Anthony Malloy Between Coffees

Where has the past week gone?

In my case it’s equal parts work and feeding the Ipod. Yes, my baby is now fully functional and has 3709 songs on it, there’s still about a hundred CDs to go so I should almost make the 5000 mark. As well I’ve added a skin to protect it, an Itrip (with thanks to Rob) to listen in the car and an Italk to record speech. Of course, I am now broke.

I’m going to use the Italk in a special project. My dad is 82 and has lived in and around Shepparton for most of his life. He’s seen it grow massively from a small country town that was a days journey from Melbourne to a large rural city, two hours by freeway and getting closer each year as the freeway inches almost to Shepp’s door. I want to capture some of his memories of this growth and his recollections of Shepp and now is a good time while he’s still able to walk, talk and remember with no difficulties. To have my dads stories, the ones I’ve heard so many times, in his voice recorded for me and our family will be wonderful. Dad, of course, will be chuffed ’cause he gets to be the centre of attention for a couple of days.

Work is keeping me busy and I’m feeling guilty about being inside typing and clicking instead of outside mowing the lawns and wipper-snippering the jungle around the edges. This afternoon, or maybe tomorrow evening now the curtains are fading in the extra hour of daylight.

Phee has managed to contract the latest craze from school - school sores. The poor scabby faced girl was so upset she didn’t want to go to drama yesterday. The whole house has turned in to a contaminated zone with disinfectant, separate towels and utensils for the inflicted one. No kisses and the constant cry of ‘don’t touch your face’. They’re clearing up after a day and by Wednesday when she’s due back at school the doctor tells us they should be gone.

Driving back from a quick trip to Officeworks Phee was going in to minute detail about a new game at school that involves pointing to different features as you count to the number of your birthday. The feature you land on apparently determines what you are. Land on your skull and you are brainy, your cheek and you are cheeky and, apparently your shoulders means you are gay.

“Oh”, I ask, “what does gay mean.”

And, in the most nonchalant and knowing voice, my little eight year old replies “It’s about when you get some sex with someone.”

I was still choking as she jumped out of the car to chase the cat around the front yard.

Monday night I had 387 songs on my Ipod.

Thanks to a late night last night this morning I have 1906.

Now I have to grab the pod and head off to work. Hopefully I’ll be able to stay awake.

The Ipod and I are locked in mortal battle.

It now works, in a manner. It’s supposed to run off my USB 2.0 ports, making for lightning fast transfers from my PC to Pod. That’s the theory - in actuality it only runs on my USB 1.1 ports. That’s like buying a car that can run at 480kph and then having a speed limit applied so it only goes at 12kph. It’s painfully slow to connect and synch.

My computer is two years old now and doesn’t have native USB 2.0 ports. I’ve tried two USB 2.0 cards with the pod and neither functions. The Apple Support line suggested I get one that’s stamped with the Microsoft Windows seal. Another issue Itunes is saying I’ve already used up 22gig - with two albums? It’s really beginning to bug.

Maybe it’s time to update my PC.

Well it finally happened, thanks to Rae’s tertiary student card and the good people at Virgin Credit I got myself an Ipod. A 4G 40 gig model.

And I should be very very happy. But I’m not.

The stupid thing refuses to work.

I have followed every instruction to the letter, performed system roll backs, reset my PC and the Ipod so many times I have lost count, swore, grumped and generally harrumphed but to no avail, the bloody thing just won’t communicate with my PC or vica versa. I’ve tried every suggestion I can find on the Apple site, Ipod Lounge and in Google but always end up with one of two errors; both boiling down to the computer knows there is something connected but doesn’t know what it is or how to write to it.

“Just call Apple support” I hear you say. Good idea. If they were open and/or not charging. Their free service hours are 9:00am-6:00pm Monday to Friday, so heaven help you if you work ‘normal’ hours, or pay support on Saturdays only. Excuse me, I’ve just spent a small fortune on one of your lumps of plastic and now you want to charge me to get it working? Apple’s much lauded design skills and user friendliness are slowly being lost on me.

So now I sit here on Sunday morning, looking at a nice shiny white paper weight counting away the hours until Monday when, hopefully, I will finally get my Ipod.

UPDATE

And further more my Ipaq won’t synch if the Ipod is connected on the same USB2 card.

Regular readers will know how much I love my wide-screen television shows that are brought to me via my digital set top box.

People who know Rae will know how she is tragically addicted to Neighbours (he says skipping lightly over how he has been dragged in to the same addiction).

The only problem is that the two aren’t compatible.

Every night, some time between 6:30pm and 7:00pm, weekends included, Channel 10 becomes unwatchable on digital. All the other channels are fine and 10 comes through no worries on analogue. It was the same when we lived just around the corner.

Any ideas? We thought it could be a factory shutting down, but it’s the same time on weekends too. It’s summer and winter, daylight savings or not so it’s not solar.

What’s playing with the frequency in Melbourne’s inner west?

Rae and I ordered Buffy Season 6 from EZY DVD a while ago and it was finally posted last week. One of the reasons we have a post office box is to ensure that we get all the mail we are supposed to and it’s worked fine, up until now ’cause Buff never made it.

The grumpy man who runs the Australia Post agency at The Circle told us we’d picked it up, we must be mistaken and that he’d never make a mistake. Of course, we picked up a double DVD of our favourite TV show, put it in the car and completely lost all memories of doing so. Idiot.

So tonight I called Virgin, our credit card provider of choice, and was pleased to hear they have teams of highly trained ninja assassins whose sole job it is to take care of this sort of business. Or he could have said a disputes department, my desire for vengeance may have affected my hearing. So tomorrow the Virgin hounds will be let loose on Mr Grumpy and we will hopefully get our DVDs or our money back.

If the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result then I’m officially a Silver Stupid Person.

The Tigers released their membership pricing today. Five minutes after getting the email I was joined up for 18 games and A reserve seating again. Having been signed up for 5 years I’m now a Silver Member and get a heap of bonus Tiger stuff, including my umpteenth billion Tiger cap, although this one is only for Silver Members so it will probably become my game cap. As a reward for being a sad bastard and signing up early I get a Tigers DVD. I’m praying it’s not the highlights of 2003-2004.

2005, it’ll be different.

Really. It will be.

Apologies to you Dad, now I know what a pain I must have been because today I fixed my first tyre puncture.

With thanks to Wonderful Rob ™ I scored a brand spanking new mountain bike. He dropped it off yesterday and, as it’s back tyre was flat, asked if I could fix it okay.

“Sure.” I said. Why I do not know as I’d never fixed one before. As a young lad I had a very patient father who, whenever I would ride over a bindii on the way home from school, would get out the bowl and little plastic box and patch it up. Sure I’d watch and something must have sunk in as, with only a quick confirmation on the net, two grazed fingers and Rae wandering out to see what was going on I now have a fully pumped up rear tyre on my bike.

Thanks Rob, it’s a great bike and I’m looking forward to cycling round over summer already.

I’ve never kept one in a cage.
I was behind the seagulls in Hitch’s film.
I never flip one.
My cats never leave home without their bells on.

So what have my avian friends got against me?

Seriously, being crapped on twice in a week is bit much.