Happy scatteryness

I went to the doc's again yesterday.

I know, I know, it was much overdue. But I am terrible at doing things that benefit my own health.

The result (and without going into too many details !) was :
More diet* pills
More goop
Even more goop
Less messiness on my legs
And more pasty-white goodness coming back

Yep. As is usual for going on the diet* pills, I've seen instant improvement in my condition. Trouble is though, every other time I've been on them, the condition worsens again after I run out. We shall see this time around, I'm looking more into tracking the allergies this time around. I have a blood test coming there too, will be curious to see what the result is.

It's just in time too, the weather here has turned colder ...

* They're not actually diet pills. They're antibiotics. However ... with a 4 times a day, 3 hours no food each time pattern, they may as well be diet pills. Hey, it's a good discipline to have, it works out to 3 meals a day (with the 4th being while you're asleep) and a cutting down on the all hours grazing on junk.

So that's me improving, hopefully it'll stick this time.

Next up - work. Oh dear. We've been "tech refreshed". Note they don't say "upgrade". The base units seem ok at the moment but when they change our systems to Windows 7, as is threatened, they will struggle for memory. This laptop has 3GB of memory and is sitting at 930MB free with Firefox, Outlook, Skype, iTunes and Steam running. If that hits 500MB, Windows complains bitterly and I have to close applications. That shouldn't happen, there's a technique called "Virtual memory", where the memory available to Windows is expanded virtually with applications getting put on the hard disc instead of in actual memory. The new machines have just 2GB.

The big awful though is the screen. We've been inflicted with HP Elitemonitor 201s, which have a multitude of flaws :

Widescreen - this is an entertainment setup, not a business setup. Widescreen means less height to work with. For business, a 17" 4:3 is more useful than a 20" widescreen, it has more useful area.
Resolution - if it's a 20" screen, it should be able to do 1080p. That's 1080 vertical lines. These can only do 900.
Pixel bleed - this is the really crippling thing. It's where coloured, lit pixels bleed into the ones next door. We're usually working with black text on white, so those white pixels bleed onto the black and make the text unreadable.
Update rate - this is where you move things around on the screen and have disorienting effects from the after images.

I'll see how it goes before seeing if I need a replacement screen. My eyes were misbehaving today, probably due to it being hayfever season still.

I ended up at the Mall yesterday after a day working at home (around the doctor visit). Firstly, if you liked the first 2 Riddick films, the third is worth watching. It starts slow but accelerates into something very, very good. Almost as if they needed to dump baggage from Chronicles (good film, bad endgame). I'd already arranged to see Riddick and wanted to put a couple of fingers up to my condition by getting out of the house (I wasn't great yesterday, much improved today).

I am sooo close to getting a Macbook. It'll be a Macbook Air, 13" refurbished last generation Macbook Air. It just ticks all the boxes :
Enough resolution on the screen
iTunes compatibility
SSD hard disc as a massive bonus
Avoidance of the abomination that is Windows 8

Just one problem - £869. I'd prefer not to spend half that on a laptop.

But ... with laptop prices going up in general, it may happen. Especially as the keyboard on this one is getting so much worse.