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Yep, exactly 3 days after the initial coral cut, the infected one exploded into a rather ugly piece of work, prompting a hasty visit to the doctor for some antibiotics. You may also notice that we have a new PuppyCam as of today. I got a bit tired of having to switch the Minolta back on every time there was an interruption to the constant demand for a video feed, so I just acquired another webcam via eBay. This one is quite light & is therefore able to be mounted on the outside of the window, so it's higher & provides a more balanced view. That's my story & I'm stickin' to it! Ok, here's an interesting scenario to kick off the new financial year. Because of the infected coral cut, I am on some fairly heavy duty antibiotics. And as you probably know, they tend to generate a goodly amount of diarrhoea. And they MUST be taken with food. So, ... it's Friday night, Julie is working late & I'm rebuilding a computer (as you do), so I pull a packaged meal out of the pantry to have with the tablet. Unfortunately, it has a bit of MSG in it, which starts my legs aching a little later, so I take extra aspirin to counteract the aching. Trouble is, additional aspirin has a detrimental effect on my already enlarged prostate, which is normally just on the borderline of "OK" & I can usually pee OK during the night. So there I am at midnight, sitting on the bog, trying to pee & it's not starting and trying not to poo & it's not stopping! If you have been following the webcam developments, you will now notice that they are back to full functionality. The new combination of motherboard, processor & memory that I acquired recently was installed in the machine in the bedroom, to drive the YardCam. Problem was, the file server was getting loaded up with Bit Torrent downloads & now two cameras, one of which uses motion sensing. So it was starting to struggle, while the new setup was just idling along. Easy, just swap the processors. Nope, they are different types. OK, just swap the whole combinations. Nope, the chassis of the one in the bedroom is not wide enough. Final solution, which took me days to figure out, was to simply buy a new chassis, for a whole lot less money than most of the other options. Looks nice too. So then there were the inevitable technical issues to get it all up & running, and it only took about 3 days, but I got there in the end. We now have the one in the bedroom looking good & just ticking over, while the "new" file server can handle the load. The big news for this week is the installation of the solar water heater. And of course (finally), the webcam captured the event - the condensed slideshow starts here. I had to switch the electric booster on when I got home & switched it off the next morning, & it hasn't been on since then. The water is hot enough & we are about to do some tweaking to get it a bit hotter, as the Alpha Female in the house likes her shower REALLY hot. Update: I found the valve that must by law be installed, that mixes the hot water with cold to provide the end result at a particular temperature. Tweaked that up a notch or two & there have been no more complaints. And the weather has finally gotten really cold - it's been frosty most mornings & tonight I rode home in the wind & rain, where the rain was bouncing off the road & blowing towards me in sheets. At one point, I pulled over to the left, because I was only game to do about 50 Kays, & the cars passing me weren't doing much more than that. Fun!
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