Mar
25

Birthday surprise

2007 | Filed Under Me, My son | 10 Comments

It was my birthday last week.  I hit the grand old age of 42.  Unbeknown to me, my son had given me an extra birthday prezzie.  He gave me Chickenpox.  I thought I had flue and I felt lousy on Thursday, but after a couple of hours of extra sleep and a couple of aspirin, I did not feel too bad.  Indeed, I worked all day Friday.  I did suspect that I might of got the ‘pox, but discounted it on the basis of having taught a few people who had heavy colds.  I was wrong.  The spots which started to appear all over my scalp late on Friday should have given the game away, but I did not think that Chickenpox broke out all over your head first.  Wrong again.  On Saturday, there was no doubt and I felt dog tired and spent most of the day in bed, while the spots erupted all over my face and upper body, with one or two managing to invade my legs too.

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Mar
19

Ideas.

2007 | Filed Under Me, Technology and Gadgets, Thoughts | Leave a Comment

I’m sure someone could establish a rule for this.  What is this?  Well, it’s our capacity to dream things up which, eventually, become reality.  Old Leonardo did it with the helicopter and other things.  H G Wells and other Sci-Fi writers have done it too.  What starts out as pure imagination often becomes reality, although the time it takes for fantasy to become reality can often be hundreds of years.  Although, having said this, I am almost under the impression that we are starting to turn dreams into reality much more quickly nowadays, aided, no doubt by the ability of computers to, in effect, accelerate time.  Manual calculations which would have taken years, can now be completed in seconds.  Thus speeding the rate with which we are able to transform our ideas into reality.

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Mar
19

Blue Ray - new tech, but old problems?

2007 | Filed Under Technology and Gadgets, Thoughts | Leave a Comment

It looks as though DVD’s are about to be superseded by these Blue ray high definition data discs.  However, I’m not convinced that they are the bees knees.

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Mar
19

The big meeting - My son

2007 | Filed Under Italy, Me, Milan, My son | Leave a Comment

Well, we had the ‘big meeting’, only it was not that big and it lasted around half an hour including an endoscopic examination of my son’s nose, which revealed that all was OK.

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Mar
17

Big meeting on Monday

2007 | Filed Under Italy, Milan, My son | Leave a Comment

I’ve already mentioned this in the past, but the saga of my nearly four year old son’s swollen eye problem continues to drag on.  The actual illness seems to be ethmoid sinusitis.

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Mar
17

Dell 6400 - update 2

2007 | Filed Under Technology and Gadgets | Leave a Comment

I complained about the wifi on my newish Dell laptop in a few past posts.  The wireless signal used to drop so often that it almost became predictable.  Well, I finally got round to checking out the Dell site and I found an update to the Intel wifi management software.  This update has made a big difference.  Now it’s impossible to predict when the wireless signal will drop!

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Mar
14

Fantastic Fastweb!

2007 | Filed Under Life in Italy | 2 Comments

I was zapping through the 50 or so stations we have on our digital TV provided by the Italian ISP Fastweb last night and I got a surprise. Recently, and stealthily, Fastweb has added a plethora of new channels to its set-top box service. No surprise there, you might utter. Well, there is a surprise. Many of the new channels can be heard in their original language, which, more often than not, is good old English.

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Mar
13

Rummo Pasta

2007 | Filed Under Italian Food, Italy | 3 Comments

I have discovered Rummo pasta and I like it. Why is it a cut above your run-of-the-mill Barilla? Well, for two reasons. First, it has a higher than normal protein level because Rummo use good quality (Australian!) wheat and secondly because it is made using a special slow manufacturing process which results in a better quality pasta.

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Mar
12

Chickenpox - Varicella

2007 | Filed Under Me, My son | 2 Comments

Our wee one woke up with chickenpox on Saturday morning.  I always thought, up to now that is, that chickenpox was quite serious and knocked bouncy children out for a few days; with them having high temperatures and feeling down.  Not our little one.  Apart from the spots - and there are not that many - he is as lively as ever.  Trying to convince him to not scratch the itchy little spots is about as effective as speaking to a solid wall.  But I suppose this is just par for the course with little ones.

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Mar
6

Golf

2007 | Filed Under Italy, Thoughts | Leave a Comment

While waiting for some students the other day I noticed an Italian golfing magazine lying around, so I picked it up and flicked through.  I’m not a golfer, and will probably never take up the sport.  However, I can understand the appeal of the sport and I rather like golf courses, which, more often than not, tend to enhance and not blight their surrounding environments.   

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