Today's forecast certainly got the heavy rain at 8am right, although it was not as heavy as late yesterday evening. The sky still looks very grey to the west, but to the east the clouds look broken up, and we have already had one sunbeam get through them for a few minutes. The idea that we may have some periods of sunshine today does not seem to be a fantasy. It is just a shame that this afternoon is going to be a rather chilly 12° C, except at 1pm when it may be briefly 13° C. The bad news is that the forecast has just been revised again. There will still be a few scattered sunny spells, and the 11am rain has now been moved back to 3pm. Also the brief spell as 13° C has been changed to just 12° C.  Tomorrow may see the temperature restored to 13° C for most of the afternoon, and after a sunny start to the day, but there maybe showers from 3pm.

  Yesterday was another indoor day. I could potentially have gone out for about an hours walk if I had timed it right, but I just couldn't raise the enthusiasm. The only thing I did raise some enthusiasm for doing was to play about with an old computer, but I didn't imagine that my enthusiasm for that would turn out to last many, many hours. It only happened because I had dome some assorted laundry, and had the heater on low in the dining room where I was drying that laundry.
  In the foreground of this drying laundry is a pair of thermal long John type things. I think I bought them in Aldi years and years ago. They did get some use when going to work in the snow, and they did keep my legs warm when the air was sub zero. Unfortunately it wasn't my legs that were cold. It was my hands, and that was despite wearing gloves. I have a pessimistic theory that we could have a harsh winter this year, and decided it would be handy to have those leg warmers ready for use. Although I am reluctant to go out in the rain, I have far less worries about going out in the frost or snow. The important thing is that it has to be bright out - preferably with a blue sky.

  As well as doing some laundry in the (late) morning I also treated myself to some breakfast of grilled bacon. It was very nice, but the bacon did seem salty enough to make me thirsty for a while. Later on I would have more pork goodness for dinner. It was a day when I ate very carefully to keep my sugar intake very low, but without considering my calorie intake. It was also a day that featured 4 or 5 bottles of known low sugar content beer, and a few large whiskies too.
  This is the PC (with the case opened) I ended up playing with for many hours yesterday. There are some clues as to how small it is if you are familiar with some of the things used in a PC. The top of the PC is about the same size as a sheet of A4 paper, and the height of the case is probably a bit less than 3 inches (approximately the same as the long edge of a credit card).  This PC has one useful feature that I doubt I will ever use - it runs off 12V, and so could be powered from a cars electrics.

  I found this PC in a skip when I was at work. It was in basic working condition, but not to my requirements. It seemed too good to throw away, but I have made almost no use of it since getting it 3 or 4 years ago. My plan is to use it as either a backup, or my main web server. That means it needs certain software installed on it. Unfortunately it is not very fast with a modern operating system on it, and that is mostly because it uses a slow laptop type hard drive, and it only has 1GB of RAM. To complicate matters it only has one RAM slot, and I do not have any bigger sticks of memory in my box of spares.

  I did have it serving web pages the day before, but there were a few problems, and I decided to start again. I made good progress, but was stymied by the file transfer program crashing as it started. Some later research suggested it is probably clashing with something else that it is hogging the FTP port. I shall probably look into that today. If I can fix that problem I shall be almost there.

  I stopped work on the computer to have dinner. It was almost a quite healthy dinner. The unknown quantity was the white Polish sausages, but at least I made sure not to get carried away, and cook too many of them. I had them with raw vegetables - a bit tomato, a red bell pepper, a sliced red chilli, and sliced white cabbage. I can't say it was very nice, but it was pretty good. In fact the worst part was those sausages. They were nice when I ate them, but they were a bit garlicky, and for hours after I was burping garlic. That was why they weren't as nice as hoped. I think I have another 6 of them in the fridge, and I will have to go through that garlic flavoured burping again unfortunately.

  A glance out of the window shows me that the weather forecast has just been revised again. It now shows rain from 10am to midday, and as I write this it correctly shows that the rain is heavy at the moment ! At 1pm there is only a less than 5% chance of rain, but an hour either side the chance of rain is 30 or 40%. 3 and 4pm may be dry, possibly with a sunny spell or two, but thanks to the clocks changing to GMT last night, sunset will be at 4.45pm this afternoon.

  I had very little rest, or perhaps I didn't have any snoozes yesterday, and so I expected to be asleep early last night. That was a very incorrect expectation ! I did seem to be yawning quite heavily when I went to bed at 10pm, but sleep would just not come. It was not helped by every sleep position I tried being uncomfortable in different ways. In some positions my legs would hurt (particularly around my right knee). In other positions one or both arms would hurt in various places, or my right should would hurt, my fingers would go to sleep, and I would crunch my ribs (once very painfully !).

  With the clocks changing, and with the clock I use at night, the screensaver on my PC, changing automatically, it is hard to work out when I finally got to sleep, and how long that first bit of sleep lasted. I now thing it probably lasted about an hour and a half, but it seemed  to have only been half an hour - the extra hour apparently lost when the clock changed. After another half an hour or so, I fell asleep again, and from then on, until it was light outside, I slept for one to two hour intervals.

  To sleep until it was fully light outside suggests that maybe I managed more hours of sleep than it felt like. Several hours later I am not sure if I feel sleep deprived or wide awake. My judgement is blurred because of the depressing effect of the grey sky and rain. When I look out the window to see a dark grey sky, and puddles everywhere (although I think the rain has actually stopped again), I find it hard to raise any enthusiasm for anything. Even blinking seems too much like hard work.

  My humour was not improved when I got on the scales this morning. It seems I have put on more weight. The peculiar thing is that this is at odds with my blood glucose level. The care I took to keep that down worked very well. My blood glucose has come right down to an almost perfect 7.3mmol/l. Once upon a time my weight and blood glucose kept in step - if one went down, so did the other. For some time now they seem to be completely disengaged with each other, and I don't know why.

  It is obvious that I will be spending some unknown amount of hours playing with that mini PC today, but I don't know when I will start that. I was going to go to the Polish/Turkish supermarket again today, but I don't know if I will or not at the moment. In fact I have no idea what I will actually do today. I don't feel strongly inclined to do anything - not even reading the book I am currently reading. I have to admit that it is one book from one of my favourite authors, Harry Harrison, that is a rather turgid read.