Small World (by sarah)

I went in for my blood tests today and was a bit confused that I didn't have to drink the horrible sugary drink like during the pregnancy for the diabetes test but otherwise it was pretty much just more blood being taken into those test tube like vials.

I have to say I've noticed that some nurses (like today) managed to take blood with there really being no pain what so ever where as others hurt and leave damn great big bruises (the ones from the hospital still haven't faded :/).

Anyway the nurse first off all took a double take at my surname and then discuessed its origin with me - then she took a double take at the address - it turns out she is the nurse who used to come and look after Alarics grandmother - used to bath her and stuff!

She asked me about the Mill and Barbara and said she hadn't seen my father-in-law in a long time and she got very nostalgic.

Then I bumped into Barbara signing in for her Cholesterol check - she was going in to see the same nurse 🙂 and was looking forward to it as she is the only one left who did stuff for 'Mummy'.

Knowing I have stomache ulcers - explains the random pain I get in my side - but god does it not like it when I haven't eaten which is odd :/ It was being a right little so-n-so as we went off to the pharmacy to pick up the rest of the prescriptions.

Again we went into the Christain Aid thing and had coffee and biscuits and Jeany managed to meet another Jean who was excited as you don't meet little girls called Jean anymore! And then the guy taking the money bought Jeany a cake - again she manages to get people to give her food :/ I think it must be a human instinct thing to give small children food!

I also bought Jean a little white heart tin made of metal with a pale blue flower on it - it was 25p and she can keep the beads from her broken braclets in it 🙂 She likes it anyway.

Back to the Drs (by sarah)

Today I went back to the Drs to talk about my results and the hospital visit - he was please with how much better I am looking compared to last week but concerned about the energy level thing, the obvious run down-ness and sleeping all the time. We discuessed that it could be stressed and that things could have gotten ontop of me and then he gave me list of blood tests I need to have to make sure.

My bloods from the hospital where not normal but weren't not 'seriously' so - I have no idea what this actually means and I hate the amiguaty.

I forgot to mention the skin thing that's not getting better and the fact I am waking up with pins and needles in my feet and hands each morning but I did find out that I have stomach ulcers and was given another batch of pain killers and stomach liners.

I then had to fill in a questionaire and arrange to have bloods taken and a follow up appointment to discuess the results of these. The bloods are for diabetes, thyroid, celeic's disease (no idea how to spell that! but its an allergy to wheat or something) - I think there was another but can't remember what it was.

We also had to sort out an emergancy prescription for dad as he didn't have enough insulin with him - as he takes porcin instead of any of the synthetic insulin's it was a bit of a drawn out process as most places do not stock it anymore - Dad unfortunatly can only take the pig extract one as his body reacts badly in mirade of ways with the synthetic stuff - a rare occurance but one that does evidently exist.

Then it was to getting the prescriptions and me being a bit worried that my prescription costs are now out weighing my food budget which sucks big time 🙁

I had had an early morning appointment but the dr was running 1/2 hr late when I arrived and then we had to wait 1/2 extra for dads appointment when i came out and then I had to wait for my prescription at the local pharmacy in Painswick (dad's stuff wont be in until the morning) so we were finished about 1 o'clock by which time it was urgant Dad eat.

Fortunatly this is Christian Aid week and one of the Church Halls was having a fund raising lunch - so we went and eat a nice lunch there.

I am now currently fasting for the glucose intollerance test tomorrow and hoping that chewed finger nails don't count as food :/

Kittens!!!! Galore!!!! (by sarah)

Our friends cat Sookie has given birth to 8 kittens - 8 for a first litter - that is a lot! and they have started up a blog about them with cute pics and things 🙂

I've also added it as Kittens Galore! to the Friends Blogroll down the side of the page.

🙂

Alaric says we have too many cats even if they are cute and very small little baby cats 🙁 Plus they live far away from us and Minni struggeled with the journey from London too here and we had to stop at the services for her to have a stretch out of the box (this was had to be done very carefully to make sure she didn't run away).

Jeany Buscuits (by sarah)

There are cute pictures of Jean decorating Easter Egg shaped ginger biscuits over on the Salaric Cooking Blog 🙂 I have only just gotten around to putting the post live - doh!

Bench PSU made from an old PC power supply (by alaric)

My first PC compatible was an actual PC. As in, the original IBM PC - not even an XT. It died a death, but I salvaged the power supply from it, with the nice red switch, to be a bench PSU for my electronics experiments:

It supplies -12v, -5v, 0v, +5v, and +12v. Which served me well for some years, but these days, everything's 3.3v or 1.8v. And my termination setups - first wiring directly into the row of screw terminals on a breadboard, then later a bit of wood with metal strips nailed to it so I could attach croc-clips easily - all left something to be desired.

So I got busy and built this:

Complete with a power LED so I can see at a glance if it's live:

Inside it's quite simple. Most of the terminals are fed directly from the PSU via the black cable, but I added an extra wire for an earth connection to the chassis (which I checked was really earthed) for ESD wrist straps. I mounted 3.3v and 1.8v linear regulators on a bit of stripboard along with the LED and its series resistor, and hooked it into the 0v and +5v lines.

Job done. Now the last bit of major infrastructure I need set up is to get Ethernet into the lab so the PC I have in there for driving the dev boards can access the Internet and my version control system...