[Richard]

Sadly old plaster does go off if it does not get the attention and treatment it needs. With a 1928 build was it lime plaster or the more modern stuff. You could need to be careful what you apply to what, lime breaths while modern concrete plasters do not and this can cause all sorts of issues. Do not count on me as an expert it is just that I have seen and heard too many problems over the years. Building walls onto floor boards is still quite common though these days walls are often a few bit of stud work, some sound/heat insulation and a bit of plasterboard. They may or may not be load bearing, just as brick and blockwork may or may not be load bearing. One hazard of older places is that a previous owner/abuser could have caused long hidden issues. I have seen images of places where structural movement came about during the war or when ground works caused ‘upsets’. Is the wiring up to current standards if you are re-socketing the place? Planning regulations Part P(?), have introduced several/many restrictions on the works that non ticketed people can perform on installations. Happily I can now rule myself out of such major works as redecorating; dealing with other ongoing issues is enough.

You can buy or hire chasing machines that have a form of dust collection, but make sure the cutters will work with you wall type.

[Richard]

Today did not go well… We arrived there is good time and were called in at about the right time,then a wait, wait wait while Michele had her hour and a half of reruns of the scans they did before before never reaching the therapy stage. Unfortunately her co-morbidities exact a toll so when she was told to lie down with arms raised then move this way and that way arms up down and sideways then sit up slide about and do it all again, things went less down hill and more vertical power dive.

A rushed GP appointment this evening has resulted in a heavily topped up supply of the ‘must be signed for’ tablets and clear instructions to take as many as possible of various supplies before Mondays rerun. I am not looking forward to that ‘experience, the traffic today was still in the New Year honeymoon phase, it won’t be next week.

[Richard]

The withdrawal of the SMB1 function has been heralded for so long even the wide boys thought it should just go, I disabled it months ago, could even be more than a year ago. I agree with Dave 1809 did greatly improve finding devices on my network allowing the server, several print servers and the PVRs to be seen and usually used from my PC. An old Buffalo device is hung off of the USB port on one of my repurposed old routers that now acts as an AP and that Buffalo can be seen and accessed very easily.

[Richard]

The Central Middlesex must be one of the increasingly few hospitals we have not visited with a 25 mile radius taking in the west north and east of us. Based on your experiences it is one better cancelled than attended.

Someone mentioned Northwick park, I think that was the one that had terrible phone performance when it opened back in the 1960s. There were bags of staff, just never in position when callers wanted or needed to call. The idea of scheduling staff start, end and relief times to avoid peek demand times, had not been part of the planner’s brief. A few moment’s work caused a dramatic improvement and meant they had enough staff to cover most sickness and holidays needs without recruiting anyone extra.

That one is outside of our notional 25 mile boundary so we have not visited it either, long may that remain the case.

Reminder, I must check my mileage against the insurance limits for the usual car, urgently.

[Richard]

Bob,

I understand that usually those ops are painful for a short while, but after that the relief from a success is usually the main effect. If a year has passed it does sound as though it is one of those that did not go as well as might have been expected. You cannot borrow my war drum or war chant mat, after today’s repeat experience of being a mushroom, kept in the dark and you know the rest…

Steve I am sorry your wife’s appointment was cancelled at short notice, I trust it was a more routine than imperative one and that you were not told on arrival after a long journey to get there

Happily we went to and from the hospital and aided by the post Christmas lull the run took a quarter of the time. Sadly the visit last month appeared to be something of a complete waste of time since all the setting up work had to be redone along with the radiotherapy. So the lightly bounced phrase involving a ‘couple of minutes’ was another ‘you’ll be kept in the dark for an hour or more, with my wife in a range of uncomfortable positions. The journey was not comfortable fun, we were tired and annoyed and in pain to boot: our mutual tin-tack guns would have run out of ammunition, so it was good we did not have one. There are posters everywhere in the hospital asking patients to let them know how things went, I will try to cool down a bit before giving them an honest report.

[Richard]

When Ed wrote about the flu doing the rounds a little while back I lived in what turned out to be unanswered hope, so I read the above between periods alternating between in bed, in the loo and coughing myself to the point of black out. Now I am hopefully getting better.

Not a personal experience but I lived in a location that was often used by rowdy Saudis for R&R away from the folks back home. This did not impress many of the locals so when a small group of inebriated young Saudis stumbled into a taxi and demanded transport to the best local ‘house of ill repute’ the driver was ready. The police station for a new town was a rather grand affair built not unlike an imposing small palace. He charged them an appropriate taxi fare and finder’s fee for pointing to the ‘best place in the neighbourhood’ before sending them off to the rear entrance. This had no sign boards displaying its real function in life and he retired to a safe lights off distance. The local staff, both male and female, were chortling about the affair for months afterwards. I understand that the ‘residents’ of the building in question showed their official displeasure at the visitor’s behaviour while taking private pleasure in distributing the story far and wide as a cautionary tale.

Now off watch for the drive into the devil’s stew pot (London) for the start of my wife’s radiotherapy, coughing and spluttering willing. The Macmillan centre advised, do not miss this at any price, take whatever you can to keep your driver going but get there.

[Richard]

Bob, sorry to learn of this repeated tale of woe, by the way 7 hours is not too bad for discharge medications. With my wife we gave up and I went back on her next appointment a week later and collected them, it was a 40 mile round trip and I did not want to leave her alone for the first ‘golden week’ after her discharge. Happily we had enough pain reducer supplies until that point. Our longest straight wait was 48 hours at this time at the local hospital. Both are hospital run pharmacies.

I was interested to hear that it once again came back to your nose issue, I will be interested to know if it gets cleared this time, once and for all. It is not a fun condition and certainly not good when it goes on the way yours has.

Have they checked your vitamin D levels? They can take a hit because of chemo, My wife found out at about 14:30 yesterday that hers were not just low but essentially off the scale; by 17:00 hours I had the medication to start jacking them up again, essentially mega dose cholecalciferol. She will be retested in a month’s time.

That ‘might’ be another avenue to explore , – if you ever have time to get bored

[Richard]

Wishing all a very Merry Christmas and a (for many) far happier 2019. I know that for some (most?) there is potential as Bob said. It is now already Christmas Day so the die has been cast as to its form, most preparations are done with here, just the final veg to do when the kitchen is free of daughter and wife who are chatting. Two power cuts in the night do not bode well for the rest of the day, but we can live in hope even though it is nasty cold outside.

[Richard]

Think on the bright side, when its done the chips are down?

Mind you I think there will be a couple of hard work weeks, that stuff can the very devil to shift depending on the paste that was used.

[Richard]

Did Bob’s, (or anyone else’s) reconstruction surgeons often work in vein?

Would open swimming in Paris mean going in seine?

Season’s greetings for a Merry Christmas with best wishes for an improving New Year to All

[Richard]

Yes, I believe that to be the case. I was trying that out a couple of weeks back but could not get anything to resolve a problem. It turned out that a keyboard had gone bad and was blocking all actions. I removed the offender and all was fine without needing to do anything at all, phew. One of the screen options was to recover (or maybe it said reinstall) from a system image stored on a drive.

[Richard]

From what I remember it used to be recommended that the disk should have the active boot partition reduced in size down to something of the same order as the SSD before you try to clone the drive. You can change it again after the drive is cloned. Disk management should allow you to do it quite simply, but carefully!. I believe that a few cloning systems can adjust the sizes on-the-fly, though I believe that an increase is easier to achieve than a size reduction so that is a risk you may or may not want to investigate.Making an image and perhaps a back up of the drive before doing any work is always a wise move.

[Richard]

Michele has just had one of those Happy Christmas moments. On a long shot I drafted a letter to the GP relating to Michele’s recent visit to the rheumatologist, where she was recommended to obtain some additional medicines. I left it a week then set out my wife’s stall for the treatment hoping that there might, just might be a copy of the consultant’s report floating about somewhere. However, that was not to be but the GP has just rung to say that they are putting a prescription through and it should be dispensed by the pharmacy today. Maybe, just maybe the visit to the devil’s stew bowl (London) on the 27th December, just might become more viable, though getting there for 10:10 could be a real challenge

Anyway on that promising note may I wish everyone a comfortable and as Merry as possible Christmas and a rapidly improving New Year.

Bob, I read your messages above, I was trying to clear out some old letter copies a few moments ago that touched similar emotional subjects from nearly 30 years ago; time does not really heal, it only allows matters to be veneered over where they await re-activation. Take care, it is nice that you have at least some caring neighbours, not just the Nasty Neighbours!

[Richard]

Tippon, I thought that when I read Bob’s comment, though with my luck we would have 6 inches of rain and a sky blotted out with thick low clouds.

[Richard]

BL, I was trying to remember why I used the image and restore method and then I remembered, my daughter’s PC developed a memory problem and the constant restarts blew the SSD, so an image was the only quick way to restore her machine. I tend to agree that it is probably not the number one choice for cloning, but when stuck between a rock and a hard place it is a life saver.

I have also used a Live CD/DVD to copy and create a bootable drive from a failing HD. It was hard work, there were bad sectors that did not always read properly and I tried several live disks before I got one to achieve a successful result. The user had some software on their original drive for which the install disks were not longer available. Again it was not eligant and was hard work compared with the cloning route.

I agree with those who said remove the old disk, substitute the new bare drive, put the old drive in  a caddy and boot from the transfer software, CD/DVD or USB drive and just let it go. Shut down, remove the start up device and the external drive and let the machine reboot when you are ready, job done. However, it only works for a planned change out!

[Richard]

Our eldest daughter spent 7.5 months of each of her two successful pregnancies self injecting every day, you can do it if the need arises. She has a blood condition that killed off three previous pregnancies so I guess she had an incentive plan. My wife spent five days every two/three weeks according to which chemo she was having, injecting her own abdomen. She also felt it was a vital step, so got on a did it, others called out the district nurse…

PM (Steve?) make sure you always have a few injector pens ‘in hand’. At one point my daughter had a few faulty batches where many failed and she had to have the town scoured for fresh items, scrounging a few from different pharmacies. Otherwise they are pretty good and easy to use.

[Richard]

I am sure I used an image “Windows 7 Backup and Restore” at least once. Connecting the SSD in place of the original C drive, starting the PC with either a USB or DVD/CD recovery option (I cannot remember which) and telling the start up to restore the image to the new drive. I do not remember it taking that long to do the task. It booted just fine first time – remember to pull the start device option first!

[Richard]

Between you two Bob and Steve some pretty nasty issues. Deal with Bob first, I can sympathise with your being stuck between a rock and a hard place getting medicos to understand the real issues. I have had a range of stomach problems which normally end up with ‘its not XXX so look at your diet or do more exercise’. When I point out that I generally walk upwards of three or four miles per day, eat at least half a dozen items of fruit plus a selection of vegetables and grains they have already lost interest; dreaming of their next round of golf perhaps?

The constipation issue can be bad for everyone with any sort of other ‘co-morbidity’, but for yours Bob it will be seriously debilitating.

As for Steve’s situation I can only wish you well, the recovery from the rebuild will not be the easiest period of your life, expect that to take time. You will be fragile for months, whatever you do, that is one time to follow the instructions to the letter and rush nothing.

(Thanks(?) Ed, that was not something I wanted to hear. I have just started a long series of ongoing sneezes, have felt pretty crap for the last few days, have a ‘trip out’ with Michele, back for a check up after her reconstruction surgery and today’s great nugget? A trip up to London for an oncology meeting on the 27th for my wife. This one can only really be done by putrid transport, I really, really hope the station car park is not packed out and that the trains really are ‘walking along nicely’ on that day.)

[Richard]

I have just shy of 30,000 files in ‘Pictures’ with a little under 5000 ‘folders’ for a total of just under 270 GB. I thought that the main reasons to use Google storage were to have an off site back up and to allow different devices easy access to the files.

I do not see why you should not have a suitable folder somewhere on your own system and call it Google Pictures or whatever suitable titile you may wish to use.

However, the issues would then be making sure that it is kept up to date with all the possible changes.

Before doing anything I would sit down and think through the objective you might seek by making any changes. If you think that you could drop Google or that they might drop you, that could be a trigger for change. If you have priceless images that you would want other to access when the inevitable comes along and do not want any future password hassle; that could be another reason to make some adjustments. As ever take action only when they are part of a fully formed plan and not what I do, copy and delete first then think it was a dumb idea, or lose items that should have been protected causing a mad scribble to hit recovery. In fact most items are on both my PC and the server with a back up made daily of the PC and twice daily for the server. However, all are on-site copies. The idea of an off site back up has some appeal but not at upload speeds and prices. As far as I remember, just backing up as a first run took a day and a half on the internal network, the internet is slower.

[Richard]

Les, thank you, but shortage of fluid is not likely to be my issue. Breakfast sees me take on board about > 3 pints or about 1.5 litres. Then I hit the water glasses, though the flow rate has to be managed if I am likely to be out and about on anything approaching half hour to hour trips. Anyway a light day can see me throw in another litre through the mid day period. After the afternoon dog walk I can get into my stride with another two to three litres spread across the afternoon to evening period. Generally my eyes are just a bit sore rather than dry, but after a salivary glad issue a week or two back my mouth can get dry enough to stick my tongue to its roof. After a typical 4.5 plus litres per day, fitting in much more fluid could be a challenge, though I was once measured at over 7 litres throughput. I have to manage diverticulitis via fluid and fruit and combat the side effects of a tablet I take by trying to ensure enough fluid passes my lips.

[Author]

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