So Much Against Me...
Things have been a real mess of late, both for me and the animals that rule this house.
Problem #1 - A Rather Fat Corn Snake.
Sorry about the photo’s here, quickly taken on a iPhone by someone who is slowly getting used to snakes, but not so out of their Viv’s, and she was not at all still for one second so sorry about the fuzzy pics, Also I have now had ‘Beau’ for a couple of months so she looks a lot better in these photos than she did.
The image above is of one of the snakes that I have here, it has a strange problem that I have not seen before, there is a strange deformation in its skin and the only thing that I can put it down to is that as the little blighter is a little bit on the vicious side (possible due to the lack of handling), and I can only think that someone has picked it up and it has gone to bite them and with the shock of that they have pulled back and stuck the snake against a door frame or furniture, certainly a hard object.
So, after taking the poor snake to the vets for an X-Ray, even they were at a loss, looking at her as from the right angle, it really looks horrible.

The Corn Snake was not mine, it is a new Rescue to me after the previous owner had contacted me, they tried to get help from the MSPCA here on the Isle of Man as they were moving off the island on the very day that I collected her and things seemed a little disjointed at the time due to items being packed and boxed up all around them at the time and at the time I collected her in a very suitable carrier box half filled with Aspen and most of the snake buried so I thought it safe to take her as is and not handle her first.
As I was given her in a clear carrier and was told that she was very temperamental so at the time I did not handle her till I got her home and even then, As I was worried about her cooling down too much I just let it take herself out of the carrier and into his new home and I did not look at her till a friend took it out to have a look at.
When I eventually did have a good look at her, it was a real shock to me to see a truly ‘Fat’ Corn Snake, apparently from what the previous owner had told me, she was being fed weekly and had done so since she was purchased from Pet’s at Home as a young strapper, two very worrying points, well three if you include the injury.
- She was being fed ‘Large Wiener’s’ weekly!!!
- She had ‘Never’ been handled at all.
- Nothing was ever mentioned about an injury to me at all.
This size (and shape) is not healthy for a Corn Snake, also a Corn Snake should be Calm and one of the best choices for children or first-time owners of snakes, certainly not like this one is at present, most snakes will keep eating and eating until they kill themselves, some species will stop at two or three, but a lot I am afraid will totally stuff themselves silly if ever given the chance, Corn Snakes seem to fall into this category, this one was well on the way to going ‘Pop’!


I always get the snakes checked over by a vet and normally there is not a great deal long with them although I have seen some poor animals with terrible burns that they got from poor quality heating or the lack of a cage around the heater element, and thinking back, the only other problems that I have found is with feeding, either the fact that they have not eaten in a while (which is actually quite common) or that they have food sticking in their throat which is more common than you would think and most owner have not ever come across this before and do not know how to rectify it, and you would be surprised at how many I have heard say that they were told that forcing another down their neck would push the previous into their stomach.
Thankfully, in this case and although she looked quite bad, it was now basically a memory of a past trauma and after time it will hopefully sort itself out, a Camera stuck down it’s throat and an X-Ray later she was basically given a clean-ish bill of health and is now back home where she is a very fisty little girl who is now thankfully eating again, just a Small Mouse this time every two weeks until she has slimmed down a little.
Problem #2 - Me and my Battles with IT
I am going through a few internal battles at present, more than often I do not want to do anything, I certainly do not want to eat of drink anything, most days I cannot even finish a cup of coffee which gets sat upon a heat mat that can bake it to a mess by the end of the day, I have gone through so many drinks trying to hide the taste of water, hot chocolates made in a velvetizer are very nice, I may get three or four sips out of those, the coffee is one of those instant crapichino mixes made to half a mug, i.e. sludge which again hides the taste of water, I may have a few sips in a day when my throat hurts me too much or my tongue becomes to dry and painful but that is it.
The total lack of food and the not really wanting to ever eat is actually getting me down, I used to love to cook and every week that I get dragged around Tesco’s I look at so many items on the shelves of things that I once loved to eat, and I can remember how it should taste, but I have already gone through all this many times over, some things I have tried and know that I cannot swallow it, or that it goes down but comes back up 30 minutes later and both times I cannot taste anything.

Somethings that I have tried and cannot handle are Curries, or hot foods of any sort, I once lived on Chilli’s and hot food, hotter the better, Now, I cannot even handle a Curry Pot Noodle, My tongue just explodes in pain which I might be willing to suffer through if I could bloody taste anything, Tonight’s trial was a bloody Heinz Spaghetti Bolognaise, which I managed about three mouthfuls before I got so bored of it and gave up, food just does nothing for me.
I do often wish that I had not got my Peg fitted into my stomach, and I had it down my throat via the nose so I could have just pulled it out myself so I could have used this as a ‘Get out of Jail’ card, i.e. a way out..
It is not just the food that is against me now, but the bloody IT as well, I have more computer gear here than most mostly because I used to work with the dam things for most of my life, but it is not just Computer gear, I have a great deal of Cisco gear, certainly more than most companies on the Island would have, this used to help me to replicate problems that may have occurred on a site, I used to get a big kick out of troubleshooting problems and fixing them back when my brain worked well, having all this gear at hand I have not ever had to worry about the lack of gear when I wanted top setup a new computer for a certain need, whether it be Graphic Design, Video Editing, 3D or Ham Radio or Electronics, Sop, when I had a big move around so that I could setup another computer for a bit of Graphic Design only to be Beat down by a blummin Wacom Tablet, I am not a big fan of a mouse, cannot even remember the last time that I used one, certainly years back, this time I was really peeved because after updating to the latest driver from the one that I had installed I went from a working Tablet to a completely unsupported driver and a message on the screen stating that I should look at Wacom’s website and select a newer model – Not Helpful!
Now that I am not working and the money situation is not at all stable, and when you look at a Website for a replacement piece of equipment and it’s around £1200, you get knocked back, cannot afford that, well not in a lump sum and it would take be around six months of saving to get that together, but now I have a computer that I cannot use for a particular use which has now had to be pushed back, but in the mean time I have found two alternatives to Wacom that are not only cheaper but also have had some cracking reviews on YouTube, so Now hopefully a little more affordable.
But it is little things like this that now really get me down, I used to be a fairly positive person that always found the good side in everything, but now I get hit in the stomach each time I wake up and try to think about what I want to do that day.
I have a lot of small and large jobs on the go, but things often now get started and then shelved because I need to get hold of parts, or I need to find or buy a new tool that would make the job go a lot smoother in the future, and then I have my old hobbies…
On the subject of large jobs I have this website, over the last 4 weeks I have been going through over 9Gb of files relating to Drake Equipment and updating a lot of the pages, I have been kind of putting all this off, I am still a long way off finishing, I have been very kindly sent a lot of Drake Manuals and these will need to be scanned and sorted, and I still have another 3Gb of Drake that I have not even looked at yet, and I have over 20Gb of Manuals for Heathkit gear that I really need to look at and maybe even Double that for the AntenneX stuff that needs Updating. All this needs me to be firing on all cylinders instead of No sparkplugs in a waterlogged engine.
Problem #3 - Ham Radio and Photography
I used to be very much well into Ham Radio, I would go so far as to say that it defiantly ruled my life, I once had friends within the same hobby that if they called, I would drop anything I was doing and drive all over the island to help them out, sadly most have gone what we call ‘Silent Key’ (Past On), and the rest I would say were not worth calling friends and have now long been forgotten, but certainly since being diagnosed with Cancer and the aftermath that I am left with I have down-sized a great deal, equipment had been either given away or tipped which has now turned the hobby into a non-hobby! It would have been great to give it to needy locals but the local so called ‘Amateur Radio Society’ and it’s members have not ever been interested and are a total waste of Oxygen, if you get my meaning.
One of my last remaining hobbies has always been Photography and in a very niece market which has always been ‘Macro on a Budget’. That said it has not had anything to do with the word ‘Budget’. This originally made me select Canon due to one very special lens, and with anyone knowing Macro Photography, anything between 1x to 5x is fairly cheap, yes you need other items but nothing is too expensive, even when you take into account lenses, but the problem is that 1x to 5x is great, but 10x to 20x is a lot better and this is bloody expensive, and very time consuming, stacking 200 to 300 photos to create a single image is very interesting, but each piece of gear that is needed is another six months in the waiting, for the future and what is making me wait now to carry this on is the new camera with a lot of AI features and a lot of Mega Pixels, even upgrading the flash units to enable better, faster and more colour accurate flash units means finding another six months of saving and somehow affording four units to enable better light positioning means a great deal of waiting, but then, I have nothing better to do at present.

Problem #4 - Cancer
With all the ‘Non-Fun’ that has been going on of late I have the ‘Elephant in the Room’ to still deal with.
The Cancer which is hopefully being beaten down is still very close to my thoughts, every little pain I now suffer is a worry that it is on its way back, especially when I find new pains within my neck or my jaw and of late, I have suffered a few distinct pains of late and nearly all worry both me and the consultants. It is the battling within my own head that seems to get me down most, I seem to find most mornings when I am sat in the workshop which is now very empty of Radio and Electronics and the word ‘depression’ is always looming close over my shoulder, I can wake up all positive, well except for the pain, so eventually I get to a point where I am able to stand up and walk to the office with the view of doing a certain task, I then sit in my chair and try to work out if there is a way to use what I have to do this task, only to be beaten down by the inevitable ‘NO’ because I do not have the means of completing the task.
It always brings a grimace to me when you hear from someone that once had Cancer, that has gone through Chemo and Radiotherapy and is now without Cancer and Pain and can eat and drink normally and is very happy to pass on the fact that they are healthy and feeling great and that I should feel the same, it is at this point that I drift off and completely ignore them, it is the same sort of treatment that I got from the Macmillan Centre at Nobles and this also annoys me greatly, you hear so much on the TV and from others of how great they were for someone, well I am sorry to say that back from when I was first diagnosed with Cancer and told that I was Terminal, which I still am and they keep saying that this cannot be lifted yet, too early they say, but anyway, back to Macmillan, I was not given any help, not guidance of people that I can contact, all I was told by a quite gruff voice was there is a leaflet over there somewhere and that was it, So Bollocks to Macmillan, I think you talk shit and you are not getting anything from me, maybe they only give help to those that are in a certain Tax bracket.
I hate the mornings, I am always in pain and most days I can sit in the office and stare at the monitors and really not know what I am going to do that day, some days I cannot even be bother to do anything and that will include even a sip of coffee and I do not really want to go on, and if it was not for Elaine and Sue, I would have chosen the easy way out by now, and I still often find myself thinking about this often. It is not just the pain, or the feeling sick that gets me down, it is feeling that I am trying to sort out many things and every time that I get near, something will get in the way, or fail, and it will mean another cost that I cannot afford and yet another delay, or just another nail in a coffin that is stopping me from doing something that I once enjoyed, also I have no reason to go out, so I find myself sat at home watching YouTube videos or just sleeping, It may sound adilic to some, but it is far from it.
Last Updated : 3rd October 2024