The BeenThere-DoneThat Blog

Today is the shortest day so tomorrow we’ll be on our way to Spring. Yesterday I heard the rather tuneless song of a Mistle Thrush. Although rather monotonous, in the literal sense, it is very distinctive and is not normally heard until early in the new year. Another indication of the coming Spring albeit rather early.

Meanwhile a very merry Christmas and a happy new year to all our friends and visitors both at home and overseas. We look forward to meeting at least some of you in the new year.

Amanda had her second visit to the hospital yesterday and the incisions have completely healed and so, apparently, has the cut bone. The consultant is pleased with the progress and, hopefully, that will be her last visit.

Now that she no longer has to wear the ‘clumpy shoe’ she does find walking a little awkward. This is not a surprise. Parts of her foot are still swollen and only very few of her shoes will fit reasonably comfortably. The swelling could take some weeks to go down.

I wonder when we’ll be able to take our first trip out? Perhaps not until 10th April next year.

I took Amanda back to the hospital yesterday for her first check-up after the operation. The foot apparently is progressing well. They removed the original, very bulky, dressings and most of the stitches. I say 'most of the stitches' because they couldn't get one out. Amanda said it felt as if there was a knot inside the foot and the nurse was complaining about the surgeon for not using stitches that dissolve. Amanda said she'd have a go herself, later, at trying to remove the offending stitch.

The new dressing is much less bulky and can be removed when she has a bath. Her next visit will be in 4 weeks and she has to wear her clumpy shoe until then.

So far so good!

About a week ago I stopped my computer, it normally runs 24 hours a day, for its bi-yearly clean-out to remove any dust and fluff which could be starting to clog up the filters on the case air inlet and to blast any dust off that got through to the CPU cooler.

As expected the filter in the air inlet was covered in fluff so I gave it all a good clean.

When that was finished I re-connected and turned it on and – nothing!

It wouldn't boot. To cut a long story short it turns out that both the mainboard and the RAM had failed. Luckily both are still under warranty but unluckily the mainboard is no longer made, these things go out of fashion very quickly, and has to be returned to Taiwan for repair. This, I am told, could take 3-4 weeks.

I can't do without my computer for that long as it's used for web site maintenance, email and the like so I retrieved an old computer from the cupboard, took the hard drives from the failed computer and put them in the old one. The old computer booted up and we're back to normal. Well, not quite.

The CPU is only 512MHz and has to work its poor little socks off to run most of the heavyweight modern software. Waiting for a web page to display is like watching paint dry.

So now we have a geriatric owner and a geriatric computer. Not a good combination. I decided that in order to preserve my sanity I would have to upgrade the oldie. I have managed to buy a secondhand mainboard via the internet, a power supply unit (PSU) from ebay and a faster 2 GHz CPU from someone I know. This combination should give me a computer that is about 4 times faster than the current old one.

All I have to do now is wait for the various items to arrive, upgrade the computer and, hopefully, my sanity will be restored.

I haven't bored you have I?

Hello?

Hello?

Is anybody listening?

Tomorrow, Monday, Amanda is going into hospital for some butchery, sorry, surgery on her foot to alleviate a bunion problem. She will be coming back home the same day but it may be at least 2-3 months before her foot is back to normal.

This will obviously put a stop to our travelling for a while and we shall just have to wait and see how she progresses.

I have remarked, from time to time, that we have seen deer around our home and, sometimes, in the garden but have never been in the right place at the right time with a camera.

But today, when we were in the kitchen, we saw a Muntjac Deer in the garden and did have a camera handy. These are the resultant pictures.

The deer was eating some of the fallen apples and, as you can see, completely ignored my neighbour’s cat and the cat completely ignored the deer.

And then, of course, there’s the inevitable picture of me taking a picture of the deer.

Yesterday morning Amanda and I were having a cup of coffee when she noticed it was raining. I looked out of the window and could see that it was, indeed, raining.

But then I noticed something odd. Some of the ‘rain drops’ were swirling around as if they were floating on the air currents. Amanda agreed with me so I headed for the door to get a closer look and just before I reached the door it stopped.

A little later Amanda said “It’s that funny rain again” and it was so this time we both moved over to the window to get a better look. Some of it was ordinary rain drops but some of it was showing up brighter. It certainly wasn’t hail stones, they wouldn’t float, so it must be SNOW! It wasn’t snow flakes but those little lumps of powdered snow.

There was a strong cold wind yesterday, being outside wasn’t particulary pleasant, and there was a ground frost forecast for this morning.

Snow on the 3rd of October – Cor Blimey!

The autumn colours are showing early this year too. For the last few years we have had to wait until November for autumn colours but they are beginning to appear now.

I wonder what winter will be like?