I had my annual Testicular Cancer checkup at the beginning of the week, after 5 years you think they’d get easier (they don’t and neither do me and needles!). Actually it was five-and-a-quarter years but I won’t go into that rant about appointments. I know, I know, it’s unusual for me not to go into a rant, but I have good reason….

I won’t be going back! After 5 years in the clear, I’ve officially been discharged from Oncology!

They aren’t closing the door I hasten to add, I can still contact them if I have a problem but my time of building up nerves and worry every 3 months, 6 months and finally a year, to each successive appointment is now over.

If I’m brutally honest, I’m still a bit shocked. I’d expected another appointment with a year interval or two years and we’d agreed at my last appointment the way forward was up for discussion this time. However, they simply checked I’d found my lump last time and decided that I know my body better than they do and therefore I was safe to go it alone!

For now this feels weird, great and a whole mixture of emotions, I do wonder how it will feel in a years time when I’d have been expecting a checkup, but only time will tell..

This marks a serious turning point in our lives, I say our because I’d only met my wife 6 months before I was diagnosed so we’ve done this all together and I can’t thank her enough. Despite a few problems over the years, Emma is 7 months pregnant and our little one will be here in mid-May.

This really is looking like a fantastic year!

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photo credit: Ben Brown

Items that got shredded included:

• Letters from ex-lovers,
• Photos of ex-lovers,
• Redundancy letters,
• and newspaper clippings of bad days for people’s favourite sports teams!

This is the third event of it’s kind!

One “shredder” placed a piece of paper into the shredder that simply said “Writer’s Block” – she hopes to write a musical this year.

For items that could not be shredded, the Times Square Alliance were most helpful in providing a sledgehammer and a large waste-container.

What would we have in the UK, maybe the “Pointless Kitchen Gadgets Destruction Day?” – Let me know in the comments!

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There have only been two episodes so far (Wednesday BBC2), but we’ve really enjoyed them and I’ve just found out they do a book…

Two top chefs Allegra McEvedy and Paul Merret have devised the Economy Gastronomy system to aid people in slashing their food bills (never a bad thing in a recession!), whilst eating better than they ever have before!

This covers people who don’t know how to cook, to those that do and don’t have time! Well worth a watch and I suspect the book is just as good.

See the iPlayer here for Episode 1

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An orchestrated attack yesterday on several sites caused a two hour blackout on Twitter and degraded service on Facebook. Even Google was hit, but defended itself and is now assisting other companies to investigate the attack.

It now appears that all of this was to annoy one user, a pro-Georgian activist blogger known as Cyxymu, Cyxymu has previously been critical of the Russian government over the war in the South Ossetia region and their handling of it.

A botnet (networks of home and business computers which have been infected ready to launch such an attack) was directed to request the bloggers profile on multiple sites where he has profiles/a presence. The requests were made so quickly that the sites came to their knees, this is know as a DOS (Denial of Service) attack.

Now whilst this might all sounds like a bunch of IT freaks trying to annoy each other (with huge consequences) to most people, this is where it gets a bit “Cold War” like. The blogger himself blamed Russia in an interview with the Guardian newspaper:

“Maybe it was carried out by ordinary hackers but I’m certain the order came from the Russian government”

So should we be prepared for more outages like this when somebody annoys someone else? Probably, Iis the best answer…

During that time you’ll have to find something to do when all your Social Media platforms grind to a halt… Some Twitter users have posted what they did here, my personal favourites include:

• ForeignRobot #whentwitterwasdown I didn’t know who to tell about the little, insignificant events in my life. It was tragic. (Seriously.)
• JustinSherwood #whentwitterwasdown I went to the beach and there was no one to tweet about it.
• Akiti_littles #whentwitterwasdown i wanted to find the hacker n deal with him myself!
• ElizaBatten #whentwitterwasdown i watched the news all day just to get updates on when it will come back up.. lol
• classic_lbd #whentwitterwasdown

  I sat here and refreshed the page for three hours.

• elefantjon #whentwitterwasdown i thought it was the apocalypse
• SaintEmily #whentwitterwasdown I was shouting at my laptop and decided to use facebook like everyone else causing that to break too

There’s thousands of things people did… What would you do if your favourite website went down?

Personally for me it’s the BBC News first thing in the morning with coffee, if that went down – well… erm… I’d drink my coffee and have to start reading my inbox How about you?

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Unfortunately the video has moved around a lot, and links have broken etc. But I spotted it today on YouTube so thought I’d repost!

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Now in a new study by Virginia University it’s announced that it’s all downhill from 27 (and there was me hoping it was plain sailing until I was 40!). So clearly I’m past it already – this news gives me more ammunition for not taking part in my wife’s gardening or decorating schemes I think!

Professor Timothy Salthouse has found that reasoning, speed of thought and spatial visualisation all decline in your late 20′s, fortunately my wife is only 48 hours younger than me so won’t get the chance to wind me up too much about my downhill struggle!

On the other hand my sister should worry – she’s at her mental peak right now..

buy Nothing Like the Holidays

photo credit: Mr.Thomas

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Today it’s all over.

Everytime the serial offender was stopped Mr Prawo Jazdy gave a different address, evading justice yet again….

“Prawo Jarzdy” is actually Polish for “Driving Licence”, it is not the first and second name on the licence as assumed by many officers!

photo credit: Kecko

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Police in Devon are to hand out flip-flops from their Police Safe Bus in one of the main stag and hen night areas, they will offer them to drunken women who are struggling in their high heels!

The flip flops have messages about safe alcohol limits printed on them, so not only will they have to negotiate the takeaway menu, but try to read shoes that they were wearing (it’s possibly more humorous than the staggerdance actually!!).

photo credit: leafar.

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