A pain in the arse

Last week, I had a pain in my upper left leg; it was so bad, and continuous, I couldn't sleep. I went to the doctor, he poked it a bit, and prodded, and told me he thought it wasn't a DVT (I had a DVT in that leg a couple of decades ago) and sent me home.

Then it faded, and I was alright for a few days.

But on Tuesday it returned. Ladysolly was out playing bridge, but when she got back, I told her that I needed to go to A&E. Because 1) it was very painful, and I was facing another sleepless night, and 2) the GP hadn't done anything. So, round about midnight, we set out for Stoke Mandeville (because they dealt with my broken ribs so well).

Again, they dealt with me very well. I was obviously not an urgent case, and while I was waiting, a couple of babies came in and they were, rightly, pushed to the head of the queue. And there was a man there who was clutching his chest in great pain. I was also in pain, but a pain in the arse isn't as threatening as a pain in the chest.

After an hour, I was triaged. After another hour or so, I saw a nurse who took my blood pressure, temperature and oxygen level. After another hours, I saw another nurse who put in a cannula and took four blood samples, and after another hour, I saw the doctor.

His opinion is that it's a trapped nerve (the blood samples came up clean). He gave me Diazepam for it (a muscle relaxer) and suggested paracetamol as a pain killer. I got home at about 6am, and went to bed.

I checked the internet for additional recommendations, and it suggested heat treatment, so I'm applying a small electric blanket, and I think that also helps.

Brexit delayed

The can has successfully been kicked six months down the road. October 31st is the new target date. So now we can procrastinate, equivocate and tergiversate until October 30th, and then go into panic mode again and ask for a further can-kicking.

Huh.

What's going to happen?

The ERG Awkward Squad can now go back to being Awkward, Jeremy can point to the fact that he hasn't actually been offered any leeway, and anyway why would he want to help the Tories get free of the petard that they are hoisting themselves with, and the 650-strong clown car in Westminster can continue to be weak and wobbly for another six months.

But I can see a way out!

Revoke article 50. We've already done major damage to our economy via the three years of uncertainty, and we won't get that back.

In 2016, most people didn't know that we had a treaty with the Republic of Ireland (the Good Friday Agreement) that guarantees open borders, which can only happen if we have a customs union or a single market.

So the choices are:

1. Outside the EU, but customs union.
2. Outside the EU, but single market.
3. Inside the EU (revoke A50).

Those are the only three options, although there's minor adjustments that could be added.

So never mind how we voted three years ago. Democracy means that you get to change your mind every few years.

What's the best option, 1, 2 or 3?

Tomtom update

On April 6th, 2019, many GPSes, including TomTom, got hit be the "Millenium bug". Sort of.  There's a 10 bit week number in the clock, and that means 1024 weeks, about 20 years. Who would have thought we'd be using GPS 20 years later? Duh.

The practical effect on my ancient TomTom XXL, is that it can no longer tell me how many minutes to go before reaching my destination, or what my speed is. This is a minor problem, but slightly annoying.

So I updated the TomTom software. That turned out to be non-trivial, of course. You can only do it from a Windows box or a Mac, so I downloaded the software, and tried to run it. It crached, of course. I tried again. Same result. So I loged in to the Windows box as root, and tried again. That worked, nd the software was installed. So I tried to run it, and it asked for my username and password, and it rejected the one I had written down, so I asked it to email me a pssword reminder. It emailed me a link to click on, except that I don't use a web interface to my email (it's just too dangerous). So I clicked on the link in the email, which showed me the URL, I copy-pasted the URL to Firefox, it asked for a new password, which I supplied.

Then I was able to run the update. I chose to also update the speed camera data, but it choked on that, so I left that out and re-ran, and it worked!

So now I have a map update, and the clock works again.

Brexit - can I see a light?

Theresa May is, at last, reaching out to Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, and trying to reach a consensus that parliament can get behind. I would hope that between the two of them, they can reach an agreement, which probably means a Brexit with a customs union and "a strong relationship" with the Single Market.

This, at a stroke, solves the whole problem of the Irish Backstop. It removes the problem of the frictions in trade that a crash-out will cause. And yet it conforms to the stated requirement of the referendum - we leave the EU.

Yes, it's true that this wouldn't be as good as the deal that we have now, but 17.4 million people have rejected that, so we have to respect the referendum, and do as well as we can within that.

But. Are there enough members of the Awkward Squad (Right wing) and the Awkward Squad (Left wing) to block this? I hope not.

One very good sign, is that Nigel Farage is incandescent with rage about this. Anything that infuriates Nigel, is probably good for the country.

So let's see what happens when Theresa meets Jeremy.