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| Sunday 31st August 2008 | 07:04 BST
Another
change in the weather ! This morning it is almost foggy. Maybe it is
foggy - I have never really known where the dividing line between mist
and foggy is. I estimate that visibility is down to a hundred Metres.
What should happen now is for the rising sun to "burn off" the fog
leaving a brilliantly sunny day. Whether this will happen, or not, I
have no idea, but it would be nice if it did happen. Yesterday remained
warm and sunny, and that lifted my spirits, and provided much
inspiration.
It felt so good yesterday that I did a chore
that I have been putting off for some time even though the deadline for
completing it has become closer and closer. I washed the curtains, and
the inside of the windows, of the upstairs front bedroom. It's nice and
clean and fresh up there now, and ready if Patricia wants to stay here
for a time. All I have to do now is remove my collection of external
hard drives from around the computer workstation, and the room is
complete apart from changing the bed clothes which I will do at the
last minute.
I managed to do more housework in other parts
of the house too. Not that I did that much, but it did include a bit
more hoovering, and some more laundry. In between, and after, all this
housework I did sit down and watch a couple of films. War Of The
Satelites, that I mentioned yesterday, was a pretty good 1950's sci fi
romp - lots of drama, bad special effects, and flashing lights !! I
also watched the film "Ice Planet".
This was made in 2001, and as the write up suggests, was a pretty bad
movie. There may have been one or two good bits in it, but they were
lost in the rest of the dross. Bring back the clacking relays, flashing
lights, technicians in white lab coats, women who know how to scream,
spaceships with exhaust smoke that drifts upwards, and planets that
look like a quarry ! That's the way to make a good sci fi film !
I
have no specific plans for today beyond remembering to buy some fruit
for my lunchtimes at work. Optional stuff to do includes tidying up the
back room some more. In fact I am almost certain to do some stuff in
the back room, but the real question mark is how long before I get
bored with it today. One thing I should really do is be prepared for a
call to the pub lunchtime. There is a microscopic chance that Dee may
call me to see if we are meeting this Sunday, or some Sunday in the
future. Considering the size of the breakfast I have just put in the
oven to cook, I probably will end up unfit to go out drinking
lunchtime. In fact it may put me off going to Tesco's when the open in
just under three hours time. Maybe I'll just have to try and eat my
breakfast in two parts. Some before going to Tesco, and the rest
afterwards. Then I can lie down and vegetate for a few hours ! | | Saturday 30th August 2008 | 10:51 BST
It's
hard to believe it, but there is some sunshine this morning. It also
feels slightly fresher than yesterday. There is still a fair amount of
cloud in the sky. So whether it stays bright and dry is in the lap of
the gods.
I can't recall any sunshine yesterday. What I
do recall is that is was most unpleasantly sticky all day. Taking a
chilled bottle of water out of the fridge almost caused a torrent of
condensation to flood off of it.
Aleemah has gone sick on
me today. She warned me nice and early so I could go back to bed for a
little while and rest after starting my housework. That was pretty nice
after hoovering downstairs and half way up the staircase. I have
continued to do some housework since getting up, washed, and dressed.
This is, in part, because it needs to be done, but there is also an
added incentive. I heard from Patricia overnight. It seems she is
coming back to London next week, although when precisely next week was
not revealed. It seems unlikely that she will be wanting to stay here
for any length of time, or at all, and in a way that means a lot of my
hard work over the last few months was not so neccessary, but it's
probably not a bad idea to be prepared, just in case.
So
today there are several things I may do. The first is to do more
housework. Some of that is likely. The second is to watch a movie.
Usually I watch one with Aleemah on a Saturday, but today I can choose
something off the wall. I think I may watch "War Of The Satelites". It looks to be an "interesting" film. Quoting from the imdb web site - "From the time this movie was conceived, it was reportedly only eight
weeks later that the completed movie was playing in theatres." Other than that I will do the usual eating, sleeping, and reading. Oh, and I might do a bit of shopping too ! | | Friday 29th August 2008 | 08:53 BST
It
feels monotonous to report it, but it's grey again ! There was none of
the refreshing misty rain that cooled my walk to the station yesterday.
This is a pity because, once again, it's a fairly mild morning. As well
as being mild, the humidity is slowly creeping up. By this afternoon I
expect it will be feeling quite muggy. According to my morning paper
there is no end in sight for this gloomy weather, although I think a TV
weather forecast I was not really paying attention to, suggested it all
might end in a bang on Sunday.
I was right to replace
the hard drive in my laptop the other day. Last night I connected up
the old hard drive via my USB 2 adapter, and proceeded to copy some of
the old data across to the new hard drive. It was actually a tedious
process. The old hard disk was in far worse shape than I had imagined,
and it was making an appalling noise, clicking and clattering, as it
struggled to give up my data. Half way through I gave it 30 minutes in
the freezer to see if, as some have reported, it made things any
better. Maybe it did, or maybe it didn't. It was hard to tell. Anyway,
I was successful in copying my data, and I have now thrown the old
drive away. Before consigning it to the dustbin I took the precaution
of disabling it forever. There was really no need for this. It didn't
have any sensitive information on it apart from a password for my
server, but really I just fancied smashing it up !
Tonight
I am not sure what I am doing. I'd like to do some advance clearing so
I don't have too much to do in the morning before Aleemah visits. Maybe
though, I will pop in the pub for a quick drink. If I do it will
definitely have to be a quick one. Even if I don't manage any housework
(which is quite likely, judging by past experience) I still don't want
to stay out very late. Maybe I'll just have a maximum of two pints with
Iain on my way home from work. If I can keep it as brief as that then I
can probably pop into Tesco's on the way back from the pub, and that
will save more time in the morning. I probably will need that time. I
have been very lax in my hoovering lately ! | | Thursday 28th August 2008 | 09:01 BST
The
greyness continues. There has even been some fine misty rain this
morning, but mostly I think the day will be a re-run of yesterday -
mostly grey ! The sun did come out yesterday, but not until sometime
after 6 pm. Even then it was not out for long.
Last night
I went for a drink with Iain and Kevin. Iain and I met at 5.30 pm, and
Kevin joined us 2 pints later. It seems our complaints about the broken
free WiFi
in the Catford Wetherspoons have finally been taken notice of. There is
now a sign on the door apologising for the lack of WiFi in there.
Hopefully it will soon be fixed. Being able to access the internet
while drinking is not essential, but there are times, particularly when
a discussion about something is taking place, when access to more
information is handy. In the past we have used it to get more
information about the guest beers in there. Complaining to the bar
staff had no effect for over two months, but it seems three approaches
to head office, two by using the Wetherspoons web site complaint section, and one sent by letter, as finally got some action going.
Despite
the day being very grey and overcast, the evening was deceptively warm.
When I got back from the pub at about 7.30 pm I had some hot and spicy
food. I went to bed, in fact I was in bed, by 9 pm, and fell asleep
very quickly. Three hours later I woke up feeling like I had been
cooked. My pillow was drenched in sweat, and I felt lousy beyond the
expected hangover. I slept the rest of the night with the duvet off me,
and with the window open. I didn't sleep too well like that, but at no
time did I feel cold. I woke up at 5 am feeling pretty rough. I had a
bad crick in my neck, and a few other stiff muscles. When I checked the
temperature of my bedroom it was still up at 24° C even after having
the window open half the night.
When I finally left the
house this morning it was very nice to walk half way to the station in
a refreshing fine misty rain. Now I am at work I don't feel too bad. I
don't appear to have a hangover , and my stiff and crinkled muscles
have ironed themselves out. There is just a tiny bit of siffness in my
neck still, but I ad to give my neck a bit of a twist to detect it.
Overall I guess I am fine, but given the choice, I could easily go back
to bed for another hour ! | | Wednesday 27th August 2008 | 08:50 BST
I
am at work now and not feeling too bad. Shortly before leaving home I
had a flash of inspiration. I was sitting on the toilet, the place
where all the best inspiration comes from, and I wondered if I had left
my 2.5" to 3.5" IDE converter inside a hard drive enclosure. When I
came downstairs to check this hypotheseis I found my flash of
inspiration was correct. It was in the first enclosure I picked up.
That makes for a happier day, but I will have to be careful I don't
waste too much time trying to use it tonight. I need my beauty sleep !!
06:29 BST
Another
grey morning ! It's now getting a bit hard to judge just how grey the
sky is at this time of the morning. As we head towards winter the days
are now very noticably shorter, and the sun is still very low on the
horizon right now. Already I am waking up while it is still dark, or if
not actually dark then close to it. No rain, or at least no significant
amounts of rain are forecast for today, and the day has started out
fairly mild.
Trying to run a graphical program over the
internet, such as trying to write some stuff here like I did from
work yesterday, was painfully slow. I knew it would be fairly slow, but
I didn't expect it to run at something like five seconds per character
! Next time I write something from work I will go back to using Winscp
that caches a local copy of the document to edit locally. That is the
method I was successfully using before trying a remote graphical log in.
Last
night I fitted a new hard drive in my laptop. The old one was
secondhand, and was showing signs of failure. So I ordered a nice big
fast hard drive to fit in it's place. Although I primarily use Linux on
the laptop, I did, once again, make it dual boot with Windows. It was
interesting, and rather satisfying, that Windows hardly managed to
identify, and find drivers, for any of the hardware in that laptop.
PCLinuxOS just installed and worked. The only hardware it may not have
identified, and installed drivers for, was the inbuilt modem. I didn't
even bother to check that because I have never used it.
One
thing I want to do is to copy some of the data off the old hard drive.
I have a little box that can connect a 2.5" hard drive to a USB 1
connection, but that is rather slow. I should have an adapter to
connect 2.5" drives to a 3.5" connector, and from there use my IDE
to USB 2 interface. The only trouble is that I cannot find my 2.5" to
3.5" addapter. It is the second one I appear to have lost. Does anyone
know where they go ? Maybe I have lent the second one to somebody and
it hasn't been returned, or maybe after a few uses they slip through a
worm hole to some sort of adapter heaven for everlasting rest. I just
really don't know, but if anyone has borrowed it I would be most happy
to hear about it's progress.
Installing both Windows and
Linux on my laptop did take up a lot of time, and I ended up going to
bed almost an hour later than I should have. So this morning I feel
tired, but not quite as yucky as I felt yesterday (but I still feel
pretty bad). Tonight I am hoping to go for a beer or two, but I am not
going to tempt fate by staying in the pub too long. If possible I'd
like a nice early start, maybe something like 5.30 pm, and then I can
stay for a couple of hours before coming home, having some dinner, and
get to bed before 9 pm. I wonder if anyone will be available for such
an exercise tonight ? | | Tuesday 26th August 2008 | 09:09 BST
I have successfully written this from work using Putty and Xming - but it's bloody slow this way !!!
06:34 BST
It
looks to be very grey outside at the moment. All that cloud overnight
has kept some of the heat in. So it is a very mild morning. Later on
today, according to a couple of weather forecasts I saw yesterday, the
cloud may break up to give some sunny spells, and it should remain dry.
On
the whole, I feel pretty grotty this morning. I think I slept very
badly. My head, neck, stomach, back and hips seem to hurt at the
moment. I don't really feel like going to work this morning, but I
will. Once I am moving again I should feel better. Whereas if I stayed
at home I would only be tempted to slouch around, eat more than I
should, and just make things as bad tomorrow morning. So I will be
going to work, but I am going in on the late train to give myself time
to settle down a bit.
I did some more of my back room
clearing up yesterday. Like the day before, this mainly consisted of
sorting through all my data CDs to see what was crap, and what was
useful. It is a very time consuming process. I usually label all my
disks, but that doesn't always fully reveal what is on them. So a lot
of the disks I had to put in the PC to read what was burnt on them. It
was a worthwhile exercise because I did find some files that I thought
might be lost forever. Those are now safely double backed up.
Discarding all the old jewel cases has saved an awful lot of space, and
I have now got to the point when I can begin to imagine the space being
used far more efficiently. I really think that the idea of returning
this back room to a dining room by xmas could be a possibility by now.
Whether the one person I want to cook xmas diner for will ever be here
to enjoy it with me is another subject. Sadly I suspect not, but it
would be as well to be prepared in case that chance in a million arises.
Earlier
this morning, while it was still very dusky outside, I am sure I saw a
bat in my back garden. Against a dark grey background I saw something
small and black briefly flutter past. It's flight looked a bit like a
butterfly or moth, but it was just a little too big for either of those
(at least any common ones I have noticed around here). It was also
smaller than, say, a sparrow, and once again, it didn't fly like a
sparrow. I have never seen a bat in Catford. The nearest place I can
recall seeing bats was around the old Hither Green Hospital grounds - a
mile, or two, from here. | | Bank Holiday Monday 25th August 2008 | 17:22 BST
Just
a quick update. Having experimented with Cygwin (see a bit further down
the page), the X server for Windows, I found it was not really what I
was after. A simpler solution was to use the Xming X server in conjunction with Putty,
the ssh client for Windows. How well this will work over the internet
when I try it from work tomorrow remains to be seen, but from the
Windows machine in the front bedroom it is working just fine. What I
have just written proves it !
10:11 BST
It's
quite gloomy this morning. The sky seems to be 100% light grey cloud. I
haven't seen any weather forecasts for a few days now, so I'll have to
guess that we won't be seeing any sunshine today, but some rain is a
strong possibility.
Yesterday started off fairly dull, but
by this time in the morning there were plenty of sunny intervals. It
remained that way through the whole day, and it might have just been my
imagination, but it ended up feeling quite warm and humid.
My
Sunday was not as lazy as perhaps I thought it might be. I did some
shopping at Tesco in the morning. (I didn't think they would be open,
but I took a chance and they were).
A bit later on I
started to tackle one small, but very time consuming part of my back
room clear up. I had stacks of magazine cover disks and home burnt CDs,
and many of them were just pure clutter. Many of the computer magazine
disks were ancient, and although a few had frequently duplicated useful
legacy programs on, many just had crap stuff on that either started out
as crap, or was just time limited, but usually just demo stuff. Some of
my home burnt CD's were so old that they were almost unreadable, and
many contained duplicates of files I have stored elsewhere. It took
ages to go through what I did, but I got through about half of all the
disks. Some extremely useful stuff has stayed in jewel cases, and the
rest are stuffed into a 96 disk CD holder. I expect I may do some more
of this later today.
I am now running these web pages from
my new Xubuntu server. It's configuration is still not complete, and I
still have a multitude of Gigabytes of data to transfer from the old
server to it, but it is seems to be running smoothly enough to use as
my web server.
Another fact is that I am currently writing
this by using a secure shell on my Kubuntu PC. It's like using a remote
desktop, but it's invoked from the command line using ssh -X me@server,
and then calling Kompozer. In theory, if I open a special port in my
firewall, and install XCygwin on my work PC, I should be able to do the same from work.
I forgot to mention an E-mail I received sometime last week. It was only spam, but the subject line amused me....
" [forgotten name] is collecting Britney Spears' farts in bottles"
Hmmmmm
Another
thing that happened earlier last week, but has only this morning been
worth mentioning, is that I bought a new towel set from Tesco. These
towels, including face flannel, are deep crimson in colour. They are
very light and fluffy, and at the moment are shedding a lot of crimson
lint. This morning, despite not expecting to go anywhere, or see
anyone, I had a full wet shave. Prior to plastering my face with
shaving foam I gave my face a good wash using the new crimson flannel.
When I opened my eyes and took a look at my face I thought "I don't
remember cutting my face so badly when I shaved yesterday". Stuck to
many of my whiskers were little bits of crimson coloured lint. It
really looked like a very bad shaving accident !
Despite
not really needing anything in particular, and despite it being near
the end of the month and my pocket money running quite low, I feel an
irrational urge to see what's in my local Aldi store. Maybe they have
new stocks of the trainers that I particularly liked, or maybe
something else interesting. Assuming it doesn't start raining, and
assuming they are open today, I might just pop out in a minute. | | Saturday 23rd August 2008 | 11:56 BST
Generally
speaking, it seems to be a rather nice day - so far. The cloud is well
broken, and there are lots of sunny intervals. If the rest of the day
continues like this it will definitely be a rather nice day even if it
is rather sub-standard for August.
I managed to start
eating at a little past 5 pm yesterday. Prior to that, at around 4 pm,
I did manage to "eat" two paracetamol and codeine tablets. It was about
that time that the anaesthetic started to fade away, and the hole where
my tooth used to be was starting to get quite painful. The painkillers
did a good job at removing the persistent pain, but the whole area
remained very tender.
Once I started eating I found it
difficult to stop. Although it wasn't non stop eating. I would have
something like a sandwich, and then have to let things rest for ~ 30
minutes before tackling something else. Eventually my hunger was as
sated as it ever gets (not much, but just about noticeable).
My
"wound" continued to seep some blood throughout the night. It may even
be doing so now. It is actually very little blood that is escaping.
Just enough to turn my saliva a pale pink colour. My refusal to play by
the rules, as dictated by my dentist, probably meant that the scab did
not form properly. However the dire warnings of bad pain if the wound
was left scabless and exposed have not happened, and that is the main
thing.
Today the area around the extraction is still
sensitive, and that sensitivity also extends right back to the hinge of
the jaw (whatever that is called). It is still too painful to fully
open my mouth yet. It may be the pressure of my cheek on the area
immediately around the extraction that is causing the pain, but it does
feel more like more general bruising (or something). However, as an
experiment, I just tried opening my mouth wide. To my surprise it is
now possible with only moderate discomfort. Perhaps the cold ice cream
I recently ate has had a useful effect. (Could the be the perfect
excuse for more ice cream ?)
Another thing that has not
recovered is my tongue. Even now, a full 24 hours after my jaw being
pumped full, to an unfeasible level, of anaesthetic, the tip of
my tongue, and perhaps a little more, still has a sort of numb feeling.
My tongue was not injected with anaesthetic, but I do recall feeling
something like a drip of the extra strong anaesthetic falling on it as
the dentist went to pump in a few more gallons of the stuff around
where the extraction was taking place. It is a curious feeling -
perhaps similar to the after effects of when you burn your tongue on
something hot, or maybe even more similar to a burn from a hot chilli.
Apart from feeling odd, it is not really of any inconvenience, and I am
sure it will fade away eventually.
There are a few things
I may do today. Perhaps a little more clearing up in the back room,
maybe do some stuff on my server, or other PC, but mainly I intend to
take things easy. If I feel like doing something I'll do it, and if not
I am quite happy to revert to couch potato mode. One simple task I
think I will tackle is to see if anyone fancies an afternoon pint
tomorrow. | | Friday 22nd August 2008 | 12:57 BST
Today
started out very damp and grey, but like yesterday, the clouds soon
thinned out and we have had lots of sunny intervals.
A
little while ago I got back home after seeing my dentist. The object of
the exercise was to have a tooth pulled, and that has been done. I was
pumped full to the brim with anaesthetic. I lost count of the amount of
injections I had.
After the first lot of injections the
dentist started chivieing (is that a word ?) at the gum to loosen the
tooth. That started to become painful so I was given more injections.
She (did I mention my dentist is a beautiful young Swedish woman ?)
then had a go at pulling the tooth. That was agony and she had to give
up.
She then got some stronger anaesthetic from a bottom
drawer and gave me a gumfull of that. It helped a little but for a few
seconds on her second, and successful, attempt it was really very
painful indeed. Probably more painful than the toothache that drove me
there in the first place.
I was given a long printed list,
and a verbal list of do's and don'ts when I left. I broke the first one
within seconds of leaving the premises. The list instructed me not to
smoke for 24 hours ! Bugger that !!! It is not easy smoking when
half your mouth is numb, and you are biting down on something not to
dissimilar to a tampon, but I managed it anyway.
When I
got home I was surprised that the lump of cotton wool that I was biting
down on had less blood on it than I imagined. I then slightly broke the
next rule by rinsing my mouth out. I did try and avoid getting the
newly forming scab too wet though.
I feel sure that
passing some warm air from a cigarette must help to firm up the new
scab. Last time I had a tooth out, in fact it was several teeth, my
wisdom teeth, I just did whatever felt right at the time. I may even
have gone out for a pint or two the same evening. (Rule number two : no
alcohol for 24 hours). I seem to recall it coincided with the late
lamented Catford Beer Festival.
It's going to be a good
few hours before I feel competent to eat again, and I am starving now.
Maybe it will be more than a few hours. I was pumped so full of
anaesthetic that I am sure my face will be numb for a fortnight. Maybe
this isn't such a bad idea. Even though I am most definitely very numb,
I can still feel some sort of undefined ache from the crater where my
tooth used to be.
I think the best thing I can do
now is to have a quiet lie down. All this excitement is having a bad
effect on my spelling, or I keep hitting the wrong keys on the keyboard
(and sometimes two keys at once). | | Thursday 21st August 2008 | 17:38 BST
There
was rain in the early hours of this morning, but it had stopped by the
time I left for work. It was still damp and gloomy for most of my
journey to work, but the clouds had started to thin by the time I got
to Earlsfield. Eventually we were treated to long sunny spells, but now
the clouds seem to be thickening again, and the forecast for tomorrow
is for rain.
I wrote a long and (possibly) interesting
piece here this morning. Unfortunately, and I blame it on the Windows
based machine I was using, it all disappeared into /dev/nul. It may
have been because I think that part of my hand ended up resting on the
Ctrl key instead of next to the keyboard. I dont know what Ctr + key
combination I typed, but Kompozer was not very happy with it !
I
wrote how I had found the time, and inclination, to have another go at
getting the ftp server configured on my new server box last night. I
did have some success. I can now log in to the ftp server using three
different identities, and for each one the password is validated, and I
go to the correct home folder. Unfortunately that is as far as I got. I
can't let it go live yet because the security is rubbish. Anyone with a
valid user name and password can still traverse the whole directory
structure and download stuff they should have no right to do so (or
even see).
I went to bed last night with my head buzzing
around file permissions, groups, and users. Inevitably I had some
dreams about it. All I can remember is that those dreams were actually
more symbolic than what I was really doing, but the meaning seemed very
clear at the time.
I have found what sounds like a good
alternative operating system for my new server box. Operating
system is not quite the right word because it is just another Linux
distribution, but it conveys the flavour of what I mean. This Linux
distribution is called Engarde.
It is a server orientated distribution intended for the
corporate/enterprise/commercial world. It is still free to download and
use, but various support packages are available for those who want to
pay for them.
It's particular attraction for me is that
it claims to have an excellent suite of graphical configuration tools.
I like the power of the command line, and it's damn handy to have some
knowledge of how to do stuff on the command line, but I don't use it
often enough for it to become second nature to me. One server
configuration a year is enough for me ! Engarde is available as a live
CD, and I have downloaded that. Sooner or later I will give it a go and
see what it feels like. I might even do it tomorrow afternoon while I
wait for my dental work to wear off (or I might just snooze all
afternoon if the crater left by the tooth extraction is not bleeding
too much).
Tonight I have taken my last antibiotic pill. I
should now be clear of many popular diseases and infactions. My
scrofula, rabies, canker, hard paw, distemper, blue tongue, green
elbow, purple shin, and orange toe have all cleared up, but it has done
little for my yellow belly and lily liver. I am not looking forward to
this tooth being pulled out ! | | Wednesday 20th August 2008 | 08:10 BST
It
is very cloudy outside. It's not dark, heavy cloud, but there is some
rain in it. I have already felt the lightest, mistiest of a shower. It
lasted just a few seconds, but there could be more to come. It is
possible that there could be heavier rain later this afternoon, or it
could be like yesterday with some sunny intervals as I make my way home
from work.
All sorts of things turn up in dreams. Last
night, or more correctly, early this morning, two interesting things
turned up in my dreams. The first could actually be a solution to a
rare problem. I was in a lift travelling from the basement to the first
floor of a building with some people. As we ascended the lift rotated.
This was so that the lift doors faced the correct way to suit how the
building was designed. There are sort of precedents for this. Many
lifts on the London Underground have two sets of doors on the lifts.
Partly this is for crowd control - to speed up the process of some
people getting in, and some leaving the lift - but in some cases, maybe
the old lifts at the now closed Aldwych station for example, it is
because the access passageways align with opposite sides of the lift.
By rotating the lift as it ascends, or descends, it would mean only one
set of doors would need to be maintained (and the passengers would
probably become disorientated, and maybe even fall over !).
The
second thing that turned up in this mornings dreams was like an example
of lucid dreaming. It wasn't exactly like lucid dreaming where you can
conciously change the "plot" of a dream, but it did involve something
like lucidity. Most dreams come in small fragment that are supposedly
stitched together to make longer dreams, but apparently this only
happens as we wake up. My case was different to that. At the end of the
dream sequence involving the rotating lift I was moaning to my friend
that to get to her flat we had to walk up the next 22 floors because
there was no lift service. As I recall, it was a tower block attached
to a two storey (plus basement) building. We had come up from some sort
of bar, or other place of entertainment, in the basement to traverse a
first floor walkway to the main tower. It was here that we found that
either there were no lifts, or they were out of order. Even in a dream
I might have turned down the idea of walking up 22 stories, but there
was some urgency involved. I think it had something to do with my
libido..........
The next dream fragment, and the one
where I seemed to be thinking outside the dream, found me outside my
friends front door. I don't think that in any normal dream I would
question how I could have instantly jumped from one place to the other.
In this instance I did. I turned to my companion and said that I didn't
remember getting there, and that I assumed that the exertion of walking
up 22 stories had caused me to pass out. My companion did not get a
chance to answer me because at that point her father emerged from the
flat to go to work. He was not a pleasant character, but as he was now
out of the way nothing more happened. Indeed nothing more did happen.
Well nothing to do with my libido anyway !
It was while
trying to remember all this stuff, as I sat on the toilet this morning,
that one other strange fact came to mind. Once we had gone into the
flat, instead of heading to the bedroom, my companion wanted to watch a
Delia Smith cookery programme on ITV. This was not exactly expected !
As she turned the TV on I noticed that a light green flourescent
display, the same as used on some old digital clocks or VCRs, was
showing channel 9. The significance of that, and I didn't realise it in
the dream, although something in my brain seems to have made my dream
eyes focus in on it, is that channel 9 was the old London ITV channel
in the days of black and white, 405 line, TV.
Dreams are
great, but I wonder if there is more significance to them if only you
can interprete them correctly. I mean, what is the meaning of a cookery
programme when you were expecting nookie ? Maybe it's better not to
think about that one too much ! | | Tuesday 19th August 2008 | 07:55 BST
When
I left home this morning the weather looked as if it could go one of
two ways. Either the cloud would break up leaving a sunny day, or the
cloud would thicken, and it would rain at some point during the day.
When I arrived at Earlsfield station I was convinced that the latter
option was more likely. Now, having arrived at work, the darker clouds
seemed to have dispersed, and the sun is shining. there is still a lot
of white cloud around, and the forecast is for showers this afternoon.
I
didn't do any major alterations to my new server yesterday, but I did
some some configuration. I am not sure what inspired me to do it, but I
have now got the e-mail option on my Palm T|X
pda working on two accounts. One account, my NTL address, is, I
believe, only accessible when I am home, but my Googlemail account
should be usable whenever I can log in to a free WiFi point. I don't
expect to use it much, but it's handy to know it's there if I want it.
In fact I have already used it once. Just before I turned out the light
to go sleep I decided to check my e-mail. there was one message, and
while still lying in bed, I wrote a short reply to it.
Before
I left for work this morning I checked the change in my back pocket. I
was worried to see what looked like two foreign coins amongst the other
coins. Closer inspection revealed that they were a brand new design of
1p coin. It wasn't until I got to work and did some research that I
remembered hearing about the new design some time ago. In fact there
are new designs for all English coinage. You can see the range here, or read a bit more about the 1p coin here. | | Monday 18th August 2008 | 09:38 BST
There
is an autumnal feel to this morning. It is cool and wet. The rain tends
to be intermittent and showery, but even when it is not raining
everything has a soggy appearance to it. Occasionally I have seen a
weak and watery sun break through. Whether there will be more sunshine
later is open to speculation. I have a gut feeling that most of the day
will be slightly grey.
With a little more effort I did
finally get the web server on my new server box to dish up web pages.
It is currently on test, and can be seen at http://www.sunnyside.homelinux.org:60080,
although the only thing you will notice that is different is that the
home page now proclaims it is running on Xubuntu instead of Suse Linux
(and maybe that I probably haven't updated it to include todays blog
entry that you are reading right now). With luck, by the end of the
week, I hope to be running it as the main server at the normal address.
(note: the address above, with it's suffix for port 60080, will
no longer work once it does become the main server). | | Sunday 17th August 2008 | 18:48 BST
Today
and yesterday have both been warm, but not hot. Both days enjoyed sunny
intervals, and I think that both days had a few light, and very brief
showers. On the whole it has been pretty reasonable, although not quite
as good as you might expect for mid August.
I have had
both a productive, and lazy weekend. It's been great that I have been
able to take a nap whenever I felt like it, but I have also been
productive.
On Saturday afternoon I finally started work
building my new server. I did a bit here and a bit there, and by early
evening it was complete. The next step was to intsall the opearting
system. I chose Xubuntu for that. It allows me to run graphical
programs, but without using a lot of resources for a full graphical
desktop like KDE.
I did get carried away doing the initial
installation and upgrades. Despite a previously strong desire to catch
up on a lot of sleep, I didn't get to bed until nearly 1 am this
morning.
I did get a bit of a lie in this morning, but
it was scarcelessly enough to make up for that late night. So tonight I
aim to be asleep as soon after 8 pm as I can.
One time
consuming aspect of getting this new server up and running is
transferring data across from the old server. Ultimately there is a
couple of hundred Gigabytes of data that I need to transfer. I have
already done a lot of that, but it is still going to take a long time
to get all the data I want on it.
I have made a start on
getting some of the services running on it. The Samba server, making my
files available as network drives is all working to my satisfaction,
but the ftp server is giving me a headache. It is supposed to be set to
give some virtual users limited access to parts of the filesystem, but
either logging in fails, or those users get access to the whole
filesystem. The one local account, giving me access to my personal file
space is working OK though.
I feel I am going to end up
calling my guru in on sorting that problem out. One other problem is
the webserver. It seems to me that the Ubuntu default configuration of
the apache web server is a lot more complicated that the default
configuration on the old Suse Linux server. I am considering the
possibility of removing the whole Ubuntu version of Apache and
installing the core system from the source files. At least if I do it
that way all the official Apache documentation will describe what I
have on my system. It's lucky there is no rush to complete all this
stuff. The old server is working well, and the only reason to build the
new one is to increase my storage space.
Besides working
on the server I have been doing some reading, watching a few films, and
eating. In fact I have been eating too much. I have been buying lots of
stuff that is easy to eat on my poor knackered tooth. Unfortunately (or
fortunately as the case may be) my tooth is now behaving itself rather
well. So I have been able to eat both the soft squidgy stuff, and some
less soft stuff. Some of it is perishable and so I have been eating
both to use it up. I now feel pretty stodgy. I hope by the time I leave
for work tomorrow it will all have settled enough to allow me some
energy for tomorrows commuting. | | Friday 15th August 2008 | 09:02 BST
Another
bright sunny morning ! I wonder how long it will last today ? Quite
possibly it will be longer than yesterday. There doesn't appear to be a
cloud in the sky. At this time yesterday the cloud was beginning to
thicken. It thickened so much that by 3 pm there was some torrential
rain, and some thunder and lightning nearby.
Happily for
me, the rain mostly held off as I made my way to the dentist. Although
there was still a few splashes of rain, and the thunderstorm was still
doing it's stuff a few miles away. My session with the dentist went OK.
The news was sort of bad. The dentist confirmed that I was suffering
from an abcess, and that the ultimate cure will be to have the tooth
extracted. That will take place next Friday. To help speed up the
healing process, which is neccessary for the local anaesthetic to work
properly, I am now on a course of antibiotics. I will also be having
one, or maybe two, minor fillings done while I am under the anaesthetic.
I
can't say I am looking forward to having that tooth out. There was the
option of root canal treatment, but it was not recommended, and I
declined it. The bad tooth is right at the back of the mouth, and I do
not tolerate the dentist working there very well. An ordinary filling
on those back teeth often has me choking and gagging at the best of
times, but the amount of drilling, and other unpleasantness
for root canal treatment is horrendous. Beside the difficulty of
doing the work, there is not a lot of hope that it would ultimately
significantly extend the life of that tooth. It has already been
drilled to practically nothing to enable a crown to be fitted. That
brings another factor into my decision. It was never discussed, but I
would imagine that anything done that involved work on a crown would be
very expensive. So it's the foot on the chest, and the tug of the
pliers for me !
After the dentist I walked back down to
Catford and met Iain in the pub. They had a rather delightful guest ale
on called "Crystal Clear" brewed by the Archer brewery. It went down a
treat, but at 5% it soon got me feeling quite intoxicated. It certainly
gave me a good nights sleep last night ! I never woke up once during
the night, and I wish I could have had even more sleep, but I had to
get up to come to work.
Getting up to go to work will not
be a problem tomorrow morning, and I would dearly love to sink a few
more pints of "Crystal Clear" tonight, but now I am officially on a
course of antibiotics, and ideally should avoid too much booze. It is
quite probable that I shall visit the pub tonight, but it will have to
be a flying visit. After one pint it will be hard to say no to another,
but I will do my best. However I am not going to sit in the pub
drinking soft drinks all night !!! | | Thursday 14th August 2008 | 08:22 BST
Just
like yesterday the day has started off bright and sunny. One difference
is that it is not starting to cloud over like it did at this time
yesterday. More cloud is forecast for later today, and there could be
some showers this afternoon.
Finally, the great day has
come ! At 4.20 pm I am due in the dentists chair. I can't say I am
looking forward to it so much now. After waiting a week my teeth have
settled down a lot. The last pain I experienced was at 2 am this
morning. For that I got up, swilled more stronly salted water over the
tooth, waited for an hour for it to settle down, and then went back to
sleep again. Since then there has been no significant pain, and I can
now lightly clench my teeth together. The area is still rather tender,
but if I don't bother it, it doesn't bother me.
What I am
hoping to happen today is that my dentist will attend to any minor
problems, but let my infected tooth settle down for another week before
prodding it too bad. Hopefully I will be prescribed some antibiotics to
make sure the healing process continues. Maybe that is that will have
to be done, but that is being very optimistic. I've never known a
dentist who isn't a bit sadist at heart, and will gleefully take any
opportunity to get their harsh steel instruments in my mouth !
Once
I finish at the dentist I will be walking past the pub on the way home
(unless I take a less direct route). I might stick my head inside to
see if anyone is in there. If there is anybody, and I am capable of
drinking without dribbling too much, I may well stay for a half (or
perhaps more - I would have reason to celebrate).
There is a chance that I will write more about my experiences at the dentist after I get home from the chamber of horrors. | | Wednesday 13th August 2008 | 08:17 BST
Much
to my surprise, today has started off bright and sunny. It made for a
cheerful start, but even now the cluds are starting to gather again.
More rain is expected later today.Another surprise is that the dark
gloom did lift yesterday. Far from going home in nasty drizzle, I was
able to pack my coat in my bag and travel home in dry, and even
occasionally, sunny comfort.
Life seems full of surprises
lately. One more surprise is that I arrived home yesterday with
practically no pain at all from my bad tooth/abcess. That is not to say
that the tooth was not very sensitive, but for most of the evening I
was no bothered by it. As an experiment I even tried eating some solid
food in the form of a couple of spam sandwiches. I did jar the tooth a
couple of times while eating, but the pain was very short lived.
Perhaps
I made a mistake in trying to brush as close as I could stand to the
bad tooth when I went to bed. After enjoying the mostly pain free
evening I woke up at 1 am with a nagging pain from the tooth. I then
had to stay up for an hour while waiting for some painkillers to do
their stuff. This morning my tooth is still on edge. It's not terrible,
but still bloody annoying !
Just a day and a half until I
see the dentist now. Even then I doubt she will be able to do much more
than prescribe me some antibiotics. On the other hand, if today's
setback (compared to yesterday evening) is just a glitch, and things
continue to improve, maybe the sensitivity of that tooth will be low
enough for her to do some work on it. I am not sure what the best trade
off is. Do I endure a lot of discomfort for a short time while she
prods and pokes around in my teeth, and hope for a quick fix, or do I
let the antibiotics do their stuff and endure a slow return back to
pain free teeth (before the dentist jumps in a week later and causes
twenty minutes of bad discomfort) ? It's tricky, but I guess I
should attempt to predict how tomorrow will work out. | | Tuesday 12th August 2008 | 08:03 BST
Torrential rain, and a dark gloomy twilight made for a very unpleasant
start for my journey into work. I was fairly saturated by the time I
got to the station. That was unpleasant enough, but sitting in soaking
clothes on the train with just a dark misty view outside just made
things even more unpleasant. At Waterloo the sky did brighten up a bit,
but still the rain poured down. I have no idea where it could have come
from because there does not appear to be any breaks in the clouds, but
at Earlsfield the sun did shine for a few seconds. Regardless of that
flash of sunshine, the rain continues. It's only drizzle now, but it
will probably carry on like this for most of the day.
My
new secret weapon in the fight against my toothache is strong salty
water. I started on it during the night, and it may be having more
effect than any of the expensive mouthwashes I have tried. It's early
days yet, but if there seems to be more improvement by the time I go
home again I will judge it to be a success. I decided on this course of
action when I came to the conclusion that most of the pain must be from
some sort of abcess despite not being able to detect any noticeable
swelling.
I came to this conclusion when an experiment
with ice cream (pretending to be a cold compress) reduced the already
low level of pain I felt when I got home last night. It's a shame I
subsequently ruined the effect by consuming some warm soup not long
afterwards. Even another very liberal dose of ice cream could not
subdue the new pain (but it was a very good excuse to eat more tasty
ice cream).
Maybe I am clutching at straws here, but
perhaps that second dose of ice cream did help. By the time I went to
bed my toothache had dropped to an acceptable level again, and I was
able to get to sleep relatively easily. My luck did not hold. After
about four hours sleep I woke up again in pain. It was not the really
agonising pain that I have had to endure on some previous nights, but
sufficient to make sleeping very difficult. So I got up for an hour
while I waited for some ibuprofen to dampen down the inflamation. I
think I got another 90 - 100 minutes sleep after that. I woke up just
15 minutes before my alarm was due to go off, and I woke up in bad
pain. I was just about aware that I had clicked my teeth together or
something. My tooth (or teeth) are still far too sensitive to clench
together, but I have noticed that the pain from doing so, while
excruciating, is not lasting nearly so long now. Whether it is due to
all the various self treatments I have administered, or whether it is
just natural body defences at work, but I think, or at least I hope,
that the abcess, if that is definitely what it is, is on the mend.
The
idea that the abscess may be healing itself gives me great hope. Not
only will the pain decrease day by day, but it is possible that the
dentist will be able to do some work rather than prescribe me
antibiotics and telll me to come back in a week.
Right
now it is a sort of itchy sort of pain - hard to ignore, but not
desperately bad. This is actually quite good considering I had an
accident while trying eat some soft snack cheese a little while ago. I
was doing OK until I got careless and munched too hard. That send a
bolt of lightning through my tooth. I can only liken it to being pinged
with a rubber band - an instant sharp pain followed by a bit of an ache
that slowly subsides. Well, it has subsided to the point where I could
be distracted from it by anything interesting, but while I am writing
about it I can obviously not really ignore it. So I'll stop. | | Monday 11th August 2008 | 07:41 BST
This
morning has started out bright and cool. As the day progresses it will
become cloudier, and there could be some showers - or so the weather
forecasters predict. This is quite actually quite possible because that
is what happened yesterday. By early evening there were more than
showers. It rained quite heavily at one point.
It's
probably predicatable, but everything is revolving around my toothache
for now.For a lot of yesterday I was relatively comfortable. I had
slept fairly well, and during the morning I was still able to eat with
some care. By the evening things had changed. Most of the pain became
centred on just one tooth, although I am too squeamish to try and
identify exactly which tooth it is. That tooth has become so sensitive
that I cannot even close my jaws properly now. It makes eating truly
difficult. My final meal for the day was a tin of custard, and a
tin of rice pudding. Both were pleasant and tasty, but hardly
fulfilling.
One problem of living on a diet of tinned
custard and rice pudding is that both contain a lot of sugar. I am sure
it raised my blood sugar levels to excess. This made me feel very
sweaty last night even though it was not really hot. In fact during the
night I considered it had become almost chilly, and that putting the
duvet back on the bed could be a good idea soon.
This
morning I accidently almost clenched my teeth together after a big
cough. The pain it caused was outrageous for a minute or two (maybe it
was mere seconds, but it felt a lifetime). With the aid of some
paracetamol and codiene the pain had dwindled a lot half way through my
journey to work. Since coming into work I have just eaten some marmite
flavour snack cheeses. The were soft and crumbly, and I was very
careful how I ate them, but my tooth is throbbing again. My appointment
with the dentist on Thursday is still seeming to be a long way off ! | | Sunday 10th August 2008 | 08:11 BST
I
didn't think it could possibly happen, but it is bright and sunny
outside. The sky is bluer than it has been for days. Potentially today
could be a warm, or even hot day, but there is a fair amount of wind
now, and that could keep the temperature down a bit.
One
other thing I didn't think could happen is that my toothache has
reduced to the point where I managed to get a reasonable amount of
sleep last night.
It took some time after I finished
writing last night for the paracetamol and codiene to calm my teeth
down. After a few false starts I finally felt comfortable enough to
fall asleep sometime after midnight. I woke up some 90 minutes later,
but ironically this was because I needed a pee. Fortunately my teeth
were still behaving and I was able to get back to sleep again fairly
quickly, and I think I then slept for several more hours.
I
woke up again a little before 5 am, as is my normal habit, and got up
to feed Smudge, and do some stuff on the computer. I was still not in
any great pain so I went back to bed again, and I have just had a few
more hours sleep.
The pain I am getting now seems more
indicative of an abscess rather than the pain of a raw exposed nerve,
even though I cannot feel any specific sort of swelling. The pain I
have now I would liken to the sort of cramping pain you can get after
smiling too much, or for too long. It seems to run along the top jaw
below the eyeline, but in my case it runs back as far as the ear. While
still uncomfortable it is still preferential to the sharp stabbing pain
of a raw nerve.
I am hoping to get a lot more sleep in
during the course of the day. If I then can get a reasonable amount of
sleep in during the night I may feel less like a zombie when I go to
work tomorrow. I guess this is the one time that I am glad the Olympic
games have started. With saturation coverage of it on TV there will be
less distractions from TV to keep me away from the land of morpheus. | | Saturday 9th August 2008 | 22:32 BST
Today
started fairly sunny, but that soon gave way to a lot of cloud and
fairly frequent showers. Those showers seem to have dried up tonight,
but I am sure there will be more during the night, and during the day
tomorrow.
My toothache continues to cause me loss of
sleep. Last night was just as bad as the night before, and once again I
estimate that I only had around 4 hours of sleep. So far tonight, using
a combination of codiene and paracetamol tablets, oil of cloves, strong
mouthwash, and some scotch, I managed a good 90 minutes of sleep. I was
hoping for a lot more, but right now I am back in a lot of pain.
Through the day it has been cyclical, and I am hoping that anytime in
the next hour the pain will recede again and I will be able to try for
another few hours sleep.
This toothache is not the only
depressing thing currently. On Friday, just before I left work, I
received an e-mail telling me that my friend Nigel had died. That was a
most sad tragedy. Nigel had been battling mental health problems for
some years,atur and had made excellent progress, but it was his body that
was to let him down in the end. I don't know if it was the result of
being inactive for too long, or a side effect of the drugs he was
taking, but he had become quite poorly with low blood pressure and
anaemia. He phoned me last Monday to say he would be out of touch for a
few days while he was taken into hospital for some testing. While in
hospital he suffered a cardiac arrest, and they were unable to revive
him. It came as quite a shock to me. For so long it was his mental
health that was the focus of concern, and with that almost back to
normal his future was looking bright again until this happened.
Despite
feeling like a zombie from lack of sleep, I saw Aleemah again today. We
watched a good film, good enough that I didn't fall asleep while we
were watching it - something that has happened before with a less
exciting film, and when I have had the usual amount of sleep in the
preceeding days. The film was Frida, and it was a biographical film about a Mexican artist who became a celebrated painter in the 1930's (or thereabouts).
Aleemah's
visit was a good distraction from my toothache to a certain extent, but
I probably was not very good company for her. Lack of sleep, and the
battle against the pain (and too much moaning about it) made my company
less that sparkling. Fortunately she was good natured about it. She did
leave earlier than usual, but in part that was because she knew I
wanted to try and get some sleep as soon as I had a lapse in my pain.
The
first lapse in my pain came very soon after I had seen Aleemah off on
her train home. I took that opportunity to have some dinner. I felt
fine until I had eaten, and then maybe it was the acid from the
tomatoes in my salad, or maybe the vinegar from the dressing, but it
provoked a great deal of outrage from my teeth. Some cold rice pudding,
straight out of a tin, did seem to help, presumably by neutralising
some of the acid, but it was the painkillers, oil of cloves, and scotch
that finally settled things down an hour or so later.
I
went to bed at 7 pm this evening. Initially I did some reading as my
teeth settled own. By 8 pm I was feeling relatively pain free, and just
starting to doze off when a text message came through inviting me to
the pub. I declined the invitation, and quickly fell asleep. I slept
solidly for 90 minutes, which was rather good, and when I woke up I
seemed to be OK for a few minutes, but only for a few minutes. Then the
pain started again, and I was unable to rest. Since then the pain has
varied between bad and not too bad, but never gone away. It is now over
four hours since I last took any painkillers. So I am about to take
another couple of paracetamol and codiene tablets. They will take some
time to be effective, but if they are as effective as I think they will
be I reckon I can look forward to another hour or two of sleep in about
an hours time. Hopefully it will be much more than and hour or two ! | | Friday 8th August 2008 | 09:55 BST
Update:
I have made an appointment to see my favourite dentist, but I have to
wait nearly a week to get this pain sorted out. I am not seeing the
dentist until next Thursday, 14th August, at 4.20 pm. They have
promised to call me if a someone cancels an appointment before then,
but I feel it's going to be a long week ! I had better get in another
litre of scotch !
08:08 BST
Early
morning rain has given away to a few sunny spells, but there is still a
lot of cloud in the sky, and more rain could follow. I was lucky in
that the rain stopped just a few minutes before I left for work.
Yesterday
did see some thunder and lightning, but it was around midday. After
that the cloud did break up, and a lot of my journey home from work was
done in sunshine - no coat needed.
For a lot of yesterday
I was troubled by some mild toothache. It was never particularly
painful, but last night it really flared up. I am not even sure what
tooth is causing the problem. It could be more than one tooth. During
the night it was very uncomfortable, and neither paracetamol, nor
aspirin seemed to offer much in the way of relief. Some clove oil
helped briefly, but it's horrible stuff. What worked a little better
was a large tumbler of scotch at 2.30 this morning. That eventually
bought me a whole hours sleep.
It is hard to estimate
just how much sleep I did get last night, but I reckon it was closer to
three than four hours. I now feel pretty dreadful - and my tooth/teeth
still hurt. At 9 am I will be phoning the dentist and taking the first
appointment available regardless of how it may impact on work. I fear
it will not be until after the weekend now. So I expect I will be
consuming a lot of scotch over the weekend. Meanwhile I am not sure if
I will be staying the whole day at work, or whether I will go home
early before I fall asleep at my desk. | | Thursday 7th August 2008 | 08:50 BST
This
morning is mild, humid, and grey. It's not exactly a thrilling
combination. Rain could be expected at any time today, but so far it
has remained dry. There is an outside chance of thundery rain later on
- and I didn't bring a coat into work today !
My
retinopathy examination went OK yesterday. Things didn't start that
well, but very quickly improved before one final problem on the way
home. The first problem is that my train took twice as long to reach
London Bridge as it should have. This was due to "signalling problems
in the London Bridge area". Once I was at London Bridge everything went
smoothly. I had imagined that I would be wandering around trying to
find the hospital entrance, but I went straight to it, and it was a lot
nearer to the station than I had ever imagined. So despite my train
being delayed I arrived twenty minues early for my appointment, and I
was seen straight away.
The resulting pictures of inside
my eyeballs showed two microscopic blemishs of no medical significance.
The ever so slightly bigger one they found last year, also of no
significance, had disappeared without trace - as predicted. So my eyes
are healthy even if the rest of me is falling apart.
After
being seen and processed so quickly I was back on a rain home at 10:15
- just fifteen minutes after my original appointment time. Things were
OK up until the time I got back to Catford. Then the sun came out.
Until then my hugely dilated pupils had just about been able to cope
with the subdued light, but that bright sunshine was a killer ! I am
sure I walked nearly all the way to Tesco's with my eyes shut. It still
gave me a really bad headache for part of the afternoon. So although I
was back earlier than anticipated, going in to work for the afternoon
was not really an option. I think my eyes returned to normal as late as
1 pm, and after laying down with the curtains drawn, and the lights
off, my headache, aided by some paracetamol, faded away mid afternoon.
At
5.30 pm, last night, I went for a drink with the lads. Kevin did not
turn up until sometime between 7 and 8 pm. So I ended up staying later
than I should have. I left the pub just before 9 pm. Walking home was
rather pleasant. It was hot and humid out, but I was favoured by a very
light sprinkle of rain all the way home to help keep me cool. Indoors
it felt very muggy, and I had trouble sleeping properly.
So
this morning I feel like I could have done with another hour or two of
sleep, and I had a hangover. The hangover has mostly gone now, but it
was really, really hard to force myself to leave for work on time. I
felt pretty dreadful as I walked to the station, and not that much
better for the rest of the journey into work. I am really looking
forward to going home tonight, and trying for an early night, and
plenty of sleep. | | Wednesday 6th August 2008 | 06:41 BST
The
sky is shrouded in cloud this morning. This is actually a good thing
for reasons that I will explain soon. The clouds have locked some of
the heat in, and so it is a bit warmer than it was yesterday morning.
Apparently the cloud will break up later, and we could have some sunny
spells. I don't really believe that.
Yesterday was
supposed to have torrential rain in the afternoon. It never happened as
forecast, or at least not where I went, but there was a very light
shower when I left work to go home. Apart from the rain in the morning,
the weather forecasts I saw for yesterday turned out to be completely
wrong. Even the morning rain was a lot lighter than I had imagined it
would be from the forecasts.
It would be most handy if the
day was exceptionally gloomy between about 9.30 am and midday today. At
10 am I am due a retinopathy examination at Guys Hospital. This
proceedure, which I have undergone several times in the past, is where
the back of the eyeball is photographed. To accomplish this they puts
some drops in the yes that cause the pupils to dilate like some totally
zonked out drug addict. Then they use a camera with a really painfullly
bright flash gun on it to take the picture.
Once this
is done, and it could take less than 30 minutes, I will be leaving the
hospital with green and purple patches floating across my vision, and
my dilated pupils will make even a dull day seem almost unbearably
bright. Needless to say, I won't be going into work after this. For
several hours I would not be able to work on anything smaller than a
garden shed (I am normally dealing with components just a few mm long),
and I usually get a bad headache from the (apparent) bright light, and
blurred vision.
After the hospital I think I have my day
fairly well mapped out, although there are some variables involved. I
hope that by the time I am back in Catford my vision will be good
enough to pop into Tesco's on the way home. Then once I am home I will
be lying down, and possibly snoozing for a while. At some time during
the afternoon, possibly early in the afternoon, I think I may get a
visit for some of my surplus junk to be picked up, but other than that
I will just hang around until it is time to go out for a drink in the
early evening for an hour or two. | | Tuesday 5th August 2008 | 09:04 BST
Just
a brief update. Just as I left for work the rain started. It was only
light rain, and I didn't even bother to put my coat on. The rain
continued as a sort of light intermittent shower all the time I was
travelling, and there is fine misty rain even now.
07:23 BST
According
to last night's weather forecast it should be raining right now. It is
dull outside, but the cloud does not look like rain cloud, and it is
certainly dry for the moment. As far as I can tell there was no rain
during the night either. Later on this afternoon could see a different
story. The forecast said that there will be torrential rain.
Reluctantly I am going to take my coat in to work. It will help keep me
drier on the way home, but if the second part of the forecast was
correct it will be hot and very humid. That sounds like a recipe for a
very uncomfortable journey home.
Last night I surprised
myself. Not only did I pull out a box of stuff from under my computer
desk, but I pulled out two (though the second was a lot smaller than
the first). Then to top that I even did a bit of hoovering around, and
under the desk. I thought that I would probably just sit in front of
the TV until it was time to go to bed. With luck, those two boxes of
stuff, plus some other stuff will be taken away tonight. If not tonight
then probably tomorrow night, and then my master plan of getting this
back room back into a decent state will have taken a major leap forward. | | Monday 4th August 2008 | 18:23 BST
Today
has seen a mixture of sun and showers. Around midday we did have more
than a shower. For a few minutes it pelted down with rain, and I was
seriously wondering if I should have taken a coat to work. Right now it
is refreshingly cool, and it is bright outside, although there is no
direct sunshine.
One of the few things I did yesterday was
to discover a new perversion. While shopping in Tesco's I bought a
small lamb joint. To add a bit of flavour I also bought something I had
not noticed before. It was Oxo concentrated lamb stock. It did make for
some nice gravy, but I also discovered that it was better than Marmite,
peanut butter, or cheese spread when spread on plain bread. This is
obviously not how it is intended to be used, by I would urge anyone who
likes a nice tasty, savoury sandwich to try it. There is no need for
any butter or margarine, just drizzle it on plain fresh bread, or a
fresh roll - Yummy !
Going to work this morning was not
all that pleasant. All it took was a mere week off work for my body
clock to get out of synchronisation with the working week. Getting up
on time was easy, but I was so used to going back to bed that I felt
really tired on the way to work. Maybe tired is not quite the right
word, but I can't think of a better way to describe it.
Upon
arrival at work I found my workspace was in a mess. Perhaps it would be
more accurate to say that the mess was in a mess. It took me some time
to get the mess back the way I like it, and to sort out what I was
going to do. In the end I realised that it was too late to write
anything then. Hence the reason why I am writing now.
Tonight
I am going to do next to nothing. If I have the energy I might pull out
a box of junk from under my desk here in the back room. If I do I am
only going to give it a cursory glance and pull out anything essential.
The rest of it will probably be taken away from me, unsorted, tomorrow
night (or maybe Wednesday). | | Sunday 3rd August 2008 | 08:04 BST
There
is no rain at the moment, but it smells as if it has recently rained,
or will do shortly. The sky is grey and it is a bit misty. I seem
to recall a recent weather forecast saying today would be dry with
sunny intervals. So maybe when the sun is a little higher in the sky it
will "burn" off some of the cloud, disperse the mistyness, and finally
start to shine.
Yesterday got off to a slow start, but
eventually I started to tackle the cleaning up of the back room. I
actually made very good progress, and I could have done more, but I
have already filled the wheelie bin up as far as I dare. It does not
get emptied until Thursday, and I have to leave a little room for
normal household rubbish.
I succeeded in clearing,
cleaning, and polishing the whole of the dinner table, and I cleared
all the "debris" from under the left hand side of the dining table and
up to the adjacent door. Some of the stuff from the floor is now on the
table awaiting re-allocation to somewhere, but it is only a few items.
I
was so pleased with my efforts that I treated myself to a Chinese
takeaway in the evening. It was very tasty, but unfortunately it gave
me bad indigestion. I felt too uncomfortable to sleep after that until
I had taken a few anti-acid pills and belched and farted my way back to
comfort !
Later today I think I will attempt just a bit
more clearing up in the back room. I can't throw anything out now, but
I can do some sorting out, and maybe load up a box with some loose
stuff that I intend to keep. I'll probably accumulate a large bin bag
of stuff to chuck, but that will just have to sit in the corner until
Thursday night.
Before I can start any sort of cleaning up
I think I ought to get washed and dressed. Then I need to go shopping
to get stuff I need for my return to work tomorrow. | | Saturday 2nd August 2008 | 09:44 BST
This
morning is cool and wet. The sky is almost all cloud, and there have
been several showers. I think this is the pattern for the whole day,
but I am not complaining. The coolness is starting to percolate into
the house, and that makes the possibility of doing stuff more likely.
Yesterday
was another mostly unproductive day. It's hard to remember just where
all the hours went. What has come as a bit of a surprise to me is how I
seem to have been so lazy without being bored over the course of this
weeks holiday. There were definitely minutes when I was bored, but the
hours have just flown by so easily.
I missed out on some
drinking by less than 30 minutes yesterday. I emailed Kevin, early in
the morning, to say that I would wait until about 7 pm to see if he was
drinking last night. Unfortunately he did not see my email until the
evening, and although he sent me a text message to say he was going to
the pub, I did not get it until just before 7.30 pm. By that time I had
given into hunger and was heavily involved in dinner. With my stomach
full of dinner I did not fancy going out, and I stayed in watching some
TV.
It was not very late when I went to bed last night. I
was not really paying that much attention to the time, but I guess I
was asleep very soon after 10 pm, and it could even have been earlier
than that. I theory I had a good nights sleep, and I did get up at
around 6 am this morning. After feeding Smudge I did some research on
the internet, and then went back to my bed and laid down. I thought I
would just lie there for a few minutes before going for a shower. I was
rather amazed to find myself waking up at just gone 9 am. I suppose I
must have needed all that sleep, but I don't know why.
Today,
and even more so tomorrow, I have a new master plan. That plan, and it
is a fairly important one compared to my vague plans for most of my
holiday, is to get back in practice for work on Monday. That means
tonight I will have to force myself to bed early, and to get up, and
stay up, early tomorrow. In addition to that, and this is the hardest
part, I have to try and get my eating times back in sync with the
schedules of the working week. I am not sure how I am going to manage
that, but I'll give it a try. | | Friday 1st August 2008 | 07:32 BST
It
comes as some relief that the forecast for today is that the
temperature will be several degrees lower than it has been of late. It
is almost chilly outside now, and the temperature is only forecast to
rise to something like 24° C. The humidity has dropped too, and
sleeping tonight should be far easier that at any time in the last
week. It is rather grey outside at the moment, but apparently we should
see some sunshine today.
For the past week the
temperaure in my bedroom has hardly fallen below 26°, and 28° C has
been more like the average. To help me sleep in such sticky conditions
I have been using one of my new fans a lot. I am speculating that
having cool air blown over my naked body has given me a bit of a chill.
Since yesterday afternoon my chest has been feeling tight and wheezy,
and my cough has returned. It's only one tenth as bad as the worst I
suffered during my cold some 5 or 6 weeks ago, but it is still very
unwelcome. Last night I didn't use the fan, and in the latter part of
the night I even managed to endure covering myself up with the duvet
cover. Hopefully this chest problem will sort itself out very soon now.
As
I finished writing here yesterday I speculated about the possibility of
getting back to my back room clear up project. I am happy to report
that I did get back to it. However I didn't do that much. In fact I did
very little at all. The lure of the magazine was too strong. So I did a
little reading, a little cooking, a little eating and a little TV
watching. Then I went to bed.
This morning I may, or may
not, get around to do some more tidying up, but I have some shopping to
do first. Amongst the items I want to buy is another bottle of scotch.
The last bottle only lasted a month (or was it two ?), and last night I
fancied a couple of glasses to help my throat. I found I only had
enough left for one glass - tragedy !!
One thing I won't
be buying this morning is New Scientist. I have already read it. So
that is one less distraction from tidying up. Unfortunately I still
have quite a lot left to read in my other magazine.....
If
I do get as far as completely clearing the dining table of assorted
debris there could be a more worthwhile distraction. I will have a good
surface to do some computer construction on. It was my intention that I
would have had my new server working this week, or if not actually
fully working, it would at least be mechanically built and the
operating system installed. From then on I could configure it at my
leisure. One (slightly masochistic) plan was to do some of the
configuration remotely when I had slack moments at work.
To
remotely configure my server will be hard work. Perhaps hard work is
not quite the right description, but it will certainly involve some
head scratching. Without the luxury of graphical tools it will all have
to be done using the command line, and use vi,
the Unix/Linux text editor. It will be very good practice for me. One
of the problems of using Linux is that once set up it tends to just
work, and carry on working. Hence there is often very limited
opportunity to practice some skills that can be very handy at times.
I
am not sure what I will achieve today, but I am going to try and plan
things so that I am available for a visit to the pub tonight.
Hopefully, if it happens, I'll be able to make it a reasonably early
session, and get home again by, or before 10 pm. I have it in mind that
I would like to indulge in some sort of large unhealthy takeaway
tonight, and I'll be wanting to do that after drinking. |
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