If yesterday was unpleasant then today is going to be positively horrible ! I think it was raining through all the early hours of this morning, and it might not stop until 4pm. With the temperature as low as 3° C at 9am it was little surprise to see some sleet mixed in with the rain - a prediction that The Met Office made, but not the BBC. It is good thing (probably) that the rain stops at 4pm because at 5pm the temperature drops from a mere 4° C down to just 1° C by midnight. Any rain would fall as snow at those temperature. Tomorrow at 6am it will still be 1° C, and the skies will be clear, as soon as the sun rises we should non stop sunshine until sunset. That will only raise the temperature to 4° C by midday. Three hours later it will start to fall, and it will reach 0° C by midnight.

  At the same time that the year is now seeming to run out very fast, we seemed to have really plunged headlong into winter already. It feels like this winter could be very harsh, and with no pensioners winter heating allowance this year, it could be a very harsh time for many of us.

  Yesterday was curious in that although the outside air temperature was supposed to be very low (7° C) it didn't seem so bad because it was dry and there was hardly any wind. Of course it was still feeling a bit cool in the bathroom when I had a shower - maybe just a bit too cool to make me bother about washing my hair, which sadly needed (and still needs) to be washed, but I didn't think it mattered just for going to Tesco.

  I may have been a bit vague about it, but I did say I would probably go to Tesco yesterday, and indeed I did. I expected that cold air to cause a lot of problems for my chest, but somehow it didn't seem to. I was wearing my faux-leather jacket, which has some reasonable insulation in it, and I didn't even open it up until I was home again. It seemed to keep my back, chest and belly warm, but it obviously didn't stop my sucking in the cold air.

  I was really surprised that there and back almost felt like it used to be. Maybe my walk to Tesco was not as fast as I would usually go, but I don't think I slowed myself down that much. It didn't seem to cause any chest pains of any variety, and even my legs didn't seem to complain. On the way home I was carrying quite a load, but I felt like I was keeping up a good pace, and once again I had no pains. It all seemed very remarkable.

  As well as the typical things I buy in Tesco, I did buy a few oddities, and quite a lot of semi exotic cheese (aka non Cheddar cheese). One oddity was a small bag or ready prepared iceberg lettuce, and another was a small jar of crinkle cut gherkins. Both would feature in some rolls I would make later. After years of only rarely buying any bread, I once again bought two packs of wholemeal bread rolls - one was baps, and the other seeded "deli" rolls.

  After getting home I put away most of my shopping, but left a few things out for immediate use. I made myself two baps filled with cheese, sliced gherkin, iceberg lettuce, and a bit of mayonnaise. One had double Gloucester cheese, and the other was the second half of the soft Roule cheese (with herbs and garlic). The latter was particularly tasty.  One little snack I had a few times in the day was a small amount from a bag of pigs-in-blankets flavoured peanuts. They were as lacking in nice flavours as expected !

  The rest of my afternoon was about as boring as expected, but I did find a few things to do, and one would not exactly be the cause of trouble later, but would bring trouble to the fore. It was to download two linux installation iso files (that could be burnt to DVD disks, or as I did later, put onto a USB memory stick). I wanted to experiment with the latest version of MX Linux, and see if it would be suitable for use as a web server.

  I principally wanted to check that Lighttpd, the web server I use, was supported in the latest versions. I also wanted to know if PureFTP server was also supported. Even more important because hardly any practice for years means I am incredibly rusty about configuring these sort of things, whether Pure Admin, the click and point program to configure PureFTP was available and supported. To that end I downloaded the 2.9 Gbyte iso files of both the 32 bits and 64 bit versions of the latest MX Linux.

  It may have been those additional nearly 6 Gbytes of data on my hard disk that broke the camels back. After downloading them I heard more short pauses from my music player - something which only started a week or so ago (maybe it might have been a few more weeks ago). I had a sinking feeling that I knew what it probably was, but before worrying about that there was Star Trek to watch and dinner to eat.

  Before Star Trek (Deep Space Nine, and Voyager) I had a naughty but nice little snack. It was some weeks ago that I bought a block of Panacetta from (I think) Aldi. Essentially it was like a superior version of a strip of pork belly. It may have been partly cooked, but I treated it as a strip of pork belly when I cooked it. it came out beautifully. nice succulent meat with a rind of nice crispy skin. I meant to have it with an apple or two, but I just had it on it's own apart from some mustard.

  Barely an hour had passed until it seemed like a good time to prepare dinner. I had intended to make something like chicken burgers. The plane was to cut thick strips of breast from the ready cooked chicken I had bought a few days before, and then put them in two baps with sliced gherkin and iceberg lettuce. I couldn't be bothered to slice the chicken breast, and then grill it for a while to get it nice and soft again, and so I made up another couple of baps with cheese and stuff like I had for lunch.

  Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had a watchable episode, and I watched that while I ate. Star Trek: Voyager seemed a bit boring, and I turned off the TV and used a little utility program, "USB Image Writer" to write the 36 bit version of MX Linux to a USB stick. While that was happening I noticed that reads from my hard disk were getting a bit twitchier. Once the USB stick had been written to it was time to shut down my PC, and reboot it from the memory stick.

  MX linux started to boot up, and if it had succeeded I could have tested it purely running from the USB stick, and it would not have disturbed my Linux Mint installation on the PC at all. Unfortunately It didn't get very far in the boot up process. The initial bit was OK, but after that bigger files were to be used, and although I never proved it, I came away with the strong impression that the files were corrupted because the USB writing program could not read the files from my hard disk cleanly.

  That idea was strongly reinforced when upon rebooting back into my usual Linux Mint there were loads of hesitations, with the hard disk light stuck on for long periods. I got as far as playing music, but after that so many things were incredibly slow, or didn't work at all. I realised that my new solid state hard disk, only fitted in August, was rapidly dying.
  I knew when I bought it that I would be taking a big chance to try using a solid state hard drive from a company called Fanxiang - a previously never heard of Chinese company. At the time they were selling these 2TB drives for around £68 - which was quite cheap. They are now around £100, and not a lot cheaper than drives made by more well known makers. Fortunately, because I was feeling paranoid about this new drive, I made sure I made backups to the original "spinning rust" hard disk.

   At first I was doing it almost daily, but after a few months it was barely weekly. It could have been as much as two weeks since I last did a backup, but that meant it did not take too long to update the backup disk from the failing disk. I was probably lucky that if given enough time it could still manage to read seemingly all files, but some may have been corrupted. Once the backup was finished I shut the PC down, put the old hard back in, turned on, and after booting everything was back to normal - if slightly slower because the solid state drive (when working properly) was a lot faster.

  While I describe it all as straightforward, and seeming to not take long, it was really a lot of short steps that took up a lot of time when added together....although maybe not that long because I was able to watch an episode of QI on the computer once it had restarted with the old disk back in it. That started at 9pm, so if it all happened from halfway through Star Trey Voyager I guess it was only about 90 minutes down time.

  In theory I could have gone to bed when QI finished at 10pm, but paranoia ruled the day. As well as keeping the old hard backed up, I have two external USB hard drives that are also backups of my home partition. bringing both those up to date may have taken another 90 minutes, but at least I could pass 60 of those minutes watching QI. My computer shenanigans didn't stop there. I was very close to going to bed when I noticed I had an update to do.

  It was not a small update. It was the main Linux kernel, and supporting files. Updating the kernel is about the only update that needs a restart (unlike Windows which almost needs a restart if the time is updated). It only took 5 or 6 minutes to install the update, and then I had to restart the computer - but I still had the choice to say when I was going to do the restart.

   If I was in the middle of some work I could put the restart off almost indefinitely, but it seemed sensible to do it there and then. Of course a restart with a new kernel is a bit nerve wracking, but it only failed once for a very simple reason (I simply had to switch the first boot device from the wrong one to the right one). After a very short period of hesitation - probably just a few seconds, but it seemed to feel longer, it all booted up correctly, and once I started the programs I run all day, and night, (things like email, and my music player), I could finally go to bed.

  Once in bed I found I had two problems. One was some indigestion that I only noticed when laying down on my usual left side. That was mildly annoying, but the major annoyance was that my brain had been so stirred up by the events of the previous 6 or more hours, and it would not shut up. I think it was possibly gone 1am before I finally fell asleep. From then on I slept about the same as usual - apart from two things.

  One thing was that after that late start I slept a lot later than usual. The other was a very peculiar dream. The dream was obviously inspired by, but inverse to the books I have been reading lately. In one section of the three part trilogy, our hero is in a very small community who are the only inhabitants of a distant plant. The head of the community forbids the girl of his dreams (and he or hers) from marrying him because the laws, meant to protect from almost incest only list the names of suitable families she can marry in to. Our hero, put there as a punishment, is no related to anyone there, and so the incest laws do not apply, but "the community" try to stop it (he does marry her in the end).

  In my dream it was almost the other way around. A woman was selected for me by "the community". The big trouble was that the woman was the product of a sex change. She was physically a woman, and probably mentally as well, although I presume she wouldn't be fertile. The big stumbling block was that when she was a he, he was a childhood friend, and I could not think of her as a her. The rest of the details were very vague, and it is really only the situation I remember.

  Getting up extra late might have been a good thing in one specific area - I may have had an extra pee, and definitely had a poo before I weighed myself. It seems that although I ate a lot of bread yesterday, and other things not noted for weight loss, I was a whole 100 grams light this morning than yesterday. Had it been an extra 100gm I would be right back in an area I was just getting comfortable in before it all went wrong !

  I wondered if my blood glucose would be up or down this morning. Once again the answer was both. For a second day, all three readings I took were very different. The Contour meter read a very good 7.5mmol/l - spot on target for my desired target at the moment. The GlucoRX meter read a not so good, but still OK, 8.4mmol/l. Once again the Exactive meter read a silly, and if true, very bad figure. It was 9.2mmol/l. That was at least on the low side of very undesirable. The very weird thing is that I made another pin prick in the same finger, and tried those last two again, and got very similar results. I really hope that the Exactive meter is telling lies most of the time !

  My blood pressure has come down a bit since yesterday morning's very slightly higher than usual reading. This morning it is slightly down to deeper in the "Optimum" area. It took a couple of readings to get it this low because the first ones were taken while I was quite keen to go for a pee. I'm not even sure why I bothered until I was comfortable again. Once relaxed it was 112/51. That's not quite as low as I can often manage, but still perfectly fine, and a long way from any reading that might be of actual concern (other than trying to beat my own records).

  Another thing which set my blood pressure was a ring at the doorbell a couple of paragraphs back. I had no idea it had even been shipped, who the courier was, or anything useful, but it was my order from The Chiltern Brewery arriving. I now have loads of their Barley Wine. I hope it is as wonderful as expected. Also in the delivery was their "12 days of Xmas" box set. I didn't realise it was actually a beer advent calendar. It contains two beers that I'll just pour down the sink unless I find a mug who will drink them. One is a porter that blatantly says it has coffee in it. The other is even more sinister. It has an infusion of Earl Grey Tea in it. I might have to put rubber gloves on and tip that one down the toilet !!!

  When the courier delivered the beers he told me they were expecting a third box, and that he will probably be delivering it tomorrow. I hope he comes at a similar time, or ideally a little bit earlier. It should be my beers from Beers Of Europe (dot com). I am mystified why I have had not email notifications about these impending deliveries so I can track them. I wondered if my email program, Thunderbird, was not working or something, but I have just had an almost spam like message from Just Eat, and so some messages are getting through OK.

  It would be foolish to go out on such a cold, grey, wet and miserable day, but I am definitely thinking about doing so. I am contemplating testing an old pair of jeans that seem to fit me OK, and, my thickest (or second thickest - I've not decided which of two similar is the best) hooded winter coats. I think the blue one is possibly thickest, but it is also the tightest. My possible plan is to just go to the station to pick up a copy of The Metro. If I do go I'll take a camera, and snap any passing trains while I'm there. If I don't go I'll be quite happy (until I get bored) being very lazy for the rest of the day....maybe.