Colourful USB hub

I treated myself to this lovely thing to compensate of the lack of any decent mobile phones to replace my ailing Nokia 6230.

All I want is Vorbis codec support!

Things that make you go "Ewwwwww".

Browsing the paper catalogues from the mailbox this week and last.

Baggy, poorly-cut, shapeless or miss-shaped. Even the models who are carefully selected to fit the horrendous stuff look awful.

Fashion it might be, but it's going to be one UGLY summer down here in Aus. :-(

I'll stick to mix-n-match generics this summer, thanx!

Dear bank account phishers

Dear bank account phishers,

Please desist sending me your spam:

1) I am not stupid enough to fall for such an obvious phishing scam.

2) I am not stupid enough to keep my money in a bank.

LaeMi

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be!

Stuck at home with a bad back, I'm feeling lonely and bored.

Went digging through my old files for emails and stuff about my first husband. I had completely forgotten just how horribly he had treated me over the 2 years of that marriage :-(

Nothing like good historical records to kill of nostalgia.

Waking up is hard to do

Had a dream last night that (part of which) was a really good idea for a screen-play. But I needed to wake up and write it down before it was lost.

That is bloody hard!

First 'wake-up' was into my bedroom at the home I grew up in. Obviously not awake yet!

Second attempt I woke up into what may have been my apartment except a trip out the bedroom door turned into an expedition into a huge wonky mansion. Pinching oneself to see if one is awake really does work, apparently - I didn't feel a thing no matter how hard I tried!

Third attempt I was back in reality, the screen-play idea more-or-less intact.

Getting back to sleep was the next challenge!

Putting off BluRay

I almost had to buy a BluRay RW drive for my PC. My DVD RW broke. It is a Samsung and, like most of the Samsung products I have had, has lasted me well, so I won't complain. I was going driveless for a few weeks until after X-mass as the prices are more likely to be lower then.

The main appeal of BluRay for me is the 25G storage space useful for archiving. Movies would be nice however until the Digital Restrictions Management is cracked to the point where I can watch the disks I legally purchase on my choice of equipment without a lot of hassle , it is not going to happen (I have suspended all DVD purchasing in expectation of this too, so even less of my money is going to the we don't get it crowd - NB: content encryption doesn't stop commercial piracy - they just duplicate the disks raw, encryption and all).

Anyways, while bored today I opened up my dead DVD-RW unit and stuck some test equipment on it (I already knew it was a problem with the drive eject system, not the laser reader system which would be pointless to try and fix even if I had the skills/parts/equipment). Found the dead part (tray position sensor) and replaced it with a same part from a junk CD-ROM I had. I am watching DVDs and backing up my data again. For how long? Who knows, eventually I will get a BluRay, but the longer I am able to put it off, the better for me.

A funny thing happened on the way to work...

Well actually it happened before I went to work but I saw the results which were funny ;-)

Some vandals had been out last night along a street that is part of my path to work, tossing wheelie bins around, putting them on cars and up trees. The mess continued until a certain tree where a wheelie bin was inverted over the top of a branch about 2.5m up a large trunk branch. I have been watching that trunck branch for months thinking I should bring a video camera and film the knott hole about 1m up it so I can show my nieces a real bee-tree with lots of bees flying in and out.

The vandalism had suddenly stopped at that point.

:-D

The only surprising thing is that I am not at all surprised

The idiot-in-my-life just came to me with an extended tape measure asking "Is this about 3m?"

Seriously!

I have REALLY got to get this guy replaced with a non-faulty one!