Another one! My Yamaha DAB+/FM/AM tuner arrived yesterday. I read the manual (yes), plugged it into the power and switched on. Nothing. D.O.A. That’s Dead On Arrival. Won’t even power on. Dead as a dodo.

Damn! First it was the OCZ SSD drive failure, costing me $53 to return it to Taiwan, for which I was never reimbursed. Then it was the Pioneer BluRay player that wouldn’t power on, costing me two trips back to Joondalup to have it replaced. Then it was the pair of lens adapters that interfered with the camera body, that cost me $25 to return to Hong Kong, again not reimbursed. And now this. Add to the list the three coffee machines that have each failed within a few months. I’m getting tired of this!

At least this Yamaha tuner came from a Melbourne hi-fi retailer, but it still means I have to re-box it and post it pack to them. That’ll cost me at least $35 I’d say. Grrrrrrr.

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I’ve exceeded my monthly 20GB download limit with iiNet. Holy cow, I never dreamed I’d ever use that much in the first two weeks of the monthly period, but I have. It just means I’ve been throttled to 256Kb/s, which is way above what I used to get with wireless internet at Trigg, that black hole of TV and data reception.

Part of the problem is that Windows 10 is downloading – 2.7GB worth. I’ve got three computers to download it for, but I’m only allowing one to do it at a time. I’ve had error messages already, which are utterly meaningless. Even Microsoft doesn’t seem to know what the error means. However, the download has picked up again and I’m letting it do it at 4am when I have 20GB of off-peak data available at full speed.

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Well, the car deal might be happening next week (it’s the actual car above and below). I talked to my good mate Barry, the former John Hughes car salesman, about the car at John Hughes’s yard in Victoria Park (Perth) and he volunteered to enquire for me.

Result: he’s haggled the price down $1500 and we’re going to go and see it next week sometime. Yes, there might be a spotter’s fee payable to Barry, but that’s fine with me. He helps me out frequently, for example by driving me to and from the airport and the cruise ship at Fremantle. That’s worth gold to me. He’ll pick me up and drop me back here.

This is a 5.5L injected V8 with every conceivable safety feature and item of electronic wizardry. It’s a 2006 model, way ahead of its time and has only done 43,000Km. Performance – 0 to 100Km/h in 5.2 seconds! Five speed automatic. (Why only 5-speed? Because the power of this engine is too high for the normal 7-speed, and with that much power available, it hardly needs to shift gears. It starts off in second, unless you tell it otherwise.) Anti-lock brakes, of course and big drilled discs all round. Electronic Stability Control. Etc etc. Looking forward to a test drive, at least. I’m not committed in any way yet, but see below.

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I had my six monthly eye tests last Wednesday and the doctor was annoyingly vague. He told me he was a little concerned, but to come back in six months. Worried about what? Cataracts, I think, or was it retinal damage? I’m not sure. And my bad sensitivity to glare? Dunno, might be dry eyes, try eye drops. Not happy with the guy. I think I might have to ask my GP to refer me to another eye specialist.

Speaking of my GP, my latest 3 monthly blood results came back last Friday and suddenly my kidneys are out of range. It’s odd, because they’ve always been fine. Why the change? She’s worried enough to immediately take me off the diuretic and to cut my metformin dose in half. I have to have another test this week and we’ll see on Friday if it was just an anomaly or whether it continues.

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While I was at SCGH hospital I bought the paper at the newsagency (I had to wait three hours for the eye drops to wear off). I noticed the very clear division – male magazines one side, women’s magazines the other.

Male magazines – lots of car mags, of course, but electronics, computers, The Economist, The New Internationalist, The New Statesman, New Scientist, Fine Woodworking, etc etc. All of them, even car magazines, needing brain power.

Women’s magazines – New Idea, Women’s Weekly, Hello!, Woman’s Day, Hollywood stars, dieting magazines galore, cooking, hair, makeup. No brains needed! Brains a positive impediment.

Call me misogynist by all means, but the day I see a woman reading any magazine or newspaper with any serious intellectual value is the day I’ll know I’ve won Lotto. Women read trash, utter vaporous rubbish. They believe any lies about weight loss and movie stars uncritically. Utter airhead stuff.

In all my years of sitting in cafes I cannot recall a single instance of ever seeing a woman reading a serious newspaper or news magazine. Look at the magazines in doctors’ waiting rooms – all women’s trash mags.

The one single instance of seeing a woman reading a serious magazine was coming back from Singapore last year, when I saw a Perth woman reading (well, she was carrying) a copy of New Scientist. I was astonished. A woman reading a magazine needing brain power??!

Prove me wrong. Women are airheads.