[Dave Rice]

How bloody stupid.

[Dave Rice]

It’s the old hunt the bottleneck and I honestly don’t know where it will be and if RAID will help. Will the compiler just say Thank You and and saturate the extra?

I keep my VMs on a separate drive to the o/s and another one for things like storing ISOs and backup targets. They are all in a dedicated PC with an 8 core FX8350 with 16GB ram. 2 x 240GB SATA SSDs and a 1TB spinner. I use TightVNC and AnyDesk to access Host and individual VMs.

It does for me but I don’t do much more than model networks and push some data about.  They are quite usable as an “every day” machine.

[Dave Rice]

Download the latest ISO from Microsoft, ignore their offer of making the USB for you, I find it hit and miss.

Download Rufus and run it (no need to install). Change the Boot Selection drop down to Disk or ISO image and point it at the downloaded file. I change the volume label so I know which version of W10 is on there and then hit Start.

I also have a folder ready to copy to it that contains a Ninite installation script for all my favourite utilities plus Anydesk and O&O Syspectr. Once Anydesk is on there I retire somewhere more comfortable and do the tedious stuff that takes the time, like installing office, copying data and setting up backups, from my laptop.

[Dave Rice]

I’ve had a text from the doc to say my letter is on the way. I can go to the regional Ashton Gate Vaccination Centre or “pharmacy” (but it doesn’t expand on that). Or just wait and they’ll mop me up later.

If I can go to the local Boots that’ll be great or it’s an hour each way on the Metro bus. Not waiting for the doc.

[Dave Rice]

Not sure about still alive, but once alive I certainly hope so. Of course there’s a chance it started here and got transferred there by one of the big asteroid hits in the past.

It’s rather tedious on the Hawkwind FB group at the moment as one of their best tunes of the latter 70s is “Uncle Sam’s on Mars”. The lyrics are fine piss take but slowly being meme’d to death.

[Dave Rice]

No problem.

[Dave Rice]

USB’s just aren’t reliable enough for live data, but for “I don’t care if it’s gone” type files why not? I’m not sure if the electricity savings would amount to anything worth measuring though.

What about a portable SSD? Capacity, power saving plus speed and reliability. The price vs a decent USB stick isn’t that much more Amazon and less than if one of the USB’s goes tits up.

[Dave Rice]

Just looked it up and I bought it in July 2019. It’s got an old Seagate 500GB in it and is attached to the Synology NAS for ad-hoc backups, so barring the odd power cut it’s been on 24 x 7 for 18 months.

[Dave Rice]

I had a call from the practice clinical (as opposed to dispensing) Pharmacist this morning. She was very good and went through everything one by one. With the changes asked for by the specialist clinics she decided that the best thing was to cancel everything existing and start again from today. Hopefully this will now mean it all turns up in one big lump rather than multiple visits to Boots. My confidence in Boots systems isn’t however so optimistic.

On the covid jab situation she confirmed that I am in tier 6 but (of course) come into a grey area. No one of my groups of medications would be enough to consider me to be at risk enough for shielding but would be enough for “underlying conditions”. There is however no guidance on what to do with my mix of multiple underlying conditions. The good news is they are almost through tier 4 and expect to get around to me before I start the anti-TNF at the end of March, so the problem shouldn’t arise.

The anti-TNF may affect the immune system, but this would be a side effect. She expects Rheumatology to be managing this and from what I have heard from the Consultant I will be in the hands of a nurse lead team much like the Heart Failure Clinic. This gives me great hope that it will indeed be managed properly.

I doubt I’d have got on as well talking to the Doctors and their instructions would most likely have confused the Pharmacists as has happened before. So a result.

A letter from the Eye Hospital (who started all this) has just dropped through the letterbox with an appointment for a follow upon the Uveitis. All I need is Orthopaedics to send me the appointment for my long overdue annual ankle x-ray and it’ll be a Full House. Lockdown? What Lockdown? 🤣

 

[Dave Rice]

There are some electronics in there as well as some cable and for 3.5″ it needs a PSU, plus shipping from somewhere in China. Also it supports both drive sizes and needs to cool a 3.5″. This usually means using metal rather than the plastic you get in 2.5″ caddies and some means of stopping it rattling around.

The last 3.5″ only caddy I bought is this £20 Wavylink so the extra £2 seems worth it.

[Dave Rice]

I am on yearly review, but I’m almost certain that the Govt mandated monthly repeats a while ago due to concerns over shortages due to covid / Brexit. It may be that that has been rescinded and it would be typical for my GP to be out of touch. When they reply to my message I’ll be asking.

However when I did a little Google on this there seemed to be all sorts of confusing new rules on how you could / couldn’t order repeats that did / didn’t apply depending on what you currently did. Implementation dates seemed different for each part of the country that I could find and said that you had to produce the tear off in person at your practice and your pharmacist couldn’t order for you any more. That seemed nuts before covid never mind now.

[Dave Rice]

Sent them a message via askmyGP, which is the way we’ve had to have any contact with them for several years:

“Thank you for submitting your askmyGP message. Due to staff self-isolating, social distancing, infection control requirements, it is currently taking us much longer to provide care to our patients when it is necessary to attend the surgery. Consequently it may take us a little longer to get back to you than normal.Your request has been triaged and you can expect a response from us within 5 working days. If you are unwell and need urgent advice then please contact us by phone or call 111 if we are closed. To prevent the spread of coronavirus please DO NOT COME to the surgery unless you already have an appointment. Your ongoing patience and understanding through this challenging period is much appreciated.
The Team at Concord Medical Centre”

The problem is GPs are central to everything. The specialist hospital / community teams can only do so much, it’s the GP that has to do the repeat prescriptions and referrals.

I have run out of heart medication again, this has happened every single month since the Govt made repeats 28 days not 2 monthly. It seems the system cannot cope with double the workload. When I get to Boots they have loads of staff all beavering away and the shelves for awaiting collection are bursting.

[Dave Rice]

Nolan, what sort arthritis medication are you on? The consultant wants me to start on an anti-TNF, specifically Secukinumab, which I understand is a self administered weekly injection. They have talked to my heart consultant as these anti-TNF can cause issues and this particular one is apparently OK.

I have a hospital appointment late March with a nurse led team so I am assuming this will be for the first dose and some training on how to DIY. At the same time I have been referred to the Heart Failure Clinic (after 9 years) who want to change my medication (not by much) to improve some of my readings. Nothing is of “concern” but they say it should be easy improve them still further.

Despite all this I am not on any shielding list and assume I am in Tier 7 (over 60s) and no idea when I’ll get the jab. The anti-TNF suppresses your immune system to some extent but no-one is mentioning the jab, I suspect that (as usual) they think I am in some high risk group or in some way considered disabled by the NHS / Govt, which in 40 years since my accident I never have been.

Time to stir up my useless GP I think.

 

[Dave Rice]

John, I have done a few of these now and generally they go OK. The thing to remember is that you are now not dealing with ADSL but Ethernet. The Virgin Hub is doing the “ADSL” bit and turning it into Ethernet, which is what the TP-Link would have been doing internally.

However on one occasion there was a Virgin Hub that just refused to work with a Draytek router. I know Drayteks well and have often used them like this but it wasn’t happening. This was in Lockdown I and the customers family business was being kicked out of their office. We were relocating the server to his house and setting up VPN connections so the rest of the family could remotely access it and an instant fix was needed. Went up to Argos and got a £30 TL-WR940N and it worked first time. I had to find another way to do the VPN but it’s been faultless.

Tested the Draytek on another hub and it’s fine. This is the sort of thing drives you nuts, he may be doing everything OK and it’s just not playing. Before you throw it through the window try a factory reset on the TPL. This is literally the only setting on the WAN page (it’s a live screen shot which is why I’ve obscured the IP address it obtained). No user names or passwords required, just set it to Dynamic IP and the Virgin Hub does the rest.

[Dave Rice]

We did have some snow on Sunday, in fact for several hours, but not a single flake pitched.

[Dave Rice]

Good news John.

[Dave Rice]

I’ve heard you mention about the lack of PS2 support before and I’ve never found it to be the case.

[Dave Rice]

John, it’s not complicated. A wizard will set up the VDSL connection, you just say it’s BT and it does the rest. But you will need to know the BT username and password (not the same as your BT account).

The generic one is normally bthomehub@btbroadband.com and a password of bt (or usually anything, it doesn’t matter). Another one is broadbanduser@btbroadband.com.

[Dave Rice]

You can use any xdsl router on a BT connection, but you need to know the authorisation details.

Modern accounts are generic (and easily looked up) but IIRC some long standing ones are unique.

[Dave Rice]

Thought you might be out Bob, Facebook has gone quiet 😄

[Author]

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