9 November 2004: Blood

Five and a half weeks, and the lurgi remains. Floating around various parts of my body, including head, nose, throat and (messily on two occasions) stomach, the mystery virus remains at large. So I went to the doctor.

"Sounds like a virus," he said. "Just got to wait until it goes away."

Thanks.

"But," he added, "We'll get some blood tests done just to make sure."

So tomorrow I head off to one of the new-fangled 'NHS Walk-In Centres' to get my white-cell count counted, and my liver and kidneys checked, presumably to make sure they're still there (I've never had to check on them before, so they have have gone on holiday without telling me or something.) I'll keep you updated.

On the upside of things, the new toy arrived yesterday. A Dell Inspiron 510m with a nice 15in screen and high-res graphics, it is remarkably different to my previous laptop:
1. The fan is so silent that when I first turned it on, I wondered why it wasn't working.
2. The wireless bit works everywhere in the house and even managed to hack somebody's private network here at university without me asking it to.
3. The screen does not flicker on and off when I move the monitor/lid.
4. And most imporantly, it does not explode when I plug it in. Not yet, anyway.

Of course, I spent most of yesterday uninstalling the cruddy nonsense that came with it. Back in the olden days you used to get adverts on the desktop - 'Online Services' that you could choose to install if you didn't have anything else already in place. But this beastie came with both AOL and Tiscali already installed! Both of them! I could use one of them at a time even if I wanted to, and frankly I don't want to use either of them. So I spent most of the afternoon removing stuff, before figuring out that I couldn't quite figure out how to get rid of the Dell Security thing that happens every time I start it up, no matter how fervently I uninstall it.

Today, however, I've solved this in the way most computer problems are solved.

I'm installing Linux instead.

Let's see the bleddy Dell Security thing survive that. It'd have more chance of getting out of Fallujah alive.