Japan 1992   © PJ Croft 2020

What a glorious day. Sparkling clear blue sky, 21deg max. Nice.

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I admit I am very sensitive. I was told some years ago that I could be called hypersensitive. I notice things people say and do and it makes me upset sometimes, like now.

I’ve been buying and setting up a new laptop for a friend of mine using my credit card because he doesn’t have one. It’s fine, he paid me today, that’s not the problem.

I was hoping to be able to pass it over and so I’ve been setting it up for him as he’s not very expert, to put it politely. He came here today so that I could give it to him. But first I had to add him as a user and delete myself, as my name got on there when it first arrived and I was setting up Windows 10 for the first time. I hadn’t been able to do it because I didn’t know his full details.

But to add a user, it involves setting up a Microsoft account. When you do that, you have to put the user’s email address in, but the next step is that MS sends an email to the user’s email account with a code. My friend’s email address is OK, we know that, but he didn’t know his password so we couldn’t access it and see the MS code. Therefore we were stuck.

That meant we couldn’t proceed. I could tell he was annoyed at making a wasted trip and he made a remark about how it would have been better if I’d set it all up at his place as he thinks he knows where his password is. Thinks. Then he made remarks about how this new laptop is no use to him and it may get sent back, or be dropped into the bin. And he got up and left quite suddenly.

Bloody hell, I’m upset. I’ve spent quite a few hours already installing free software and an anti-virus program for him. But because he can’t remember his email password, we can’t proceed and so he’s upset with me, making snarky remarks.

Yes, I’m sensitive. I suppose someone else would have given him snarky remarks in return (“Why can’t you remember your passwords? Why can’t you keep a record?”) but I’m not like that. My pulse is racing and I’m having trouble getting my mind away from this.

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I put the new battery into the Honda MDX a couple of days ago, cleaning the battery compartment before I dropped it in and ensuring the terminals are clean and tight.

The car hasn’t been started or driven for a couple of months, so I was a bit nervous, but it started first time and after a little lumpiness, the engine cleared its throat and idled smoothly. Great. So I let the foot brake off and put it in reverse with my foot on the accelerator. Nothing, except the creep you get at idle. I tried to increase the engine revs but nothing I did would make it go any faster. I hurriedly put it back into forward and let it creep back into the garage. Wouldn’t want to be stuck half in, half out.

It’s as if the accelerator is not controlling the engine. Strange. I haven’t done anything that would cause that. The clue is that there’s a Check Engine warning light on, but what does it mean? I do actually have an OBD (On Board Diagnostics) reader which would tell me, but you have to get under the dash to plug it in and I can’t contort my body enough to do it. I suppose it’s possible that the car has decided it wouldn’t be prudent to drive with this fault, whatever it is, so it’s stopping me.

I think I’ll phone the RAC to come and give me an idea what’s wrong. I would guess that there is no mechanical cable, that the accelerator controls a voltage to feed to the engine and its computer, but I don’t know. Could it be a faulty potentiometer?

If it needs mechanical work, so be it, but it’s probably something simple as the car hasn’t been driven recently. I did notice before I started it that the radiator was looking dry, so I filled it with distilled water, and the oil is near the lower mark, but it’s not dry – it’s still within the bottom and top marks. Odd.

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I’ve been meaning to mention that Sunday evening ABC-TV program Operation Buffalo again. What a weird program. I’m still watching it after four episodes, but it’s losing me. It can’t seem to make up its mind whether it’s serious drama or a comedy. As I’ve said before, it’s like parody. Some of the acting is slapstick, yet last Sunday there was serious shooting (with guns) and a woman got shot right in the forehead. It’s not comedy. But the acting is so over the top that I’d be embarrassed if it was seen overseas. Oh well.

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I’ve now got all my wi-fi devices connected to my iiNet modem again, after realising that the password has changed. But my land-line (VOIP) phone is still not working. I’ve been through all the phone settings and the iiNet modem settings and nothing looks wrong. I’ll go through the modem settings one more time but this is annoying! I’ll tell iiNet that I don’t want to pay for the past two weeks for this phone, because it hasn’t been working and it’s not my fault.

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There was an ad in The West yesterday for a vegetable/vegetarian chain of shops in Perth, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen truffles advertised for sale. The price? $2 per gram!  That’s $2,000 per kilogram. This is bullshit. There’s no way it can cost that much. They’re just exploiting us.

I’ve never even smelt truffles before, let alone seen them. I’m tempted to go and buy a couple of grams just for the experience.

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Grrrr, I’ve finally managed to get the owner set up on this new laptop, once he gave me the password for his email account so that I could get the code that Microsoft sends when you set up a new account.

What a rigmarole! You can’t be a user on a PC with Windows without setting up a Microsoft account, whereby they try to get you to give them all your information and let them send you all their advertising and so on.

I’ve now got the new owner’s name showing as the main user and the person who signs in, but I want to remove myself now, and I can NOT find a way to remove myself. It says, To remove a user, click on your account and select Manage.

But which account? The new owner, or me? When I try to follow this instruction, i.e. clicking on Manage, it just starts up a web browser and gives a dog’s dinner of options, but I cannot find a “Remove User” button.

This whole process has made me realise just how difficult computers are for the average person. I’ve been using Windows for nearly 25 years, but I’m bamboozled by so much of this. I’m not stupid, but so often Microsoft says, “Do this”, but when I do it, if I can find it, I don’t see what I would expect to see. This is crap.

Oh well, chicken breasts with cheese, and roast vegetables, cooking now in my Breville Air Fryer oven (roasting, of course). One aluminium tray, no washing up.