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.

Ever since I moved into this house, I’ve had problems receiving TV channels and the FM radio reception in my tuner amplifier is almost non-existent. (TV and FM radio share the same part of the EM spectrum, so the antenna feed for the TV is also used for the tuner amplifier). Same for DAB+ digital radio. Very poor reception with terrible fading. As shown in the previous post, I’m in an outer fringe reception area.

Most of the time the TV reception is OK, but it’s weather dependent and sometimes I can’t get ABC channels. I’ve looked outside for a TV antenna but there is none. I assumed it might be in the roof space.

Well, my good friend Keith came here yesterday and got up in the roof space to have a look. Result? There is no bloody TV antenna anywhere! The signal I’m getting is purely stray pickup by the cables in the roof space. Bloody hell. No wonder I’m having trouble.

The good thing is that the house is properly cabled, with splitters sending cables off to the various sockets in the bedrooms. So if I get an antenna installed, I should have a good result.

I wonder what happened to the original antenna? Was there ever one installed? I’m the third owner of this house. I’m still in touch with the owners before me and I’m sure they wouldn’t have taken the antenna with them when they moved out. I’m inclined to think that there was never any antenna from the start. It’s quite possible. The builder would have installed the cabling in the roof but it would have been up to the owner to have an antenna installed. Maybe they did what I’ve done – plugged their TV in, saw that it worked and left it at that. Amazing.

Anyway, I’ve contacted a TV antenna installation company and I’ve just got to say Go.

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I recorded the new TV program The Politician’s Husband on ABC1 on Sunday but I haven’t watched it yet. I edited the start and finish and noticed that at the very end, where it shows the BBC logo with the production year in roman numerals, this – MMXXIII. Huh?? I looked closely. That’s what it says – MM XX III — that’s 2023. Maybe the show should be called The Time Traveller’s Husband!

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I still haven’t made a serious move to buy that Mercedes that’s sitting there waiting for me. But the latest housing price report has made me hesitate even more. Perth’s median house price fell about 2.6% in the past twelve months. My suburb is smack on the average, so it means the value of my house has fallen.

I’m not thinking of selling, but I’ve always regarded the house as my nest egg to be raided in a reverse mortgage at some stage. Buying a $40,000 car is just using that amount of my $500,000 equity in my house.

But a reverse mortgage depends, to work safely, on the house value rising at or above the interest cost on the mortgage. If the house is falling in value, then a reverse mortgage, where you don’t make any repayments to the bank, is a slightly riskier proposition. Although I’m eligible to do a reverse mortgage (over 65), I haven’t done it because I still have savings. But using those up, when the value of my house is falling, makes me nervous. Therefore, I think I’ll wait before making any rash moves. It wouldn’t be a rash move, but I don’t need a new car – it can wait.

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So Bronny “Chopper” Bishop has gone. HOORAY! What a travesty she made of the Speaker’s position in the federal parliament. She ejected or suspended members from the House on 400 occasions, and 390 of them were Labor members. Totally biased. Question Time became a waste of time. This is the Liberal Party way.

What a bloody disgrace. A Liberal Party member. Yeah. It seems to me that even though she’s apologised and repaid her doubtful travel expenses, that shouldn’t let her off the hook. I think she should still be investigated for fraudulent claims on her signature.

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I’ve often thought that I’m pretty lucky in having no problems with arthritis or joint pains. I’m 68 and many, many people have these troubles at this age. I’ve been free of anything except an occasional sharp pain in my knees.

But my right arm has started aching pretty constantly, and now, from a few days ago, I’m getting sharp pains in my right hip area. Uuurrrgh. I hope I’m not heading for hip replacement. The right arm is my mouse arm, of course.

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My new Sony Xperia SP phone has arrived and is now working. This the replacement for the one I lost a couple of weeks ago. The lost phone was an HTC Desire, a relative cheapie that I never liked very much. Very hard to use.

This new Sony is still an Android phone but it seems easier to use (I can work out how to answer and make calls!). It’s also smaller, so I’m more inclined to carry it in my pocket. I could never find the old one, so I often missed answering calls.

But losing my phone means I lost all my numbers that were stored, so I’ve got to rebuild the Contacts list. Very tedious work. I think I had a backup, but I don’t know where it is. Not much of a computer guru am I?

Digital radio coverage in Perth

Gaaah! From the ABC’s web site:

Red – Tertiary Coverage