There were red clouds on the eastern horizon as the sun heaved itself over the horizon this morning. Weather lore says that red sky in the morning is shepherds warning. In other words it may not be a great day. On the other hand the early version of the weather forecast says there will be a sunny afternoon, and an afternoon temperature of 18° C. The latest revision hasn't changed what you can see in the early screenshot above. Tomorrow could start with some light rain, but it should be dry by mid morning. Sunny spells, followed by sunshine until sunset should start by 2pm, and also by then the temperature could rise to a mild summer-like 21° C.

Site news: This web server kept dying overnight for the last few nights, and this morning, after a restart it only lasted for 15 minutes. I have changed the power supply brick, and I am keeping my fingers crossed !

  After the trauma of the previous day, yesterday was initially not so bad, and the afternoon was good. I started writing so late yesterday that the morning seemed almost to be over by the time I had finished. At that point I still had to have a shower before I could do anything else, and "anything else" was to be a quick shopping trip to Tesco. The urge to do that faded completely after an hour or two when Michael texted me to ask if I wanted some bottles of Diet Coke while he was out in his car shopping in Tesco.

  As I probably said in so many words the day before, my desire to do some extensive fasting, as you are supposed to do when depressed, only lasted one day. Yesterday I started the day with a big bowl (100gm) of instant noodles, and as beer drinking time approached I had 4 Marmite rice cakes. I was going to have corned beef on them, but I noticed the packet I had in the fridge was a week past it's use by date. I wouldn't have paid any attention to that if it was not just starting to smell a bit gamey. It made a nice snack for a Magpie or two, and I substituted cheese for the corned beef,

  As I suspected he would the moment he texted me, Michael joined Jodie and myself in our Thursday afternoon beer tasting session. Having someone else to talk to while Jodie is immersed in her phone is always good. Michael brought over a couple of beers he had bought from Aldi, plus one that I had given him ages ago. The latter one was one he needed help to drink. It was a can of 9% Polish beers, and it frightened him.

  I must admit that beer did initially taste strange after the previous beer, but because I ended up drinking most of it I had time to acquire the taste, and thoroughly enjoyed it after 2 or 3 gulps of it. That reminds me, I was once told by several people who seemed to know what they were talking about, and they said that beer should be gulped, rather than sipped like wine. The idea was that the best taste came from the back of the tongue, and tasting it with the tip of the tongue spoiled it. Jodie, being a self proclaimed beer connoisseur, sips it like she is tasting wine. Maybe that is why so many of the horrible sour beers she likes taste so horrible to me.

  One bit of good news I have forgotten to mention in the last two days is that I have had a letter from the department of work and pensions. As well as the supplementary energy payments that I believe everyone is getting this winter, us pensioners have been awarded a £500 per household, winter fuel allowance this winter. Maybe I'll be able to keep a few lightbulbs on this winter at the hugely inflated electricity prices we now have.

  Hmmm, it appears my server has just dies again, and I won't be able to upload this, and no one will be able to see it until I have somehow fixed it. I think I have now eliminated the power supply, and I have done what I can to blow any dust out of the air vents. The only feasible thing to try now is to remove the battery pack in case that is going faulty. Apart from that I can't think of anything else I can do except to replace the machine. That will suck up a lot of my time today. Another half hour passes.......

  I can see the output of a temperature sensor, and it said that something was up at 60° C....and rising. That is why it is shutting down. I think the internal fan has stopped running. Getting to that fan is tricky - to say the least. The server is an old Toshiba laptop, and despite taking out every screw I can see, I cannot seem to get the back off. As I write this I am cloning the hard disk from it, and preparing to put the clone in an old HP laptop. It might complain a bit about the hardware being different, but being Linux it should sort itself out enough to run the web server and file transfer server. That will be enough to get back on the air. With luck it will be soon enough that I will be able to upload these words to it - finger crossed.

  Back to yesterday: After Michael and Jodie left I felt warmly intoxicated, and hungry. Fortunately I had my dinner of beef stew with potatoes. runner beans, green chillies, and mushrooms, pre-cooked, and 5 minutes in the microwave got it steaming hot. It was not a huge dinner because I only used a half pack of diced beef. Normally I would use the whole pack. I had something after it, but I can't remember what it was. I can't even be sure if I did eat a "pudding", but if I did it was likely to be a chunk of cheese.

  I watched a bit of TV last night before going to bed, and going to sleep quite early. I think I may have been asleep before 9pm. On the whole I slept OK, but I kept feeling too hot. For unknown reasons I didn't seem to sweat in bed last night despite the cooked green chillies I ate. I seem to recall I had some pleasant dreams last night, but I've left it so late to describe them that they have all but evaporated now - except for one because it was so easy to remember. I dreamed I woke up, checked the clock, and saw that it was 5.20am. I thought "good, I can have an hour more sleep and then get up". I was a bit dismayed when I woke up again and saw that time had slipped backwards, and it was now 3.45am. I was not sure I could sleep for another 3 hours, but it was easy.

  One curious thing this morning was that my temperature was not as low as it sometimes is first thing in the morning. It was strange that it was a perfectly average day time temperature of 35.5° C (my typical average is 35.6° C). Maybe it was also a surprise that my blood glucose was down to a nice 8.1mmol/l. After the beer and the potatoes in the stew, I was expecting something loser to, or maybe even over 9.0mmol/l.

  Until I get my web server back on the air, and hopefully happy, I can really predict how much of the day will be left to do other stuff. I guess I'll have to write about it tomorrow. To finish off here's some pigeons...well quite a lot of pigeons all on one small bird table yesterday morning after I put some bird food out for them.