Manda QoP

This isn't a geeky post I'm afraid, apart from a brief bit of science content courtesy of Wikipedia. I try to avoid blogging on personal items however, this is a pretty major change that will be taking place in my life and I'm fairly sure that people are going to notice. On the 15th March I'm having a gastric sleeve operation. This removes the portion of the stomach that releases ghrelin, the hormone that makes you feel hungry; More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Ghrelin . I do feel that this needs some justification. My family and close friends are very supportive, however, a few people seem to think this is cheating to lose weight. It isn't. I've spent 2 years thinking about this and sold my house to pay for it. I am terrified and I really need everyone to be supportive as it's going to be very hard for the next 4+ months. For those of you who think I'm cheating, here's some background. In most people the hormone ghrelin is only at h

I've been thinking about IT and how it has changed, for most people I guess it's changed for the better, but for some of us it's just not fun anymore. IT used to be about inventing, creating, figuring things out, getting excited about new things and going to work was a great adventure. For fun I'd pick up a new language and figure out writing a little app, like the little game I wrote using SCADA, a chess game in C and a bouncing ball app in Delphi, silly little things but they amused me at the time and I felt as though I was learning something. It was hard to imagine not loving your job and feeling so happy that you weren't in one of those 9-5 trapped in the office jobs that afflicted normal office workers. IT was fun and it stimulated the mind. Nowadays we appear to have ended up as drones, plodding in to 9-5 jobs where the software to create does all the work for us, thinking is optional. I have no desire whatsoever to invent little games anymore because it&