Week of 3rd December, 2018

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Monday, 3rd December

This afternoon I got a text from Sarah, asking me to collect something from a local house. It's to do with the Guide Movement - Sarah has recently changed the names on the bank accounts appertaining to her responsibilities, and this is related to that. Unfortunately, the bank changed the names, but not the address, so this mailing went to the former incumbent, which means I get to make the pickup, because Sarah will get back too late.

So a quick drive to the other house, and collect the goodies - 4 chequebook sized boxes - and return.

Then I could run up get-iplayer to collect the programmes I want from the BBC's PVR-in-the-cloud.  And the USB drive that torrentpi uses to store his work is progressively dying. I really need to replace it asap.

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Tuesday, 4th December

I've an appointment at St. Mary's hospital today, to discuss the upcoming surgery with the anaesthetist.

So hop on a big train (it's quicker) to Paddington, and walk round the corner to the hospital. Signage is poor, as usual, but I found the place, and made my number.

In due course, I was gratified to hear that everything looks good, and I'm doing all I should be. Also, I now know where, and when, to report on Friday. Finally, travel home after discharge (hopefully Tuesday) is confirmed as taxi, and I must be accompanied. Katy is doing the honours for that.

I'm typing this in the same restaurant I patronised after the colonoscopy, while indulging myself in a Full English. And I could do without the muzak - Christmas tunes, with 3 weeks to go, yet!.

In the evening, I decided to try to fix the problems with torrentpi's USB thumbdrive. So say

sudo shutdown -h now

but maybe because I didn't wait for the shutdown, I think I pulled the power too quickly, because, after I'd swapped the USB drive, he didn't start up again. I'll probably have to restore the SD card from backup, which will lose all my get_iplayer history.

Meanwhile, I can use get_iplayer on inspiration2.

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Wednesday, 5th December

So this morning, I did. And for some initially obscure reason, datarates were down around the 12Mbit/sec mark, and the traffic graph wa showing flat-topped blocks for each download. Jusicious inversigation revealed that my VDSL downlikk rate was very low, with a sky-high signal-to-noise ratio. Further study suggested a link drop early Monday morning, after which routine speed tests from the fingbox showed the anomalously low datarate.

Eventually, get_iplayer finished its work, and I could restart ppp on the uplink. With no effect, of course, VDSL was still up, at the low rate. No excuse, I'll need a router restart. Bye-bye 197+ days uptime.

That worked, and I'm back to healthy datarates, according to the fingbox.

This little problem also fouled up some catchup downloads to the $ky box. Nothing that re-requesting didn't fix.

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Thursday, 6th December

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Friday, 7th December

The cancer surgery, today, at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington. I can, and will, get myself there, under my own power. Coming home, not so much. I'm supposed to be accompanied on the trip, and for at least 24 hours afterwards, just in case. Who will do it is, as yet, unknown to me. There's no parking, so it'll be a taxi home.

On the day: Reportig time is 07:30, so catch a TFL Rail train from Ealing Broadway station, (and pay for it - Freedom Pass is not valid at this time.

I got there in plenty of time, to discover that I shouldn't have brought so much stuff. But you can get round anything. The Admissions people kept my rucksack and coat under their hand, for security, but my EDC bag stayed with me under the trolley, as I went for surgery. The next several hours are a total blank, until I woke up in the recovery area, with surgery complete.

There followed another almost-blank, until they wheeled me up to the 8th floor, and parked me on a ward. Still very woozy, and with an epidural in my back for pain control

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Saturday, 8th December

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Sunday, 9th December

There's not much point in talking about these last days, and several more in the future. Hospital routine in inflexible, to say the least,  but everyone assures me that the cancer is gone. And that epidural pain relief is effective - there has been no pain, unless I make incautious movements, and they're pumping me full of IV fluids and extra painkillers. I'm not allowed to eat, or even drink - "nil by mouth" is the rule, and I'm starving. Funnily enough, I don't want to eat

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