Like the last few days, today will see a mix of full sunshine and sunny spells, with probably more hours of full sunshine than hours of sunny spells. The afternoon should reach 28° C, and with only a light breeze it could feel quite warm out. There is a 10% and 19% chance of rain at 7pm and 8pm, but no rain is actually shown on the forecast. Tomorrow could see full sunshine from sunrise until 2pm when some cloud will reduce it to just sunny spells. Tomorrow afternoon may peak at just 24° C, and that may feel quite cool after recent hot and very hot weather.

  Yesterday was quite a productive day, and yet there were several things I didn't do - including not going shopping again. The most productive thing used up the whole evening, and made me late for bed. Most of these things can be described very simply, and with luck I will be writing a shorter diary today.....with luck, or care !

  Like several recent days I allowed myself to be distracted yesterday morning, and I also wrote a semi longer diary yesterday. I didn't get my post-writing lie down as early as I should have, and that altered the intended course of the day. For instance it was early afternoon before I got back to some laundry I had left soaking overnight. It was not a lot to hand wash, just 5 (or maybe 6) pairs of underpants. It seemed like it should have been hard work, but once started I continued until they were all hanging up to dry.

  The consequence of not getting that laundry finished until early afternoon was that I could not use the bath for a shower in the morning. The consequence of that was that I never did get to go out to get some much needed shopping from Tesco. By the time I had hung up the laundry to dry it somehow seemed too late to bother about going out, and my thoughts turned to indoor pursuits.

  It was about 5pm when I decided I just had to start a job I think I was probably saving for a rainy day. The job was simple to describe, but took a lot longer to execute. It was to replace the hard drive in my best laptop with one almost 4 times the size (in terms of storage capacity). I had bought a pair of 2TB solid state hard drives from Aliexpress back in April, and they have been gathering dust since. The price of anything with compute memory in it has gone through the roof since all memory production has been bought up in advance by loonies building gigantic "Bit Barns" (data centres) for AI (so called artificial intelligence).

  I thought I was lucky to get those hard drives, by a possible reliable manufacturer, for a fair price. If I had waited until now I may well have had to pay a lot more ! I had to do some preparation for this project, and before dinner time I burnt two recordable DVDs - one with Windows 7 on it, and the other with Linux Mint 22.3 XFCE (desktop) edition. While one of the DVDs was burning I went to the kitchen, and started grilling 4 big smoky sausages, and some thick cut oven chips.

  As usual, I watched the 6 O'clock news while eating my dinner. The sausages were the same as those that Michael rated as extremely good, but I don't think they are that wonderful. Being soaked in probably artificial smokiness make me think that the smell and taste are a cover up for lack of any great taste or smell. To make matters slightly worse, the oven chips were very slightly under done. After I had served up the first lot I put the rest of them in the oven, and cooked them for longer. Being a bit crispy improved them.

  After dinner I continued to watch TV, but while doing so I got the laptop out, and started work. Replacing the hard drive is a very simple job on the Dell Latitude E6510 laptop (the laptop I was modifying). With the new hard drive in place I booted of a Windows 7 DVD, and commenced the installation. I chose to use about about 500GB of the 2000GB solid state hard drive (which on reflection sounds a bit odd - why didn't I use half of it, and maybe I did).

  The Windows installation went smoothly, and there were no interruptions because I didn't have the laptop connected to the internet. When it finished I installed a couple of programs, and gave it a test. It seemed to be working well.  The next thing was to install Linux Mint. That too went very smoothly, but for some reason it didn't install a boot menu so I could select what operating system I wanted to use.

  Along with several other programs that are not part of the standard installation, I installed the Grub 2 boot loader. I was very surprised it was not installed to start with, but once installed I saw it configure itself, and upon a reboot the boot menu was displayed, and I could select Windows 7, or Linux Mint, and both worked fine. There were any other things I installed on both Windows and Linux Mint, and tested them. There are more things to add, but by gone midnight I was happy I had a laptop that could boot both operating systems, and had most of the usual programs I use in place and working.

  I was quite happy to go to bed after that, and it was not long before I was fast asleep. I only have a vague recollection of getting up for a pee in the night, maybe once or twice, and I have a vague recollection of a dream. About all I can say about the dream, or the single dream I have any memory of at all, was that the dream included either a train or railway station. I slept a bit later this morning, and went back to bed after I first got up.

  I know that sausage and chips was not the healthiest of meals, even if all grilled. The only other thing I ate yesterday was rice crackers with Feta cheese on them - which would have been a great choice if I had not put a dollop of Brinjal (aubergine) Pickle on them. I have never checked, but that brinjal pickle seems like it has a lot of sugar in it, but maybe not.......

  This morning I seemed to have gained another 400gm. I have had a tiny poo, and maybe if I had the sort of poo I expected, it might have reduced that 400gm gain to something less. The odd thing (again) is that with a weight gain came a drop in my blood glucose. This morning the average of all three meters was 8.5mmol/l, and while my self set target is 7.5mmol/l, it is still a very good result. Oddly enough it was one of those days when all three meters gave very similar readings.

  This morning the bathtub is clear, and I shall definitely have a shower, and I think I may as well wash my hair too. With that done I can finally go shopping in Tesco. I am currently halfway through my last bottle of Diet Coke, and so a visit is getting quite important.

  I was thinking that maybe I might go out for a walk after I had finished shopping, but as usual, the bane of my life rears it's ugly head again. I think I may be expecting a delivery today, and while I should be able to fit a visit to Tesco if I don't waste time, I won't go further. That is a shame because I had almost convinced myself I might enjoy some exercise !