since monday afternoon i’m in bed with flu. not particularly pleasant. fever wouldn’t retreat really until yesterday evening. went to see my very capable physician yesterday who did a very thorough check including a CRP blood test, all in all, revealing that i was probably suffering from a viral infection but on the way back to the living again. he told me to stay at home until friday (which i’m doing).

since monday i had ample opportunity to compare the results of my assortment of thermometers: i’ve accumulated over the years

• a mercury-in-glass thermometer
• a digital thermometer in the same form factor as the mercury-in-glass thermometer (and used in the same way)
• a digital in-ear thermometer (whose head you poke into your ear canal)
• and yet another digital thermometer, this on to place on your forehead

it turns out that the mercury-in-glass thermometer and the digital thermometer are the most reliable. the other two thermometers produce widely varying readings depending on the angle you poke it into the ear (in ear thermometer) or depending on where exactly on your forehead you place the forehead thermometer — and the trouble is your are unlikely to be able to repeat the next measurement with the same level of accuracy: trying to get two consistent readings in a row with either the forehead or the in-ear thermometer proved next to impossible. both would often report my body temperature as 35.6°C or some other bogus value when both the mercury-in-glass and digital thermometer would tell me that i’d have 38.1°C…

the best one in my opinion is the digital thermometer that replaced the mercury-in-glass ones: it works under the tongue (as does the mercury-in-glass one) but is faster to take the reading: within 90secs you’ve got a reading of the state of the nation (and it beeps a couple of times to alert you that it’s finished taking the reading). the mercury-in-glass has the advantage of being completely analogue and not requiring any batteries, but has the drawback of taking quite a long time (up to 10mins until the temperature had stabilised in some cases).

so, now you know what computer scientists do when they are bed-ridden with the flu…