Thanks to Pete for sending me a link to the Vader Sessions. That’s the funniest thing I’ve seen on the intarwebs in quite some time!
Update: Cripes! YouTube synchronicity! No sooner do I post this than I see Wil’s post on a Simpsons / Star Trek mashup. Urgh. Mashup? I feel dirty.
Last weekend Louise and I went to Plymouth for a couple of days to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary and see my old friend from university, Michael, who was having a party for his thirtieth birthday. It was great to get away, just the two of us, for a couple of days.
We decided to go to the Eden Project on the Saturday. We visited it for our first wedding anniversary, shortly after it opened. It has certainly improved over the intervening years; it’s far more established now.
Over the weekend Louise developed a bad tooth ache, which we later discovered was a tooth abscess. By the time we had made it home on Sunday the pain was reaching unbearable levels — “worse than childbirth” in Louise’s words. Therein started a marvellous adventure in attempting to find emergency dental care on a Sunday.
Listen up Reading folk, useful information: There are (at least currently) no dentists running emergency sessions at the weekend in this area. Do not go to A&E, they will only refer you to a helpline number. Do not call this helpine number, they will only tell you there are no dentists running emergency sessions and refer you to NHS Direct. Do not call NHS Direct, they will only refer you to the helpline number. What you should do is go to WestCall at the Royal Berks where a nurse will at the very least be able to prescribe you antibiotics and/or painkillers. Moral of the story: If you get a toothache on Friday morning, make an emergency appointment that day.
What followed was a very difficult week all round. Louise was a real trooper through it all and our heartfelt thanks go to her mum who helped look after the children every day. A cocktail of wickedly strong antibiotics and painkillers has done its work and Louise is now on the mend.
Louise got two A’s and a B in her Psychology AS Level exams. Yay!
At the pub on Saturday evening Tim berated me for not following up on the post about my recent health issues. Well, a week after the onset everything is back to normal. The blood tests I had done came back clear but there was evidence of increased enzyme levels indicating muscle damage. So a bit of mystery. My money’s on a viral infection.
Watching tonight’s edition of Real Story about fraudsters picking up bank account details from peoples’ dumped hard drives was certainly food for thought. The one time I dumped an old PC I made sure to wipe the hard drive but this will certainly make me more methodical in future.
Of course the show didn’t give any advice on how to wipe a drive, just a warning that not doing it was bad. The linked article above at least has some help in this direction. Bare in mind that just deleting files or reformatting a drive is insufficient; it doesn’t take much to undelete the data. My recommendation would be to use the free DBAN utility. If I know you, I’ll come round and do it for free. For anyone else it’ll be a tenner. Companies are more than welcome to get in contact and I’ll do them a quote.
It’s infuriating, sad… worrying even when officials become incapable of using their discretion. That Mel Smith was prevented from smoking on stage… I’m lost for words. Hell… good intentions… something or other.
Most programmer humour is fairly opaque to non-programmers but I think most people can follow Tim’s point about TOTAL_CNT. Interestingly, at this point in time, that post is the top Google hit if you search for “peoplesoft total_cnt”. Well done Tim!
At Tim’s suggestion Louise bought me the Kings of Leon album Aha Shake Heartbreak a couple of weeks ago. I’d listened to it a couple of times but tonight while I was racking up some overtime at home — paid, yes, I’m too mercenary for anything else — I put it on repeat. I think it’s safe to say that it’s growing on me quickly. Yes, Tim, I’ll be upgrading my opinion on them from the damning-with-faint-praise-y “they’re alright”.
Feed the cat. Open the fridge. Pull up my socks. Tie my shoelaces. Pull out a chair. Open the front door. Scratch my head. Drive my car. On Monday these were just some of things I could no longer do. Yes, for real.
Rewind to Friday. The day before I’d been working from home on our laptop and now my arms ached, I thought, because of the awkwardness of the keyboard. Nothing particularly strange. Come Saturday morning, though, I’d lost a lot of the strength in my hands but not so much that I was alarmed. I went to bed thinking “this’ll be gone in the morning”.
It got worse but it was still just an inconvenience and I didn’t really think about it. Monday morning rolled round and it was the worst yet. I couldn’t close either of my hands into a fist. My grip was lost. A trip to the doctors was disconcerting rather than comforting; I was looking for “yes you have X, take Y and you’ll be better in Z days” but got “you might have a virus, we’ll do a blood test, take these anti-inflamatories and call back immediately if it gets any worse”.
I sat in the town after the appointment and suddenly it was all very real. What if I didn’t recover? How could I keep working? How would I cope with the children? How would Louise cope with me? How would it affect our relationship? I didn’t want to turn into a third child for her to look after. I was on the virge of tears but thankfully Louise was there to give me a hug and some sympathy just when I needed it.
Monday turned into series of reminders as to my new feebleness but just like every other day it came to an end. Tuesday morning… what would that bring?
Relief! My right hand had regained some of its strength! By Wednesday I could close both my hands into a fist again. Today I went back to work; my right hand seems almost entirely back to normal with a bit of weakness in the left.
Scary. Possibly the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me.