Tag Archives: Oddities

Alice in Wonderland

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Appointment 09.30 at hospital. I’ve spoken with the specialist for at least ten minutes before she and the nurse examined me thoroughly. Had to have a scan made, according to the scan specialist all seems fine. Have to call next Monday to make another appointment to discuss the results of the scan. Then I will have to make a third appointment to have a biopsy done under general anaesthesia. Again, for the second time in this life, I will be brain-dead for a few hours… Not sure what to think of that…

Oh yeah do pass me some anaesthetic please! Left or right?:

A very nice lady made the scan with a probe explaining everything that she saw on the monitor to me. It was awesome! I’ve never seen it before and what looked to me like early-black-and-white-television-picture-noise seemed to make total sense to her. What an amazing job she’s got *this is the geek talking*.

While I dressed up again in some silly blue and white checked hospital dressing gown I had a quick look at the prints and asked her if I could have one. She asked me why out of curiosity, I told her it was my geek personality being amazed by her knowledge and/of technology. So yeah, she gave me a print and I was grinning like a Cheshire cat when I left the room. Proudly showing the print to A. who had no clue and probably thought it was just some b/w tv picture noise…

Will keep you posted but will leave you for now since I still suffer from a few examinations… I reckon you won’t mind, I had enough Alice in Wonderland for today!

Some cool noise:

Noticeable Oddities of the Day:

I’ve never seen a hospital like this with such a high standard of efficiency and such nice people. In fact every hospital I’ve ever been to over the last 15 years left me frustrated, without being given any answers to questions and with a waiting list of at least three months… Today I have seen two specialists and had a scan done [without an appointment] while I originally only had one appointment with one specialist. This would have taken at least three months in the Lowlands!

I’ve never been treated at a hospital the way I was treated today, these people were so kind and willing to help. No grumpy cows like some women at hospitals in the Lowlands *pardon my French*, I reckon these people actually love their job and it shows!!! Even A. noticed the difference, no he isn’t biased because he’s English. I will have to make another appointment for the surgery so I will definitely go there again. For once in my life I have left a hospital with a positive feeling. Hurray for the UK!

XS4all

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I miss them you know… Internet is flacky out here and I hate it. The moment storm or rain, or both, mixed with a bit of thunder shows up, it will stop the internet hub from working and will send out a message that the lines are not synchronised. Every two minutes it will reconnect for one minute and fail again the next. Quite annoying that is!

I wish we had XS4all over here, never never never had any problem with these guys, perfect service and policy. Especially after having to deal with UPC and their vicious ways of ripping off people, XS4all is just a relief!!! Anyway internet has been flacky for a couple of days now and whenever I needed to look for stuff online I couldn’t which is quite frustrating.

I have been busy working on my website and it is getting much better, I changed the looks of the bee and will change some more details tonight, in Illustrator. It looks more like a cartoon now which is quite cool actually. I need to look for sound files to use with my intro and AS. has been busy adjusting some scripts that I couldn’t get to work; the equaliser on my main page and the script to make the eyes of the bee follow your cursor.

The ones that were used didn’t quite work, or I tried to mix two different items together, each with their own scripting which sometimes isn’t such a good idea… Well I knew he would get it to work, I also realise what the problem was with the scripts I just can’t put them together in one working script. I did with the play, pause and stop buttons though, but it just takes me ages and I’d rather design and work on the main thing than the tiny details, although they’re important!

So AS. has been a great help to me. He is on standby *again* this weekend and had to go to work this morning because he couldn’t dial in. Lucky him he could park the car in the car park of the office. Hopefully he won’t get any call outs tonight [or the middle of the night]. It would be better if our internet was okay then he could stay here at home and dial in…

Diet is going well, I love all the healthy food and I’m learning too. Each recipe is different but in a way quite simple and sober but just the right combination of food makes it special and delicious. I prepare two portions of lunch a day so AS. can bring his to work the next day. He loves the food too. I’m happy with that because it makes it all a lot easier otherwise I would have to cook different things for him as well and to be honest I’m not sure if I would have done that…

Well I better continue working on the website. I skipped my sleep last night and have been working all night on the bee. I enjoy working with Flash but it’s intense at times, especially for me because once I’m busy and on a roll I won’t stop [like last night]. I had some sleep but went to bed at 08.30 this morning to wake up around 14.00 and start working again. I won’t do it too often, I would kill myself and become a very very grumpy person. I don’t think AS. needs that!

Check the test website every now and then if you like, it’s there and will be there a few more months I reckon… The url can be found below in an earlier post. Talk soon!

Noticeable Oddities of the Day:

The UK telephone infrastructure is all overhead instead of under ground. You will notice the spaghetti of wires running from each house to a center point in the street. When the GPO/BT were building the local telephone infrastructure, the internet was not even thought of.

Nobody had more than one phone line in their house. These days it is not uncommon for people to have two or more phone lines in their house. Also business use of telecommunications has increased hugely over the last 20 years. So sometimes when someone requests an additional line there are simply not enough pairs in the ground.

It is a technology which allows two ordinary phone lines to be squeezed down a single copper pair. Normally each phone line requires its own copper pair all the way to the exchange. Copper pairs are subject to corrosion and can occasionally fail. In this case BT are obliged to repair the fault quickly. Read more about BT’s copper access network