Peter's Hospital Diary

A little late, I know, but better late than never!

I travelled back home on Wednesday, after most of the snow and ice had melted, and launched into the festivities. The last minute Christmas presents had arrived, and were wrapped, and there was a final flurry of shopping on Thursday morning.

Unfortunately I seemed to come down with some bug on Christmas Evening, but after an early night, I felt much better on Friday. This year we had Christmas lunch in the evening, to accommodate all the family, with ten sitting down for the traditional dinner. However, as always, I think the best meal is Boxing day with the cold cuts.

Guests are leaving today, but we have visits from various cousins this week, and a ‘bit of a bash’ on Thursday night!

So… Onwards and Upwards!

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Today is the shortest day as we run up towards Christmas! And it looks like being a white one as I drove back last night to find a dusting of snow, and a little more in the car park outside the flat this morning!

The last two weeks have continued to be busy both at work, as we clear the decks for next year’s activities. I have been on a few visits to past haunts, and the weekends have also been spent catching up on things. I have found the Christmas decorations for the blog though, and put those up yesterday, and at the same time updated the bloging software, Wordpress

As with last year, we are not sending out Christmas cards, with the money we would have spent will be sent to LeukaemiaCARE. I will put the newsletter up here in the New Year.

However the highlight of the weekend was the celebration of my father’s 80th Birthday. My sister and her family came down and we all went out for a meal – there are some photographs, but on my father’s camera – as soon as I get them I’ll post a couple up here! Happy Birthday Dad (and Happy Birthday to Mum, for tomorrow.)

And before signing off, I must mention my Godmother and ‘Honorary Aunt’, Eileen, in New Zealand, who wrote to me about 2 months ago. A reply has been on my ‘To-Do’ list since then! I will reply – really – but you are not forgotten, and we all wish you a very Happy Christmas!

I will be posting before Christmas itself (I finish work on the 23rd – but until then…

Onwards and Upwards

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The ECP passed uneventfully – the Friday morning session seemed to take a long time on the photo-activation stage, but a quick dash to Waterloo, and a stop at M “this is not just food” & S for a sandwich and I was on the train home.

It was a computing weekend. I have just re-activated my Skype account (for anyone who hasn’t heard of Skype, it is a free messaging service) which now includes the ability for video calls. However the use of video requires a suitable ‘Webcam’ and the Webcam I bought wouldn’t work with my Windows version (Win 2K) and while the video worked with the Linux client, the sound wasn’t very good.

The solution is to upgrade the operating systems, and I started on saturday with Windows XP on my aged laptop, And that is where the fun started!

I had bought a new hard drive (clean installs seem to work better)but my (aged) laptop won’t boot off the DVD player. (It was originally fitted with a a CD – I upgraded it) so I needed a way to boot it and then read the install disc. I spent most of Saturday trying this, until I realised that the install disk was a CD – and putting the CD reader back in the laptop solved the problem! And Skype burst into life in full colour and sound!

The next stage is to put Linux on the laptop and make it dual boot (it will be Fedora core 12) and upgrade my other Linux machines (including the webserver) to FC 12, however that can wait for a while as I have some other jobs to do, and I also have some coursework from the last module to com-plete (although that will be easier on Windows XP)

We have also decorated one of tyhe Christmas trees as Christmas draws nearer. We will be doing the same as last year. in that we won’t be sending out Christmas cards, but donating the amount we would have spent to LeukaemiaCARE.

There is one more job to do before Christmas, and that is to find the Christmas theme for the blog!

Onwards and Upwards!

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This blog is getting like a bus service – nothing for ages, then two posts arrive at once!

I am sitting in the dermatology day centre at St Thomas’s connected to the ECP machine, so typing one handed is a bit slow (and error prone!) Good news is that the browser has a spell check – bad news is that it is an American dictionary.

It has been a bit of a short week; I was at Corsham for the first three days (and a very frosty Tuesday morning!), although I was at a meeting in London this morning before nipping over the river. I shall be staying the night (hope it’s warm) as usual, ready for the second session tomorrow morning – then back home for the weekend.

A few plans – I need to upgrade my laptop to see if I can get the video side of Skype working (just had a slow typed conversation with Jane – of photo fame below) and I must make a start on my coursework. I also have a computer to build (the file server I mentioned before) although I don’t think all the parts will be here – still, I should be able to make a start!

Onwards and upwards!

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