Getting Started

It is really difficult to get myself motivated to get going. I had two meetings yesterday which were very good, a bit longer than I wanted them to be and so another day went begging.

Today I am trying to catch up on the lost production of last week and the difficult thing is prioritising it. Last week it would have been quite easy to sort out as all I needed to do was to tackle things in order and get one out of the way at a time. Now - well everything needs to be done at once. Oh the fun of it all. The fall out from the IT problems is also that I have been fiddling around with the IT settings to ensure that firewalls and the like wouldn't block getting me reconnected. Now I have had to reset all the settings and to learn a few new skills especially now that I have a remote firewall.

All good fun :-) NOT.

I beginning to feel a lot better as well now. I've lost almost 1 kilo this week and sensible eating and a bit of exercise seem to have helped. Anyway, I can't keep on chatting to you all day - back to work!

Health Update

I appear to have 'gotten over' last week's dizzy spells and just not feeling me - "A Change in the Water" as my Mum would have me believe!

I think it was getting my land legs back and the massive change in eating habits. You really can eat for your country on board. I also have had it confirmed that the ship shouldn't have been that bad and vibrating as much as it did - which I'm certain is the root cause of all of this.

So other than that I've realised it isn't too long to go until I get back into the swing of things and get my next lot of tests. I haven't done my exercises since I've been back but I intend to change that in the next day or so. I've cut back my food to what I used to eat before the holiday and so now I need to get back into the routines I had before.

That is about it for now. The Internet has been up all day so far and let's hope it stays that way. I'm hopeful of actually getting some work done tomorrow.

And on the seventh day

He was still re-booting PCs, routers, cable modems and reviewing the status notices which still do not mention this particular problem.

Seven days! So apologies for no real meaningful posts apart from those aimed at keeping me sane.

I hope that this will change this week..

Still Having Connectivity Problems

Sorry folks,

I am still having intermittent disconnection problems with the ISP. So far today we have suffered about 10 outages. I am DEFINATELY going to have a sense of humour failure tomorrow, I've worked hard for it, I need one and I just deserve it. After all - I believe that NTL or Virgin Media should have the benefit of my experience of being a customer of theirs.

Hopes for a calming weekend

After a week of battling with minor officialdom and people who are not paid to use their initiative and with businesses who upset their customers I think that I ought to take a calming down weekend.

Frankly I lost the whole week to having no real IT and I have written that off ready to start on Monday. It looks to be set fair for the weekend so beer and barbecue would appear to be the order of the day.

I'm going outside now - I may be some time!

Faroe Islands, Iceland and Norway

Wonderful destinations and each different. Of all though Norway was how I thought it would be, steep fjords and waterfalls. The Faroe Islands were just enchanting - very quiet and peaceful and a nice quiet place to go. Iceland was by the far the biggest surprise. I'd expected all the geysers and boiling mud etc but it was a land of huge changes - almost every turn or valley took you to a different landscape. You could be driving through a green valley, pop over the hill and be confronted with miles of lava fields or perhaps some geysers letting off steam. I'd love to spend more time in all three places but as an independent traveller next time.

Dodging the tourists would be the difficult bit in Norway - in the Faroes and Iceland I reckon you could easily dodge them all day.

Could it possibly be

That the internet has been up all morning and that the problem is now fixed? Am I tempting fate?

I can hardly believe how much this has affected my work this week. It is now Friday afternoon and I cannot claim to have had one substantial call or conversation or to have managed to get more than a few minutes work done at a time. What with re-booting the complete network and getting all the PCs working - then finding that the internet had gone down again and having to keep on re-logging in and resetting everything I have had a total sense of humour failure this week, no work done and I am going to write off this week entirely.

Ho hum!

Owww - Cramps

2 am. One leg and then the other, fell out of bed in agony! It still hurts this morning. It has been threatening all week and I have been feeling my calf muscle twinging but blimey did that ever hurt. I haven't had that for years and years.

It could be related to this cold/flu/dizzy stuff or perhaps the Statins which apparently have cramp as a side effect :-(

Anyway - I suppose the better news is that the internet is back working and I am not having to spend all day booting and re-bootings PCs, Routers and Cable Modems! Will have to see how that goes on today.

Peculiar

Still feeling quite peculiar - still a little dizzy and disorientated. I'm sure the IT issues haven't helped but I'm sure this has to do with finding my land legs again.

I hope so I sure don't want to feel like I do at the moment for much longer it is quite disturbing as when sitting you can feel your body shaking and when standing moving from side to side, almost imperceptibly but you can definitely feel it.

NT Hell

What an utter nightmare the last few days have been. Trying to resolve what should be an easy issue. Finally, we got somewhere today and had to "bite the bullet" and pay 25p to report the fault. This after having checked the service announcements (looked at the service announcements online - helpful but if you can't connect a bit pointless).

After dealing with whoever from Mumbai - it turns out that IT IS NTL/Virgin Media's problem after all - it isn't on their announcements on the phone which I have diligently checked. The Internet is back on line now (not sure for how long though they expect another 48 hours worth of trouble).

To say I was getting irate would be an understatement - some-body's head was going to get chewed up the way things were going and no one was interested - customer support is now outsourced at 25p a minute, reporting a fault - 25p a minute - what is that all about.

Luckily they have decided to refund the cost of my phone call - bit it was a known fault and frankly it was driving me utterly mental trying to solve it as the acknowledgement page said that all was OK and yet after re-booting PCs, Modems and Routers (all in sequence) the same provisioning screen kept turning up and then every now and then the Internet would come back and I'd re-boot the PCs around the house and re-set everything only for it to go down again.

I am one very unhappy camper. You'd have thought Branson and his army would have brought some sense and sanity to the customer service department - perhaps some over ambitious number crunching, greasy pole climbing spotty Herbert after consulting his life coach made an executive decision to screw up the people that pay for the service. Perhaps I should go back to BT? Now there's something I never thought I'd say!

Holiday

The holiday was great, no doubt about it I am 3 Kg heavier :-(

There is a lot to be said for cruising and - possibly because we have always independently travelled - quite a bit that we didn't particularly like as well.

The stuff we didn't like included:

Excursions - a necessary evil to give you a flavour of the places you are visiting - you are at the mercy of the other 40 odd people in your party.

Lots of people - we are used to staying in remote farm houses or on board our own Canal Boat or in an RV or something similar. We are not used to so many people being around us. Not that the ship was crowded just lots of people.

The Ship was a "bit tired" it shook and rolled more than perhaps a larger or newer vessel.


Stuff we liked:

The ports of call were fantastic

The food was good

You were made to feel special

The scenery came to you at a slow pace.

So where did he get to?

Well.......

My Internet router died on Sunday and I could just about use the Internet as long as I was three inches from the wireless antenna!

On Monday we got a new Router and then my trouble started:

1. I really haven't felt well since I got home - I felt a lot worse on Monday and yesterday
2. My provider (not recognising the MAC address of my new PC(s)) wouldn't let me connect
3. When I did manage to get connected it wouldn't let me set up the router and I had to go through the re-connection process again ( a BIG pain as it demands renaming PCs, re-entering Pins and passwords and all that, re-booting PCs, Modems etc.

So finally today I used my old PC and set that up downstairs and managed to sort out the router, the pcs and now I am back to where I was on Saturday afternoon/Sunday morning trying to catch up with 1500+ e-mails.

I'm feeling a bit better but still quite dizzy and with a sore throat. A friend reckons that the dizziness is having come off the Ship and getting used to being back on land - which may well be right. I remember that even when we have been on Canal boat holidays.

I could do without the swaying which I am still doing now!

Back on Dry Land

Trying to get used to this sun and heat here. We had a great time. No time to put too much on here now -more as the week goes on as we are off to a birthday party now - my friend's 60th!

Needless to say - had a great time, fascinating places we visited and things we got up to.

The Quiet Blog

See you all soon - cruise awaits.

In all the excitement

I'm not sure I actually said what I meant to say at the end of my party.

At the end I said that I had been diagnosed exactly a year before and that I'd got the clear about 10 weeks ago. I think I said how glad I was to be there and celebrate that with everyone.

However, what I don't think I said and I had planned to was to thank everyone for "looking out" for me and being there and sending e-mails and calling me and taking me out for a beer and all the good things they did to help me out. It was very important to me then and is important to me now. I think they know and I'll thank them individually when I see them as well.

Sense of Humour Required

As some may know we are off on a cruise tomorrow.

Tonight's film on TV was..................


Titanic

:-)

What a great night

Twas my 50th Birthday party and I shared that with an old chum of mine from school days.

What a brilliant evening. I had a great time and celebrated my birthday in style surrounded by family and friends and I didn't get too squiffy :-)

I got some great presents too - people are really imaginative about such things - I wish I was sometimes.

Right - that is enough from me for the moment - I hope to spend the rest of the day doing next to nothing except packing.

1st Anniversary

By this time last year I knew that I had bladder cancer and was probably reading the leaflet the gave me. I had by the early afternoon a phone call giving me an appointment on the following Tuesday. Those days were a blur. Explaining to my Mother that I had Cancer wasn't easy. I remember using all the soothing and upbeat words and actually thinking the opposite of what I was saying.

So tonight - should I wear the "I'm not dead yet!" Tee Shirt? I think I should.

Curious

I've been looking at this label and - is it me - or is this just plain obvious?

Bizarre!

Sleep - As evasive as ever

I didn't have the problem I normally have on a Tuesday night (there's a clue then!) as I didn't have treatment on Monday.

Tonight though I'm yawning away but can i get to sleep! No chance. I think I have done the usual and worked all day long on the PC and that has just meant that my brain is too active doing figures and answering e-mails.

I have no doubt that I will sleep Saturday night and in to Sunday!!