Busy Saturday

Well, I managed to get the iBook laptop open again and found that I had indeed loosened a cable with all my fiddling when replacing the DVD ROM. It runs like a Buick now. I reckon I now know most of the tricks to repairing an Apple iBook....but hope never to have to do it again. Brain strain!

Joan is still going well except for several side effects of the chemotherapy. She is extremely sensitive to cold and hot things and food. Yesterday her finger tips went purple and painful. I rationalise it by saying that I too would have side effects if I started ingesting lots of rat poison. Don't think that helped much though.

Yesterday evening we went to a picnic in the Park at Wireless Hill with some friends. Three of them originated in Trinidad or Barbados. Their accents are a strange mix of sing-song West Indian with a smattering of Canadian. To shut ones eyes and listen, we could have been sitting and talking to a group of West Indian cricketers. One lady was terrified of birds which was a bit daunting for her as there were quite a few bold ravens, mudlarks and magpies waiting for scraps. It was a pleasant evening with good conversation.

Wireless Park is on a largish hill near the Swan River in Applecross. It was the site of an International Radio Station and is now natural bush parkland, a telecommunications museum and a local AM radio station. Nice spot!

Earlier in the day I delivered a computer to a couple who live in the Northern Coastal suburb of North Beach. They were most appreciative of the gift and I am sure it will serve them well.

From there I went to Hillaries to brother-in law Mike's place to give him some help with his garden reticulation system, his new iPod Touch and his voice amplifier system. Mike has advanced Parkinsons disease and was once a very capable techie, but Parkinsons has robbed him of most of that. It must be a soul destroying condition not to be able to do simple things that once came so easy.

The voice amplifier problem was solved, but Mike's voice is so weak that I doubt that it will help much. It certainly makes his laboured breathing easily heard. The iPod was eventually loaded up with music, but Mike's PC didn't have the firewall and virus protection turned on and the way it was playing up I suspect a few bugs have taken up residence and need cleaning out. The retic system was an impossible job for me as Mike had disconnected about 12 color-coded wires and replaced them in different positions. He hadn't made a diagram of their relative positions and the combinations of possibilities are beyond my mathematical abilities. I recommended that he get 'the man' out to rewire it.