Cifi.com Weblog

Well what do you know, it is December already.
That means that in a months time it will be the end of the year, 2008 will be behind us and once again we will all be hoping that the new year has got plenty of nice things in store for us.
This year has been so chaotic and I can honestly say I hadn’t realised it was December until around lunch time when I heard somebody else mention it.
My last two week stay in hospital followed by a week at home getting over it didn’t help the situation - that alone meant I lost a lot of October and the beginning of November.

So maybe it is about time I concentrated on getting all of my Christmas shopping sorted out.
I’ve got a good idea of most of the presents I’m going to buy for people and now it is just the matter of actually doing the purchasing.
As always the majority of my purchases will be made online, I’m afraid I refuse to pay the kind of prices you see in the stores and no, the VAT reduction hasn’t made me want to rush out and spend lots of money.
The thing I hate is that sometimes I order things and then a week later the price drops and then I feel foolish. However if I don’t make the purchase now then there is the chance I wont get it before Christmas which would mean spening more buying it from an actual “shop”.
People who think online purchasing is a lot easier are very much mistaken - there is an optimum time to actually make your purchase and the skill is working out exactly when that is.
Alas I’m stilll not 100% on that game.

I think we are getting somewhere at last - well it isn’t much to ask I feel when you’ve been working on something for nearly two weeks.
I have working Network Browsing and it has been working for nearly 24hrs. All of our subnets and remote offices can browse the network corectly and the newly installed Server 2003 machine appears to be doing its job.
I keep on checking the browser status on the network every half an hour or so just to make sure nothing has gone wrong and each and every time this machine thinks it is the Master Browser. Now the backup Browser list is very strange with some Set-top boxes thinking that is a role for them, but we can worry about that later. Right now my main job of getting Network Browsing working appears to be nearing the end, oh how happy I am going to be if things continue to run correctly over the next 24hrs.

With regards the Anti Virus solution, well I’m afraid I get to the end of my teather with the ESET solution and I’ve removed it from our server. That is not to say it is dead and burried, if I don’t get on with the new trial I am currently installing then I’l give it another go (with all the extra knowledge I’ve picked up from their forums).
The Symantec Endpoint solution however seems to be working very well. Client installs working fine, clients appearing in the list correctly and most importanly of all, the clients seem to be able to get updates from the main server as they should.

This week is now looking up a little bit as I might have a solution for both jobs I had on the go. If both things are still working at the end of play tomorrow then maybe I can go home for the weekend and know that my last week of work before Christmas (I’ll explain that a little bit later) might be a little bit easier and I’ll actually be able to wind-down a little bit.

Enough is enough.
After tearing out what I have left of my hair I have decided to go back to Server 2003 for our Subnet Domain Controller rather than Server 2008. When we tested things a month or so ago we did so with a Server 2003 machine and everything seemed to work OK. So we just assumed that a Server 2008 machine would do the job equally well, however I am convinced it does things slightly different and it must be the OS that is causing me all of the grief I’ve had over the past week and a half.

The new Anti Virus software (ESET NOD) is still causing me some headaches too - although I am now not convinced that software has got anything to do with the broken Betwork Browsing.
However I install ESET, I follow the instructions all the way through, do things by the book on this one as it is quite an important system, yet I cannot get things to work correctly.
I keep finding myself going along to the support forums and asking questions and although in most cases people are willing to help and they give me an answer (and in most cases that answer works) it all leaves me wondering why I should need to do this.
The manual and installation instructions should detail everything correctly - some of the issues I’ve been having are not even covered and the fix is so bizarre you wonder how anyone found it.
I’m still having problems getting the client machines to talk to the server - right now half of my test machines cannot communicate and so are running three month old virus definitions, which is a complete waste of time.

We’ve downloaded the trial version of Symantec’s latest offering and it is my plan to install that a little later and see if that works any better than the ESET solution. It is a shame but it looks like “better the devil you know” and we’ll be paying Symantec for a couple more years of protection rather than moving to something new.
It’s a shame as the interface and overall feel of the ESET solution is very polished, more so than the Symantec, but at the end of the day “ease of use” is a very important factor to me and the ESET software just isn’t being that.

The new server for our Engineering subnet is running Server 2008.
Along with being a Domain Controller we’ve got a few other tasks lines up for it - one of which is the new Anti Virus system.
We have been Symantec users since the year dot, however I use ESET at home and I’ve been rather impressed with their product. As they also sell an Enterprise solution similar to Symantec we’ve decided to take an even closer look at it and if things work out we’ll move to that instead.
However I am now thinking that somehow and for no reason at all it maybe the ESET software that is causing a problem with my network browsing - it makes about as much sense as there being a hardware problem, however there does seem to be a connection here.

I had a perfectly working network browser system and it remained working for a good few hours. Both subnets could browse each other and if I attempted to get a list of computers from any one machine it reported back correctly.
So with fingers crossed I rolled the ESET Server software out on to the machine and prepared things so I could install the client on a few of our test machines.
Within half an hour network browsing had stopped working once more and there were error messages all over the place. The reason I cannot believe the ESET software is at fault is because it simply doesn’t touch any of the ports used for Browsing or any other Microsoft network traffic. The ESET software should be totaly detached, however within half an hour of installing it Browsing stops - there just has to be a connection here somewhere.

Once again - Things do not bode well for this coming week!

So starts another working week and yet another week attempting to get network browsing working correctly on our network. Now generally speaking browsing is working, with one exception…our Engineering subnet cannot browse or be browsed.
Our plan, nice and simple, we’d put a Windows 2008 server on that subnet, make it a domain controller (so it would always win elections and become the Master Browser) and everything would just start working.
Oh how simple things look on paper, work in theory and then all go totally wrong.

This is actually the start of my second week on this problem and I’m at my wits end - I cannot give up because we need network browsing to work, however I think I may have to go back to a Windows 2003 Server rather than the nice new 2008 one we have installed.
The problem is that Server 2008 is still quite new and when I search around for help with network browsing all the help I find is for Server 2003, people don’t seem to have written the help information for Server 2008 yet.
We have some of the most bizarre problems…everything works and then it doesn’t. The server will get a list of all the machines and browsing works perfectly and then, even though it hasn’t lost an election it loses everything in it’s browse list and we are back to square one.
At one stage I was convinced it was a hardware fault on the server, but that now makes even less sense.
After a whole week and another week ahead of me I really have to get this solved - I’ve also got to try and sort out our Anti Virus solution (as our licenses ran out a couple of months ago) and I’m trying to do both at the same time with very little success.

Things do not bode well for the coming week!

I am going to be honest - I didn’t actually expect to be spending my birthday at home this year. I’ve just spent two weeks in hospital and there was talk of me having to stay in for another week for some different treatment and I thought that would mean I would turn 33 in a hospital bed.
Now I know Elizabeth and my mum would have attempted to make my birthday OK. I’m sure they would have both attempted to visit me and I’d have had cards and presents and I would have tried my very best to look happy.
But I cannot remember a birthday where I haven’t been at “home” surrounded by family, so I really didn’t want to be in hospital. Thankfully it didn’t happen and I was home.
In fact this week is my “recovery week” so I’m not even at work, which I suppose is a little bit of a bonus.

So anyway, I’m 33 now. I wont say “and it certainly doesn’t feel like a whole year has passed” because this time around it really does feel like a year. Over the past 365 days I’ve had two extended stays in hospital, numerous days when I’ve felt really under the weather and generally “ill”.
I can’t say it has been all bad - certainly not. Elizabeth and myself still enjoy life together, she has been a real rock ever since I was first diagnosed with all of my health problems and I cannot help wondering if I’d be coping as well as I am now if I wasn’t with her.

My birthday was a quiet affair, Elizabeth did have to go to work (even if I didn’t) so I spent most of it relaxing and getting used to the idea that next week I’m going to actually have to go and do some work. Once she got home I opened up my cards and my presents and we then had a relaxing evening in front of the television - nothing major exciting, just a nice evening. We’ll go out for a meal on Wednesday to properly celebrate.
So “Happy Birthday” to me - oh and the same to anybody else who just happens to share this special day with me.

Well as you can see it has been a little while since I made a post here.
So that can only mean a few things - one being that I’ve lost interest and just cannot be bothered to spend any time here writing things. That isn’t the case however. Allthough I did say that I wouldn’t be writing as much as I used to (I’d go for quality over quantity) I haven’t totally ost interest.
So why the gap in posts?
I’ve just finished another stay in hospital - two weeks this time, and although the hospital I was staying in for the second week did offer internet access, it was extremely slow and for some reason this domain was blocked so I couldn’t log in and make a post from my hospital bed.

I will make another post over the next few days to bring up to speed why I was in hospital yet again.
I cannot say that the stay was great, I mean who wants to be stuck in a hospital bed, I’d rather be at work than being bored watching television after being seen by a doctor each morning and having blood taken.
I’m feeling a lot better than I did before I went into hospital, so maybe the stay has done me some good.

Just moments ago I took my final antibiotic after my trip to hospital last week when I thought my leg was going to fall off or I had something serious like a DVT.
I’m pleased to say that my latest condition has more or less cleared up, my legs are no longer red/pink and they don’t hurt all the time which is obviously good news.
The best news of course was that I didn’t have a DVT or else I wouldn’t have come home last Friday and I’d probably now be writing this post from a hospital bed somewhere while I waited for some new opperation etc.

So anyway, seven days ago I was in hospital and then I was being let out with a weeks worth of tablets. I’ve now taken the last one and all I’m left with are my usual complaints and illnesses.
It is now just a matter of sitting back and waiting for something else to happen so I can get worried and rushed into hospital etc.
Anyone would have thought I’m getting all very sarcastic in my old age - I’m just getting used to all this shit by now.

I went back to the hospital today as a follow-up to me going in last Friday when I thought the worst and I thought I had a DVT. As it turned out the A&E doctor was convinced that I had Cellulitis and sent me away with a course of antibiotics for a week. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this was the wrong decision and I’m actually very pleased it wasn’t a DVT as that would have been bad and it would also have meant I wouldn’t have gone home on Friday evening, instead probably finding myself in a hospital bed somewhere or other.

I went for my follow-up, surprisingly the follow-up was in the A&E department as well - very strange way of doing things. I saw exactly the same doctor I saw on Friday who took one look at my leg and smiled. The redness and pinkness from Friday had more or less vanished on my left leg and although there was actually something new on my right leg he was convinced that the antibiotics would treat everything and that by Friday my legs will be back to normal.
So I was only in the place for about ten minutes before more or less being given a clean bill of health.
I’m still on the antibiotics and will be until the end of the week and then I get to wait and see what god (or whoever is up there pulling all of the strings) has got in store for me next.

We’ve just got back from a nice meal out. We don’t usually go for meals out during the week, however as it is almost our wedding anniversary and there was a special offer going in the local Evening paper we decided we would go out this evening.
The deal wasn’t too bad really, they had got together with a lot of restaurants and the offer was a two course meal for two people at £10 per head (although many places were offering a three course for £15 per head). I guess the idea was that you would go somewhere to eat where you wouldn’t usually go and if you really like it you’ll return in the future and pay full price.
We decided to go to a place called “Oliver’s Lodge” in St. Ives - which is a small hotel but the restaurant looked really nice too.

I must admit it was a really enjoyable evening.
Greeted at the door we were shown into the bar and our first drink of the evening was bought over to us. We were there for a little while before we were shown the menu and then a short while later our orders were taken. We were toldw e would be moved into the restaurant as soon as our first course was ready and about ten minutes later we were called through and seated and a moment later our first course arrived.
The service was good, the food was great and I’m pleased to say it wasn’t all “arty farty”. Far too often I’ll see a posh restaurant on the television and the food looks and sounds amazing but you get so little of it I’d want a take-away afetrwards! The portions we got were good sized and neither of us felt hungry afterwards.
There was next to no delay between the courses and as we wanted more drinks they were bought over to us.

There was only one small complaint and not one that we bought up - we couldn’t get the bill at the end!
One of the girls asked us twice if that was all we wanted after we’d had our coffee and we said yes and I meant that to mean “So we’ll have the bill now please” but it just didn’t arrive and afetr around half an hour we had to go searching for somebody willing to take some money off us. To be fair there were spare tables and the staff were obviously not in a hurry to get rid of us so I think we were just left talking at our table and probably the idea was to go and see somebody once we wanted to pay.
Once we got the bill and I paid, once outside we both suddenly realised that they hadn’t charged us for one of the rounds of drinks, so we’ll call that payment for having to wait for the bill and we’re all happy!

It really was a good meal and I think the deal has done what it was supposed to do. We came out with their Sunday lunch menu and I think there is a good chance we may well go again and this time they will get a full price meal out of us.

It was out time to do a little bit of entertaining this afternoon and into the evening. Nothing major you understand, I’m more than confident that we could do a full meal or a BBQ for a few people, but this was a much smaller affair.
My mum was coming over for some tea - her first visit over to the house in a very long time, what with her not being a driver (yet) it is difficult for her to get over to us. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind going to pick her up, but you’re looking at nearly 45 minutes to her, same to bring her back and then the same run in the evening when she is ready to go home, it does make for a long day and a lot of driving.
My brother bought her over and also his girlfriend got the opportunity to see our house as well.

Elizabeth was of course fussing around in preperation for their visit. As far as I was concerned it was my mum, mu brother and his girlfriend just coming over for a bite to eat. Sure the house needed to be generally tidy, but really that was it, no serious amount of work was required.
While we were shopping yesterday Elizabeth bought a new shower curtain because the old one was looking a little bit old (apparently). I’m sure it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact we had visitors this evening and she wanted the place to look perfect.
I like the fact that Elizabeth has pride in the house, I just need to get her to calm down a little as there is a difference between having a nice, clean tidy house and having a house where the hoover has to come out after every meal etc.

I’ve not that long been back from the A&E department at our local hospital - that’s right, when I’m not at various hospitals keeping appointments I’m going there on emergencies and spending time waiting around as they decide if I’ve got somethign else seriously wrong with me or not.

This all kicked off early this morning, I woke up and my left leg was aching. It was one of those strange aches where it may have been the way I was laying overnight, it might have had a draught on it or maybe something a little more serious.
I didn’t think that much of it to be honest, I did struggle getting into my car as it didn’t seem to want to bend very well, but I got to work and started the working day.
Any hope that the leg might get betetr during the day was soon lost and by mid-morning the condition was worse, there was a really horrible pain, my leg didn’t want to bend and if I’m being honest it was feeling a little bit like before I went into hospital earlier this year. A check online indicated that the symptoms did match those of a DVT even though I am on blood thinners, so with my record I decided the best thing was to force myself back into the car and get to the A&E department as I really didn’t fancy another blood clot doing the rounds in my body.

We waited for about an hour before I was eventually seen and when the back of the leg was examined there was now a visible symptom, a horrible deep red rash across the back of my leg and that too was a possibly sympton of a DVT.
They took bloods and I was then sent back to the A&E waiting area while they were sent off to the labs to be tested - apparently they were sent up as urgent, however it was about three hours before we were eventually called back into the cublicles and I was told about the results.
The doctor was 99% sure it wasn’t a DVT and he felt it was cellulitus and gave me a course of antibiotics and also arranged for me to go back and see him on Tuesday next week and make sure everything was clearing up nicely.
Cellulitis is an infection and it will be to do with my under-lying condition, my legs are swollen up still and now there is an infection there which is causing this new condition.
This all started when the consultant reduced my steriods by 50% some three weeks ago and I’m now convinced he shouldn’t have done and should have just given me another six weeks at the higher dose.
It looks like I shall have to attempt to get an earlier appointment with the consultant as I’m now a little worried that any progress we made is now being lost due to these new problems I’m having.

You know - I’m getting a little fed up of hospitals now, this month I was only going to go to one twice, now I’ve been to one four times and there will be another visit on Tuesay. Maybe it is about time I applied for my own parking spaces at these places.

My Linux administrator has said that management does interest him - something that apparently doesn’t interest my Windows administrator (I think he’d seen all the hassle I have to go through on a regular basis and decided it was easier to stay on a slightly lower wage and not have the hassle).
The problem is that although he does have a few of the skills needed to be a manager of some description he also lacks a lot as well and what is worse is that he doesn’t actually realise that he does lack some of the required skills. Even when I sat down with him at the time of this appraisal last year and we went through some of the issues with his attitude and the way he interacted with some of the people within the company he still didn’t acknowlede he had a problem and that is only going to get in his way as time goes on.
I think he wants to be a manager of some kind but doesn’t want to go through the hassle of learning how to do it and changing the way he is - he does need to realise that he can’t just fall into it (I did, but that was a different thing all together, I had no choice what with me being the only IT person in the company).

There are many projects going on at work at the moment and one of them is the Intranet. This is being led by our new Business Systems Manager and he wants input, support and team members from nearly every single department in the company (and so he should, the Intranet is a company wide tool and everyone needs to put their input in). I’ve made Gary the official IT contact on this project meaning hr needs to go along to the meetings, tell people what is and isn’t possible and then once the decisions are made he will be heavily involved with the installation, design and support of the project.
I’ve made him Project Manager for this highly visible project and now I just need to hope that I haven’t made a mistake, that he really gets down to it and gets it done and the end result is something we all like.

This could be considered “do or die” for him at the company because if he shows he can Project Manage then he will get more projects to look after and ultimately he will have a potential management career here. If he fails this one then people will be reluctant to give him more projects and I can see him being stuck in the role of “Administrator” for as long as he remains.

So I am weak.
Look the bottom line here is that I am not “Under the Thumb” and there is no way that my wife rules over me in our relationship. We do things side by side and it is with equal footing that we went into this relationship and that is how it will be for ever.
The problem is that Elizabeth knows how to use emotional blackmail - she will claim she doesn’t and if I suggest it she actually can get rather defensive. I will not be called “Mean” for anybody.
So yes, Elizabeth knows which strings to play and she has ended up getting her own way and yes I’ve got to go against everything that I believe in with regards ticket touts.
I won’t say that the only reason I’ve done it is to keep her quiet - that really isn’t fair. I’ve done it mainly because I know how upset she was that I failed to get tickets (athough as I have explain, numerous times, that really wasn’t my fault) and of course the being called “Mean”.

I kept an eye on EBay today and ticket sales for the Cardiff gig are still going well. The average price appears to be somewhere in the region of £75 per single ticket which would mean spending £150 for us both to go - this really isn’t something I wanted to do.
There were a few autions for pairs of tickets, so I set myself an internal budget of £55 per ticket and started bidding up to £110 for the pairs in the hope that I might get lucky and manage to get something.
My first four attempts all failed, on each occasion there was somebody willing to spend that ittle bit more on the pair of tickets - maybe they were getting it in the neck even more than me!
Before we went shopping today I put a “Top Bid” of £113 on a pair and left it at that. When I got back from shopping I found that I’d actually won the tickets and I now owned two tickets for the concert in question.
The only problem being it had cost me £113 rather than the £65 two tickets should have cost.
So I haven’t spent the £150 I thought I would have to, however at the same time I have had to pay over the face value.
The seller claims the tickets were accidentally purchased and that is why he put them on auction starting at the face value - so do I feel a little less upset I’ve potentially bought from a “fan” rather than a tout?
Well of course I’ll never actually know who I’ve bought them from - just have to hope a tout hasn’t amde money from me.
At least Elizabeth appears to be in a better mood with me at the moment.

Earlier today tickets went on sale for “The Killers”.
Now I’m not a major fan myself, some of their music is OK, however the wife is a big fan and realy wanted to go and see them - one of the bands she “must see live” at some point in her life. One of the problems is that there aren’t that many weekend dates on this tour, one of them is in Dublin, one is in Newcastle and the other one is in Cardiff.
The one in Cardiff would work as we have relatives there who would put us up for the evening, however the next thing was actually getting tickets and that was never going to be easy.

Tickets went on sale at 10:00am. I was logged into the site five minutes early and hitting the refresh button and as soon as the webpage changed from “Tickets will go on sale…” to “Find Tickets” I was there and in the system. Two tickets selected for standing at Cardiff and then the wait.
And as usual the ticketmaster.com website couldn’t cope with the number of people connecting and on every single occasion I got anywhere neat a “Check Out” situation an error message would appear.
Soon it was obvious that Cardiff, the smallest of the venues was going to sell out quickly, so I moved to try and get standing tickets for anywhere - we would worry about the logistics at a later date.
Alas the tickets kept on selling, I kept on getting nowhere and as the last few tickets were sold I was unfortunately not the owner of any of them.

I gave Elizabeth the bad news and of course she took it well (as you can probably imagaine). She contacted me later in the day to say that there were already tickets available on EBay and how I should spend £75 per ticket and buy them from some lowlife scalper - something I really don’t agree with. I told her that I didn’t think we should pay that kind of money to some scum and of course she took that really well as well.
We were going to a concert this evening and I met her directly afetr work and of course got it in the neck. “You spend money on your car” and other such arguments and how I was so mean not to spend £150 on a couple of tickets to a gig she had to go to.
So right now as you can probably imagine I’m pretty pissed off.
Firstly with the whole ordering system that means me (well the wife) as a fan cannot get tickets, yet touts can and make a nice 100% profit on each ticket.
I am also pissed off with the wife as she expects me to give one of these lowlife touts the 100% markup so she can go - something I am totaly against.
Why me? I’m one of the good guys in this world but somehow people seem to have it in for me.

Well I’ve just had another night at the gym (well, when I say night at the gym what I really mean is that we got there and I spent about an hour using the treadmill, but a “night at the gym” does sound that little bit more impressive).
So as usual I started off walking and immediately set the machine up to 5kmph - not quite the 6kmph I was happily sitting at before I went into hospital, but still a fair pace and when you consider the amount of extea fluid I’m currently carrying around I don’t think I’m doing too badly.
During the session I decided to add a slight incline to the mill, and this of course increased the difficulty level. Since coming out of hospital I’ve been more or less OK on the flat but add a small hill to proceedings and it can be near fatal.
I’m pleased to say that I seemed able to cope with this slight incline and by the end of the first 30 minute stint I was walking at 5.3kmph and the incline had been increased by a couple of notches.
I was certainly worn out after this and I was only able to do fifteen minutes in my second session whereas I’ll usually do 25-30 minutes again. However I felt I’d pushed myself this week and I wasn’t coming out of it too badly.
Maybe my fitness levels are increasing as I lose some of this extra fluid.

So I’ve been playing the latest MMORPG - Warhammer Online, for a little while now. Although I knew that the main part of this game was combat and combat with other players I thought I’d give it a go.
To me something based mainly on PvP lacks depth, it seems to be a bit of a cop-out. However the number of subscribers that WOW has shows this is what the majority of people want. I still seek that game with more depth and even if it doesn’t have the number of people playing it that WOW and WAR have I know I will enjoy it more.

Although the game has a lot of combat in and the need to fight other people, there is also the need to “go it alone” or to group up with people to generally explore, do missions and increase your experience points and thus increase your level. I actually enjoy this aspect of the game and you’ll find me happily playing the game in “Single Player” mode and then getting involved with the large scale battles.
I’ve kind of reached this point now where I’m not quite good enough for the missions in the area I’m in, however I’ve done all the missions in the older areas.
This means I need to improve my character before being able to do the newer missions and that will mean “grinding” - just attacking creature after creature and gaining XP points.
I’m also in this situation where to travel to areas I’m yet to visit I need to find a “Flight Master” and the closest one to where I’m currenty ocated is across an area that I’m also not ready to venture into yet!

I’m sure I’ll get past these frustrations soon and I’ll continue playing the game for a little while. I just don’t think this game is going to keep me occupied for too long - I don’t see me playing this for years as I have done with previously released MMORPG’s because of the lack of depth, but alas there is nothing else on the horizon at the moment and if I want my fix of online gaming I have to play what is available….

At last! I have Air Conditioning in my car.
Of course you could argue that we are now at the point of the year when we really don’t need AC - and to a point I will have to agree. I’ve actually only had the AC switched on once since it was repaired and that was only to test it as I didn’t fancy driving all the way back from Lincoln only to find it still wasn’t working.

It was an early start today as I wanted to be at the garage in Lincoln as close to their opening time as possible, mainly because I’d been told it was a 3-4hr job to get the AC back up and running. This meant getting up as some really early hour, although the roads were quite quiet which made for a good journey.
Some roads were closed and we were sent on the mother of all diversions, however we still managed to be at the garage before 9:00am which was great.
They gave us a lift into Lincoln and we spent the morning looking around the shops etc while they worked on the car. About three hours later we got a phone call saying the car was complete and they would be along in ten minutes to collect us.

Although I feel that such a fault with the AC shoud have been found and fixed before I bought the car I must give them credit for fixing the issue afterwards. I think initially they were hoping it would just be a matter of re-gassing the system, so there was ultimately a lot more work involved (new compressor fitted).
Anyway, we now have nice and chilly cold air in the car when we want it and even if it doesn’t get switched on again this year at least we can now relax and know that 2009 will be a nice and cool time in the car if/when we see some sun.

I was dragged along to what I thought was going to be a bit of a boring curry night this evening - I am pleased to say I was wrong in my assumption and it was actually quite a good evening.
I had numerous fears - that there would be too much talking going on and not enough consumption of curry, this is always a bad thing as I have to admit that curry does rate as one of my favourite foods.
There was then the fear of there not being enough food to go around, so you end up with just a small amount and you leave the event looking for somewhere else to eat.

The night was in aid of a charity that looks after homless children in India (hence the idea of curry). They do an amazing job out there and although the evening was free (all the curry had been homemade) we were asked to make donations, which was fair.
There was an hour long show after the eating where they bought everyone up to date on what the charity is doing and how they are helping people out in India.
It was all very interesting and I certainly had no problem leaving a donation at the end of the event as it had been good fun.
I must add that the food was excellent. I did have seconds however my only mistake was that I wanted to try all of the different curry, so I ended up with maybe a small amount of 3 or 4 on each of my helpings.
A much more sensible way forward would have been to just have a couple which looked realy nice.

A fun evening I didn’t expect and my “poorly” body managed to cope with the curry too!

I have just returned from another visit to the hospital.
Not a great visit to the hospital I’ll add - I got into my appointment almost an hour late, got out to find the whole area empty as the receptionists had gone home for the evening. Finally being sent down to go and have some blood tests to find that the blood department had actually closed half an hour before, so now I’m going to have to make a special return journey at some point just to have some blood tests.
Anyway I could go on and on about how the whole hospital seemed to be out to get me, but that isn’t the main reason for this post, so I’ll get on to that.

It would appear that the medication I’m currently on is now making some difference. My last blood tests showed an increase in certain levels in my blood. Everyone remarks that they don’t think I am looking as bloated as I was, the doctor yesterday seemed to make a similar comment.
However the biggest bit of good news was the fact that I’ve lost almost 1.5 stone in weight in the six weeks that I have been on the steriods.
Now the majority of this weight will be fluid, but my diet is good and we are going to the gym as well so there should be some general weight loss in there too.
So that is a lot of fluid to have lost and the doctor said that should continue - so with fingers crossed I should be able to get rid of some if not all of this fluid soon.
I’ve had my steriod medication cut in half, however that shouldn’t make a major difference to the fluid loss as that is mainly controlled by the water tablets which I am also on (and they haven’t been reduced).
So not a bad doctor’s visit at all and hopefully there will be an equally good one in around six weeks time.