My abiding memory of staying at my grandmother's house, was waking up with a Persian cat wrapped around my head and purring like a tractor.

Fluff was a very affectionate moggy.

I think cats like the extra warmth of a head. My neighbours cat used to follow me to bed and climb into bed with me. Around 4 am he would wake up and want to go out exploring.

It has been considered. However, I think funds will only permit a standard HDD replacement. If I'm going to upgrade I want more space than it's got right now, so a 500GB internal drive would be the minimum.

It's not so much the storage that's the issue, it's the lack of RAM. It's maxed out at 3GB, and most modern apps need a bit more headroom than that. I thought I'd seen the back of the bad old days when you planned ahead for which programs you wanted to use and opened them in order of greediness, while quitting other stuff to make room.

Given the HDD is the performance bottleneck in any system, it will breathe new life into the MBP's old legs. The size is an issue, I admit - there are plenty of deals on 256GB SSDs, I bought a Crucial M4 for £130 a few months ago, but 512 drives are still very expensive. Having said that, I'd still get a 256 and add external storage for the less frequently used stuff.

It's worth keeping an eye on Amazon's Lightning deals - bargain drives pop up every now and again.

That's pretty much the same situation I'm in (Similar age, similar RAM limit). Luckily the taxman's cheque will hopefully get me an MBA at some point in the not-too-distant-future.

I accept that. It's just the old legs - hopefully - won't need to be very long. I'm hoping to scrape enough together to get a Mac mini in the not-too-distant future, so the MBP will be relegated to second-line duties like sofa surfing and photo archiving when I'm away from home.

All ideas are being considered, mind.

Afternoon. Isn't it siesta time?

That makes yesterday a Friday, so it's most certainly advisable!

39 (heavy spotting).

Somewhere between the Euro crisis and the US presidential election I think.

Good luck and I hope you get the date. Keep us posted though I am sure you will.

C

Went as well as could be expected. Got the go ahead from Dr Johnny after a weigh-in and (chaperoned) examination the lady who creates the dates wasn't in today and my surgeon is new to the area so it'll be a couple more weeks before I get my date in the post. Then I have to come off my pill 2 weeks before, have blood tests and an ECG the week before, a Clexane injection the night before and job's a carrot!

I should be allowed to keep my stone as well which would be amazing!

I'm having one of those moments too. Think I'll go make a lovely cup of tea.

Hmm detect a certain level of smugness here I get to go to Waterloo East - you the US of A

I travel for work very rarely. In fact I've been on 2 trips in 6 years. Quite looking forward to it, mainly to meet the rest of my team in the flesh rather than just hearing them on the phone

I'll try not to be too smug ok?