I took off a sock the other evening, the back of it had completely worn through. I tossed it in the bin, its days of covering my feet were over. Then I had a thought, nostalgia cutting in, what memories could this sock tell? How many thousands of miles has it covered? What adventures did it accompany me on? Did it ever visit the States? Did it get stuck up a mountain on the verge of death? How many dog walks? Was it there on my wedding day, or the day my divorce came through? Had it travelled to the Canary Islands, Weymouth or just the local pub?

It’s surprising how such trivial items can trigger memories. I look around me, many of my friends are now in the winter of their lives, I’m still thankfully I think in the autumn of mine. My target age is eighty-three, that gives me thirty years. Four of which I’m still working, okay, only part time thankfully, plus it keeps me out of trouble and I enjoy it. I don’t think I’m going for any more major life changes. I’m fairly content and now accelerating rapidly towards death. Do I want another relationship? I don’t honestly think so. I’ve been there and done that. I think I’m now very much destined to be single, but I can live with that. I don’t have enough wardrobe space to spare for a start. I need to do a bit more travelling, but apart from that I think I’m pretty much done.

I’ve lived a life that’s full, I travelled each and every highway, and more, much more than this, I did it my way.

As for that sock, it will go in the recycling, maybe it’s only on the beginning of a new journey.

The anticipation was one thing, the fear of failure was another.

I was at the point of three options, drink, pop Zopiclone or just not sleep. I was pretty much resigned to the fact that I would die by either alcoholism, drug overdose or insomnia.

So I took the pill, thirty minutes before bed. My anxiety was through the roof. I had zero expectations. To be honest I was probably almost wishing it didn’t work for some strange reason. But hey, I turned the light out in great anticipation of being awake for the next seven hours.

I was asleep within sixteen minutes. I did get up for a pee a few hours later but then I was back to sleep again pretty instantly.

Meh it was a one off. Popped a pill again on the Tuesday and the Wednesday. It worked again, asleep within minutes. No weird dreams or side effects. I just slept.

So is it the answer? Well it’s early days yet. I’ve only taken it on three occasions, but on each of those it has worked. I’m looking forward to trying it again over the next few weeks.

If it continues to work I will have to find something else to die of.

So I finally managed to get a telephone appointment with the doctor. This was not the same patronising bitch who insisted that I was an alcoholic, who I spoke to about eighteen months ago. Although the surgery made their best attempt at trying to get me to have an appointment with her again. No. After taking advice from another doctor I had an appointment with the senior partner of the surgery.

This was Doctor Young. His opening gambit was not, ‘you drink too much’. A good start. Actually he did something very unusual, he listened. He did ask about my relationship with alcohol, but never once did he accuse me of being an alcoholic or having a dependence. If anything, he thought that my alcohol consumption was actually well under control, if somewhat high, but was happy that I was fully aware of this. We discussed all the usual things, CBTi, and sleep hygiene and all that crap. He was, actually, very nice. They don’t like prescribing ‘Zopiclone’ for more than a couple of weeks, it can be addictive and it can become tolerable, to the point it has zero effectiveness. But, I took took it for around four years, and it worked every time. I took it last Tuesday, it still worked within thirty minutes.

We then kind of hit the end of the conversation, the ‘Where do we go from here moment’. Oddly, we were both on the same page, the exact same internet page. Both looking at ‘Daridorexant’. I couldn’t pronounce it, he didn’t’t have a bloody clue what it did. He corrected my pronunciation, I filled him in on its use and effects. We agreed to give it a blast. I think he was interested in it effectiveness and what side effects, if any, it had. I was willing to give feedback and was quite eager to try.

I had the prescription on the Tuesday, popped in to pharmacy, ‘It’ll be here tomorrow’. It wasn’t. ‘It’ll be here tomorrow’. Almost gave up at this point, went to just collect the prescription and they actually had it.

So now I have the magic drug. Will it work? I don’t know. The problem is the anticipation may outweigh its effectiveness. You build yourself up so much for the ‘wonder drug’, and then only to be disappointed.

Tomorrow I will know. Roll on tomorrow.

So I have this ‘retro’ arcade machine, probably got it about eleven years ago now. About six months ago I spent ages writing various utilities to update the game list, now has around seven thousand games, basically every arcade game ever up to the millennium. All mostly work and play fine. I got a Chinese hard drive with pretty much every console game on it up to about the last ten years, managed to purge pretty much everything I wanted over to the arcade machine, plus I have all the console games ready to play on this drive.

I’ve now also got ‘The Spectrum’ which is a perfect emulation of the old ‘Speccy’, including all the rubber keys. Comes with a load of games, plus I got a USB drive with about forty-thousand more on it.

But do you know what? The games are crap. Colour clash, awful sound, glitchy sprites and appalling game play. Am I taken back to my childhood self, no.

I can’t go back to a time when I was fourteen years old, at ‘Spellbound amusements’ on ‘Whiteladies Road’, where every lunchtime was spent living off a king sized Mars bar and piling up ten pence’s on the screen of ‘Dragons Lair’.

You can recreate the tech, but you can’t recreate the memories.

Okay, so it’s been a while. Melatonin wasn’t the answer, like the other drugs, it made me drowsy but it didn’t make me sleep. I tried GABA as well as that was supposed to help in combination, but again, made me drowsy, didn’t make me sleep.

Did some experiments, the interesting thing is, analysing the sleep patterns, comparing when I’m drinking, to when I’m not drinking and when I’m taking Zopiclone, there is no difference. I’m actually sleeping the same, the difference is when I’ve been drinking or taken Zopiclone I don’t remember being awake.

So have an appointment in the coming week with the senior partner at the doctors. There is a new drug out which looks interesting, it removes ‘wakefulness’, so definitely worth a try. Hopefully that will work out okay. Next week is looking interesting overall, let’s see how it pans out.

So after last week of wearing a Melatonin patch, taking a sleeping tablet (antihistamine) and some other sleeping tablet (mainly herbal junk), then being completely wide awake at 3AM I decided to try something a bit different. I know that Zopiclone works, but isn’t reall a long term solution, so decided to give Melatonin another blast, but this time in tablet form. I think the patches did something, but not really enough so going for the main ingrediant. Yes, it was prescribed, albiet from a rather questionable source. The leaflet says it is to be used to treat ‘jet-lag’ in adults, but more interestingly it says, ‘Insomnia in children and adolescents (6 to 17 years old) with ADHD’.

I’ll do a post at 3AM if I’m still awake.

So oddly last night after not drinking, as it had been quite a heavy couple of weeks I didn’t have too much problem sleeping. Was going to take a pill, didn’t need to. But in the morning I was tingling like I was on a mission, hadn’t had that feeling since I gave up Prozac, very strange. Thankfully it did fade.

The rest of the day was productive, if wet. I really must do the write up for the SSL thing tomorrow and get that out of the way. Also must try and finish this bloody jigsaw.

So I got up at 2AM, after going to bed at 10 to just lie awake for four hours. Dogs had already gone into kennels earlier that day. Got into car and drove to airport. First thing I knew about there being ‘trouble at mill’ was an email marked ‘UPS ALERT:ONBATT’. Panic. Okay, every now and then you do get a ‘power blip’ and the UPS cuts in, like it should and smooths things over using the battery until it passes, usually this is just a few seconds, Panic, still sets in. This was 6:25 on the one day I’m going to be away for over a week (don’t get ideas, the security is mega). Second email. ‘UPS ALERT:ONLINE’. This I at 8:04. Relief spreads over me like a heat rash. I’m reading this while at the luggage carousel. Now, all good. Until. 14.38. ‘UPS ALERT:ONBATT’. WTF. Twice in one day, what are the chances of that in the same day AND the day I’m away! And that’s the last I would hear.

Panic has now set in. I’ve lost email, both personal and company accounts, and web servers, again both personal (this one) and company accounts. I can’t ping the server. Can’t access the CCTV or the alarm (sorry folks it won’t talk to me, but is battery backed up and is loud as fuck, so again, no ideas). Panic again sets in. I can connect to the VPN. Good. Means the Zen ISP connection is good. I can log into the firewall. Check both routes, yep, 5G on three (that an anachronism?) is also up. Can’t ping the server. Look at the DHCP leases, all looks a bit dead. Panic is now very much set in. Server must have shutdown and not come back up. Panic is now in full swing. Contact my friend Elaine, she’s going to visit tomorrow and attempt a manual reboot.

Fast forward to today. Tried to connect to alarm panel, offline (again, it works fine when offline). Tried to connect to CCTV, that is back up, so the network switch is online. Checked the heating, yep, that’s good and the ring doorbell, so the WiFi is definitely up. Tried to ping the server and no luck. Connected to the firewall again and checked the DHCP leases, WiFi access point, switch, heating, doorbell, all good. Server, out to lunch. Elaine calls, she’s in the office (navigated the alarm and the lock). Now with a torch and a video call. I guide her towards the correct unit, and I have a lot in that cabinet. There is a UPS, a firewall, two network switches, the main server, backup drive and about sixty miles of cabling. After about ten minutes with a torch and pointing at things the server is identified and after more fumbling the power switch is located. It does indeed appear that it is powered down. A prod of the now found power button and the server is alive. Gave it a few minutes and then tried to refresh the email. The email server is now alive. ‘UPS ALERT: SHUTDOWN’, 15:53. ‘UPS ALERT: LOWBATT’, 15:53. So the power was out for over an hour, the UPS had run out of battery and sent the ‘shutdown’ command. There are a bunch of emails just after saying various services were shutting down, and that was it, it powered off, safely, as programmed to do so. I assume the firewall was also given the signal and dutifully shutdown. Until the power was restored. Depending when it happened the UPS would have done a couple of things. After it sent the shutdown command it knows it has to do a full shutdown and restart, to power things back up. So I assume at some point the power came back on. The UPS would have charged up to a point it was no longer in ‘low battery’ mode and would have pulled the power relays. This would have cut the power completely to whatever was connected. It would then enraged the relays again and ‘power up’ this should have caused everything connected to just ‘reboot’. Obviously the firewall obeyed and dutifully powered up, together with the ONT (the fibre interface) and the 5G modem (three, lets not go there). So connecting to the VPN and connecting to the firewall would all be okay. But, it seems the server did not power itself back on. This is probably just an over site in the bios settings. I expect it’s set to ‘last known config’, which of course would have been ‘off’ as it was told to shutdown by the UPS. It really needs to be set to ‘power on’. Or indeed, I should also configure it to ‘wake-up on lan’, I could then at least kick it from the firewall and reboot it. So there are things to simulate and test when I get back.

What are the chances of two power cuts on the same day and the same day I leave for a week? Low, very low. But it did happen. Thanks to my hero Elaine, I can ‘unpause’ my life again.