I had a notification from my GP surgery early this morning asking me to book in for a hypertension review, rather puzzling as my blood pressure is being checked in surgery on a regular basis in the run up to the operation. It's always a lot higher in the surgery than at home where I'm more comfortable and relaxed than I can ever be in clinic. Then I remembered that my my three monthly medication supply is about to run out, so maybe there was a hidden logic to the scheduled message anyway. Just in case, I phoned to check if this was needed, and ended up getting a GP appointment straight after the Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning, which I was asked to celebrate.
There were nine of us at the service. I then popped over to see the doctor, then returned for a cup of coffee and a chat ten minutes later. I think he was satisfied by the chart of home readings I'd taken, that all was as good as it could be under the circumstances. A medication review will be necessary once I've recovered from surgery, if my blood pressure has naturally dropped to where it should be for a man of my age. Still, with the op in two weeks, that's at least another month away.
I was grateful to have another acupuncture session booked for just after lunch, as the last couple of days of wound pain and discomfort have been pretty taxing on my energy level. It did me a power of good, though I felt it was a good idea to ask Clare to accompany me on a visit to Russell's to trouble-shoot his computer. He had received a couple of emails recently some someone claiming to have hacked his router, planted malware on his machine, and threatening to expose him for downloading pornography unless he paid a sum in bitcoin. He'd meant to ask me about this yesterday, but forgot and rang later in the evening.
I thought this was something about which he should contact his ISP, Plusnet, but in searching for a helpline contact number, I came across a user group forum in which was posted an exact description of a similar scam email content. I reported this to Russell, but thought it'd be a good idea to look at his machine, a Dell laptop still running Windows 7, but now doing so very slowly. His broadband speed was stable and adequate for his kind of usage, but the machine ran slowly. It was using the old Windows Security essentials suite, and was fully up to date.
An imposed security scan revealed nothing suspicious, which was a good start, so I installed CCleaner. It took more than an hour to run. It was the first system cleanup that had been run in its six years of life. Over 15GB of redundant files and nearly 1,900 useless Registry entries were removed. I think it should be OK for the future, as the CCleaner installation will pop up a spring-clean notification from time to time, which I know will get attention. Such a shame for Microsoft to foist such a badly designed system on an unwitting public.
I'd like to persuade Russell to use Linux, but he relies on several Windows only programs, the equivalent of which would need to be found, installed and learned, and that's a bit of a learning curve for someone of ninety two.
About the time we were due to leave, Clare had a phone call from Eloise, a therapist who works with her on muscular problems. She's also a 'cello teacher, and Clare had invited her to give a lesson to one of her students at our house, using my father's 'cello, which is stored chez nous for Rachel, as it would be too vulnerable to the horrible climate conditions in Phoenix where she lives.
The call reminded Clare that we were in danger of running late to get home, so we departed rapidly and joined a stream of traffic going into town which was thankfully only a fraction of the stream of traffic leaving town, so we got home with five minutes to spare. It was lovely to hear Eloise playing one of the Bach 'cello suite opening pieces on my dad's 100 year old instrument. She was very taken with it, and looks forward to returning for another play, another lesson. What a pleasure for us!
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