Island Life by David Slack

I see your problem... it's either the tinfoil you're using for your hat OR (and I can't rule this out just yet) that I've stolen all your bandwidth spamming my mahjong club.

It's a close run thing.

This solves the airport problem:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=108044

The MagnumMac problem can presumably be adjusted by threatening to ridicule them on your widely read blog :-)

For the password: try putting in written form the Helen Clark laugh - "the honk" I was told by a Labour staffer it is known as.

Not as menacing as Muldoon's 'heh heh heh...' drier and more forced.

This solves the airport problem:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=108044

Indeed it does. Richard, who is formally qualified to say so , informs me that it's not rocket science. My problem was that I was trying to do the Factory Default reset, described at the foot of the page. That one just would not take. What it actually needed was the hard reset. Helen has now gone. Of course, if it's also possible that the black ops people have been at work overnight....

Rob: Sadly, because the reset worked, I can't try the honk. I do sense a Youtube mash-up on the way, though.

Paul: I use the tinfoil to wrap around my cellphone. It's the only way I can get stable V*d*f*n* reception in my office here on the isolated shores of the Waitemata harbour.

Meanwhile: here's a question I have already asked Richard:

Internet, connecting to Airport Extreme by wireless, is substantially slower on the Macbook Pro (using Leopard) than it is on ethernet. (Or more specifically: initial page loading is much slower. Subsequent refreshing of the page is much closer to the ethernet speed.) I don't strike this at all on the Windows laptops. In their case the wireless speed is almost as good as ethernet. Posts on discussion boards suggest other people are having the same problem. No configuration change seems to be able to cure it (including disabling all security). Any suggestion would be welcome.

"LittleCreep"

"WeHaveMovedOn"

No dice.

"Sustainability"

"Cancerous"

...

"RichPrick"

"ForFucksSakeTrevor"

Surprised you didn't try "Peter" (in the time-honoured tradition of password selection). :-)

She mostly bears it with good grace, but get around a friend who’s not a fan of computers and empty half a bottle of wine into them both, well, then I find out how unwelcome my clever gadgets are.

I thought for a moment you meant that the pair of them had emptied a half a bottle of wine into your computers. That would have been harsh.

talking of tinfoil hats ... or more precisely "singing of" and as it is still the holiday season (at least according to Nat Rad) for your consideration I present ... this

Aha - try this - not exactly tinfoil but it will stop the aliens...http://www.stopabductions.com

Westfield Albany is not as terrible as you make out. Living in a delightfully mall-free city (mwa-ha-ha), I'm occasionally dragged to such places when we're travelling. Granted, there is little to be said for the interior, but I believe it's core source of triumph is the terrace along the front/back (I'd call it the front, because it seems like the entrance, but the main carpark is on the other side).

Anyway, having suffered 30 minutes or so in side the air-conditioned mcdonalds smelling-horror, it is possible to stumble outside to a bar. Not just any bar, but a bar with a wine-list not beholden to Pernod Ricard (so it's not the list of usual Montana suspects), and to enjoy a fine drop. Better yet but from the terrace, you can't see the mall, smell the mall, or see a sea of cars. It's almost a semi-rural vista, and after the first or second glass of wine, you might almost forget you were at a mall. Bliss.

A somewhat unrelated Albany story was our subsequent trip to a cheesery just on the other side of the motorway. You get to it through a string of cul-de-sacs of forgettable architecture, and randomly, there is then a small farm, with a few goats, and some great cheese, under siege by Albany's Terracotta Plague.

can I go one better? :

I bought a Philips 400GB HDD from Harvey Norman on Dec 22. Didn't get a chance to install it until Jan 12. I then realised it had already been installed previously and they had left some recorded items circa August 07. Those recorded bits wouldn't play very well (did the video equivalent of a CD stuck between parts A & B) and the bits I recorded were just as fudt. On Sunday morning (Jan 13) I took it back to Harvey Norman and said:

This is crap I want a refund. The player won't play properly and the unit won't record properly. It says on the box that it works just like a VCR but it doesn't. I can't just press record when I'm watching something and decide I want to record it. I need to go to menu and press various options - which is rubbish. Also, there's supposed to be a skip function that you can program to skip a certain amount of time, like a 3'45 ad break, and it will skip that instantly. But it's simply not on the menu. I've already got a Sony HDD and that's the kind of functionality I want."

To which the chap replied:

We'll send it back to Philips and see what they're prepared to do.

I said it had nothing to do with Philips since they were the retailler and it did not do what it claimed to do and I wanted a refund. He said that since I'd said the unit wasn't recording properly it must be broken and they'd have to send it back to Philips before they could do anything. And since it was holidays it may take a few weeks.

I relented, but it was only 2 days later that I realised that although he'd given me back my reciept, he'd taken back my HDD but given me no proof that he'd taken it. If he's on P he could just as well put it in the back of his car and deny everything!

"as any fule kno"

Hey! I didn't think there was anyone else in NZ who knew about Down wiv skool :)

My mum had a couple of Molesworth books, and oddly enough my intermediate school library had several more.

It's a long way from St Custards to Fairfield Intermediate, Hamilton but it somehow worked anyway.

Fotherington-Thomas lives at the bottom of my mate's garden. poor fule. he never made it in advertising.

I know who stole my Compleet Molesworth in 1963, and I would have a fatwa out on her now had she not married a real dud and been forced to live in a city which I shall not name out of delicacy, so I reckon fatwa has been executed by karma.

Incidentally, a former husband of mine was at prep school in the UK and his school reports really did have a category for Raffia Work. No prizes, though.

Look what I found: the St. Custards website.

A poor sub for those missing copies of The Compleet... (mine disappeared with the ex in 1996)

http://www.stcustards.free-online.co.uk/