Saturday, December 12, 2009

Diarrhoea or Diarrhea take your pick

Yesterday I rang my contact for the Noongar Aboriginal Centre in Albany. We had previously installed some computers there in the hope of keeping aboriginal youth in touch with the world.

In Albany, there is a lot of absenteeism by aboriginal students at both primary and secondary schools and an alarming number of youth suicides. We asked that the community centre people report back to inform us as to whether the computers are being used and if it is thought that more machines would be useful. I was pleased to hear that they are being used and that they do need plenty more. I arranged to take a trip to Albany in late January with another ten iMacs.

The iMacs I am setting up are not speed machines, but are still working well and screen resolution and sound system is great. Being all-in-one machines they take up a lot less room than 'tower' computers. They were all manufactured in 2000, installed at the University of W.A., then Murdoch University and lastly at the CYO Institute where I collected them for further distribution. All they need is a PRAM battery of which I have ordered 50 from HK.
The only real problem with them is the size of the hard drive. They all have a 6+GB hard drive. The latest iMacs have a 2 Terrabyte disk. It isn't a great problem as I don't think there will be a lot of storage space taken up with documents...more likely is storage of photos.

To ensure that no private data is left on any machine I am doing a 'clean install' of the operating system which wipes all previous data. Games and word processor packages are also loaded.

Joan is again showing the symptoms of Campylobacter jejuni....nausea, dizziness and Diarrhoea.

The GP has ordered more blood and poo tests and the results will be available on Monday. Hope it is nothing serious.

I had a call from 'my' renal specialist saying that the latest urine test showed an increase of protein in the sample. Previously he suggested that my slightly high blood pressure may be causing this extra protein. He prescribed a beta blocker to lower my blood pressure...it worked! He now thinks that my low blood pressure is doing the same and has taken me off the beta blocker. Can't figure that one out. Another test late next week should shed some light.

Ah, getting old...it's great!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear of the ongoing health problems. Kind wishes, Paul.