Is school and work and whatever people there normally do during the day just canceled indefinitely?
Yeah, mostly. Lots of cafes and other small service industry stuff stay open, because all this is good for business (assuming your not Coptic, in which case you're probably already cowering inside a burning church).
Even the oil companies and the military contractors are evacuating staff after yesterday. The brother of my sister-in-law (I don't know the term for this) happened to live down the street from us. He has to leave tomorrow. In a moment of true Arab comedy, he's going to his hometown of Beirut.
After the initial wave of "this just in" reporting, NPR and Daily Beast usually have some interesting articles about the Egyptians still working amid all this crap (although Daily Beast may draw back a bit after their correspondent got the crap beat out of him by police Wednesday).