Month: January 2014

Life changing day .. plus 1

/ Tony / Leave a comment

    Firstly, let me get one thing straight here. This is not going to be a day by day diary of the build up to my operation. It is going to more a recording of events that have a connection to my op.

    This morning I talked to my manager about what happened at the hospital yesterday. I was going to speak to our service leader, but did not get chance, and anyway, I am seeing her on Friday for a one-to-one. So back to my manager. She knew I was at the hospital and the reason. I had explained that I go every six months for an ultrasound and a consultation with the doctor. So the first thing she asked when I walked into the building, was “Is everything ok.” I replied, something like “…well I’m still alive….. I’ll come and have a chat when I get settled in.”

    Got the computer up and running and went through to her office for a talk. I explained what had happened, and she was extremely supportive, wanting to know all the details. After about an hour, I went back to my desk. Five minutes later, she called me through to her office and explained that she had spoken to our service manager about it and she was just as supportive. About an hour later the service manager called by my desk, sat on the corner and asked me if I was okay. I told her I was and she replied that if I was getting too stressed, I could work from home. I said I was fine and she tapped my upper arm and said we would talk later, which was very moving I thought.

    My manager had also mentioned it to the girl, I am supposed to work side by side and she had been very supportive too. I’ve not mentioned it to the two that I “supervise” as one was not here today and I want to tell them both together, so I’ll do that on Thursday. Tomorrow, I have to explain to my old colleague from my former job. I still do certain bit of work for them. Partly because I enjoy it and it keeps me in touch, but the main reason is, that they don’t really have anyone trained in the work. This has to change, and tomorrow is the day it changes. They have no choice now.

Life changing day . . . .

/ Tony / Leave a comment

    As the title says, today was life changing. I may have mentioned it before, but I have what is called an Abnormal Heart Murmur or a Regurgitation or more commonly, a Leaky Valve. I’ve probably had it since I was born, but it was only noticed about 8 years ago. Since then, I have been regularly monitored at hospital. There has always been the view, by the doctor, that one day, the valve would need replacing. It has always been, in the doctors words “…. a conversation for the future…” That future arrived today. I had my regular ultrasound appointment closely followed by an appointment with my doctor. I had the strange sense that something was different during the scan. It normally take 20 – 25 at the most, but on the doctors’ instruction, the radiologist took a lot more readings, and in the end, it was nearly 50 minutes before the job was done. It was now time to see my doctor, Dr Mc****y.

    The results of the scan, were a bit late in coming from the radiology department, so I had a bit of a wait before I was allowed into see Dr M. When I say ‘… a bit of a wait…’ it was about 45 minutes, which I don’t consider long at all. You should have heard the moans and groans from the patients that were there. Everyone was complaining about how long it was taking and how long they were delayed. For f**k sake, it’s not the end of the world if you have to wait 30 – 40 minutes to see your doctor. It is usually because some earlier patient was late or had been given some bad news. Just get over yourself, you’re not the only important person in the place !!!!! I apologise for the mini rant, but it does get me so cross.

But I digress. So my notes are delivered and after another 5 minutes, my turn comes. Dr M asked how I was and asked the usual questions eg do I get out of breath, can I still do everything I used to etc etc. I usually say I’m fine, but recently, I have been getting a little out of breath doing things like climbing stairs. That was it! He was like a cougar, jumping into action. He examined me for about 10 minutes and then hit me with the bombshell …… “I think I need to talk to the surgeon at the next meeting.” I just sat there nodding and saying shit like “fine” and “okay” and “I understand”. What he was basically saying, and he did not mince his words, was that I need my mitral valve replacing, and it needed doing soon.

I shall leave this as a bit of a cliff hanger …… to be continued!

Update to last post.

/ Tony / Leave a comment

     Well, I worked out how to use the mini keyboard. Possibly the worst thing I have bought. Just so difficult to use. It does not always connect, and the slightest  under press on the keys means the character does not get sent to the tablet. I think I will just have to cut my losses and forget it. As I said, cheap is not always chearful.

     This post was created, using the built-in keyboard and WordPress for Android. It has some limitations is can’t seem to change the ‘posted in’  but tags can be added quite easily.

Less than a week has passed …..

/ Tony / Leave a comment

    So it has only been six days since post ‘500‘ and quite a bit has happened. One of my colleagues worked out the extra cost, for changing offices to £720.00 per year. In his email to the manager, he stated that this was the extra cost ‘….for each of us…‘ which is not quite accurate. For me, even if I worked at the City office every day my driving would be shortened by 70 miles a week. Working from home one day, would reduce it by another 30 miles per week. Taking it all into consideration, including a £15.00 per week parking cost, by extra cost would be £132.00 pa or £3.30 pw. I think I can manage that.

    What annoys me a lot, is the assumption that we all ‘have a problem’ with this new working practice. There are at least two of us that just seem to want to get on with it. It’s not as if we have any choice! We just have to make the best of it. Change affects people differently. At the end of the day, we will still have a job. We may be put out a little, but in the current economic climate in Britain, having a paid job is something to be thankful for. Of course, the Trades Union is involved at a high level, but we also have a local convenor in our office and his views (right or wrong) seem to be getting some attention. I tend not to take any notice of this person, as I think that his attitude sometimes shows that he is still living in the 1970’s.

==============================

    Another problem cropped up with R*** on Friday. We live on the outskirts of Leeds. Our doctors, however is in Tadcaster. This means we receive our health care from North Yorkshire, and although it calls itself the National Health Service, effectively it is a localised service. So the problem is that R*** needs specialist dental care, because of his condition. Many dentists are very wary of treating people with special needs and Autism can be very scary if you are not fully aware of the issues autistic people face. He had to visit the Community Dental Practice on Friday. They examined him, and found his teeth to be doing okay, but then they dropped the bombshell. They told us, that because of recent changes by Government, they were no longer ‘allowed’ to treat him in Leeds as it was out of the catchment area. We would have to find another specialised dentist in North Yorkshire. It seems that there is one in Selby or York. This will have a serious effect with transport on his days at college and will mean whenever he has a dental appointment he would have to miss a day. We are not happy to say the least.

==============================

    On a lighter note, the mini keyboard for tablet came. It is a lot smaller than I anticipated, and I’m yet to get it to actually work. The accompanying manual seems to have been converted/translated from the original Japanese and some of the words and phrases do not make much sense. Still I suppose you get what you pay for, as I found out with the cheap 32gb SD memory card, I bought. That does not work at all with the tablet. So ‘cheap and cheerful’ does not always pay off in the long run.

Not as bad as feared

/ Tony / Leave a comment

    Now, this post refers to two issues. One that I’ve mentioned and one which I may have spoken about, but I cannot remember. So, I shall begin with the first issue:

Blogging with word 2013

    It worked! Not a lot more I can say really. However, that would be a bit of a waste of time my mentioning, if I don’t expand a little. This post is also using the ubiquitous Word 2013, so you could say that ‘the jury is still out’ to quote a much maligned phrase. It is definitely not Windows Live Writer (WLW) but I am beginning to warm to it a little more than before. I thought that I would miss the ‘generate tag’ plugin that WLW has, but you know what, I was never that good in the first place. With Word, I just have to post as draft and amend it. Also, unless I’m mistaken, there is no way to preview the post in Word, but I’m just nit picking I think.

    Now, what I would like is a cheap way of writing my blog on my ‘hudl’ tablet. Okay, I realise I can use the WordPress website, but that would be too easy. Well it will when my mini Bluetooth keyboard is delivered.

    The second issue is work related.

Workplace Review

    Looking back I have had a little rant about this, is to do with the next work review. Things change every day. Before this morning, we were under the impression that we may end up in one of the offices on the outskirts of the City centre around mid June. That is what I was hoping for. However, the word out today, is that we are to move to the City centre, literally, and it is going to happen in March. The office that has been mentioned, is one of three on the same street, each with a different name. Over the years, I have worked in both of the two other offices. Since 2005, I’ve worked in offices that are away from the centre, but quite easy to drive to. The new office is what we call a ‘Changing the Workplace’ office. All that means, is that we will not have our own desk, and we will hot-desk. My manager has done it for a while now, and she has started to get used to it. I do not think the majority of our team share the same feeling.

    One of the big issues, will be parking. At the current office, and since 2005, the parking has been on site and free. There is no such thing in the City centre offices. Nearest car park will cost £5.00 a day, which will be a big chunk of money that I’m not used to spending. Saying that, the new idea will be to be more ‘agile’ and as such, I will be able to work in other offices and I should be okay to work one day from home. So not all doom and gloom!

    On a lighter note, this post is number 500. Yes I’ve actually made 500 postings on this blog. Feel like I should sing something …….. “Happy Birthday to My Blog”

    

Blogging from Word 2013

/ Tony / Leave a comment

Now here’s a thing. Way back in October 2012, I was running Microsoft Office 2010. I attempted to post a blog using Word 2010. Whilst it was quite successful Word, did not have the power and facilities, I was used to in Windows Live Writer. There are muttering amongst, the rumour merchants that WLW is going to be discontinued, or as Microsoft put it ‘no longer supported’. This will be a shame, and will affect a large number of bloggers who use WLW. I have tried a number of alternatives to WLW including Zoundry Raven, Blogdesk and even the standard WordPress editor. None come a close 2nd to WLW. However, even this has its limitations and one of its big issues (as far as I’m concerned) is the problems with ‘Tags’. Okay, you can get an add-on that will create tags from your text, and this works very well for quite a number of blogging platforms, but it adds the tags at the end of your text. These do not seem to be correctly formatted WordPress tags and do not link to any tags in other blogs, which is a bit of a bind.

So, I am trying out this post, using the blog post template in Microsoft Word 2013. It does not feel much different from the 2010 version, so I’m not too sure if it is going to be better. There is still no facility to add tags, which is a major downside, but it just means that posting has to go as a draft. Now that, may not be such a bad thing in the scheme of things. I will just have to add the tags at ‘draft stage’.

I’ve just sent for a small keyboard for my ‘hudl’. I am wanting to be able to use it to write with. I know I can use my laptop, but there may be a time, when I want to write something, for say a quick blog post, or just a note to be used in some writing later. If you have ever tried to use an onscreen keyboard on a 7″ tablet (I know ‘should have got an iPad’) then you’ll know how difficult it can be. Especially when trying to format the text. It only cost just over £7.00, so it’s no great loss if it does not work.

Right. Time to upload this post. Wish me luck or something !!

Tablet virgin no longer

/ Tony / Leave a comment

 So this is the first post using my new tablet. I decided long ago that I did not want an iPad of any sort. I know they are very good (or so I’m told anyway) but I’ve never really had any desires to own one. I always fancied a Galaxy or something similar. Then along comes Tesco and the ‘hudl’! I read up on the kit and decided just after Christmas that I would save up and get one. Well as soon as Mrs H heard that, we were off to Tesco the next day to pick it up.

 So here I am, gingerly tapping this out, directly into WordPress. Much fun!!!

 

 

Getting back to normal (or as normal as it gets)

/ Tony / Leave a comment

     After surviving Christmas, the next task was to get through New Years Eve. We did!! R*** was on respite, as he struggles with the NYE fireworks. It’s not the fireworks themselves that are the problem, it’s the randomness of the explosions coupled with the unexpectedness, if that’s the word I’m looking for. So he was away for two nights and came back on Thursday evening. Sounds like he had a successful time, there were no reported issues. S**** and his girlfriend A**** and another friend from his university days, went to a party. They were all staying over, so that left me and K*** ‘home alone’ as they say. So what did we do… go to the pub? go to a party? go into town??? Nope, we watched the television. Well that sounds a bit simplistic, but it was a nice evening. We had a nice meal, some nice wine and spent the evening relaxing.

     Then it was back to work on the 2nd. That was a more stressful day than the whole of Christmas and New Year together. It appears now, that the work review that we are going through is changing somewhat. We were originally told, that our service would be “picked up and dropped into the new service” and that “new opportunities would present themselves.” We are now told that we will be “slotted in” but will have to push ourselves forward and sort of make a case for our existence. So that sounds interesting! We have also been told, that we need to make a brief ‘pitch’ to promote each one of us. My direct manager, S**** was pushing the idea, that this was going to be some sort of ‘presentation’ and that I should use Microsoft PowerPoint to do it. Ten minutes each was the suggested time frame for each one of us. The fact that this meeting was only booked for an hour with eight people to speak did not seem to matter. It is now down to a two minute talk about who we are, what we do, where we come from and where do we want to go. I am not looking forward to it at all. I’m not one of those people that enjoys self promotion. I’m a background person that just want to get on with the job in hand. I’ve been told that I should always be looking for better opportunities. Sorry, that’s not for me. So we will see what happens at this meeting on Friday.

     I now have a Tesco ‘hudl’. th I mentioned it to K*** just after Christmas, that I was going to see if they were reduced in the sales. I’m not a fan of Apple products, so the Ipad or Ipad Mini were not something I could ever see me using, but thought it might be useful to have some form of tablet computer.She got a bit annoyed with me as she did not know that I wanted one. We looked on the Tesco website, and she bought me a red one. We shall see how useful it proves to be. With it being an Android device, I am quite used to the operating system, which is the same as my smartphone. I just need to be careful that it does not turn into a smartphone without the telephone part.

     My attempt at writing a story based on letters from the main character is coming along, albeit slowly. I have a good idea where I am taking it, but I’m just not sure whether it is moving along to fast or even too slow. I decided to write this back in October 2013 and had the idea that each of the letters is a chapter of the story. I’m now up to chapter six, and this is where my doubts seem to be creeping in. I will finish it though, but not sure when.