Izdihar - Magic Kingdom Escapology

Sort of anyway. Took my little trip to the KFNGH this morning for my stress technetium test, it turned out it was 09:30 after all the earlier phone calls. As the procedure involve injecting a radioactive substance into your blood stream, the first thing they have to do is get a cannula into a vein in the back of your hand. Past experience has shown that trying this on my left hand where they seem to prefer putting them isn't overly successful with me - last time they tried this it took three very painful attempts on my left hand before they gave up and found a vein in the inside of my left elbow. This time at least, they only failed once on the left hand (it felt like they'd set my hand on fire) before trying my right which went in an absolute doddle. Next time, they will be pointed very firmly and directly to that side. Whilst they were doing all this, another nurse spent her time shaving my chest for the ECG sensors. It doesn't look great and AM really doesn't like the prickly effect for a couple of weeks afterwards.

The stress test itself was very straightforward. All they needed to do was get me up to 85% of my calculated maximum heart rate - max being 172 in my case (how do they work that out) and 85% being around 150 BPM. All in all it took about 11 minutes on the treadmill at which point they inject the technetium into the cannula. So once I'd eaten the obligatory cheese and cucumber sandwich they provide, it was off across the other side if the hospital to nuclear medicine.

The wander across KFNGH is always a rather pleasant little interlude, as there are gardens dotted around the place in between corridors and wards and so on. The sun was shining as always and the staff are rather friendly over there. For some reason, NM always seems to be tucked away in a corner, as if almost forgotten about. There's a quiet waiting area round there though and it did give me time to get my nose stuck back into the book I'm reading at the moment - Trudi Canavan's 'The High Lord'. Good escapist stuff when you're stuck around with nothing better to do till they're ready for you.

The scan itself involves nothing my than lying on your back for 15 minutes, then turning over and doing the same on your front for 10, whilst they run the scanner over you to pick up the stuff injected earlier. That done, it was out with the cannula, which for once I was allowed to do myself - blood runs out really fast when you don't put your pressure on it fast enough - easy enough to stop though. And that was that.

As always, I got slightly confused on the way back through the hospital to get back to where the car was parked - I always seem to find myself in a corridor that I shouldn't be in on the way back - but at least this time I didn't need help to work out where I'd gone wrong. I had to get petrol on the way back, but was concentrating so hard on spotting a filling-station, that I missed my turn on the way past the camel souk and ended up on the Dammam highway for 20 Km until I got to a junction I could retrace my steps from. At least it meant that I could go into somewhere for petrol that I don't normally use and get a shot of someone new for my 'Petrol Pump Attendants' series on flickr. I'll pop it on the bottom of this post later, once I've downloaded and processed it - I think I may have got one of the better ones today, but I'll know for sure once it's off the camera.

I have to go back on Saturday so that they can do the same scan, but without me needing to go on the treadmill. This will be a resting one, but still the same messing about with cannulas and 'glow in the dark' chemicals being introduced into my veins.

Now all I have to do is see if I can shake off the cold I seem to have acquired over the last couple of days. If it's not one thing, it's another as they say...

As promised then

Link: http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-server-ubuntu8.04-lts

Alright, only a small success to be truthful, but I have managed to get a little further with the Ubuntu server build. At long last, I managed to get it fixed up with a static IP address, have been connecting from the Vista box to 'PIGLET' with PuTTY, have the basics of using Vim worked out and I've finally got something other than a default "It works!" page into the root of 'www'. It's not much, but then I never claimed to be much of an expert in some of these things. Next step is how to connect using FTP, then finally, I may be able to push content into it from Dreamweaver CS4. Much thanks go to the page above for the low down on how to fix it all up.

OK, so I know I've not been very reliable at posting anything this week, I can't really claim I'm massively busy or something, but I was short of something to say that would be of any real (or suspected) interest to anyone. Did I mention I'm not very reliable at this sort of stuff? Thought so..

What to tell you then? One thing I could tell you is that the image in the header above is about to change, but unless you are paying very close attention, you'll probably not spot a thing. All I'll say is a brief thanks to Andrew Hreschak who created this skin. Nice work there.

One thing I do wish to get off my chest is the press treatment of Stoke City in the coverage of our games. Almost every time we play a side that doesn't beat us (as apparently some have mandated they should), you see endless sloppy commentary about how such and such side didn't play their best football and that somehow they are flat and listless. Does it never occur to them that the manner in which Tony Pulis sets out our game plan might be responsible for that. Always, the result is attributed to the opposition playing badly, never is it that we were might have been playing well and never is the team credited with that. After a while it really does stick in your throat what is said about us. I know we're not fashionable, I know we're unlikely to ever win any major honours, but at least show that you understand what is going on on the pitch and drop the cheap, lazy and 'big four' biased coverage.

I should also mention that I'm off for another stress technetium on Wednesday - or at least I will if KFNGH can decide whether the appointment is at 12:00, 08:15 or 09:30 - at least I've managed to establish that it's 'no caffeine' from 17:00 the evening before.

No pics from yesterday's Fight Cub this time - competent they may have been but, they didn't exactly set the world alight this time, though the voting isn't over for a while yet. If you're desperate, head over to the Chris of Arabia's Trash Can and look for yourself.

Link: http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=17567

Well that was fun. Had a problem with my widgets there for a moment ( those things over there --> ) full details to be had by following the link above.

So that's my first week of 2009 over in the office and we hit weekend at last. There are any things to be done this weekend; shopping, find AM a birthday present, perhaps get some plants for the back garden, get a corner shelf to put the SoundDock on - life really is a whirl round here at times you know.

Seems Stoke have bought themselves another player. This time Matthew Etherington from West Ham, a winger by trade, if only I could work out which side. Hopefully he's left-sided, as Richard Cresswell has been filling in for some time and it's really not his natural position and at times it has shown. I wish Matthew all the very best at the club and would like to think he could start like that on Saturday against Liverpool - we need the points desperately. Come on you Potters...

Not much else to report, other than all the luggage survived intact. Can't really complain at that to be truthful. More from sunny Riyadh soon.