As I write this were are experiencing the sunny spells forecast for 9am. Even the latest revision to the forecast says they will stop at 10am, but when I look at the sky I have doubts it will completely cloud over soon. This morning started at 4° C, and the best we can hope for later is only 7° C. It looks like it will be a windy today, and that is going to make it feel even colder.  In the latest revision the sunny spells for 5pm have been replaced by light cloud. It should remain dry today unless the BBC forecast turns out to be right with it's forecast for light rain at 11am and midday. Tomorrow could feature a lot of sunny spells through most of the day, but the afternoon temperature will still not be any higher than 7° C. Winter has returned !
 
   I never gave any explanation of why I started to write so late yesterday morning. There was a simple, but maybe foolish explanation. I fell down the wikipedia hole early in the morning, and couldn't get out again. If you have never experienced falling down the wikipedia hole it is easy to try. You look something up on wikipedia, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon, which the Russians were reported as using in Ukraine, and then start following links in the article. Those links provided links to other links, and those to others, etc etc, etc ! Before long you might find yourself reading about grain cultivation on Oklahoma, or something, and before you notice several hours have passed painlessly by.

  The rest of yesterday was less educational, but not completely. Once I finished writing the short piece I wrote late yesterday morning I laid on my bed and read some SciFi fiction. After a couple of pages I closed my eyes, and before long I was having a snooze. I think that only lasted for maybe 20 minutes, but I really was not paying much attention, if indeed any attention, to the time.

  I think it was just after midday that I had part one of a two part lunch. It was nothing more sophisticated than 4 rice cakes with some spreadable blue cheese on two, and spreadable cheddar based cheese on the other two. An hour or so later I had part two which was three rice cakes with ham and cheddar on them. That must have given me some needed energy, or it could have been the result of seeing the first, albeit short, unexpected sunny spells.

  Somehow that enthused me to do something I have been meaning to do for a few weeks now - having another look at the laptop Jodie's boyfriend gave me. It had a strange fault where the power button didn't appear to work, but somehow didn't seem to do nothing. The easiest way of making it start up was to plug in the power lead, but it was all a bit hit and miss. There was one other clue of something not right.

 It was very obvious that laptop had a web cam, but nothing seemed to detect it's presence. I wondered if someone attempting a repair has accidently plugged the camera into the power switch socket, and vice versa. It meant I had to dig deep inside to try and find the switch that the power button pushed down on.  I had to do some mega dismantling, and ended up with little screws everywhere. The chances of getting those screws, plus all the internal connectors back in their rightful places is pretty slim.
  Once I had managed to find out how to remove the keyboard the root of the problem became easy to see. There was a blob of green corrosion on a ribbon cable where it plugged into a connector on the main board. When I pulled the ribbon out of the connector I could immediately see that several of the gold plated contacts had been eaten away. I cleaned it up so it is easier to see in the middle of the photo above.

  If I was still doing my last job I could have replaced the ribbon cable because we used them with the same pitch. The exact amount of conductors wouldn't matter provided the new had more because a sharp scalpel blade would fix that (I was practised at doing that in emergencies). The ribbon would not have the built in bend, but by using a longer ribbon that would be no problem.

  The big problem is the socket must also be corroded inside. Once again, back at work I had the tools to replace such a socket, but now it means the laptop is a write off. The big mystery is how it happened. It looked like liquid spillage, possibly a soft drink like cola, and that connector is under the keyboard - a mostly like way liquid could get inside, but there was no sign of any other spillage. It might be possible it was just a single drip that had got through the keyboard, and maybe the keyboard had been replaced because there was no sign of any liquid ingress on the keyboard.

  A little later I got curious in another direction - how much would a "renewed" identical laptop cost from Amazon - if they had any. It wasn't long before I found the identical model, with now obsolete, and unsupported Windows 7 on it for just £89.99. While the broken laptop was working I managed to install MX Linux on it, and it seemed very nippy. I decided I could afford £89.99 if I cut down on something or another, and so I ordered it. With luck it should be here in a few days, although Amazon's official estimate is by next Friday.

  It was TV time when I finished with the laptop (still in bits all over the dining room table). At that point I hadn't even started to prepare any dinner. I almost didn't feel hungry, at least not at that time. I thought that maybe I might have a few more rice cakes and cheese for a very slim dinner, and if nothing else it should theoretically be good for my blood glucose which had started the day at a high 9.0mmol/l.

  In the end I fancied something hot for dinner, or maybe more substantial, but sill possibly safe. I opted for a pile of Birdseye cod fish fingers. Maybe I was expecting too much because they didn't seem to be any better than supermarket own brands - which are usually quite nice. I ate them while watching Star Trek: The New Generation. That finished at 7pm, and I then watched The Simpsons on Ch4+1. At 7.30pm I had my usual break from the TV, and it was during that break that I found and ordered the £89.99 laptop.

  At 9pm I turned the TV on again, and watched Have I Got News For You. That was followed by QI, and I watched that too. At 11pm I went to bed, and it was not long before I fell asleep. Once again I seemed to sleep quite well with few disturbances until about 4am. It was feeling rather cool by then (just 3° C outside), and I turned the heater on full. It must have been as my bedroom warmed up that I had the only dreams I remember.

  Actually, it is only one bit of a series of similar set dreams that I remember. The dreams were set in being at work, but where I worked was a sort of mix of various places I had worked during my life. I must admit I don't actually remember doing any work during these dreams. The one bit of dream I remember was worth remembering for two reasons. It was about another company which shared the big building I was working in. All places effectively looked out to a large square courtyard.

  There were a couple of notable things about the company who were diagonally across the courtyard from us. The first is their habit of bringing their desks outside to work whenever the weather was mild or better. The other thing was that the two owners of the company had big beards that were laced with foil. The old owner had plain silver foil, but the younger, perhaps the son of the old man, had metallic purple foil in his beard.

  They were the most notable things, but it turned out to be an interesting company. I was chatting with the old owner, and he told me that despite being British, they had the contract to build all the replacement batteries for much of the worlds satellites. He told me he would have loved to have gone into space to fit the new batteries, but the work was actually done by astronauts from the satellites owners.

  It was a cute sort of fantasy dream, but it was time to get up, and the first thing was to check my blood glucose. This morning it was a wonderful 7.6mmol/l - a very nice drop from yesterday's 9.0mmol/l. After a visit to the toilet I dared to check my weight. It was only a few days ago that it seemed I had put on about 2kg. This morning it was only 0.5kg above my "standard" weight (where standard is an approximation that I report to the nurse or doctor). I think a few days ago I might have been retaining water for some unexplained reason.

  Today I had thoughts that going out might be nice, but that though only came with the first weak sunny spell. We are still getting sunny spells now, and the temperature has already risen to 8° C. Unfortunately here does seem to be a very cold feeling wind, and that puts me off going out. Besides which I have some stuff I ought to/could do. Putting the unrepairable laptop back together would be one potential job. I have offered it back to Jodie's boyfriend in case he can be bothered to put it on Ebay as "for repair or parts". For that it ought to be back together. I am waiting to hear what he has to say. Unless he says he would like it back it can go in the bin exactly as it is - minus the useful bits like hard drive, memory amd CD/DVD drive.

  Assuming I do get it all off the dining room table in one form or another, I might have another go at repairing the old Toshiba laptop that was my web server until it started to overheat. I suspect it is clogged with dust deep inside, and at the last attempt I couldn't seem to find a way to get deep inside. Maybe, with one of my Dell laptops being a potential standby replacement for the HP laptop that is acting as a server, I can be a bit more ruthless as I try and pull it apart.

  One thing I will do today is to do some washing up so I can use the casserole dish to cook a nice healthy dinner for tonight. I think it may be chicken and red cabbage, but other vegetables are a possibility. I have no idea what I might do with the other spare hours of the day.