[Richard]

Ah yes, the infamous camel spider such as

or

Camel spiders get a terrible press, and bites are probably best avoided but apparently the stories about them are rather worse than most reported effects. They tend to inject an anaesthetic so that they can then settle down for a meal of you while you sleep. As the pale colour suggests they are not creatures of the sunny day, preferring to take a snack at night while their meal companion is sleeping. The main danger is that the wound can be large and open so going septic is a real danger.

These pictures were taken in our garden in the ‘Middle East’ where things were far hotter than it has been here. At this time of year it was usually about 140F by day and about 99% humidity at this time of year. May was hotter but the humidity then came up and things were cooler but less comfortable. By night the temperature fell a little, perhaps 110 ~ 130 F. If you did not have air conditioning in the car often you did not like to drive round with the window open as the rush of hot air could burn your arm.

[Richard]

The VFM Addict wrote:

I’ve got to go up to the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand on Monday or Tuesday; thankfully just to lodge papers rather than a hearing so no need to suit and boot, thank god. Parking is close to impossible and even if you can get it its over half a mile away and costs as much as a good evening out. So instead it has to be the moving underground ovens to get there. At least I can pick my time so its not the rush hour either way. 30C above ground makes it closer to 45C down there in the rush hour. I could handle it once upon a time but these days I’m not sure.

By Monday, it should be cooling down once more, though at 20:30 here it is still 30.5, which is a bit warm. At least the humidity is still below 50% which makes it a little easier to handle. I gave up on the mowing idea and watered the plants that needed some care before calling it a day outside. Now to see what tomorrow brings.

[Richard]

I agree that the report was less than transparent and suspect that in the absence of a smoking gun that may not have been accidental. Certainly the links suggested that grain free was a major issue for most, perhaps all  products to which they pointed. I am not familiar with USA dog foods but did not recognise any of the makes.

[Richard]

The temperature is now down to 31.2, which is a whole 3 degrees lower than it was. Unfortunately while I need to do a few outside jobs my energy levels have hit the bargain-basement level. I was going to chuck out or scrap a barbecue, but just for laughs I tried to fire it up. I had replaced several bits a while ago, i.e. years back and found it barely warmed up. This time it readily burst into life and soon started to burn off the organic remains that had collected. You can colour me shocked. I left it going for ten or fifteen minutes and there was no doubt at all that it was right up to temperature. Now it needs a clean-up, a new rust free grill plate and it could be fully usable once more. The good news is that having cleaned up the shed there is room to put it away when the weather returns to normal. For the moment the only issue is where to keep it ready for possible use.

Really I should trim some grass and confirm that the new mower works as it should. It can be all go when you feel more like sitting down and doing nothing!

[Richard]

Yes it has been a thorough and through a far from Teutonic production, rather it has been a sad politician produced mess, just a little more expensive and public than usual, even for politicians projects. We have a few on the boil, Cross-rail by now perhaps thoroughly enraged rail rather than just cross. HS2 a political inspiration from the EU melded into a through and through UK style camel of a project except that this camel will probably never have any legs. All should and could have been so much better only now they will never deliver what was needed, by the scheduled delivery date or when they happen along, if they ever do. The Germans are not perfect but my goodness they usually do rather better than this.

[Richard]

I have not had anything as dramatic as that Les, but I did have a leg swell up and go a funny colour, it swelled up so that the foot would no longer articulate. Now I wear oedema stockings to control the size of my foot. The other foot is much slimmer since a spinal issue caused the leg to start withering. That has now been corrected by an operation back in about 2012 but I now use a pair of the socks to maintain sartorial balance. My wife is the one with a serious reaction to bites and other things, so she carries two Epipens with her at all times.

[Richard]

An interesting report as we are responsible for 95% of the feeding of the two we dog sit. I noted that the comments suggested that there were concerns about the grain free variants. I wonder why people are so concerned about getting grain free as I have not heard of anything but a tine number of intolerance cases in dogs. It is much the same for humans with numbers now trying to avoid gluten because someone they once knew might have been coeliac or something else.

In this case to which you referred it appears likely to be a USA problem though of course bad practices can travel to other places. The food on which ‘our two’ appear happy is a fairly main stream food to which they insist on having added fresh cooked vegetables. The Husky being especially keen to complain if the mix is not to her exact standards. Currently, sprouts and minted vegetables are top of her selection list, cauliflower less so

[Richard]

I agree that the flying rats are no benefit to anyone, neither is the 34 degree heat today so the thought of being up a ladder dealing with pigeon ‘fall out’ has absolutely zero appeal. The ‘great out doors’ is not so great today, so my limit was reached when I took my wife’s car out for its weekly run and found the air conditioning was essential from the off. I will need to do a bit of watering later, hopefully I shall not encounter any flying piranhas the way others have recently suffered their predation.

[Richard]

Returning to the subject of the temperature, here it is already showing signs of an undesirable uplift. It is already hotter at 10:00 than on any other day this year, so outside work will probably have to be shelved for the moment. It is not yet like it was in the Middle East when 45 degrees C and upwards were often the case but at least here the humidity is a little better at 46% vice the 99% we used to ‘enjoy’. My office had air conditioning out there and the condensation on the outside of the window attracted the rats from the Ministry of Health compound to come across for a rehydration break lapping it off.

[Richard]

If the result continues or if it shows signs of going a wrong colour, get medical attention faster than both would normally aspire to get such action. I have had some horrible experiences with adverse reaction and infections after such bites. They are not to be messed with once they go bad they can go a long way bad.

[Richard]

Bob, since history is always written by those who feel they won, whatever that means it is hard to follow the role of women in past generations. However, at one point they did work alongside men in a very public way, albeit in a private location, mining. A parliamentary commission was looking into the dire working conditions of miners and visited a mine or mines. The work was hot hard and dangerous so the workers took to wearing basically nothing for both the men and the women. This totally stunned the visiting rubberneckers who were scandalised by this scene of naked workers and a vote to restrict the employment of women resulted. Given the conditions, the life shortening effects of the work, etc. I doubt that the workers minds strayed into thoughts of debauchery, but they had to be protected and women had to be constrained. In fact of course women had and have continued to work in any role they could as the wartime efforts attested. Sadly those battles are still being fought.

As for sperm issues, there are many ‘reasons’ put forward, weight, clothing, excessive sitting, various forms of pollution, foods, cooking styles, pharmaceutical products, perhaps even a small bit of evolution and so on. Perhaps there is no clear one fits all reason, sperm do not like elevated temperatures and body temperature is an elevated temperature for them, they do not like pollution either, so round and round the issue goes. Does anyone have any good epidemiological data comparing ‘performances in different areas, activities, pollution levels, etc. as the basis of a good study?

[Richard]

It has been warm and bright but not too far out of the normal for us so far. The office was only a degree or so cooler than the outside, both in the mid 20s so OK by me. The air-conditioning is quite nice in the conservatory, though there has not been the killer humidity that can make life really uncomfortable.

[Richard]

It does sound as though she has life sussed out and if you cannot do it by her age, when will you achieve breakthrough? Long may she continue to enjoy her good life lived the way she can enjoy it, along with your company of course.

On a side note, our disabled daughter has recently found the bus services work well with her mobile. She has grown in confidence, being able to plan trips and know when and where the next bus will be when making the three hop trips to see us. Prior to this break through, she was a nightmare even on point-to-point journeys. Your neighbour may well be so well tuned in to her present way that she needs no such assistance. Though with winter coming, even she might value knowing when the next bus is likely to turn up – as this is not always quite the same as the numbers on the schedule.

[Richard]

I have had the NHS application almost since it first came available, but to be honest I have been a little  disappointed with what it can do and the way that it does things. The need for a text response and a code to be keyed in before you can access anything can be a bit of challenge in poor reception areas. I have known the text to take several hours to come through making it frustrating not to say useless. Some GPs restrict the activities that can be carried out, so you may well not be able to book appointments. The symptom checker is a pretty broad brush affair; expert system it is not. It often defaults to ‘see your GP within x hours’, which can be unsettling.

The ability to get text reminders/confirmations of bookings that have been made is valuable along with other reminders that the GP may decide are important is valuable. Our only issue is that they then try to call for everything via the mobile. This does not always work so well, especially when reception is weak to very poor as it is for us at home. However, for those often out and about in better reception areas it can be very good, if a little embarrassing in crowded places!

[Richard]

From what I have heard these editions can only be used on a machine that does not have an earlier version of Office, or indeed any version of office. Is this the case as I would otherwise be interested in updating a few machines.

[Richard]

My wife and I are on repeat dispensing for most items so there is no need to order tham. The exception is the controlled drugs that must be ordered and signed for on collection.

I was surprised to note that I am marked down as having had all sorts of vaccinations that had not even been developed by the time I was supposed to have had them! I did get a few of them the ‘old fashioned’ way and was luckier than many others. While I had whooping cough and measals together (saved the doctor making repeat calls I guess), some of my cohort were off school for months and I am not sure that some ever came back. Several relations and close contacts were either maimed for life or died early after painful lives following mumps or measals. This makes my medical record so ironic. Perhaps because of my experiences I am an ardent proponent of vaccinations, yet I missed out on many of them as a child because they were not an option.

[Richard]

Enforcement action taken by ICO:

https://ico.org.uk/action-weve-taken/enforcement/?facet_type=Enforcement+notices

 

[Richard]

The third machine has now updated with no issue with its WiFi.

So far one machine has received the latests version upgrade with two others awaiting my action to release the new version. I shall wait till I feel more comfortable because of the risks raised by the first machine.

[Richard]

Neither of my machines that have so far been checked show any problem, one used a 15 year old Netgear part that is supposedly not supported under Windows 10, but which worked just fine.

[Richard]

What a shower of supermen with all this time to think things through in such refined and fine detail.

Reality check a bunch of possibly woman burst into a room playing a siren and announcing gloom and doom while one of them rushes the head of the table.

What are you going to do?

The very real prospect is that I would remain seated frozen in place and uncertain what was happening, however in the very unlikely event that were not to be the case very probably I would expect to take direct action, though my capacity to do so would probably intervene and I once more would do nothing.

Hindsight gives 20/20 vision everyone now apparently knows that they were just a bunch of attention seekers who got what they wanted and that they were armed with only their own native stupidity, it has not always been the case. Knives do not have to be huge meat cleavers, planes have been hijacked with small knives that were easily hidden but can slash and have slashed throats. Reviewing all the possible options when faced with a real live situation is frankly for the birds or armchair experts. In the event very few know how they would really react unless they were specifically trained to deal with such events. Security people should be so trained but where were they? Stunts like this stupidity should never have been possible.

So Dave and Ed shame on you for assigning false motives in a bluntly put rather less than honest assessment of events.

[Author]

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