Thursday night.

Boredom level: I’ve accidentally started an iPhone/Android war on social media. Well, more of a skirmish. With multiple comments and 138 “likes” so far. In my defense, I was half-asleep when I wrote that.

Just five more workdays until the much-needed staycation. Things are looking great at work but covering so much, for so long, requires some relaxation. At my tenure level, I get 22 days of vacation time (aka enough to leave for an entire month) as well as six days of PTO, and if you combine the unused time that rolls over from one year to the next… That’s a lot of time off, eh. That falls right into the #GrigoryProblems category, I know – the sort of problem that most people don’t encounter in everyday life.

Oh, and coworker sent me a set of oil paint as part of the Secret Santa gift exchange. That looks great. If/when I finally dip into my hoard of art supplies (any month now), I look forward to playing with that.

In covid news, French president Emmanuel Macron has covid. He’ll be self-isolating for a week while continuing his work. He’s 42: aside from being male, he’s not in any risk groups. It looks like his wife (who is 25 years his senior) doesn’t have symptoms for the time being. I get that you can’t exactly run a country from a bunker, but it still amazes me how many presidents, ministers, princes, etc are catching covid while hunkered-down people like myself don’t. Part of that is just blind luck, I’m sure (Macron did manage to go almost an entire year without catching it) but the fact that some world leaders haven’t caught it yet means there are varying degrees of caution being exercised in France and the US compared to other countries. Interesting.

Elsewhere, there are all sorts of wacky conspiracies, rumours, and downright misinformation about the covid vaccine on social media. Some claim that a nurse died after getting vaccinated. Others use the dumb old meme – “I don’t know what’s in it, so I don’t want it in me.” That would’ve made more sense if they didn’t also eat ground beef, drink random energy drinks, or vape. The vaccine will get rolled out to the general population in about three or four months. I wonder how many people will go absolutely rabid from disinformation or catatonic from social media fearmongering by that point. The good guys have science on their part, but that doesn’t make for good counter-memes. 2021 is gonna be a weird year…