Step One...

OK. I've just sent off an order to Dell for a laptop. A bit of juggling money around, and it can be done. I need a laptop to write books on the road and store the photographs I take. Plus it was a special deal. Free delivery and half a gig of memory. No case, but my backpack fits a laptop nicely. Not a luxury ultra light laptop, about as basic as you can get, but that's all I'll need.

What's helping to pay for this is selling off the Leighton shares we bought a month back. Made a dollar profit on each one, and that's enough for a laptop and a bit of something for Kerri. A new kitchen table is what she lusts after - a thick wooden tabletop to match the bench. Plus she gets some more fun working out where to reinvest the capital.

The rumours of a US interest rate hike sparked the sale. Leighton will probably slide down again if the US rate goes up. Best sell before the slide.

Of course what will happen now that we've sold is that the price will shoot up another buck and I'll be kicking myself! Again. Still, we made a profit.

I've been rethinking the structure of my OZ book. Start off with the rocks and plants, move onto the animals, a chapter on the first inhabitants, the convicts next, then the gold rush, the federal story, the world wars and modern development. A ton of stuff I want to cover, at least in summary. Some vignettes - the man who wrote Eternity. There's any number of interesting little stories as I move through Australia and our history, leaving books at appropriate spots. Appropriate books. I wonder if I can get a copy of "From Here to Eternity"?

A bit like Bookcrossing, when you think of it. Like Stace's one word sermon, these books just appear on benches, in trains, in coffee shops, phone boxes.

All I need to be is interesting, thoughtful and funny. I can do that. Link the themes in unexpected ways. Need to find a copy of my jingo jingle.

Accomodation on Gold Coast and in Rocky booked and confirmed. Looking forward to it - should be nice and warm in Queensland compared to here. Took the dog for a walk this morning in the fog and she didn't like it at all. Too cold, too damp and too much traffic noise, especially with the buses along Constitution Avenue. Besides she slows me down by sniffing and peeing on trees and things. Geez, what a life.

XPSP2RC1Bld2069

Installed XP Service Pack 2 Release Candidate 1 Build onto my workstation. Memories of SP1 when it stuffed up my Internet connection, but this one seems to work OK. Took the best part of the afternoon to load, but admittedly a lot of that was me having a nap while the process completed except that it didn't because a dialogue box popped up a few minutes after I left the room. Not much of a nap, anyway - I spent most of the time reading John Glenn's memoirs.

Read some more after I came back, punched the default on the dialogue and made myself a cuppa. Still look another hour or so to install, and then rebooting was slow.

Semagic has stopped working. Went through the help file and the FAQ, tried the solutions, tried listing Semagic as an exception in the firewall, tried turning off the firewall entirely, but no joy. Filed a support request.

At least I can still use the web interface. Hope they fix this soon - XP SP2 is going RTM at the end of July and there will be a flood of complaints if it's still buggered.

Pulled my finger out and got the Luftwaffe airfields listed. A bit of confusion over the two fighter fields on Guernsey, shown as Rennes and Dinan, which are the names of French towns well out of fighter range. Sorted.

Laptop will be delivered in around ten working days, Dell tells me. This could be a pain, as I'm leaving in ten working days and if it arrives while I'm up north it will be no help at all to me.

Leighton went up another 16 cents. I could have held on and made another $500. At least my remaining Leighton position increased in value, and the way these things go, it could just as well have dropped 16c and then I'd be kicking myself even harder.

Didn't take a walk this morning after a largely sleepless night. Had one before dinner. Dumped a frozen corn-fed chook in the crockpot with a quartered onion, a couple of cubed carrots and spuds and a bit of water and by dinner time it was a fragrant melting mass. What's left of the mixture will be the basis for a great soup tomorrow once I peel off the fat, fish out the bones and any gloopy bits. mmmm.