Peter's Hospital Diary

Somewhat busier than I expected too! You may have noticed that the blog was down for most of yesterday!

It started last week after we returned from France, when I bought a new Voice-over-IP (VOIP) phone. We do use VOIP, but the new phone has a cordless handset and can interface both to VOIP accounts and to the standard BT line, so saves having two separate phones. Anyway, installation went well and the IP side burst into life during the middle of last week. Anyway, I was doing a little system maintenace (that is on the home network etc) requiring a reboot of the VOIP phone. And that is where the problem started as it wouldn’t re-register with the VOIP provider, Sipgate.

A bit of diagnostic work showed that it was a DNS issue. DNS (Domain Name System) is the clever bit that converts an easily remembered domain name (like boraston.net) into a numerical IP address like 206.12.34.249. There are servers dotted around the internet and everytime you look up a web page, a request goes to a DNS server to get the real address. (Think of it as looking up your house name and getting the street address that it corresponds to). If you connect to the internet with a router, the router acts as a DNS relay, and forwards the DNS server address to the computer making the request. (All clear? )

I have had some suspicions for some time there had been DNS problems, but as it only affected a little used Windows machine, and I had applied a workaround, I hadn’t bothered to find the root cause of the problem. Now it was getting more important! Eventually I tracked it down to my router – which was a relatively new model when I bought it and had early firmware (the internal program that controls it) So time to upgrade the firmware – which I did, and the DNS problems seem to be solved. The responsiveness of the system seems to be slightly improved too.

We were out yesterday (details later) and when I came back I found that the blog was down. To cut a long story short, the firmware upgrade also changed the way internal IP addresses (those on my network) are allocated (using something called DHCP – Dynamic Host Control Protocol) and the blog server’s internal IP address had been re-allocated at 5am that morning so that the mapping from external (public IP address) to internal address was incorrect. That was eventually fixed so the server has a fixed IP address, and all is now back to normal!

I said that we were away yesterday. This was for a family gathering long postponed since Felicity’s birthday in June. We had a trip up to North Somerset (on the A303 – past the little village of Grately!) for the gatering at Felicity’s mother’s house, then on to an extended pub lunch. The photograph shows Olivia in the clothes we brought back from France! Hard to believe that she is now seven months old, and I don’t think it will be long before she is walking!

On the health front, my mouth seems a lot better. I don’t know if was the shock of the very spicy prawn dish on Thursday, the various mouthwashes that the dentist gave me last week, or the GvHd is dying down, but certainly my tongue is a lot less sore, as are the insides of my cheeks. I now need to teach myself not to eat ‘defensively’ (ie, in a way that protected my cheeks and tongue) and chew food properly. I tend to talk through clenched teeth too as that protects my tongue, so another habit to be unlearned.

While I am pleased at the improvement, if it is as a result of the GvHd abating, it raises another question – what about the underlying disease? have all the rogue cells been eliminated? Is my (new) immune ssystem still going to be on the look out?I guess there are no answers to those questions (although I will pose them at this Thursday’s check-up) so it will be a case of carry on watching. Still, I mustn’t get obsessed with it, but continue….

Onwards and Upwards!

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