This is why I shouldn't do anything when I have the flu. (Warning: language.) · 4:52pm Feb 12th, 2018
Four days in now. I've mostly spent them lying in bed while having those thoughts you only have when you're either running a fever or have gone insane, which may actually have a Venn overlap.
This morning, I deliberately let all medication wear off in order to figure out where I was in terms of recovery: actual or potential. The answer is that I'm fairly unlikely to die from this. The pains are lessened, the coughs aren't quite as bad, fever is down a bit, I haven't had to break for the bathroom in a day and a half... Overall, while I have a chance to relapse, I'm probably not going to be one of the fatalities from the waking nightmare which is this year's flu season. But it's kept me from writing. I haven't even tried to tweet since this started. Part of that is because composing with a fever is one of those bad ideas (and any genius concepts which arise on plumes of steam tend to look a lot worse in daylight), and the rest is because my primary medication is a generic version of Nyquil. You do not do anything online while on Nyquil. People take screenshots.
So stay in bed while desperately wishing my computer had a remote control -- because under normal circumstances, the system is in my bedroom. Fine: I have streaming services and my monitor is of decent quality. But I can't reach the keyboard from my bed. I can't pause, select, rewind... nothing can be done without getting out of bed and forcing my shivering way to the keys. (This is a problem which has occurred to other people before this: plug-in sensors and remotes are available -- but budget, plus at best, I'd just be getting it now.) So I'd set up a video, and then the next video on YouTube's list would play... and the next, and the next, because dear gawds I don't wanna get up.
I ran through a lot of the Nostalgia Critic's catalog. It was something to do, plus it was good to see that someone else's face could change into shades more interesting than mine.
Today... today, I'm moving. I feel I can type a little. I'm going to try a meal of something which isn't soup. And I thought maybe I'd read some fanfic.
I've said that I don't write reviews because my natural critical style is blender on purée. In this case, the first fanfic I came across was... bad. It got my attention because the one-word title was misspelled. (Incidentally, the story title is also the first chapter title. Yes, the author misspelled it twice.) I read it, and then I... said a few things. A partial laundry list of soiled structures. I posted it, and then got to read about how the author claimed this story is being written to work out some personal issues. Gee, wonder who's done that before. So now I feel bad about what I posted. Not horrific -- we've been trolled before by people claiming something was happening in their lives, and that makes it hard to trust -- but at least slightly guilty.
This is what I almost did.
Before I got a degree of control back, I spent several minutes searching for either a YouTube link to the opening seconds of the Nostalgia Critic's Felix The Cat review or a quick gif. I really, really wanted that image in the story's Comments section. It's the sort of thought you normally only indulge as the briefest of dark comfort fantasies, and... it felt like I was just about ready to go for it. But no such mini-clip or gif existed. All I could get was the quote.
I didn't post that there. But the Nyquil is starting to kick in now, and so I think I'm gonna put it here. Only... modified. Just a little. You know, to suit the occasion.
If a piece of shit took a piece of shit, and that piece of shit took a piece of shit, and that piece of shit took a piece of shit, and that piece of shit took a piece of shit, and that piece of shit took a piece of shit, and that piece of shit wrote a FANFIC... and THAT fanfic took a piece of shit... THIS is the piece of shit you would READ!
...yeah.
Stop me before I browse again.
Glad you're not dyin'. c.c
Now I have to go watch that review.
Budget is budget, but you do have a smartphone, right? It’s probably an android smartphone (more likely for the same budgetary reasons, anyway) in which case, there’s an app that will become your remote:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Relmtech.Remote
This is by far not the only option, just the one I have personally played with and found adequate and sufficiently universal. Depending on your particular situation, some other app might serve better. There are, likewise, iPhone-based solutions, but I’m unfamiliar with those.
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No smartphone. My very dumb flip phone does four reliable things:
* Makes phone calls
* Receives phone calls
* Drops out volume
* Loses voicemail
Anything else is a crapshoot. (It doesn't even allow basic Internet access unless I pay $X for a day of turning it on and even then, the memory may hold up to six very small site pages at a time. On the few occasions I've had to risk that function, it was browse-and-wipe, or it wouldn't load any additional sites.) Local contracts are too onerous for me to ever consider a smartphone: it would quickly turn into 'Today, you glanced at the screen seven times. So that'll be twenty dollars.'
Get well soon, and you are so very right on with the nyquil. People do.
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Pardon me, I was so sure Marvel Puzzle Quest was a mobile-only game. Oh well, I’m out of useful advice in this case.
I was in a similar position last week in terms of flu. Even now, coughs fill my office. Glad to hear you're on the upswing. Just be sure to take it easy. It's people overexerting themselves with still-compromosed immune systems and developing secondary infections that are really getting them.
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Mobile and Steam -- but in my case, I play it on my Kindle.
Speaking of things which go through your head when you have the flu: in the current PVP event, I got beaten by one person, ten times, in the space of thirty minutes. (There was no point to shielding: once it wore off, I just would have struggled to sighting distance of the goal number and then gotten hit ten more times.) And after seeing the same name pop up again and again, I started searching the app for a means of messaging someone outside my alliance. I wanted to talk to this person. Specifically, I wanted to tell him I was selling off my entire roster and sending him all resulting ISO and Hero Points, so how would he like to complete the transfer? Because if my only purpose in life was to be his punching bag, then let's just call it a day and a perma-quit knockout, in that order. But sadly, no direct contact available.
There should be a limit as to how many fights you can have against the same person. Ten is too many.
Ah, I'm also down with something cold or flulike at the moment; sorry you're sick as well (and it sounds like you've got much worse than me at the moment). Get well soon.
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…Wait, but any Kindle that you play Marvel Puzzle Quest on would be an Android device, using a software remote is still an option.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unified-Intents-AB-Remote/dp/B00LHXTLZ4/
I hope you are feeling better soon.
Your computer was purchased recently, correct? (Within the last couple of years, if I remember.) So I’m guessing that the keyboard uses USB rather than one of the older standards. If so, you can get a USB extension cable. the upside being that you can have your keyboard (and mouse, if you get two) reach your bed. The downside is you might be more tempted to post in your feverish state. It may be too late this time, but something to think about in preparation for next time (that we all hope never comes).
If you’re still looking for YouTube playlists to keep you entertained, might I recommend Tom Scott. The Citation Needed show he does with his college buddies is well worth a laugh.
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Fortunately, there's a Stateside version available. Reviews for that one are -- well, put kindly, "mixed" -- but I'll try it out and see what happens. Thankee.
I have now reached the point where I've started to cough up that special phlegm.
If you've ever had the flu, you know exactly the substance I'm talking about. It's the body's very own Silly Putty. You can spend feverish hours marveling at all the things it can do. The adhesive properties. The stretching. The way it likes to change color. Some say that if you carefully mold it into a USB port, it will either transfer files or kill you through electrocution, either of which would be an improvement over the flu. One strand is strong enough to keep a man suspended in midair for up to zero seconds. It's amazing stuff and the only way to experience it is to reach this stage of illness. Aren't you glad you're missing out?
...yes, I just had a momentarily temptation to show a more-conventionally-ill Twilight running experiments on it.
Any chance you or one of your friends/family could go out to Walmart and buy a cheap wireless mouse?
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Would the fever last long enough for her to attempt publication? ‘Cause that would be a spectacular rejection letter. (Bonus points for infecting the editorial staff?)
There's a lot going around on this end of the pond as well. My grandmother is current in hospital after picking a nasty chest infection up (she's in her 90s), though nominally she might by out on Wednesday.
My phone, if anything, is even more crude that Estee's. Which pleases me, for some obscure reason.
Apros of nothing (other than giving Estee a few second's of mild amusement, maybe), in order to read all of the contest entries of Aragon's competition, I finally - FINALLY manged to turn the mature filter on. After frag knows how many years. And trying everything. And switching from Firefox to Waterfox. Apparently, it requires Fimfic not to be open and to manually delete all the cookies. I have not tried turning it off again yet... Anyway, it allowed my to read said stories (which were funny) to read the sequel to a story whose first part was not mature.
And... The stories that are now showing up do remind me just a tidge why I generally have it filtered out most of the time.
(No judgement, because whatever (in this case literally), turns you one folks.)
But my reaction to some of these is best illustrated thusingly:
photos.smugmug.com/Primary-Gallery/i-p5gmZvx/0/fcf21bc8/Ti/AotrsAvatar3s1-Ti.gif
Being sick sucks. Glad to hear from ya though. I know well the pain of trying to find a clip of a reference and coming up empty. Posting it in text and explaining just isn't the same.
If you run out of stuff to do, I'd recommend checking out 17776, a really cool web experience. I just found it yesterday and it consumed hours of my life until I finished it.
Hope you keep improving though! Don't be down with the sickness.
Get well soon!
I managed to avoid the flu this year (I now qualify for the NHS Flu Vaccine), and it sounds like it was a good thing to miss.
And Nostalgia Critic is nearly always good. For Pony and (vaguely critic)-related, you might look for "Tamara Watches" to see her review of the MLP movie.
Haven't got in any site trouble here at Fimfiction. Have had some authors complain that I ramble Too -ING Much To Suit Them & threaten blocking if I didn't cease and desist.
Did get 100 points over at Ponyverse for a comment to the effect that audio readers should, oh IDK, LEARN TO -ING READ! Yutz couldn't read "pulchritude" if you spotted him 4 tries. (Fact, not theory) Also, I did not much care for their habit of assuming that cursing when they encountered a word that they couldn't pronounce would improve their word power.
A small piece of advice. Read the piece aloud at least once BEFORE you record it, thus assuring that you can read it aloud. Check pronunciation on Wikipedia if you have to. It will greatly improve your recording & it isn't cheating. Yes, this means that you'll have too read the -ING thing at least twice (Horror of horrors!), but a true artiste is willing to endure much in their search for perfection. Also, spare your listeners gratuitous comments. Don't like it in movie theaters, don't like it on my cell.
The Comments section for the story in question has reached the point where I would now see NC's quote as a rather mild starting point. This no longer reads so much as 'I'm writing this to work out my issues' as 'I'm a troll who can't keep up the act for more than twelve hundred words.' And after seeing the writer's latest reply to someone who was offering advice, I did something new.
I preemptively blocked her.
Sometimes, you really only do have to know someone for five seconds before realizing you never want to see them again.
ETA: The author has now done some visible editing. For starters, the title is currently misspelled in a different way.
This is why my headboard is my computer desk. Roll over, put hands on keyboard, squander waking hours online. Chairs are for chumps.
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No. I turned my residence into a quarantine zone: no one came in and the two times I had to go out for medicine, I wore a flu mask. My human contact has been close to nil because I don't want to give this to anyone else. (I know how I got it: all those visits to the hospital. Compassion frequently exists to backfire.)
Besides, a wireless mouse in bed keeps bringing up questions of contour maps.
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Hm... maybe move your desk over towards your bed? Any chance of that working?
Hope you feel better! Here's a Discworld Crossover you might have missed that was featured for a while!
Watch! Watch!
4795192 Readings are fun. When I *tried* to do a reading for Lazy Dragon, I determined that (upon listening to it) that my mic was worth about ten cents, and that I had Estee's cold, even though I sounded normal. On The One Who Got Away, I totally forgot that I liked the pronunciation of GAB-er-dean instead of gab-or-DINE that the dictionary preferred. Thankfully, it turned out to match my expectations well. :)
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Voice of Experience
"You will be able to tell when you develop pneumonia because you will have a thick yellow-green phlegm with a sort of sweet-sour taste. It's quite unique & unmistakable."
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In Socialist country, you go to hospital to get rid of illness.
i don't think i've ever had "special phlegm"...but i remember at least one time i had unbelievable snot, huge gobs that took up an entire tissue EACH!
get well soon!
i'm a little curious about what fanfic you're referring to that was so shitty...then again, maybe not.
14 days since I got the first symptoms and I’m still getting migraines and periodic chills!
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Yeah, I've read articles about nurses in hospitals asking people to not go to hospitals if it isn't necessary to prevent more people getting sick. I even read one of a coach who took his entire time to visit one of them. Some are not very happy with those situation.
Ah yes, the joys of being sick. There are as many kinds of snot and phlegm as there grains of sand - but nobody appreciates when I try to discuss categorization with them.
Glad to hear you're coming out of it. I'm fortunate in that most of the time when I get sick, the mucus stays in my upper respiratory tract, rather than the lower. But I had the flu last year and felt like I was drowning while delirious with fever and barely able to walk to the bathroom. It's a particularly bad flu year, both in cases and severity.
I had the weirdest feeling I knew what you were talking about (unlike every other time you make oblique references like this), because someone else I follow put up a reading of it, but since you said "first chapter" I thought no way...
checks YouTube for spelling
goes over to Comments section
sees number of comments in the last day
...ah, there's that rainbow butterfly.
Whatever issues this author may have, she knows how to make a splash right out of the gate.
(On a note of slightly better uses of my time, I may well finally catch up with Triptych in the next week or two, having finally summited the mount that is Starlight Over Detrot. I qualify that only because there are a few other tempting peaks in the range, for surveying if not yet making the final approach.)
Ugh. I sympathize. I'm fighting off a more mild case and had to go back to work today for mandatory meetings. Can't wait to get home and pass back out.