The latest revision to the forecast shows just light rain at 10am, but that light rain could continue to 3pm, although there is a chance of a break from the rain at midday. More light rain could fall from 7pm onwards. The highest temperature was can expect today is just 12° C. The lowest was probably around 3am when I noticed it was just 6° C. Tomorrow could be dry, and the middle of the day might be bright. Even a full hour of pure sunshine might be possible, but it will only raise the temperature to 13° C.

   I did not do all the things I hoped to do yesterday, and yet it was quite a satisfactory day. One important thing I did was to finish washing the white hand towel and the white t-shirt. They seemed to dry quite quickly with a fan on them. The very important thing I didn't do was to try and fix the dripping hot tap.

  One very poor excuse for not tackling that hot tap over the kitchen sink is that the last work I did to the tap has left it back in a stable, and very usable state. All water coming out of the mixer tap is coming out the spout as designed. The real problem as the moment is that since being on a metered water supply, those rapid drips are costing me money !

  It feels like most of my day was used playing with the Apple iMac I was given. As noted before, it is of 2008 vintage, and Apple no longer support it. That does, in theory, make it a security risk, but many ways Macs can get infected need user interaction, and unless you are intentionally installing software or updates (which don't exist for it), you just click on OK (or whatever) to something you didn't ask for.

  More significantly, most security worries are for when the Mac is part of a business set up, networking with other machines and stuff. Obviously I am not in a work environment, and so that is one less worry. It might be theoretically possible for some naughty virus to steal things like banking passwords, but I am very safe from that because I use a far more locked down PC for that. Of course the biggest safeguard is that I only keep the original Mac OSX 10.6 operating system on there as a curiosity. The main operating system is (now) MX linux.

  Yesterday I said I was using Antix Linux, and indeed that was what I first installed, but from the start I knew there was something wrong because I had no option to download the Xfce desktop version of Antix. The install media I downloaded started with just a very simple, plain desktop, and advised installing your desktop of choice once it was installed. I think that was what caused all my problems. I ended up with an unholy mix of two desktops, and somehow they were fighting each other. My attempts to correct things just made it all worse.

  Having realised my mistake I downloaded a fresh MX Linux install, and copied it to a bootable USB memory thumb drive. I installed it, and found the desktop was still all messed up, and yet the underlying stuff was working OK. The problem was that I had preserved my home partition, with all my customisations on it, as well as some stuff, like pictures, that I wanted to keep.

  Once again I rebooted from the USB thumb drive, but before I hit the install button I deleted all the config files from my home partition, but kept things like documents, music and pictures. I then went through the installation process again, and this time I was presented with a clean desktop. Unlike re-installing Windows, the Linux install took no more than 20 minutes, possibly less, and gave me a fully functioning computer with most of the essential programs installed and ready to use !

  What takes a lot more time is customising the desktop, and other bits, to look like Windows XP. It may be stupid, but I liked the look of Windows XP. Having saved all the old pictures used for customising stuff like the famous Windows XP "bliss" desktop picture, plus some icons and even a copy of the Windows XP "Start" menu button, it was a very quick job. What took longer was remembering all the programs I wanted to use and installing them from the equivalent of an "app store". Everything I wanted was complete free, and if it wasn't, I didn't want it.

  I guess it took much of the afternoon, but when I finished I couple play music using my favourite music player skinned to look like Winamp. I had my favourite picture viewer, and my favourite image editor - The Gimp. I noticed that the latest version has changed the look and layout, but after a bit I managed to get it looking a lot closer to how I am used to it. There is still one program to install, but I am not sure what to use to show digital TV. I have two ways working on my main PC. One way is a bit clunky, and the other seems to miss, or not play some stations properly.

  The best thing after all the work I did was that that all the external connections, ethernet, WiFi, and Bluetooth, can be controlled and used perfectly. That includes being able to transfer files to and from my mobile phone. One thing I didn't check was whether I could play music from my phone via the bluetooth connection. It could have limited uses, but if it doesn't work I am inclined to not fiddle about, and perhaps mess everything else up !

  While working on the iMac I had a combined snack and lunch. It was no more than ready sliced cheese on rice crackers - quite a lot of them - 12 of them to be precise, or enough for quartered 3 slices of ready sliced cheese. Either before or after that I also had half a dozed sugar free "fibre" biscuits. It might have been eating them that made me feel hungry, and drove me on to the rice crackers.

  My dinner should have been one meal, but it was two smaller meals because I couldn't cook both parts at the same time. Meal one was a small plate of "steak cut" oven chips. I have to admit they were rather delicious, and maybe the fact that my portion was a quarter or less than a typical chip shop portion, may have made them seem more precious and more delightful. Meal two was grilled diced lamb with rosemary. The lamb was originally destined for a stew, and was getting close to the end of it's life even when chilled in the fridge. It was really nice, and grilling it meant I could pour off all the fat that cooking liberated, and that was much healthier than having the fat swimming around in a stew.

  I watched, or part watched  (sometimes listening while reading something else) the usual Star Treks, and at the end I didn't seem to feel all that sleepy. Fortunately I noted there was an episode of Secrets Of The London Underground being shown on "Yesterday" (at least I think it was that channel). It was an episode I had seen before, but still interesting - even after my third extra large vodka and Diet Coke.

  After going to bed I didn't sleep as smoothly as hoped. It took a while to get to sleep, and then, once again, I had a long period of insomnia after about 1am. The big problem was that I was feeling much too warm under the duvet, and yet it felt freezing without it. It did get quite cold outside in the middle of the night, and the temperature in my bedroom had fallen to almost 18° C. That may me comfortable when fully dressed and active, but it felt extremely cold to my mostly bare body while being as inactive as possible. I turned the heater on low, but it took hours to get the room feeling mostly comfortable.

  At 5am I turned the heater up full, and before long I was catching up with the sleep I didn't get in the middle of the night. It was almost 8am (actually more like 7.30am) when I got up. This morning I was happy that I was not suffering from any form of constipation. I easily, and quickly passed a seemingly sufficient amount of poo.....although a lot more would have been beneficial when I came to weigh myself. My weight seemed to have shot up by about 600gm this morning.

  That weight gain seems at odds with my blood glucose measurements. Once again the newest meter, which was the first to be give a blood sample, gave the highest reading, but it was only 8.1mmol/l. That was very acceptable, and would be good enough by itself. The other two gave lower readings of 7.8 and 7.7mmol/l. Both are very good and both were low enough that I would have hoped for some weight loss instead of weight gain this morning. Maybe any weight loss might be revealed tomorrow, although I doubt it would be more than a few hundred grams.

  In light of my low blood glucose i treated myself to a bad breakfast. It was one of the rather higher than normal sugar content instant noodles. Actually it was not so much as a treat as a better time to use up one more of the packets. They are not even very nice. I mean they are nice, but not very nice.

  It is easier to say it than to do it, but once again the most important thing I could do today is to have a go at that dripping tap in the kitchen. One thing that would come before that is to get some shopping in from (probably) Tesco. A possible temptation comes for a walk, maybe just a short walk, in what is now sunshine. The latest weather forecast says sunny spells for midday, and then dry for three or four hours after that. I really do want to see how the river looks after all the rain we have had. It should be a roaring torrent !