Archive for the ‘did_do_better’ Category

TL;DR A £7000 policy isn’t enough to cover a single chemo protocol for lymphoma, especially given the likely costs that will have stacked up before getting to a diagnosis. My insurer, ManyPets, have been prompt in paying smaller claims, but much slower on the bigger ones. But there’s been no quibbling or hassle, and I’ve […]


January 2023

31Jan23

Pupdate I shied away from mentioning that Milo was ill last month. I guess I was hoping that he’d bounce back soon, and I didn’t want to worry anybody. But January brought terrible news, as it seems he has lymphoma. He’s started chemotherapy, and I hope I get to mention what he’s been up to […]


September 2022

30Sep22

Pupdate The boys have been enjoying the sun when it’s been out, as we have the last warm and dry days before autumn descends into winter. Milo has been particularly enjoying the windfalls from the apple tree: Solar diary This might be a regular feature here, at least for a little while (until the novelty […]


December 2020

31Dec20

I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad for a holiday break… In this post, a brief pupdate, some new toys, People Powered, the history of PCBs, toiletry vacations, and some Pi and VR stuff. Pupdate Max continues to grow, and get used to being part of the household. It’s been really fun having him […]


I’m a bit behind on writing this up, but just as I sometimes call out bad customer service it’s also worth highlighting good experiences. TL;DR John Lewis gave me a two year warranty on my Chromebook, which meant that when the battery died I was able to get it fixed. Background When I bought my Chromebook back […]


I get to go along to a lot of industry conferences, and goody bags are pretty standard fair. I expect that most of them quickly find their way to landfill, which is always a shame. A couple of years ago I was visiting somebody who I’d met at a conference, and I had one of […]


I was very frustrated last month when my trial subscription of Azure IaaS was disabled after a couple of days use (and I’m working on a post detailing how I later resurrected my server). The cause of that issue was that the free trial only bundled 1m IOPS (storage transactions). I’ve been watching my use of […]


I found myself upgrading a bunch of stuff over the last weekend, which gave me cause to reflect on what was good, and what was not so good. Android First up was my ZTE Blade, which I’ve had running Cyanogen Mod. I wasn’t super impressed with version 7.0. There were few things that it did […]


This might well be the bargain of the decade, and I must say that I’m quite cross that the news took so long to find me. A couple of days after I bought my NAS a friend tweeted: I asked Leslie how it was so cheap. It turns out that the (ex VAT) price was […]


Last week I was very impressed to find this at my desk in the Westin Jersey City: and yesterday I found this in the Crowne Plaza Zurich: NB The D-Link pocket WiFi router being powered by the media bar USB. For some odd reason this hotel doesn’t have WiFi (but thankfully it does have free […]