Digital Update

I'm home from another victorious night at the Scrabble Club, 3 from 3, the last by over 200 points! The ladies are starting to comment about playing me and not winning. I suggested I could stop coming but they said no, they enjoyed the challenge.

They are a nice group of ladies but they do tend to whinge about their letters a lot. "I've only got one vowel" "I've got four E's" "I've picked up another V" etc. My attitude to Scrabble is you do the best you can with what you get, getting difficult sets of letters is part of the challenge. In other words, "Toughen up Princess"!

And of course, there's always a nice supper in between the second and third games!



I bought a new digital set top box this afternoon. The old one packed up a few weeks ago and our picture on the ABC is just snow and static without it. I tried Dick Smith, Retravision and Harvey Norman and couldn't get anything under $120 so I tried that other well known electrical goods retailer, Action Supermarkets, and sure enough I found one there for $49. I brought it home, plugged it in and Bob's your uncle, a beautiful pictuire once more, plus ABC 2 and SBS. At present there's no GWN (7) or WIN (9 & 10) but everyone says they will start digital transmission in April next year. Our GWN picture is only marginally better than the ABC without the STB so that will be a big step forward. Of course, the Olympics start this weekend and are on GWN so that will be a source of frustration. I've thought about getting a sattelite antenna but they seem to be a bit expensive. I also looked with a certain amount of longing at a 42" plasma with built in digital tuner for just under $1300 but restrained my cunsumer urge, we are on the verge of a recession after all (apparently).

Funny how the price of oil has dropped but the price of petrol hasn't!

While I was at it I bought a cheap DVD player, A. because ours isn't working properly, the hard drive records OK but it won't play or accept any disks, and is filling up with recorded Geelong games that I haven't been able to dub onto DVD, and B. because I've heard that the cheaper the DVD player the more likely it is to play a wide range of DVDs, hired, recorded, burnt etc. The guy in the shop agreed that that was the case so I bought one. Only problem was, when I got it home and plugged it in it wouldn't work! The power would come on but no other function responded, not even opening and closing! So, it will be going back to where it came from tomorrow.








A new "breed" of super heroes.