Well, awkward situations seems to be the norm these days so far in life.

Around 2 months ago I discovered that my left shoulder was numb to touch, similar to the feeling you get after going to the dentists.. that one where you can chew your cheek for 5 minutes and not feel anything except blood 😯

Ended up I didn’t think much of it, until the thumb and forefinger on my left hand went numb as well. This is where it went awkward, since I am what you could call a “southpaw”
(Left-handed just in case that reference went orbital)
No sense of touch in your thumb and forefinger means its bloody hard trying to pick anything up, or even grasp a pen properly.

So, down to the doctors to explain the symptoms after spending the night before reading up on the internet. (*note to self, do not believe anything from so-called “health” sites) I was promptly diagnosed with a trapped nerve in my neck and the information was passed across to Physiotherapy section to organise an appointment.

I hate Physios 🙁

It should be classed as an unorthodox form of torture, particularly that “traction” machine itself.
Easiest way to piss off a physiotherapist? slouch 😆

At the bottom of my last post in August I mentioned about upgrading my phone to Windows Mobile 6.. Yes I do happen to run around with one of those annoying PDA Phones and decided since I do work in IT, to have a fiddle with it and see what I can break 🙂

HTC produces rebranded items for large service providers (T-Mobile, Orange, O2, etc) but were sly, they only made it available through their HTC website to people who had a legit HTC serial number… thanks to some kind souls they managed to find their way onto the XDA Developers forum for all owners to download and try. So I was running the HTC WM6 version on my Orange SPV M3100 (tip: use the XDA Developers WIKI if you want to DIY )

Discovered that WM6’s bluetooth stack isnt the most “stable” of releases, courtesy of my cars bluetooth stereo having problems keeping connected, or having the wonderful “calling” bug appear when I start the engine. (It thinks the phone is making a call, and only way to solve it is to Soft Reset the phone)

So I tried a few other WM6 versions, only to discover that they all exhibit similar bluetooth problems 🙁 so I am now back on the original WM5 rom from Orange until someone releases an updated WM6 rom which does not suffer issues with Bluetooth.

Well its either that or buy a new phone, and I’m tempted for one of those new Motorola Razr2 V8 phones.

Hell, I would of went for the new Sony Ericsson K850i but at over £450 for the phone, fuck that !

Well back in BT for the 3rd time in this job, to the old BIC Systems building down Airport Road West.  This time the course is on Microsoft ISA Server 2004 (One of the vital services in my Remit).  There is only 3 people attending it, myself and two guys from Dublin… guess its not a course many people want to do!

2nd day already, the first went past in a blur (mainly because it was very old ground, theres only two ways to setup ISA2004… the correct way, and the half-arsed way.)  So today, we are picking up on how to configure ISA as a Proxy Server, the likes of Access Control Lists and whatnot (last time I done ACL, it nearly caused my brain to dribble out of my ears courtesy of Cisco)

The only sour point is that everything is done within Virtual PC 2007, but the machine is Windows XP, 2 gig of ram and a 2.8gig P4 single core…. they might need to rethink this course with a couple of C2D with hardware virtualisation 🙂

anyhow, back to the course!

So the last week we have been having somewhat of a good turn of weather, the Sun has been out and essentially “baking” here and everyone has been enjoying it.
Well except for today, which has been grey, dull yet still boiling… that was until the rain came.
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One lovely thunderstorm later, and its feeling somewhat cooler 🙂 I pity anyone who was caught out in it!
(embedded video courtesy of the WordTube plugin for WordPress, using the Flash Player from Jeroen Wijering)