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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Tuesday 12 August 2003 (Day View)

Fri 8 Aug | Sat 9 Aug | Sun 10 Aug | Mon 11 Aug |   Tue 12 Aug   Wed 13 Aug | Thu 14 Aug | Fri 15 Aug | Sat 16 Aug |

12.08.2003 – Tuesday 12 August

• I was awoken by the phone, and a short while later, Joe at my door telling me Mum was on the phone. She was worried because some weird window had popped up and frozen her computer, and she couldn’t shut down. I told her to pull out the power, and just before I left for uni, she phoned to say that it all seemed to work well now, so I didn’t give it any more thought and spent all day at uni, doing uni type things, and becoming worn out. I decided to watch “Pulp Fiction”, and indeed did for a few minutes, and then it froze up. I really, really hate scratched DVD’s. There’s something about the anticipation of the movie and the frustration of a stupid digital device that won’t do what it’s supposed to that is just so exceedingly annoying. I then copied it, but I think the image has some bad errors, as the first test play froze the DVD application, and I haven’t had time to check anything else since as Mum came online, spoke a few words and went offline again. This happened several times, Mum finally managing to say, “Windows must now restart because the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service terminated unexpectedly”. This didn’t sound very good. I couldn’t think of any good reason why this would suddenly start happening, apart from hardware failure, as Mum doesn’t do that much software manipulation to mess up anything that way. Ironically, just minutes before I’d got sick of all the extra port scanning going on and told the firewall to just shut up and block those particular ports, and kept half an eye on the #BITS channel where they were discussing some new worm that’s out. I got the feeling Mum might be a bit distressed over the PC, especially as she’d had to try so hard just to let me know what was going on, and I was rather worried myself in case it was some hardware fault, so decided to ring Mum up and see if I could find out more. First I needed online information, and having only the one phone line, I had to get this before disconnecting to phone Mum, which was fortunate as Shan came online and I had a quick talk to him to see if he’d be able to go fix Mum’s PC once I figured out what was wrong. He’d just patched his computer – from the same problem. So I guess that pretty well solved my problem and Shan said he’d go fix Mum’s some time tomorrow. I phoned her up and let her know, and now, here I am downloading the patch for my computer.

Finger

• I had a little cuticle on my finger, and sometime this afternoon I noticed that it was a little sore, and on closer inspection saw a tiny blister form. It has grown throughout the evening until it is now a third the size of my nail, and painful and hot. It’s almost becoming too much to type with it now. I think I may have bitten the cuticle, and then noticed the blister after that. A friend told me I could have some nasty disease on there, and should phone the hospital and see what they reckon. Normally something as menial as a blister on my finger wouldn’t bother me, but this one hurts too much and I can’t understand why it’s even there. It looks now, exactly as though I’d burnt my finger and it had blistered – that’s about what it feels like too, yet all I did was nibble a cuticle earlier this afternoon. I would like to be healthy. I realised today, that I can’t remember the last time I was healthy. I’m sure it probably wasn’t that long ago, but at the moment, I honestly can’t think of the last time I was healthy. I guess there’s nothing I can do about my finger. I can’t very well call an ambulance, and I can’t walk to hospital, so I might as well grin and bear it. If it’s bigger or worse in the morning then I’ll obviously have to go in to hospital and have it checked out, but let’s hope it isn’t. I do have to stop typing though, it’s hurting too much.

Comment by DK – Wednesday 13 August 2003, 7:31 AM

  Try lancing it with a clean sharp object such as a sterile needle or the end of a sharp knife sterilised by heat :)

Comment by Ned – Wednesday 13 August 2003, 1:45 PM

  That sounds like torture :-(