Bloody Blackberry Enterprise Server!
The machine that we’re running our server on is about to run out of warranty and as this is a critical business system it has to be on up to date hardware.
So we purchased in a new server and now I’m preparing to move the software from one machine to another.
I hit the Blackberry website and they have a lovely step-by-step guide on how to do this move, it looks really easy, especially as Blackberry supply something called a “migration kit” especially for this process.
So I contact our reseller and ask him for the kit, basically a temporary key that will work for 60 days which should be plenty of time to get everyone moved from the old server to the new one.
I got a reply quite quickly, “Sorry, Blackberry don’t do migration kits any more – you’ll have to use the other method”.
I popped back to Blackberry support and found the “other method” that was mentioned and it looks like a complete and utter nightmare!
There are numerous steps that are required and numerous amounts of manual configuration and you just know if you get one of them wrong then everything will go down and then I’ll really be in the shit.

I spoke with our reseller again and asked him if there were any other options open to me.
I could buy a new license for the second server, that way I could run both servers side by side and migrate users at their convenience.
The price for the second set of licenses – oh around £2000!
So that rules that plan out and now I’m going to have to read through about 200 pages of documentation to see how the fuck I’m supposed to move this bloody server.
It would also appear that Blackberry, in their infinte wisdom, have actually removed some of the “I want to move my server” options from tha latest version that were available in an older version.
Nice going you bunch of idiots.
This is going to be a complete nightmare – I do hope I don’t generate too much downtime.

We’ve been out for a family event today.
It was someone on Elizabeth’s side of the family, birthday today so we went for a drive out to Northampton to say hello.
There was quite a large gathering of people there to wish him happy birthday and to enjoy some drink and some food.
Of course as with most parties for me these days I couldn’t exactly have that much to drink, but that didn’t stop me having one beer – well you’ve got to have some fun in life or it wouldn’t be worth living!
I recognised a few people at the party, people I’ve met at similar events in the past or Christmas or Easter etc.
I am however ratjher bad with names and I was having to be reminded by my wife on numerous occasions as to who was who and where exactly they sat in the family tree.
I’m not blood to any of them, however I am family by virtue of marriage so really I should embrace all family.
“Our Side” (by that I mean my blood relatives) is rather small, so really I should enjoy the larger family on Elizabeth’s side.

The meal was a buffet affair which always goes down well in my book.
For some reason I enjoy going up to a table and choosing exactly what I want to eat.
In fact the knowledge it was going to be a buffet meal was one of the reasons I wanted to go to the party – I haven’t been to one for a while now.
And the centre piece of the meal? They had a whole lamb on a spit-roast.
It was a little late, the typical English weather meant that it took a little longer to cook than planned, however once that meat came around it was amazing.
There was just so much of it and it was just so tender.
I could never be a “veggie” I’m afraid, I just like my meat so much, especially when it is carved straight off the beast!

Now I don’t like to point blame at somebody or something without proof.
I also don’t like to blame somebody or something when they really cannot put across their side of the story.
However I’m pretty sure that I am adding up two and two and getting a very sensible four!
Ever since we got the new cat, on two occasions I’ve found damage to my car.
Damage that looks exactly like a cat has got it’s claws out and scratched the paintwork.
Now I’ve seen our cat running around outside and chasing insects and other bugs and all it will have taken is for him to have jumped up after something and that would be instant damage to my car.

We’d just been to the cinema and I was heaading back to the car when I noticed new damage, this top on the bonnet.
The damage looks very much like a cat has lept up scratched the car while chasing an insect of some description.
This is the third bit of damage to my paintwork and now this new bloody cat is becomming rather expensive to keep!
His food and board aren’t expensive, even his vet bills aren’t too bad, but his bloody damage to the car is going to become costly.
I’m managing to get rid of most of the scratches so far with some of the magic “T-Cut” stuff, but you can only do that a few times in any one area before you start to take the paintwork down too much.
I really don’t know what I’m going to be able to do about this – the cat will do as he likes and I know of no way of stopping him.
Bloody cat!!

For yet another evening I’ve had a near flawless dialysis session.
I got on to my machine a little bit early and that meant I was probably going to get home a good half an hour earlier than usual.
The machine was immediately started with a speed of 350 and with red-to-red this meant I was getting the very best possible dialysis through my line.
Throughout the evening the machine alrmed no more than about three times and that was when I was laughing or I moved around a little too much.
Each time all I had to do was reset the alarm and I was off again.
I don’t know what has suddenly happened to my line but right now I’m probably getting the best dialysis I’ve ever had.
If I can continue having sessions like this my next month blood tests are going to be near perfect.
When you’re getting dialysis like this through a line it makes you feel that you really don’t want to bother moving to a fistula – why would you want to potentially break something that isn’t borken?
Oh well, fingers crossed I manage to keep this up.

I’m sitting here looking down at the very unsightly bump on my belly and trying to decide if it is actually getting any better.
Don’t get me wrong, it looks a lot better than it did even a couple of days ago.
Most of the bruising around the site has now started to go away so that would certainl indicate that I’m no longer bleeding inside.
However the size of the bump just looks and feels about the same as it was a week or so ago and I was under the impression it would start getting smaller.
Sure I’d have a bump there for anything up to four to six weeks, but I did assume that over that time it would get better and generally smaller.
I’ve obviously got another dialysis session tomorrow evening, so if my doctor is around I may well have a little chat with him and he can attempt to make me feel better about things.
Twice I’ve been told that the bump was going to be operated on and then a day or so later I’m told that isn’t going to happen.
I cannot help feeling now that eventually it will be operated on, personally I’d rather they just put a needle in again and took most of the blood out.
That would be the very best way to 100% confirm that I have stopped bleeding and it would also take the bump down a bit – I’m so very concious of the fact that people can see the bump through my clothing.

We went into the hospital today to speak with the “Living Transplant Donation Coordinator” (very impressive title), to talk about my wife being a possible kidney donor to me.
My kidneys will never get better and my best chance of some kind of normality back to my life is a transplant.
The average wait for a kidney is 2-3 years, however if there is a living donor who is willing to give one of their kidneys up, then that time can of course be cut back.
There is also the added advantage that the kidney will start working immediately, one taken from a dead person can take up to a week to get started and that first week is oh so critical.
My wife has agreed to speak to the people about the possibility.
She can of course back-out at any point and I certainly wouldn’t lose any kind of respect for her if we did.
She could also of course be told she cannot donate due to medical reasons and the chances of her being a perfect match are very small, but things are moving.

I found it quite ammusing that I was asked to go in with her on this first appointment.
We spoke to the woman for about five minutes before I was told that I needed to leave the room while the first question form was filled in and I remained out of the room for over half an hour.
I was then allowed back in the room where we spoke for all of another two minutes before we left – my wife to go and get some x-rays and some bloods taken.
So I’m not quite sure why I was required to go, but I’m assuming it is to make sure we are who we say we are, to confirm we are indeed a married couple and I’m not just somebody attempting to buy a kidney off of a stranger.
Anyway I wanted to be there for my wife, if she is willing to potentially go through all of this and to effectively half her renal funtions for me then of course I’m going to be there at every corner.

When it actually comes to the transplant my wife will actually suffer more than me.
Sure I’ll have a foreign kidney inside me that my body will try it’s best to reject, but at the end of the day my body is getting a kidney back and so things will improve almost immediately.
My wife on the other hand is losing a kidney, so her body will have to get used to the reduced renal function.
We’re still quite a way off, it will take at least three months before we know if she is able to donate a kidney to me, but the first steps were taken yesterday!

Well I’ve had some bad dialysis sessions over the past few weeks, yesterday however was the best I’ve had in a very long time.
I expect this was mainly helped by the fact that I am allowed Heparin again, so there is a lot less chance of my blood clotting in the machine – that always annoys me when that happens.
It also keeps my blood “flowing well” so in theory that should mean a better pump speed on the machine, more and better dialysis – it is all good.
Last night we were on machines about five or ten minutes earlier than usual which is just so nice when it happens, it means we can get home that little bit earlier and when you’ve had a busy day at work that is what you want.
The nurse put my pump speed up to 400. I looked at him and gave him a little laugh, there was no way my little line was going to be able to cope with a pump speed of 400.
Just last week I was starting at 300 and on some occasions having to drop to 250 for the last part of my session because the machine was throwing up errors all the time.
He said to me that as my blood was now flowing well there was no reason at all why a pump speed of 400 for the session couldn’t be done.

And guess what? He was right.
I would say the machine probably alrmed about six times throughout the evening, but on each occasion it was just a matter of resetting the alarm and off I went again.
There was a little worrying moment when my artificial kidney fell from it’s mounting, if it had managed to take a pipe off on the way down that would have been exciting, but it didn’t and so all was well.
So last night I’ve quite possibly had the best session of dialysis I’ve ever had.
I honestly cannot remember ever having a pump speed like that for a whole evening, even when it was a brand new line just gone in.
I see people with fistula’s with a pump speed of 400, so now I’m even questioning the need for one of them (too late now, that has already been done).
With fingers crossed I’ll be able to have some more good sessions like that as I’m sure they do me a lot of good.

I’ve had another “not so great” dialysis session – kidn of had enough of them to be honest.
The evening started off very well, I arrived at dialysis a good half an hour before our twilight sessions are supposed and instead of being made to sit outside and wait we were allowed straight in.
Not only that, within five minutes of getting in somebody was putting me on a amchine – this was a good half an hour ahead of usual and I thought it would mean a slightly early night – bargain for a Friday evening.
Alas because of my ongoing issue they once again had to offer me minimum heperin which meant clotting up wasn’t an “if” situation, more a “when”.
We did try flushing every hour, however on Wednesday I was flushed every half an hour and that was obviously what I needed – half hourly flushes and not hourly.
So with around an hour to go the machine started alarming all the time and it was decided that there was a clot and that would mean my machine being relined and me losing around 15 minutes while this was done.
Also when a machine clots they cannot return all of the blood to you, so you end up losing some which is never great for you.

I still finished a little bit early, however I think I took a little too much fluid off.
I’d taken into account the hourly flushes when I decided how much fluid I was going to take off, however all it took was for one of those to be missed and my loss of blood due to the machine clotting up.
So I ended my session withour cramps (major bonus) and the lightest I’ve been for a very long time (another bonus) however also feeling a little bit wooley-headed (not so good).
I can onyl hope that my blood pressure sorts itself out overnight and then I’ll be fine by the morning.
Otherwise I’ll have one of those horrible weekends when I feel light-headed every time I stand up and I hate those and I’m sure the wife does too – she does worry!

It is not often that I get to read the news and actually hear some good news with regards those of us waiting on a new kidney.
The last bit of bad news I had was when I heard that the current government have no plans on introducing an “opt-out”policy with regards transplants.
With no many people saying “I would get on the donor list, I just can’t be bothered” I honestly felt an opt-out policy would result in a lot more organs coming about.
Those that don’t uffer from kidney failure (thank god) really don’t know how difficult it can be – imagaine having to go to hospital three times a week and then sit on a machine for 4hrs at a time.

It turns out that kidneys where the patient has suffered from some kind of heart failure or attack are not that often used in transplants.
Previous data and information on these kind of kidneys said that they didn’t last and you were in effect putting an already damaged kidney into somebody.
Well new information from the amazing boffins at Cambridge now say that there is no real reason at all not to use kidneys from heart attack victims in transplantation and that research chows they are no worse or better than kidneys retrieved in the “usual manner”.
At the moment kidneys from such patients do not automatically make their way into the allocation system, however many patients were offered such a kidney, however many turned it down because of fear of it not working correctly once transplanted.
So with fingers crossed such kidneys are now going to make it into the allocation system.
I don’t know how many people die of heart conditions in a year, however that many new potential doners is an amazing thing and can only go to help the 7000 or so people who are on the waiting list.

It doesn’t happen very often but every once in a while you can get that “perfect dialysis session”.
Now by perfect I mean everything going according to a plan, no unexpected things happening and at the end of the session you’ve reach your various goals with regards fluid loss, managed not to pass-out anf feel fit enough to drive home afterwards.
This is exactly what happened to me earlier today – so a thank you to a person who definitely won’t be reading, Samantha.
Due to the things happening over past weeks I’ve been a little delicate when on dialysis and also due to the risk of the interal bleed starting again they are having to keep me off the heperin.
The heperin keeps your blood flowing and so for the past two sessions my lines have all clotted at around 3hrs into my 4hr session and I’ve then had to go through half an hour while they re-line the machine and get me restarted.
Samantha however decided that she would flush my line every half an hour with a small amount of fluid and then add that amount to the total I was trying to lose.
I was attempting to take 3L of fluid off anyway, so basically I wanted a session without error noise, without clotting and a total of around 4L of fluid taking off – this was no mean feet at all.

The end result was perfect.
The machine was flushed every half an hour so I managed to go for the full 4hrs without any sign of clotting.
I managed to cope with the 4L of fluid loss and came in at just under my previous dry-weight and I didn’t feel dizzy or “wolley headed” so I was able to make the drive home without any problem.
So rarely do you get a fault-free dialysis session, especially at the moment due to my conditions and having to use hardly any heperin.
So a big thank-you to the dialysis team (of whom I’m sure none will ever read this) for yesterday afternoon.
Now if only all of my sessions could be that good it really wouldn’t be so bad.