Happy Bunny!

 Friday. 8.35 a.m. I mentioned that I was having problems getting Blogger to work, so I could write more posts. The problem is now solved. I used to use Safari to work on my posts, but I realised that Google owns Blogger, so I used their browser, Chrome, and it works perfectly. It makes sense, as you would want all your products to work together.

Saturday. 9.20 a.m. It's the 1st of November. The sun is shining, but I'm not sure how warm it is out. I will go out later. I have a regular prayer triplet on WhatsApp at 10. 

The digital thermometer currently reads 23ºc.

2.45 p.m. For some reason, probably technical, Mike was not able to join the prayer triplet at 10 o'clock this morning, but my friend Richard was able to make it, and we had a long chat. Technology is great when it works, but it's not so good when it goes wrong and causes a certain amount of frustration and stress.

Tuesday. 1.50 p.m. It's quite mild and sunny at the moment. How long it's likely to last is anyone's guess.

The digital thermometer currently reads 24ºc.

I am currently transferring my writing into word processing, as I mentioned earlier in recent blog posts. I am editing as I go and adding new stuff. It's going well, and the fact that I leave it for a few days helps me to come up with new ideas. I'm cutting out a significant portion of what I originally wrote and rearranging the order in some cases.

Saturday. 11.15 a.m. It's unseasonably mild at the moment. The digital thermometer currently reads 23ºc.

We had our monthly men's breakfast this morning at the Oaktree Centre. As usual, plenty of eggs, bacon and all the trimmings and then a discussion around the table.

The trees are rapidly turning colour, a wide range of browns and yellows. The leaves are falling fast.

2024 General Election (and other Minor Distractions)

Saturday. 7.45 a.m. Well, I sat up and watched the BBC's coverage of the General Election on Thursday night. The polling stations closed at 10 p.m. and I had been to cast my vote at 7.15 a.m., at the Oldbrook Community Hall, which is on Oldbrook Boulevard and opposite the Green. (No, I'm not going to reveal how I voted, it's between me and the ballot box.) I watched about the first couple of hours of the coverage and when the exit poll results were announced at 10, just after the polling stations closed, suggesting that Labour would have a landslide majority and the Conservatives were likely to get no more than 120 seats, I went back to bed.

I woke later to continue watching the election results as they came in. It was around 2 a.m. that it was clear that Labour had won, that Keir Starmer would be our next Prime Minister, and that the Conservatives conceded defeat. It has been revealed that it was the largest defeat of the Conservative Party in its entire history. 

Saturday. 2.25 p.m. My genealogy research is going well. Actually, I should say more than well. I am nearing 10,000 people on my tree. I am surprised how many of them, particularly on my paternal side, went to America. One was a soldier in the Civil War and, as far as my research goes, another during the American War of Independence. On my maternal side, one branch, the Gylkes, was a Quaker family and Thomas Gylkes was a clockmaker, some of his clock are valued at well over £1000, according to my Google searches.

Friday. 6.05 a.m. As you will have realized, I haven't posted anything on my blog for quite a while. One reason is that the browser I use most, Safari, has not been working properly. I can't scroll up and down, which makes it virtually impossible to view many websites and in particular, the functions on Blogger are difficult to deal with.

Saturday. 7.20 a.m. I have been struggling to find out why Safari has been playing up (not scrolling up or down.) I have been looking at the settings and trying different settings to see if any of them will work and after a great deal of effort, I have solved the problem! I can't see how this particular setting got altered but it has worked and things are back to some sort of normal. I have been using two other browsers, Firefox and Chrome and find all of them have advantages over each other, but, as I have fot used to Safari that's the main one I have used more or less since the first time I got an Apple Macintosh computer.

I must have mentioned that I had an appointment with a consultant at the cardiology department at Milton Keynes Hospital a few weeks ago. As a result the consultant suggested I have an implant in my chest which would monitor any irregularities of my heart rhythm and hopefully prevent me from having a further episode of either a heart attack or blackout which I had in the early days of 2024. Yesterday I had an appointment to have this procedure done. It was scheduled for 12 mid-day. It was easy enough parking, immediately outside the department. That was one of my biggest worries, not being able to park the car and then having to find a space somewhere else and then not be late for the appointment.

Monday. 6.20 a.m. It is taking a good deal longer than usual to complete writing this post. I will attempt to do so now.

I digress . . . Continuing from the above. I waited for a brief moment in the waiting area in the cardiology department, before a nurse came out and called me in with another patient.

I had to change into a hospital gown. I hate these things! I know they get you to wear them if you have to have a procedure done or have an operation, but they only tie up with a few lengths of thin tape and the back is open, that is, if you don't manage to hold on to it to prevent your behind being exposed. I took off my shirt, remained in my underwear and socks, and just waited. Other patients in the six-bed unit came in and then disappeared to have their procedure done. Above all else, it was just boring sitting and waiting.  Eventually, at around 1.30 I was called in by a nurse, who took me into the (I won't call it an operating theatre. It did remind me of the room where I had the stents fitted after I had my second heart attack in September 2018, at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.)  The nurse got me to take off the gown and lay on a bench (for want of a better name. It was more like a bed, padded and not too uncomfortable. A surgeon, dressed in a gown (perhaps called a smock, but I don't know, also with a face mask and, one again, reminding me of the stent-fitting, with the surgeon wearing a green gown and a face mask. But the memory of face masks is related, to me anyway, more to the face masks we were expected to wear during the covid pandemic lockdowns, and the second heart attack was around 18 months before all that happened. The surgeon cleaned my chest and then said that I would experience a slight sting, which would have been when he made an incision in my chest, on the left, just over my heart, and the procedure was over, and I returned to the unit to wait, yet again.

A nurse came to talk to me about the gadgetry I was given, which communicates with the implant in my chest (I.L.R. or Implantable Loop Recorder.) I have a box, which looks vaguely like a landline telephone which includes a separate handset which sits in the cradle on the box, as well as a remote device, small enough to fit on my keyring and should go with me everywhere. If I hold the remote device over the implant when, or if, I have a irregular heart rhythm, the device will record an electronic measurement, similar to the reading that is given by an E.C.G. and this data is sent to the cardiology department at the hospital. I was also given a letter, telling me that a remote appointment had been arranged for the 23rd of August, and that I have to send data from the home monitor (the gadget I describe above, and which sits on my bedside table. So, having had the implant and given instructions on the various aspects of its use, which are also included in several leaflets I was given, I got dressed and then left the cardiology department.

Blog Post 1,900

 Saturday. 3.15 p.m. This, dear reader, is, unbelievably, the 1,900 blog post! I can hardly believe I am writing that, but it's true, and still rambling on about the mundane things of life! Sometimes the most mundane things are the most interesting, in a rather strange and ironic way.

Sunday. 5.10 a.m. I know it's very early morning. 

It was raining, although lightly, when I took Alfie out a few minutes ago, so we didn't remain out for long.

Wednesday. 10.25 a.m. Well, things didn't get off to a good start yesterday when I had problems opening the Safari browser on my MacBook. It meant that I could do virtually no work which required the use of the MacBook and the internet because Safari is the main browser I use. I thought at first that I had been hacked because I kept getting strange messages popping up on the screen, although I have software installed which checks for viruses and strange activity. As a result of this, and because I was hacked and had money taken from my bank account (although returned, thankfully.) I decided there was no alternative but to have the MacBook looked at and have the issue resolved. The only place I could think of where they would be able to do this for me was Curry's. I had taken the MacBook there a few years ago when I had been hacked (as mentioned above.) Knowing that Curry's was open at 9 a.m., I drove there, only to find that no one could deal with a MacBook at that time. I was told to return after 11 as the person who was trained to work on Macintosh computers would be able to have a look at the problem.

So, I went home and then, just after 11 a.m. I returned to Curry's and this time I was able to tell the young man who was trained in Apple computers what the problem was with the MacBook, and he told me it would take a couple of hours to discover what the problem was and, hopefully, fix it for me.

I went home and had lunch and at around 2.30 I got a call from Curry's that the MacBook was ready to collect. I drove to Curry's and collected the MacBook. I was relieved that it was working properly again. I then drove to Sainsbury's, as I wanted some ice cream and chocolate sauce (and why not? I managed to get it, paid, and then went home. Mission accomplished!

12.15 p.m. Earlier this morning, I had an appointment at the cardiology department at Milton Keynes Hospital. The appointment was for 9.30 and the letter I received from the department, a few weeks ago, told me that the appointment could take around three hours. I managed to park in the nearby Number 3 car park, which is where Carol and I used to park when she went for her chemotherapy appointments, and we would walk through Cardiology. Luckily there was no problem with parking as there were a lot of spaces when I arrived.

I reported to the reception in cardiology and I hadn't been sitting in the waiting area much more than 5 minutes, then I was called into a side room by a nurse. She took my height, apparently not 6ft 1 inch, which I have been for years. So, less than six feet tall? Surely not! Does that mean I'm shrinking? Weight, which I didn't know, although I have a rough guess, as I have my own digital scales. Next, I had to lay on a couch to have an E.C.G. done. Around a couple of minutes of that. Having to keep still when this is done and then a printout is taken off the printer.

I went through to see the consultant, and he went through my medication box as I had to let him know about the meds I was on. I should have made a list, but only realised I needed this, having reread the letter I had from the hospital regarding the appointment. I have to say, I was not impressed by the way he threw the various packets of tablets back in the box. I am very particular about keeping it tidy! He listened to my chest, using what I thought was a mobile phone (no stethoscope?) No doubt this is a new technology, an app on his phone.

Having checked me out, he then told me that I could have a device fitted under the skin of my chest, which would monitor my heart and, if it detected something wrong, it would alert the hospital, so I could be taken in for investigation and prevent another incident as happened in January when I was taken to hospital. He then dictated a letter into a recorder device, which, I trust, whoever has to unscramble it could make head nor tail of his words. At that, the consultation was concluded. I was somewhat surprised that it was less than thirty minutes since I had arrived at the cardiology department. I drove out of the car park and, when I went to put the ticket in the machine at the exit, it lifted the barrier, so I could drive out, pleasing me because I didn't have to pay!

1.45 p.m. Having dealt with the cardiology department at the hospital, at around 2.40 I drove to see my friends from church, Margaret and Mike. Mike has Parkinson's and has been in hospital and was discharged around three weeks ago. I drove out of Oldbrook and towards the roundabout which crosses Marlborough Street and came to a halt because there was so much traffic, which, for the time of day is quite unusual. I moved forward slowly and traffic coming to the right was quite heavy, but I eventually managed to cross over, but then there was a considerable queue of traffic coming up from Chaffron Way. I drove on, but then I saw an ambulance racing towards me, with lights flashing, and a siren blasting. If I hadn't slowed down and come to a halt, I would have had a head-on collision with it.

MacBook Madness

My MacBook Air has been sick for the past couple of days. Yesterday morning I attempted to open up the Safari browser so that I could do some work, as I do most mornings. I've had this laptop for over three years. It was a birthday present from my lovely Carol, so it means a lot to me that it's in good working order. It gets a far bit of work, used for surfing the net and writing this blog. (Before you ask, this is being written on Carol's MacBook Air. I had to really think what the password was before I could get into it, but after some serious thought, I soon got it up and running successfully.)

I really had to scratch my head attempting to solve what what was wrong. I hadn't downloaded anything that might have conflicted with the browser. I restarted the MacBook,but still nothing. I didn't have anyone around with whom I could ask, such as my stepson, Daniel, who knows virtually all there is to know about computers and computing. After all, he should know, considering he went to Newcastle University to study the subject. But, as he's not here, I can't ask him. Then I had a brainwave. I know that Macintosh computers are used at Shenley Christian Fellowship, and that Ross Dilnot, Pastor, uses a MacBook, so I texted him and he said that he didn't use Safari and suggested I download and use Chrome. Which is what I did. It took a while to set it up and got it working successfully.

But later in the day I tried to get into the MacBook to do other work and then found the whole thing had frozen. It just would not do what I wanted. I attempted to reboot the thing, but nothing. It wouldn't even close down. So, after some thought, it occured to me that I ought to take it into the Apple store in Midsummer Place in the shopping centre in Miton Keynes. I could always just go in and enquite, but I might not be able to see anyone who could fix it, and maybe not until a few day's time. I thought it perhaps better to ring and get a definite appointment. I had to look for the telephone number using the smaller MacBook which had belonged to Carol. I found the number of the Apple store and then rang. Then I had to listen to what was obviously a computerised voice. Very convincing, but it made me think of either Alexa or Siri, the computerised voice 'helpers' on my Kindle Fire and on my iPhone and MacBook. You have to speak very clearly and deliberately, otherwise 'she/it' can't understand. It took a while to get anywhere, but you also have to know more or less exactly what it is you want and use simplified sentence structures. As it happened, 'it/she' couldn't understand and I was transferred to a human. A young man with a definite American voice. He didn't seem to know where Milton Keynes was and how far I was from the Apple store. I got an appointment for Friday at 1.45, and then I asked where he was. It turned out he was actually in America! I assumed when you rang the telephone number, which was definitely a Milton Keynes number, but would never think I was actually speaking to someone in America. Just shows the crazy technological world we live in. It was such a clear line, another benefit of how the technology improves things.

Friday morning. I packed up the MacBook Air in my newly-aquired computer case, which came from Amazon. I have to say I'm rather pleased with it. It's always a bit of a risk when you buy something on line, that what you see in a photograph on a website, a product doesn't always come up to expectations, which means you end up having to return it. Not so with this case. I bought a holdall from Amazon when I needed to take stuff with me to the John Radcliffe a few months ago when I had to have the stent procedure done, and that has turned out to be a good buy as well as more or less exceeding expectations.

I digress. I parked the car in the carpark near The Point. The appointment at the Apple store was for 1.45, so I had ample time to walk into the shopping centre and waste about half an hour browsing. I headed for Watersone's, not actually such a good idea, because me and books are like a magnet, and I have to be careful I don't buy something which takes my fancy. I already have a considerable stash of reading material, so anything I buy will merely add to that. But, as it happened, I didn't see anything that I would buy. I have ordered an Ian McEwan novel which I want to read called 'Machines Like Us' which sounded to me as if it would be something I would like to read, so I have ordered it through Amazon.

From Watersone's I walked through to Midsummer Place and ended up at the Apple store and signed in. It seemed extremely busy in all of the shopping centre. I couldn't see why, considering it was a Friday and the schools would have returned on Tuesday.

I eventually got one of the staff to have a look at the MacBook and he managed to get it up and running successfully, but when I got home some while later, it went back to not opening correctly, so it looks as if I will have to return to the Apple store to try again to rectify the problem.