Technobabble

We have been very busy over the last couple of weeks....I think I might go back to work for a rest.

An Aboriginal lady asked for help with her PC laptop last week. It presented with the Blue Screen of Death and would not do anything. She had a lot of data on it which she needed to modify and print over the weekend for a submission. Whilst I don't have any great skills in the PC repair business I said I would take it to a friend and we would see what we could do to restore her machine.

We (mainly Rob) managed to drag the data off the hard drive with some magic software and reload WindowsXP and the data. That took some three hours of pretty intense grey matter pressure. The disk used to reload XP wasn't the one that came with that particular computer and that is where the fun began. Unless you use the original disk, the drivers for things like the USB port, Video control etc etc have to be found on the net and loaded separately. It all worked and I gave the machine back to the lady vowing to stick to what I know well....Macs.

Yesterday I went to Rob's school, where his IT students had refurbished a stack of 10 PCs for an Aboriginal group. My job was the clean up the cases, crank 'em up to see if everything worked and search to see if the drivers were all there. Three machines needed driver downloads, so we configured another three machines from the dozens Rob has in his classrooms. All done and they will be delivered today.

Enough technobabble for now.

Today is the day we find out if the CT scan done last week shows continuing decrease in Joan's tumour size. She has around 30 tumours in her liver and the last scan a month ago suggested 'Small, but significant tumour size reduction'. Today also sees the start of chemo round 7. After having round 5 delayed a week because of low white blood cell count and the next round reduced because of that we are a bit apprehensive that the dosage reduction may not give the same benefits. Joan is ready to tell the oncologist that she would like to get the full dose if he thinks that is necessary to continue the good results. Who are we to tell the man what should be done, especially when on a trial?