Mona is still not showing her face much,
and today wasn't a good day for keeping an eye on her: Yvonne had horsey visitors in the morning, and in the afternoon we were off to Geelong. She has found a hiding place
behind this cabinet:
Off to Geelong again today for
what proves to be the final followup on my eye surgery. Once again Bridget, the orthoptist, saw me first, and confirmed
that her main purpose was to measure my eyes. Three weeks ago I had asked her to do so before I knew what I was there for.
And the results were interesting. Left eye -0.5 dioptre spherical, +1.0 dioptre
cylindrical, at 100°. Exactly what my right eye had three weeks ago. But the right
eye has changed (and improved). No spherical correction any more, just +0.5 dioptres
cylindrical at 130°. That's very much in line with what I had been observing.
And then an eye scan with this Zeiss device that I haven't been
able to identify. It proves to be a scan of the macula, and all came out well. That's good,
because I'm overdue for a macular scan.
In to see David, who was also happy.
In principle I should come in for a final checkup at the end of May, but given the current
status it's likely that he will take an even shorter look and say “yes, everything's OK” and
send me on my way again. Not much for a 2 hour drive. So we agreed that we would only make
an appointment if something were to change. And he suggested that I have my eyes checked
with an optometrist (Specsavers) at the end of
May, very much in line with my current appointment for 10 June.
So it's done! All in all, an excellent outcome, and one of the best treatments I've had
anywhere. To be recommended.
Mona is gradually becoming less timid,
but the emphasis is on gradually. I was here alone in the morning, since Wednesday
is Yvonne's shopping day. Mona came out and inspected the
place, wanted to be stroked, and all seemed well.
But then I went into town too, and when I got back, she had retreated behind the bassoon
cabinet again. And she didn't come out for hours. By 20:00 I was getting worried and
looked for her everywhere (how often have I done that with various cats?). Climbed up on a
footstool and looked down behind the cabinets in the corners. Nothing.
But Bruno, who had joined in on the
fun, suddenly hissed: Mona was right in front of him in this part of the bassoon cabinet:
Extracted her, moved Bruno to another room, and she stayed with us all evening. She's
becoming much more friendly now, and if it weren't for the other animals, the adaptation
period would probably be over.
Into town today to visit Kontoku Shimokawa to hear the results of Yvonne's latest pancreasMRI. Things didn't start off well: it took
longer to put the animals away, while driving out of the garage I managed to knock over the
air compressor that I had carefully placed behind the car, the door opener remote control
didn't work, so I had to go and get the spare, and while I arrived in front of the practice
exactly at 14:00, by the time I found a parking place and walked back, it was 14:05. Never
mind, Kon always lets us wait—except for today, where he was 3 minutes early. He had put in
another patient in between, so we had to wait after all.
Never mind, says Yvonne, all is OK, no change since last time. We could have left, but
since he had been alerted that we were both there, we went in anyway. Gap in pancreas has
increased, the question is when to have surgery. Some time in the next 5 years; after age
80 he wouldn't want to perform surgery, which would take up to 12 months to recover from.
Yvonne is clearly worried (“give me three years and I'll be happy”). I don't buy that.
Clearly we're going to have some discussions. The question is whether her other ailments
might make the point moot. For now she has another MRI appointment in 3 months.
Why couldn't I open the garage door with the remote control today? Clearly the battery was
flat. That's not surprising after 9 years, but how do you change it? The casing clearly
comes apart, but there's no indication how it's intended to be opened.
I still don't know. I opened it by pressing a screwdriver between the two halves, slightly
damaging the casing, but that doesn't seem right. Maybe it's intended to be opened
somewhere round this buckle, but I don't see where:
Yet another nonsense email from AAMI today, a reply to my message of 12 April:
I have attached the screenshot showing that your wife willingly shared your vehicle's registration when asked by our client to claim insurance.
The screenshot attached shows where you confirmed the accident.
The evidence holds you at fault. Please share your insurance details or pay the demands in full before we escalate the claim for further recovery.
What kind of nonsense is that? Of course we “willingly shared the vehicle's registration”.
Why not? And the (second) screenshot to which he referred is part of my diary entry for 18 October 2022, clearly stating “The damage? Nothing visible”. OK,
Nitin, tell me what makes me at fault, and how it explains the various damages that Helen
Miller claims to have been cause, from memory including scratches along the side of the car.
Where's the assessor's report?
The best thing is to go along. Escalate the claim. Nobody with any sense is going to take
this one to court.
Checking the weather readings from my weather station this evening. None! I had forgotten
to restart the application after tiwi lost power on Saturday.
OK, start it. “Can't find libmysqlclient.so.18”. Damn, which version is it? I've been
messing around with these things so long that I don't recall which I was using. In
principle it would be in ~/src/weather/WH-1080-tiwi/, but there is no such directory,
just directories with other system names and versions going back 12 years:
WH-1080-teevee/ maybe? No, that didn't work either. OK, rebuild the executable.
“No mysql/mysql.h”. Oh.
More messing around. There is a
file /usr/local/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient.so.18. What does ldconfig -m say?
Accepts it, works. Why did I have to do that? Probably
because /usr/local/lib/mysql/ is a symlink to the directory on eureka.
Done? No, I had blown away /home/grog/src/weather/WH-1080-teevee/wh1080. How do I
get it back again? From a backup (220 GB of compressed tar)? That could take hours.
Rebuild? It doesn't work on tiwi, but it does on eureka. And finally
I was able to get the thing running again. Only half an hour of work.
I really should tidy up this mess.
This page contains (roughly) yesterday's and today's entries. I have
a horror of reverse chronological documents, so
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but if I fall behind it may contain more. You can find older entries in
the archive. Note that I often update a diary entry
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