Beastly cold

Kerri's father is down from the Gold Coast, and he's brought a cold with him. I must have caught it from him when the in-laws came over for dinner on Saturday, because this morning I woke up with a sore throat and now I've got a nose that's runny at one end and stuffed up at the other.

The chemist shop now needs to interview you before they can sell cold medicine. Apparently the best stuff is a good ingredient for some sort of illegal drug and they are cracking down on sales. I had to wait a few minutes while I got asked some very basic questions. I answered in a stuffy voice and got the gear.

DD's laptop got dropped when I was away, and the hard drive was making odd noises, so I got a replacement drive. Of course all the data and documents on the original got lost. Loaded up all the software again, but of course that's only half the job, and uploads and things need to be downloaded from the web.

Found that I couldn't get onto the network and when i eventually puzzled it out it was because the Ethernet and both wireless cards weren't working. Hmmm. Ran the driver disk through and it said everything was installed OK, but no connection. Turns out that Dell has half their drivers zipped up and they don't install automatically. You've got to go hunt them down and unzip them and install them.

Did that and it all works fine. Shouldn't have to play detective for this stuff. I was thinking that maybe the bits had been damaged in the drop and I'd have to buy a new laptop.

Cold grey day today. Not been a real lot of fun.

Listening to Jenny Kendall-Tobias now. Her cheerful voice is bringing a touch of Northern Hemisphere sun into this cold, dark Canberra evening.

White Swan

White Swan,
originally uploaded by skyring.

I got a postcard from elhamisabel today (Hmmm, how'd she get my address? No worries, drop in some day!) showing a white swan with a fluffy back.

I know what these little fluffballs are - the swans here do exactly the same thing. Makes it a bit puzzling when you see a family of swans coming across the lake - the two adults making swan noises and all these cygnet noises coming from somewhere invisible.

Then they arrive and unload, the kids jumping off into the water, the parents coming closer for a sandwich.

Of course here they are black, so it's not as easy to see the little ones until they get close.

Thanks for the postcard, elhamisabel. you are a sweetie for thinking of me!