Post-Traumatic Tech Disorder

Okay, I’ve joked about the swine flu, but it’s time to take a somewhat more serious look at it (for the people panicking around the world):

• It’s a flu.  Yes, it originates from pigs but it can be transmitted to humans in close proximity to pigs.  It can also be transmitted from infected humans to other human just like a regular flu (so the sick person who thinks it’s funny to cough or sneeze on others will probably experience a sudden "worsening" of his symptoms).
• You cannot get swine flu from eating pork.  It is a respiratory disease, so you’d get it from an infected person/pig’s coughs or sneezes or touching surfaces exposed to the virus (via someone’s coughing/sneezing).  You still need to cook your pork properly though or you still run the risk of sharing fun times with your good buddy Food Poisoning.
• The symptoms of the swine flu are the same as any other flu.  Fever, chills, headache, body ache, and tiredness (with some possible vomiting from both ends).
• How do you know if you have the swine flu or a regular flu?  Go to a doctor when you first show signs of the flu and they can run some tests (takes about 24 hours turnaround on the tests).
• Treatment?  The CDC recommends oseltamivir or zanamivir (antivirals).  There are two other antivirals available, but the CDC says they aren’t effective on the current strain of swine flu spreading about.  These two antivirals are found in the brand name drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza.

For more detailed information, check out the CDC’s helpful guide, Swine Influenza and You.

To aid everyone in their panic over the upcoming swine flu pandemic, I thought I’d share some common sense survival tips to help make sure everyone is properly prepared.  So here are some wrong and right ways of minimizing your exposure to swine flu:

Wrong Way: One night stand with a pig.

Right Way: One night stand with a chicken.

Wrong Way: Rolling around naked in a pile of uncooked pork chops.

Right Way: Rolling around naked in a pile of buffalo wings.

Wrong Way: Get on all fours and squeal like a pig in an overcrowded pig sty.

Right Way: Squeal like a pig in Deliverance territory.

Wrong Way: Pig-licking!

Right Way: Toad-licking!

So, keep your wits about you and you’ll do fine out there in a swine flu riddled post-apocalyptic future.  And if not, there’s still the possibility you’ll come back to (un)life as a shambling bacon-scented pig zombie.

As a techie consultant, I’ve done my fair share of travel.  With the current job, most of my travel is for conducting training sessions, which are shorter duration and not as taxing… as in I don’t have to get up at 3am to make a flight to start working as soon as possible on Monday (most of the time).  Still, it’s a decent amount of travel, and over the years I’ve run across some observations.

Today, I started tossing those observations onto Twitter with the hashtag #travelnomicon to keep track of all the future ones.  Here are some observations I can recall from my past that weren’t tagged (or are probably just sitting in one of my many notebooks):

• Don’t complain to security when you try to pass through the metal detector with more than 30 piercings.
• If you can’t physically lift your carry-on over your head, you should probably check it instead of blocking the way hoping someone gets impatient and helps you.
• Flyers will find you and glare at you menacingly after the flight if you apply a ton of Icy Hot just before boarding the plane.
• Just because most military don’t have to take off their combat boots going through security, doesn’t mean you can do it too.
• Upset about being pulled aside for a strip search? Well, blowing a dog whistle as a working dog walked by doesn’t seem as funny now, does it?
• No matter how badly you need it, you can’t slap a prescription label on a bottle of vodka and get it through security.
• If the girl next to you has serious motion sickness, don’t hoard your barf bag after she’s already used hers.

Sometimes, it is true… life can trump fiction.