The BBC website forecast is far more optimistic than the Met Office forecast above. The BBC reckons that most of the morning, and at least half the afternoon will feature sunny spells. The Met Office forecast has been revised twice since I took the screenshot above, and it has changed a bit. 9am and 10am may still feature rain, but the clouds will be much lighter. From then on the cloud will be light, and occasionally the sun may peep through the clouds for short periods. Midday and 9pm are possible times. The temperature is now shown as a steady 18° C - the same as yesterday (the BBC is more optimistic with 19° C).  Tomorrow may be sunny in the morning, but lightly overcast in the afternoon. The temperature may make some attempt to be closer to summer at 20° C.

  Yesterday seemed like it could be a boring day again. The grey sky, and threat of rain put me off going out. However, it was not a boring day at all, although it did have boring moments ! I warmed myself up by hand washing two hand towels, plus a couple of smaller items. For a while it looked like I might be able to get a few hours of drying in outside, but I decided I would put them on the clothes horse indoors where I could forget about them while the weather did whatever it was going to do.

  I cooled off again by doing some reading. I could have been quite happy reading for hours, but after maybe half an hour I had the urge to be more productive. As I suggested yesterday morning, I wanted to have another go at getting a new firewall box for my internet connection up and running. The firewall I was running was based upon a big old PC, and for a year or two is was working while partly dismantled following an emergency repair. I didn't want to shut it down, and lose my internet connection again, once it was repaired to put it back together.

  The old box, and the one the preceded it, were easy installs, but the new box I wanted to use, and finally did use, just would not work with the Smoothwall Express software I wanted to use. I think it was because Smoothwall is rather old software, and lacks some sort of digital signature. Without that signature the BIOS of the computer would not let it write to the boot sector of the hard disk. So every time I installed the software (including operating system) it would leave the installation unbootable.

  That was not my first problem. The first problem was that the second network card I had installed (one connection to the dirty outside world, and one connection to my internal network) seemed to be faulty. It would not allow the computer to even start up. Actually I am not sure if it is faulty, or whether it is just having some sort of fight with the BIOS or something. I may check it on another machine. A replacement card seemed to getting it working again.

  While Smoothwall did not work I found that Ipcop did work. In one sense it was the better option because it is still being supported. On the other hand it was quite a learning curve to do all the configuration. At first I was optimistic that it would be easy because the installation sequence is almost identical to Smoothwall. It was after the installation, when it has to be configured for things like incoming and outgoing rules where it is very different.

  It took me ages to work out how to open port 80 to allow access to these web pages. I then stumbled over trying to input the parameters for the Dynamic DNS service I use (and actually pay for !). This allows sunnyside.homelinux.org to always end up on my server here at home. If it wasn't for that I would have to do away with the name, and just use the actual internet address that is supplied by my ISP (Virgin Media), and that can change after line faults and stuff (but doesn't usually).

  It took all afternoon to finish the most important setting up, and with the lid screwed back on I could relax, and sort out some dinner. I didn't really stop for any formal lunch, but I snacked on enough crap to keep me going. Dinner was a bit more planned. It was roasted, and spiced, chicken legs with a simple salad. I am not sure the spices added much flavour. I really ought to add the spice towards the end of cooking before the roasting evaporates all their flavours. Before they were cooked, those chicken legs looked to be quite big, and I thought two would be enough - they weren't ! Each only had a couple of big mouthfuls of meat. It was over doing things, but I ended up eating all 5 that came in the pack, and that I had cooked.

  For some of the evening I could relax, and catch up with some stuff I had missed during the day on the internet. I seemed to do that in preference to watching Star Trek, although I did try and follow Star Trek by sound, and watching a few minutes here and there. It was not the best way to watch it ! I later watched a bit of QI, and it was soon time for bed. It was nice to lay in bed just reading, and making progress reading what is quite a thick book. It is what I had thought I would end up doing in the afternoon until that Firewall box grabbed all my attention.

  At 10pm it was lights out as usual, and I seemed to fall asleep very quickly. I can't think of much to complain about my sleep, and so I guess I might have had a reasonable night.  There was one thing definitely good about my sleep - I didn't wake up with any unusual aches or pains. The previous morning I had woken up with my right wrist very painful (but only when pressure was applied in a certain way). I forgot to mention that pain was slowly fading away even while I was writing yesterday morning.

  I don't think I mentioned that my left elbow was also playing up. It has been doing so, usually in the morning, but also intermittently at any time of the day, for several weeks or more now. Once again it is only certain movements that are painful - very painful some times. It was bad yesterday morning, but my right wrist seemed more newsworthy. This morning neither is a problem...although that left elbow might send out a few very mild warning aches still.

  This morning my blood glucose has spiked up to 9.1mmol/l, and that is a lot higher than I would like. The worst thing is that I am not really sure why it has spiked like this. I can't remember eating anything that I know to have caused it. Curiously enough, my weight seems to have dropped a little bit from it's peak yesterday. I have always believed that my blood glucose, and weight, march in lock step with each other, but this is twice in the same week (or two) that one has gone up while the other has gone down.

  I ought to go for a long walk today, but I don't feel very keen about it. It might be bright at lunchtime, but I feel sure that Angela will either go shopping, or will be in the pub without me. That nulls a possible reason to go for a walk in that direction. If I do go for a walk I will probably go in the other direction. Instead of going for a walk there are things I can do that would be very useful here.

  One thing I will almost certainly do today is to go to the corner shop for the latest New Scientist magazine. I will probably spend some time reading it too. Getting the new firewall up and running unlocks one barrier to my rehabilitation of the back room. I no longer need the desk in there that was once my computer desk (a long time ago), and latterly was where my old firewall sat spread out in little bits.

  All I need to do is to clear the top, which would be easy now, clear out the draws, which is already partly done, and then I can take the legs off it to make it easier to move elsewhere. I think it might end up in my bedroom, but I might just throw it out. With that desk out of the way I can take down the brackets for the shelves that used to be above it, and scrub the wall clean. I might even paint that bit of wall while it is completely clear. The almost final touch will be to drag the dining table into almost the centre of the room, and apart from trying to do something with the remaining boxes of stuff I am reluctant to throw away, the room will be usable as a dining room again - maybe after a bit more deep cleaning here and there. It is a bit like my garden - it was a job that seemed too big to ever finish, and yet it feels like I am on the home straight at last.