I Had Hoped

I knew when I went into hospital that I was going to have a wait until my Warfarin levels were back to normal. That’s why I had put so much thought into keeping myself busy before I set off for Liverpool.

The set up was perfect, a nice compact Eee PC and a Wireless Broadband Dongle from 3. I was prepared for problems with the Dongle, there are complaints about coverage etc, but everything was perfect. It worked a charm and was actually fasterthat I expected.

So, before the Op was fine. Lots of surfing done. I was a happy boy.

After the Op, the plan went skywards. I had a project and because everything had worked so well I was looking forward to getting stuck in.

On went the computer and up popped an error message. The SIM card in your Dongle is either missing or not inserted correctly. Connection cannot be established.

Buggar. I now had the prospect of another 4 days in hospital without my connection.

A call to 3 got me nowhere (post to come). So I’ve written a couple of posts to be published but just this evening I found TBlogger, a little app that lets me publish from my phone. This post is the result. If it works, I’ll be back with more details.

Blogging Offline

I must admit that, up until now, the concept of offline blogging confused me a little. I could see the point if you were in a place that just didn’t have a connection, but if you can connect, why not use the facility?

Well, I’ve just ‘Gone Mobile’ and realised that this presents two problems.

1. The first is that my band­width is limited. I’m paying for my data on a ‘Pay As You Go’ basis and this makes me much more aware of the cost.
2. The second reason kind of relates to the first. It’s all about distraction. If I’m online, I do a lot of research that often just turns into surfing! This is not good when you’re trying to do some­thing specific but it’s also not good when you consider point 1!

Therefore, I thought it would be logical to look for a client that I can use offline and then upload to my blog.

Hardware

I’ve just managed to treat myself to an Asus Netbook (despite Asus saying today that the Netbook is dead!). I bought it to replace a broken laptop but also because I wanted a very compact machine I could bring along to hospital (That’s where I am now!).

I’m very pleased with the machine and it’s certainly doing it’s work keeping me enter­tained whilst stuck on this ward. More on that later!

Software

I then researched the offline blogging tools that are available. The result was a little surprising. Despite being a recent convert to Ubuntu Linux on my Desktop machine, for the moment I’m opting to keep my Netbook running on the Windows XP it came with. I would normally do all that I could to find an open source solution to my problems but since many of the reviews pointed to Windows Live Writer, that’s where I headed for first.

I have to admit that, so far, I like it! It’s nice to have a WYSIWYG editor that actually imports the theme from your blog – a little surprising too consid­ering my blog sits on WordPress and not a Microsoft product. Live Writer also gives you many facil­ities not imme­di­ately available in WordPress like tables and some rich formatting options. Of course, these options are available through WordPress but they are not so readily available without digging into plugins or writing your article in HTML.

Experiment – Success?

It’s probably fairly obvious that I’ve only just started playing with this programme. Really, I wanted to publish an exper­i­mental post to see if it would publish first time with the ease I would really like from my software. If you’re reading this, it worked and I’m really chuffed! Expect to see more articles written directly with Window Live Writer.

It’s Official — Hospitals Are Boring!!

Well, haven’t I had a really exciting couple of days? I was due to be admitted into the Walton Centre on Wednesday so that my Warfarin could be stopped ready for my Op on Monday. The letter said get here by 10am but it also said to speak to the Bed Manager before you leave (but after 0830hrs). Well, of course, it’s a 5 hour drive from home to Liverpool so this was a problem!

I phoned the Bed Manager on Tuesday and explained the situ­ation. She said it was not necessary for me to be there by 10am and suggested I call her back at 0930 the next morning

When I called on Wednesday morning they said “Come Down!”

So imagine my surprise when I arrived at 2pm to the news that there were no beds! Mmmm, I was not Mr Happy. Luckily there’s an ‘in house’ hotel within the hospital complex down here so it was easy enough to get me a bed, the problem was that the Doc didn’t want to stop my Warfarin when I wasn’t on the ward. He decided it would be OK to stop my it the day after, so the problem was sorted but since I didn’t stop the Warfarin, I could have come down a day later instead!

A Bed At Last

I was finally booked into a bed last night and imme­di­ately give a Heparin jag to replace the Warfarin that was now stopped.

Everything settled down quite nicely, the ward was quiet and the staff very friendly. Apparently the hospital policy for my type of surgery says that I should stay in a single side room to cut any chance of infection. The problem had been that there were no side rooms available and rather than put me on the open ward, they preferred the idea of me staying in the hotel.

Of course, this also led to problem with the Warfarin, so in the end they had to compromise and put me in a quiet corner of the ward.

All Change!

When the night shift came in, they decided to put their own stamp on proceedings. They had an emer­gency coming in which meant they needed my bed space. I had to be moved. Guess where to?.…… A single Side Room!!

So here I am. Sitting in peace and quiet, with nothing much to do. I have to wait for the Warfarin to get out of my system before the Op can go ahead. At the moment this is planned for Monday.