The forecast
for today predicted an even duller day
than yesterday. Sometimes it won't be
quite as dull, but it will always be
dull. It will probably be dry, although
there is a 10% chance of rain at any
time. It will be another degree cooler
than yesterday at just 12° C. Tomorrow
may see some sunny spells in the
morning, but mostly it will be a
slightly less dull day than today, and
it will be cooler still. The temperature
may briefly touch 12° C, but most of the
time it will be just 11° C.
Yesterday was yet another
day when I was not terribly productive.
In fact you could say I wasn't
productive at all. I blame it on the
dreary day. I just get anti-enthused
when the sky is grey. My most productive
thing, although the actual product was
close to zero, was to finally get
Jodie's mum's other, and younger, old
computer on the table, and to start
investigating it.
As I may have mentioned
yesterday, or the day before, it is a
Dell PC, and in my terms it is close to
modern. It has a 2.5GHz Pentium IV
processor in it. Being a single core
processor it won't cope with multiple
tasks, but it should be OK for single
tasks. There is only 768MB of memory in
it. That should be enough to get started
for most experiments, but should I
actually get it going properly I would
hope I can increase that to maybe 2GB.
All my experiments have ended in
failure. The failures seem almost
random, and that suggests a power supply
problem. Fortunately the power supply
looks to be a standard ATX + P4 unit,
and I will try replacing it to see what
happens. Initially I will just dangle
the new power supply outside the case.
One thing that does run OK, because it
demands very little power from the
processor, and with the hard disks and
CD drive not being used, there is little
drain on the power supply, is a memory
test program.
After trying assorted things to
try and get a desktop up, I resorted to
using Memtest 86 - a memory test
program. It confirmed it could see the
768MB of RAM, and it started to test it.
That was just before dinner time, and I
left it running over night. The test
program has done 28 full test cycles,
and found no memory errors when I
checked this morning. That eliminates
one source of possible problems.
I had fish fingers for breakfast.
They are usually safe, or so I seem to
think. My lunch was a couple of bowls of
instant noodles. They were slightly
special in as much as they were Polish
noodles with Polish flavours. The actual
noodles may have been made in Poland, or
anywhere else in the world, and I doubt
that they were any different to any
other noodles. The flavourings were
definitely different though.
The first flavour I had was one I
had previously tried, and found it to be
good, but nothing to get very excited
about. It was the second flavour that
was unusual. It was Borscht flavour, and
I had never tried it before. It is based
on beetroot (and the picture of it about
should look more purple than red). I was
wary of beetroot in any cooking. I
thought it would taste far too earthy,
but maybe I was wrong. Of course no
instant noodle ever tastes anything like
what it says on the packet, or even like
anything on the good green Earth, but
these noodles did have a rather nice
taste that I can only describe as
slightly tangy. I almost wonder what
they would have been like without the
Caribbean hot chilli sauce I added !
I hope these two pictures,
taken 2:40pm, show a good reason why
I didn't want to go out yesterday.
If it had been 2° C instead of 12°
C, I could easily have believed it
was about to snow. I found it very
depressing, and it probably affected
my choice and quantity of dinner
later on. I was briefly cheered by
my Amazon delivery arriving
surprisingly early at 3pm. I was
gloomily thinking it might be nearer
"before 9pm", as is usually quoted
at first. By 2am they had refined
the delivery time to between 2 and
4pm, and 3pm is exactly
between those two times.
The delivery was of two more
whiskies. One was a bottle of Johnny
Walker Black Label whisky. In fact
what arrived was double
black. Maybe that is "Black Label",
or maybe I got a better (or just
different) version instead, but I
sort of doubt it. It is matured in
freshly charred oak barrels, and
definitely has a charred sort of
taste. It is not quite to my liking,
but is OK, and infinitely better
than a burnt peat flavour. That
could be a mix of burnt tyres and
cow dung as far as I am concerned.
The other bottle was an Irish
whiskey. Hinch, and a little sip
tasted very nice and smooth, as many
Irish whiskies tend to be.
My dinner was a chicken stew
with potatoes and peas in it. It was
rather nice. In fact maybe it was
too nice because I ate more than
intended. If I had had some sort of
dessert after it I could have had
half yesterday, and half yesterday.
Instead I ate the whole lot ! That
might not have been a good idea,
although at the time, or at least as
I started it, I thought what harm
can it do. I would find out this
morning.
Before that I had to get some
sleep, and it didn't come easy. I
thought I was ready for bed as early
as 8pm. I didn't actually go to bed
then, but I think I did very soon
after 9pm. I read for a while, and I
think I put the book down before
10pm. I expected to fall asleep
fairly quickly, but it seems I just
wasn't tired enough. I finally fell
asleep around midnight. From then on
I slept fairly well, but there were
a few times in the night when I
couldn't seem to get the temperature
right.
At 5am the heater had been on
low for half the night, but I
couldn't seem to get warm enough
under the duvet....or maybe that was
warm and comfortable enough.
That seemed to be my cue to turn the
heater up full. I seemed to sleep
very well after that, and I woke up
just after 7am with most of the
duvet kicked aside. I didn't feel
all that good when I got up, but now
it is hard to say why. Maybe I just
felt a but excessively stiff and
creaky.
This morning my blood glucose
had shot up to 9.0mmol/l. I think I
have to blame the excess chicken
stew for that. It is not a
completely awful reading, but it
does mean that like the day before
yesterday, I have to spend the day
being careful with what I eat in the
hope that tomorrow it will be,
ideally, under 8.0mmol/l. The
difficulty is that today is not an
ideal day for doing that because
today is shopping day.
I got myself showered and
dressed, ready to go to Aldi soon
after 9am. It was actually a nice
walk to Aldi. If I had been
complaining on stiffness earlier, it
seemed to have gone by the time I
walked to Aldi. It was made a nice
walk by braving the cool weather by
not wearing a coat. There seemed to
be very little wind this morning,
and that made 12° C passable with
bare arms.
I could have gone to Tesco
instead of Aldi, but there was one
thing (maybe two things) I
particularly wanted to look out for
in Aldi. One was a reasonable priced
(£24) Japanese whisky, and the other
may have been an aged bourbon that
tastes suspiciously like Jack
Daniels, but is several pound
cheaper. Actually, the little sip I
had when I got it home may have
tasted better than Jack Daniels. The
Japanese whisky was rather pleasant
too.
When it came to food I did
try and be selective about what I
bought, and generally most of what I
bought could be classified as safe
if eaten in less than over generous
quantities. I don't think that
includes something I saw in the
frreezers, and which I bought two
bags of. They were bags of sprouts
with pine nuts in a balsamic glaze.
It wasn't until I got home that I
checked to find they have a rather
high sugar content. Oh well, I'll
try and enjoy them at an appropriate
time.
I bought rather a lot in Aldi
if measured by weight. The walk home
was not quite as enjoyable as the
walk there, but it wasn't as bad as
I had imagined when I first felt the
weight of the bags I was carrying. I
also had 6 litres of Diet Coke, and
the two bottles of spirits in my
rucksack weighing me down. Despite
my high blood glucose I cooked
myself some bacon when I got home.
It is too grim to consider
going out to enjoy myself, and I
don't think I need to go out again
for any shopping. It looks like I
will have to amuse myself at home
today. The only possibility of
something better than playing with
old PCs is if Jodie wants to come
over for some beers today. She
should have been over yesterday, but
she had an afternoon appointment
with the vicar concerning her dad's
funeral. As far as she is concerned
he could be just tipped into the
Thames, but a forgotten aunt has
popped up, and apparently without
offering to help pay for it all, has
demanded a proper funeral. Jodie is
rather peeved about this because she
has to arrange and pay for it.
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