I pre-wrote this post last week, intending to share that I was feeling somewhat better than the week before. I had slipped below my target weight and was trying to gain a few kilos, but with these persistent health issues, losing weight is far easier than gaining it.

My plan was to return to the local pool, and I had been sleeping much better.

Last Tuesday morning, I visited my GP to discuss my health and next steps. I finally convinced her to refer me to specialists for my hip pain. Things were looking promising!

However, just a few hours later, in the late afternoon, I could barely move, lost all my energy, and kept falling asleep. I checked my ketone levels, and the test strip turned black. I called 111 and was sent back to Basingstoke Hospital.

Because I caught it early this time, I spent three days in the hospital instead of four. Still, I’m incredibly tired of this. I’m not entirely convinced they know why this keeps happening, but they’ve adjusted my medications again and given me equipment to test my blood.

Work

Once again I’ve found myself the last contractor standing. It’s never a good sign. Since I’ve started, one contractor retired, and the other one’s just put in his two week notice because he’s found a solid long-term contract - and MAK won’t stop extending for only 3 months at a time.

On better news, I finally got to start work on the Architecture Version 2 project work. Well, myself and a subset of the platform team. I’ve been focusing on changes to the VPC, subnets, and firewalling so far, and actually started building the infrastructure in the latest sprint.

Other Stuff

• Fed my grand-cat last week whist the daughter and her fiance are away.

• My potatoes went into the ground at the allotment, and I think all three other beds are ready for planting.

• I managed to speak to my neighbour about halving my plot and she was gonna think about it. I frankly can’t carry on with a the size I have. It’s just too much.

As always, you can add my RSS feed to your reader of choice and if you made it this far thanks for reading!

Chris

For my American audience, happy Independence Day! And for my UK audience, happy “Tories can fuck off for a decade day”. Yes, it’s voting day here in the UK and the conservatives should hopefully lose the government. Not that Labour are much better but beggars can’t be choosers.

The Car

For a few weeks now the car’s been behaving strangely, first the throttle kept getting stuck at full when I pushed the clutch down causing the engine to rev uncontrollably. The only way to fix it being to let go of the clutch. Then about two weeks ago, the engine light came on and the computer threw up a slew of errors, and it felt like the car was in limp mode.

Turns out, the engine and computer fault was down to the glow plugs ALL being faulty. I knew at least 3 were because the car was almost impossible to start in the winter.

The car wasn’t in limp mode though. That ending up being the actuator arm on the turbo having become detached. Didn’t even know I had a turbo!

Anyways, got that all fixed for about £350 and the thing feels like it has power that wasn’t even there originally. Maybe the actuator was never attached correctly?

Health and Weight

About a decade ago I found myself exceedingly heavy and unfit. About 120 kg. So, I set myself 3 goals. The first was to get under 100 kg. I did that in 2019. The 2nd was to get under 90 kg. Last week, I did that too. Now, my final goal is to get to 79 kg - the same as I weighed in high school and in no way, shape or form overweight. The end is near.

And the New Job?

One of my favourite gigs of all time was working with Tesco Bank, but I’ve got to admit, so far, MAK System is a pretty close second.

The team members are friendly and competent. The code base and technology choices are sane, but not so perfect that there isn’t technical debt to get one’s teeth into.

And the developers are just the right shade of aggravating and awkward. Enough to give me something to complain to the missus about, but not enough to cause any real issues at all.