toilets. One thing to criticize was the campaign to mock the effectiveness of masks. Masks are not for the protection of the wearers but to protect everyone else. Since CDC botched the test kits, everyone should have been asked to wear a mask, because we could not know who was infected. Masks would have limited the spread of not just Covid but also flu. Especially since there was an outbreak of Influenza B around January. That was just logical. I would have rather seen people walking around in masks and gloves than being cooped up at home. Quarantine should have been last measure But again, most people are dumb. Now I have to begrudgingly agree with the government's decision to have everyone stay at home <end rant>

I wanted to create a new thread in order to give progress on my site updates. I want explain a bit on what happened and what I am doing. What happened with the site? Honestly nothing really exciting or dramatic, overall in the end, I did not want to support the host I was with for the past four years after not really offering too much help with managed servers. They would spend 30 seconds looking, say they can ping the server so its up and then just say, "hey not my problem". I was on aging hardware, paying the same amount of money, so I took the opportunity to move to a new host with better/faster hardware and a staff that does help to support you when run into an issue that you can't handle on your own. I have been doing this a long time and pretty good monitoring and handling 99% of what comes my way, but there are issues that you need the next level up to help figure out what to do. I wasn't getting anything like that, but paying for it. Not anymore. What my goal is... I know more than anyone that the site needed some TLC. It's been a while since I have done any drastic updates, the site looked tired and I know the site can be so much better than what it's current state was. LEGO investing has changed since Ed and I launched the site and it's time to remove the dead content and bring more of what people are looking for. Below is the short term list of items planned for updating. I have been working on the nightly, just like the early days and enjoying seeing parts of it coming to life. Fix the login. This has been messed up and quirky for a while. This has been resolved and working well. It's a simple thing overall, but nice that it actually works how it's supposed to Overall price guide site design update. The site was tired and disjointed. I hated it and pained me to look at it. Time to start over. Brickfolio update. All the Brickfolio data is safe. I have close to three million rows of data for Brickfolio entries. Time to bring this thing to 2020. I will probably create another thread at some point to solicit some feedback on some new requests for the brickfolio Fix the data syncing with Brickset. A lot of people used this feature, but it's time to make it work the way it should. Later I will work on the content portions. The news and blogs. I have some good ideas for this, but want to get the price guide and brickfolio to you sooner than later. What I am asking for if possible... If you can, please stop asking where the brickfolio is. Again, the data is safe and I am working as fast as I can to bring it all back to you. It won't be a few days, but more like a few weeks, but it will be worth it. I setup my dev environment to push releases quick and easy. I want to create a true changelog so that you can follow updates to see what was done/fixed/new/removed, you know like what real software companies do. I really do appreciate your patience with this. It wasn't planned, but if there was going to be a time to do it, it was going to be now.

Well... Respectfully, because I am a guest in your home...But, I think it is more accurate to say that the President ignored the potential crisis, because he is way out of his league, and he didn't see the political upside to spending time on it. Additionally, it has been reported that he saw focusing on testing as a political liability. I don't see any way to be aware of the facts of the disease timeline, AND the President's laughably inaccurate, magical thinking statements during that timeline, and not come to the conclusion that the Administration badly mismanaged this crisis, namely with regard to early testing, and that because of that significantly more people will die.

I can't agree with this. Some businesses have the ability to adapt while others will fail due to the circumstances. People will then lose jobs. Point me to where Darwin talks about surviving under draconian government orders. "...under the correct right guidance..." Sure if they have parents who DON'T have to work. My wife is an elementary teacher and so far she has been able to work with our kids on some home schooling. And explain how parents who are forced to work from home and without necessary child care are supposed to take care of their children. Unfortunately due to the circumstances most kids will be put in front of video games and tablets for most of the day. Their only socializing will consist of instant messaging.

Started the BIG hogwarts castle with the family during lockdown this weekend.

Just a heads up in France and Italy Amazon is now only taking FBA orders for essential items (baby, health, beauty, groceries, industrial, pet). Buyers can still purchase items in other categories from 3P not using FBA. It may be wise to plan ahead if this is also rolled out for the USA over the next few weeks and you have alot of Lego or other items not in essential categories in FBA. We are selling 99% FBA in the essential categories in the USA and open orders are through the roof so the USA fulfillment network is obviously already under quite a bit of strain.

More pics https://brickshow.com/2020/03/additional-images-of-the-lego-star-wars-mandalorian-sets-revealed

A little tasteful humor during this somber discussion.

It was an opinion piece but some like Fox News were representing it as scientific evidence based on facts. Agreed there is so much false information in both directions. The one thing that gets me about the MSM is that originally nobody was covering it. You could watch multiple first hand reports out of Wuhan on Twitter and YouTube for 3 weeks before there was any coverage on the nightly news. Nothing not one story because all they were covering was the impeachment. Perhaps if more people knew what was going on earlier they could have been better prepared.

Btw I really appreciate that "normal" people dont wear masks and just keep their Distance and do everything else that is reommended. So the Medical personel has the masks right where they need them.

Twitter Debunking lol. Seriously the original article was removed which means that it probably contains more truth than the governors want you to hear. Free speech doesn’t exist in this environment of fear mongering. Google the article. It’s a good read and I agree with the author. This is going to kill Main Street, lots of people will lose jobs and children will miss out out on important development and learning.

And now debunked https://twitter.com/ct_bergstrom/status/1241522140559503360?s=21

Now that is a useful site. Did y'all see that Target, Walmart, etc are not doing returns on toilet paper or cleaning supplies. People who hoarded a year's worth of toilet paper are going to have to sit on it.

Just ordered the new set released today

Nice.. now I know why your folks in Bavoria make a fun of it, refuse to wear anything over their mouth and generally sit around at the sidewalks drinking beer.. nice touch! You have over 20.000 infected and you will get at least 500.00 with this approach. Your IMBECILE ppl in Bavaria led the local government into declaring house quarantine.

Fixed it for you.

True that. But those damn skins are expensive.

That and deaths from drinking, drugs and spousal murders are going to skyrocket.

You doubters and naysayers will realize how dumb you are when you see the images of the frontline of the pandemic hospitals and workers the bodies we are still under reacting anybody comparing this to the flu needs there head examined. This is a major event it is just getting started.

The people who are going to die haven't died yet, you can't just do a quick math based on those numbers, also, the hospitals aren't yet overrun as they are in northern Italy. THAT is why we are doing what we are doing. More people can survive this with better care, that's what "flatten the curve" is all about. Decrease the rate at which the hospital ICUs fill up. If it's successful, people will claim the virus was not that bad and we've all stayed home for nothing. It's not intuitive, it takes a bit of thinking to understand. It's not because the mortality rate isn't THAT bad, it's a combination of a high number of asymptomatic carriers, a long incubation time, a high transmission rate, PLUS a very high mortality rate for certain populations, this is not like the flu, it's a novel virus, no one in the world has antibodies against it, it has also mutated already at least once. I know it goes against every capitalist bone in your body, but maybe put some human lives ahead of the almighty dollar for a bit, and if all goes well, maybe we'll overhaul the whole apparatus and we can all be better for it in the future.

If you - any person - have a 3000$ mortgage then you have a really high income and logic stipulates you would have some money saved in the bank . As far as the first part goes , if left unchecked the virus can affect up to 80% of the population to which humans have no immunity against . Even at 1% mortality that’s a lot of humans dead . Is it a bit over the top ? Maybe . Is it worth the effort to save lives ? Absolutely !

And what will the body count be if this thing infects millions? Tens of millions? What will be the economic cost of that? We are doing exactly what was done with the Spanish flu of 1919, which killed more people than WW1. That’s how we would have handled this 50,60 years ago

This was a fun one. I'm always amazed by the building techniques that are in use today. Some rubber pads on the bottom of the rotating base would be nice as it sometimes spins around with the car on a smooth surface.

I am practicing social media distancing during this virus: staying as far away from social media as I can.

"The World Health Organization has announced that dogs cannot contract Covid-19. Dogs previously held in quarantine can now be released. To be clear, WHO let the dogs out."

I agree. It's Lego, but in a new way.

To be fair, these are pretty innovative. LEGO integrated tech into bricks like nothing I have seen before. I still want that Yoshi brick build (0:30)

"Get to the sh*tta!!"

RIP Kenny Rogers