Happy New Year, y’all! And here’s a productivity tip for all my fellow adventurers: a holiday or vacation is a great time to catch up on that illness you’ve been putting off.
Seriously, I’ve gotten sick something like three or four times in the last month: first a cold which canceled my trip to the WAFR conference in New Mexico, where I was a fricking invited speaker and couldn’t go. That turned into a lingering sinus infection which just about went away by the time I returned to my home town of Greenville – but which then reared its ugly head again. Since my mother, my buddy Derek, and at least one other person fell ill to the same bug within a day or so (stuffiness, a 1-2 day period of severe lethargy, followed by lingering sniffles) I’m guessing this was an entirely new bug that I picked up at the airport. Again this disappeared, but after my return flight back, an adventure in and of itself because of weather delays, I got what appears to be a different bug, this one a slight sniffle plus lingering gastrointestinal distress. Fun! All clearing up in time for work.
So, what can I say? Computing continues its usability slide – I had to switch from Feedly to Innoreader, the Microsoft Word broke all my keystrokes, and the new WordPress editor sucks, making all common operations that much more difficult in favor of something “new” and “cool” that just adds a bunch of junk to what was a clean, simple and easy to use interface. WHAT? Oh, I was going to say something about taking care of yourself in winter colds, but WordPress’s new editor decided to turn a carriage return into some strange modal event that absorbed all my keystrokes and threatened to post the page before I was ready. Where was I?
Oh! So! What can I say? To prevent propagation of infecftion, elbow bump or fist bump rather than shaking hands, don’t touch the “T” – your eyes nose or mouth – and if you have to cough or sneeze, do so into your shirt, not into your hand or even a handkerchief (those spread infection to your hands). If you get infected, get plenty of rest, plenty of fluids, look up the appropriate treatment for your symptoms, and take your placebo of choice, because while placebos don’t work, the placebo effect definitely does. No, it doesn’t have to make sense; it’s just the evidence. Suck it up, Chester.
So! All that stuff I wanted to blog over the holidays. <looks at list> Sigh.
Guess it will have to wait. Back to work!
-the Centaur
