Well, home again. And how nice it is to be home. I allowed myself one little toy by way of self-compensation for the pain of England; a little digital camera (an Epson PhotoPC650 that had been on sale), and a fine gadget it is too. I've been snapping away happily since aquiring it. One batch of photos from my last day or two in Stourbridge is here.
Having been completely fucked around by United, I've sworn off flying with them again. For one thing, I can't afford to keep buying new luggage, and for another, I don't like giving money to companies that leave me that close to smacking the shit out of the staff. It's not why one pays other people to do stuff.
Amongst the things I better appreciate for having been in the UK: how much nicer my house is than I remember it. And how good it is to have daylight when I wake up (although the daylight until I go to bed is still a bit disconcerting).
The simple pleasures of being home: good cafes, a garden, and a house. I spent today hauling rubbish (mostly of the I should accept that I'm never going to find a use for this
variety) down to the tip. Unfortunately, the cheap bookshelves we use were all sold out today, so we'll have to wait until next weekend to buy a trailer load of them and organise the house some more.
Leaving the compost alone for four months appears to have produced worms and dirt, which got ladelled out onto select bits of the garden. And the house needs a wash, badly. I compromised by cleaning the worst bits off and resolving to hit it again next weekend.
One downside of using gPhoto with my camera - it chews through memory like nobody's business. I've managed to exhaust a 96M phys/150M SWAP with 30 or so photos.
I remember again why I don't like gyms in Wellington: while Bodyworks has decent enough equipment and is gratifyingly empty in the evenings, they won't tell you what it costs. You have to go and speak to some bullshit Personal Consultant (read: waste of space) so they can sell you crap you don't need. And, of course, there are joining fees and rubbish like that. I'll definitely be looking to see if I can find something with good gear and no bullshit - but I fear they don't exist hereabouts.
Not to mention that while some twat at Bodyworks may thinks it is a clever marketing move to make use of the member's car park conditional on plastering advertising over your car, all it does is piss me off.
So I decide to buy a DVD player. I know, I'm supposed to be working up finances for a house, but I put most of my surplus cash for this month towards that, and I figure if I don't get my share of goodies I'll just get bitter and twisted.
Anyway, I bought a NAD T550, which is one schweet unit. The sound and video are incredible. There's are review in the AudioEnz full of audiophile words. The only trick with it is that this is yet another one of those players that is not really multi-zone, but just happens to have a hack to allow the end user to change regions at will - rather useful when you own an R2 DVD. Since it took me a day to scare up the hack, I thought I'd put it somewhere to share with the other kiddies.