Good news Aquarius Condo. swimming pools are scheduled to be open soon. According to message from the Aquarius Management Office the pools could be open as soon as May 1st.
Please do not leave your apartment without:
Face Mask. It is not bad to have a spare one on the pocket. Sometimes the masks malfunction. My mask protects you. Your mask protects me!
Gloves. Gloves are an important accessory.
Napkins or similar disposable protection when door knobs and similar stuff needs to be worked on.
Social Distance: Allways. Always. Always. 6 feet.
Going to the pool: Sun protection lotion. I like 100 SPF. Consumers Report says that anything under 30 SPF gives no or very little protection.
Broward County relaxes a few COVID 19 precautions. Check out the message that Frank de Risi was kind enough to send.
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No mask? We are ready for you! Check a sample of our services in the clip bellow.
Old Uncle: My dear I have an excellent paper by astronauts that spent many months isolated in the spacial station. It’s full of advice to cope with stay-at-home.
Nice (mother of 4 young ones): Do they have kids in the space station?
The City of Hollywood has issued an Emergency Order effective tomorrow, Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 12:01 a.m. ordering that all persons outside their homes and within a public place such as a grocery store, hardware store, pharmacy, restaurant, or other deemed essential business, are mandated to wear a cloth facial covering consistent with the current CDC guidelines. All individuals providing delivery services shall wear a form of covering over their noses and mouths while making deliveries.
U.S. Surgeon General shows how to make face masks. All required it is a piece of cloth, a couple of rubber bands. It takes less than 45 seconds. Bellow there is another suggestion. It takes even less seconds…
This one from men’s brief takes just under 30 seconds. It is also possible to make a facial mask from panties. Youtube is full of creative suggestions that help you protect yourself and protect others.
CITY OF HOLLYWOOD EMERGENCY ORDER 2020-02 FACIAL COVERING ORDER
On March 11, 2020, a State of Emergency was declared in the City of Hollywood by Mayor Josh Levy relating to the Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (“COVID-19”), and subsequently redeclared on March 18, 2020, March 25, 2020, April 1, 2020, and April 8, 2020.
COVID-19 is believed to spread by respiratory droplets that come from the mouth and nose. It is believed that people who are asymptomatic can still spread COVID-19 by breathing, talking, laughing, coughing, and sneezing. Recently the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) issued guidance that the general population should wear cloth facial coverings to capture the respiratory droplets of asymptomatic people to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, numerous local governments have adopted various versions of orders that request that all persons outside their homes wear a cloth facial covering consistent with the current CDC guidelines. These orders are designed to protect the health and well-being of the community by slowing the spread of COVID-19.
As of today, the City of Hollywood is aware of confirmed cases of COVID-19 within its jurisdictional boundaries. To limit the potential community spread of COVID-19, it is now necessary for the City of Hollywood to continue to implement restrictions for the general health, safety, and welfare of the community.
Pursuant to Section 252.38(3) and 252.46, Florida Statutes and Section 1.01 of the Charter of the City of Hollywood, as well as section 40.01, City Code of the City of Hollywood, the City has the power to issue emergency orders with the force of law. The City Manager has expressly been authorized to issue Emergency Orders.
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:
Section 1. Covering of Nose and Mouth. All persons outside their homes and within a public place such as a grocery store, hardware store, pharmacy, restaurant, or other deemed essential business, are mandated to wear a cloth facial covering consistent with the current CDC guidelines. All individuals providing delivery services shall wear a form of covering over their noses and mouths while making deliveries.
Section 2. Types of Coverings. A covering over the nose and mouth shall include a face mask, homemade mask, or other cloth covering, such as a scarf, bandana, handkerchief or other similar cloth covering. All persons should avoid the utilization of surgical masks or N95 rated masks as those are critical supplies for health care workers, police, fire, emergency management, or other persons engaged in life and safety activities.
Section 3. Other Personal Protective Equipment. All essential businesses are strongly encouraged to implement policies for employees to use other personal protective equipment, such as gloves, subject to the availability of such items. All essential businesses are strongly encouraged, subject to availability, to provide alcohol-based hand sanitizers (at least 60% alcohol content) for use by customers and employees, provide disinfecting wipes at points of entrance, cash registers, and/or other appropriate locations, for customers to disinfect carts, shopping baskets, or point of sale terminals, or, alternatively designate staff responsible for disinfecting carts, shopping baskets, point of sale terminals, and other areas as frequently as possible.
Section 4. Enforcement. This Order is in addition to, and supplements, the City’s Declaration of a State of Emergency, City Emergency Orders, County Emergency Orders, and State of Florida Executive Orders and shall be strictly adhered to at all times. This Order may be enforced by City law enforcement personnel through issuance of Notices to Appear or arrest, pursuant to the provisions of Chapter 252, Florida Statutes, and other applicable state, County and City laws, rules and regulations, or through the issuance of Code Violations and Notices of Violation pursuant to applicable provisions of Florida law, Chapter 162, Florida Statutes, and City Code.
Section 5. Effective Date. This Emergency Order is effective as of 12:01 a.m. on April 9, 2020 and shall remain in full force and effect until terminated.
ORDERED ON AND FILED WITH THE CLERK OF THE CITY OF HOLLYWOOD ON APRIL 8, 2020.
Ordered by: _____________________________
Dr. Wazir Ishmael, City Manager
Free (and not) Movies and Shows for you at Aquarius
Free movies and TV shows are abundant at Aquarius. Let’s see some ways to find them:
Of course you must have the X1 system installed in your apartment. Also the internet connection must be properly set up. If you have not upgraded your installation some features may not be available. Have you user id and password of your Comcast account handy!
Comcast Xfinity offers thousands of free on demand films. They also offer recent releases for a price. It helps to browse the computer to find the titles. The link https://www.xfinity.com/stream/ gives a panoramic view of the free offers.
The premium Channel HBO that is included in our Aquarius contract with Comcast/Xfinity is another gold mine of good titles. HBO offers also thousands of films. The quality tends to be better than Comcast on demand. Also the series are remarkable. Game of Thrones, Sopranos, Little Big Lies are a few of the great number of good series available. With your Comcast account you can watch the HBO collection anywhere in the United States. Check out HBO GO and HBO NOW. The catalog may be seen here https://www.hbo.com/movies.
PBS also presents a limited catalog on demand. You may check it out here https://corporate.comcast.com/comcast-voices/pbs-on-demand-in-hd after finding your preference the search of Comcast will locate the specific program. Of course you may want directly to the search available in your TV you may use even the verbal search but the functionality is not always the best. A computer or a smart phone may help you find item faster.
There are temporary offers that ave very interesting:
Amazon Prime. If you are not a subscriber you can get a trial subscription valid for 30 days. Amazon Prime has about 14.000 (yes fourteen thousand) titles available. It offers more that shows, films and music. In the spirit of Amazon there are many titles that Prime customers have to pay. How to get there? Comcast now has a link to Amazon. You also may use your smart TV or you BD-DVD player to get Amazon Prime. The Comcast search not always presents all you can get with Amazon Prime. Here again the computer or the smart phone may be of help to find the show you are looking for.
Netflix offers a month free you are not a subscriber. Depending on who you ask there are 4.000 or 6.000 titles offered by Netflix. Many British TV series are available (Father Brown?). Netflix has many in house production that are exclusive for Netflix customers. Some of them are Oscars winners others not so much. The quality varies but there are many interesting productions.
Disney+ the new streaming service offers a 7 days free trial. The catalog includes 500 movies. It is a must if kids are in the household. Disney is free for one year to Verizon smart phone clients.
Also there is Hulu a complex offer that may be an alternative for those that have no cable. It is not the case for Aquarius residents. But they have exclusive titles not available anywhere else. There is a bundle of Hulu plus Disney+ that may be of interest.
Until April 19, 2020 the following premium channels are free:
Showtime (Billions, Homeland), Epix (Godfather or Harlen, Hunger Games), History Channel Vault, Pluto are a few other free offers with very interesting content.
And about some study? Great Courses, Coursera, TED are some options. But this we will discuss another day. Have you ever browsed YouTube. They also offer a free trial for their Premium service.
Do you have any suggestions? Please make a comment in this site or better yet send an eMail to ceciliob@gmail.com (sometimes I read my email hehehehehehe)
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Corona virus worries you? Check this by the Israel Defense Minister:
The renewal of the elevators of Aquarius project was funded in December of 2016 with the approval of a Special Assessment and a Loan from Popular Bank (also known as Popular Banking Association).
The 15 million Special Assessment (2017 SA) reserved one million dollars for the renewal of the 7 elevators of Aquarius.
In November of 2017 the RFP (Request for Proposal), received proposal from four elevators firms. The range of proposals was from 1.4 million to 2.45 million dollars. The winning bid was awarded to Premier Elevators of Georgia, which was the lowest bid, under the advice of the Special Consultant hired to oversee the renovation project.
Premier Elevators’ bid excluded the cab finishes, electrical upgrades and civil construction needs. It also excluded the external elevator doors.
These ancillary items had an estimated cost of $200,000. Each cab about $25,000, thus 4 cabs for $100,000. Electrical and construction items about $100,000. To this we should add contingency and miscellaneous expenses.
So, the overrun on the cost of the project was $600,000 ($400,000 of the bid plus ancillary of $200,000).
Time-wise we also had very long delays. Each elevator was supposed to take 15 weeks. Both Aquarius Towers were supposed to be worked simultaneously. So, the overall time should have been 45 weeks. To this we should add another 15 weeks for the Gym and West Deck elevator.
In the most conservative estimate, the project should have been completed by December 0f 2018.
A good project management strives to complete the work on time and under budget. This did not happen in the Aquarius elevator renewal.
Projected Time: 60 weeks or December 2018. The time it took to reach the substantial completion: 104 weeks as of November 2019. A 100% delay.
Budget estimated at –> $1,000,000
Spent at least –> $1,600,000
Notwithstanding the budget overrun and these issues, we still struggle with several miscellaneous items.
What is still needing attention?
Many doors are noisier than the old elevators. Some progress has been observed in recent months but several doors where rubbing metal to metal which need to be addressed.
Electrical panels: on some floors they are affixed with tape. The LED signage is also faulty in several floors.
The verbal floor announcements seem to work randomly.
Same with the loud bells for the elevator arrival announcement. When they work, they are too loud.
The tile flooring in the South Tower personal elevators are not the same. One has glossy tile while the one next to it has a satin finish. It’s difficult to understand the reason for this kind of discrepancy.
The elevators do not display the required License of Operation. The North Tower A Elevator exhibits a license that is expired. The other elevators do not show the operation permits.
Aquarius Pools to be open soon
Salon Aqua – Aquarius Beauty Parlor
On the Aquarius South Building the Salon Aqua Beauty Parlor is open for residents and visitors. Salon Aqua is proud to serve Men and Women.
Face Masks for everyone. It’s the law 04/09/2020
Are Maks Helpful? Covid 19
Free (and not) Movies and Shows for you at Aquarius
PBS also presents a limited catalog on demand. You may check it out here 
Corona? L’Italia Non Si Ferma
♦ A strong community is a community where all participate.
The 15 million Special Assessment (2017 SA) reserved one million dollars for the renewal of the 7 elevators of Aquarius.
In the most conservative estimate, the project should have been completed by December 0f 2018.
Aquarius Condominium, Hollywood Florida - Not ACA site 