Category Archives: Random

It’s three weeks since my surgery, time for my first follow-up appointment with the neurosurgeon. It’s all good news.

The residual pain I occasionally feel is perfectly normal, he says; most people are in more pain than me at this stage. The nerve root is still recovering from the original problem, so it’ll take a few more weeks for the pain to fizzle out completely. Even so, I might be left with something niggly, but nothing I can’t live with.

I can now start to do more things, like drive again. Everything in moderation: walking, swimming, cycling. (Hmm, maybe I should take up swimming.) I shouldn’t jog (ha!) or play badminton until about six months after the surgery, as all that running about jars the spine too much.

Rather to my surprise, he’s happy for me to ski in January, as long as I take it easy. (I wonder whether I should try ski boards/snow blades/whatever they’re called?)

He wants to see me again about three months after the surgery – just before I go skiing, preferably – for a final all-clear.

Everything happens in threes, I tried not to say a week ago. One: operation. Two: tooth. And three…

My car was broken into overnight. They took a couple of quid at most, which I kept handy to pay car park charges. That’ll learn me. (It’s usually obscured by other stuff, but I guess it wasn’t obscured enough.)

Oh well. At least they left my MOT and driving specs. And a shower of glass all over the off-side rear seat.

Time for a cup of tea, I think.

From Yahoo! News: Bush Mum on Request for Documents from 9/11 Panel

I saw this and thought, What’s Barbara Bush got to do with it?

D’oh.

Avaragado appeared briefly on Anglia News this evening. Quite accidentally.

He was crossing Magdalene Bridge on his way home from doing a little shopping (no, he didn’t buy anything heavy) when he was startled to notice someone being interviewed ahead of him, with the camera pointing straight at Avaragado’s handsome fizzog.

Attempting nonchalance, he drifted into the road to avoid clattering into the interviewee, and promptly forgot all about it.

At 10:30 this evening he switched to ITV1 for Harry Hill’s TV Burp to be confronted almost immediately with the very interview. And there, in the background, he was. No startle-face. Seamless road-driftage. Very professional. A TV natural.

Avaragado is still available for panto.

Traditional bonfire night
festivities last night: to Midsummer Common for the fireworks
(my photos)
then to the Hotpot for a chinese meal. I think we cleared them out of white wine again.

There I am, watching Buffy The School Counsel[l]or (BBC2’s a bit
behind the rest of the world), eating my pretend sausages, when I feel
an odd crunch mid-chew. I extract some tiny bits of tooth, liberated
from somewhere top-back-right according to my tongue. It’s not too
bad, I don’t seem to have any razor-sharpness or gaping holes or
pain, but this does have a one-damn-thing-after-another feel to it.
(And if anyone says “everything happens in threes” I’ll… well, I’ll
probably hurt myself again.)

This is clearly Toby’s fault. Only a few days ago we were
talking about dentists, down the Wrestlers I think. He
obviously put a caffeine/beer/nicotine-style spell on me. It’s
either that or the fact that I haven’t inhaled dentist breath in ten
years.

Right, I’ll add that to my list… off to the cam.misc FAQ for
recommendations, I guess… I’ll try to get an appointment for 2:30 so Chris
can bring that old gag out for another airing.

Avaragado’s gallery now
has photos going back to the start of 2000, on gallery pages 4 and 5. Oh so exciting.

I’ve updated Avaragado’s
spinal column with some history and these grisly photos:

What the surgeon took out…

…and the mess he left behind.

Just -308 days to go until last Christmas!

Searching for present ideas? I can thoroughly recommend the fine products of Transglobal Emporium, including the Luxury Shed Calendar 2004 and my favourite, the Time Savers Greetings Card.

Disclaimer: Avaragado’s brother is responsible for the Greetings Card.

The reason my web site wasn’t working was…

[drum roll]

I was logged into a Yahoo Messenger client configured with “no
proxies”, on an entirely different machine to the web server on my LAN.

This makes no sense to me, but probably does to someone. Changing
the Yahoo client to use “Firewall with no proxies” or “Use proxies”
and setting an HTTP proxy – and rebooting the Netgear box –
both seem to work. Haven’t tried Yahoo’s “No network detection”
option. (Note that exiting Messenger doesn’t make it magically work –
you have to reboot the Netgear.)

I first thought it must be something to do with the clock on the
Netgear, as rebooting it seemed to let connections through until it
had set its own time from an NTP server. But then I noticed another
possible correlation: being logged into Messenger. When the Netgear
reboots my wireless connection to it drops, naturally, so I get logged
out of Messenger. When I regain the connection, Messenger seems to
eventually notice and log back in automatically. At that point, I
spotted, my test via http://www.websitepulse.com started to fail. Finally,
something deterministic!

And the pattern fits, of course. People have been able to connect
when I’ve not been at my PC – like yesterday
evening, and when I’m asleep, and when Roger first got through
last weekend. (I turned it all off while I was in hospital.)

Splendid!