I turned off my computer on Friday morning.

It wouldn’t turn back on on Friday night.

On Saturday I opened up the case and rummaged around.

On Sunday I asked some friends on email for advice. ‘Cos when it all comes down to it, I’m more of a software person than a hardware person. They said it was probably the Power Supply Unit (PSU).

I confirmed this by plugging the main power cable from the PSU in the other, working, spare computer, into that one. It worked.

I looked up PSUs on the Dick Smith web site. $99, in stock at the Dick Smith down the road. Handily local, though only one model available.

We strolled down to Dick Smith. Only to be told they’d just sold the last one. D’oh. There goes Daniel’s theory of quick and easy shopping.

So… I’m using the spare computer for a bit longer. Which can access the web and so on, but which I couldn’t use to blog, because I’d forgotten my blog password… argh…

• The Geekrant version of this tale

The Goodies name their favourite episodes (at least, of those released on DVD):

After watching the shows again, all agree their favourite episodes are Earthanasia and The End in which the three spend their time together in confinement and without their often wild film excerpts.

“Ironically they were brought about by the fact that we ran out of money at the end of each series,” Oddie says. “I actually think that some of those have stood up better than some of the film things.”

These are two of my favourite episodes, too, really bringing out Oddie and Garden’s superb dialogue-writing skills.

My favourite Goodies episodes (in no particular order):

• Earthanasia — “ha ha ha Your little faces!”
• The End — “Is he going into a monastery?” “No, into a lavatory.”
• the Lighthouse one — like the two above, pretty much a three men stuck in confinement story, with a bit of space travel thrown in.
• U-Friend or UFO — Star Wars, Close Encounters, Superman, Doctor Who, they all get a look-in. “EBGB, how do you talk to aliens?” “Exterminate! Exterminate!”
• Radio Goodies (pictured) — I can never hear “Walk in the Black Forest” without thinking of it.
• String — such a wide-ranging parody of advertising I don’t think I’ve seen on any other comedy.
• The Cream Mine — that whole card game and sauce bottle fight at the end cracks me up. It brought the pointless argument over pronounciation of “scones” into popular culture.
• Saturday Night Grease — was particularly funny after I’d seen the movies that inspired it. Just about every classic musical ever made gets spoofed.

Yup, I’ll be buying the new DVD release. Like the first one, it’ll sell like cupcakes in Australia.

Somewhere, possibly retired now, there’s an ABC staff member or two who were responsible for scheduling The Goodies constantly through the 70s and 80s, embedding it deeply into the memories of most Gen-Xers.

Whoever you are, and wherever you are, I salute you.

• April 2000: The Kitten Kon convention — meeting Tim Brooke-Taylor
• The Goodies Rule OK — fan club, news
• Kay’s Goodies photos (which is where the above pic came from)

I was sitting at work this afternoon, about to email Marita with the astounding news that the big Dymocks near work was having a 20% off everything sale, when the phone rang with something even better.

I had become an uncle.

Young baby TBA (probably Leo) had ventured into the world some three weeks ahead of schedule. He and his mum and dad are doing very well, but it was a little bit of a surprise, particularly as he arrived on his grandmother’s birthday.

Welcome, Leo.

(more…)

Came across this fascinating article from Joel Spolsky on how to price products. No, really, despite the use of graphs, it’s really interesting. He talks about software, but really it applies to anything. He makes some great points about companies getting people to pay what they’re willing to pay for a product, through market segmentation: concessions for the oldsters, cheap movie tickets during hours when employed people are at work, grocery discount coupons that most people with money don’t bother with.

One he doesn’t really talk about is early adopters vs late adopters. The brand new sparkly product vs last year’s model. Video games are a good example: I’m not a hardcore gamer and I can’t bring myself to pay more than A$50 for an XBox game. I’d rather wait until it drops. Hell, I haven’t had the time to finish Halo yet, so I won’t be getting Halo2 for a while.

Personally, I won’t run all over town looking for a particular bargain, unless on the day I’m feeling particularly stingy or am aiming to save a phenomenal amount of money. I don’t have the time. For instance, I recently bought a new hard drive for one of my computers. I bought it at Dick Smith because it’s just down the road (incorporated a healthy walk into it) and because I knew they had what I wanted in stock. I could probably have saved $20 or more by shopping around, but that involved time I didn’t have (or at least, didn’t want to spend). Also I suspect the bright appearance and perception of no problems with vanishing shops or argumentative return policies give me warm and fuzzy consumer confidence feelings.

When I get my car serviced, it goes to a dealer. Again, it could be done cheaper elsewhere, but the dealer almost always have all the parts required in stock, so I’m rarely without it for more than a day. Given the state of the PT system and my travel needs, it’s often inconvenient to be without my car, and that’s an inconvenience I’m prepared to pay a premium to avoid. Indeed, some people with more time than money don’t do preventative maintenance on their cars, simply fixing things when they break down. I prefer to avoid breakdowns, since I’m invariably in a hurry.

This is not to say I won’t leap at a bargain when I see it, or that for whatever reason I sometimes refuse to buy something, on the basis that I know or think I can get it cheaper somewhere else. I dare say if I were to cruise around the web sites and find my favourite Doctor Who story on DVD for $10 cheaper than anywhere else from a reputable retailer, I’d snap it up. I also frequent places like K-Mart and Big W when I’m buying kiddy clothes.

Obviously the equation is different according to how much time you have, how much money you have, and how much you can save. For now, I’m short of time. When somebody builds some kind of device that squeezes about 30 hours into the day, maybe for me that equation will change.

Tandoori Times, Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. The service was a little slow and chaotic due a dire shortage of staff, which the manager later apologised profusely for. But since we were a small group enjoying the conversation, this didn’t detract at all from dining experience. Perhaps this place has a reputation for greatness, as one of the funniest people in the country, John Clarke, arrived with some people, and was prepared to wait for a table. Maybe he was super-keen to watch the Bollywood movies and Indian pop music videos broadcast onto the wall. Whatever, the food was damn excellent.

Lime Leaves, QV complex, city. Supposedly a Malaysian restaurant, but I think the most you could say was that it was modern Asian-influenced cuisine. The sight of a waiter taking orders without writing them down is either a sign of hopeless optimism, or good service. In this case all the meals arrived quickly and accurately, so evidently it was the latter, though some people in the party swapping seats later on did confuse things a bit. The entree was tasty enough, but my chosen main (lamb cutlets) was utterly delicious. Evidently a couple of early-leavers contributing over the odds, and most of the rest of us rounding up was what avoided a shortfall in the bill courtesy of a couple of repeat offenders. But what a great meal.

Another weird dream the other night:

I was in a kitchenware shop in Collins Street, as was the cat I had when I was growing up, Sooty.

We shouted “Get it back, it’s the wrong set!” And he started to try and grab pieces back, but every time he chased someone to get it back, another person would take a piece from the package.

Bizarro.

• Possible influences: Apart from visiting a kitchenware place on the weekend, I have NFI.
• Past dreams.

I got given a new wallet on Monday, so a couple of days ago I transferred the contents of my old, decrepit one into it. On the way across, I took this picture.

Feel free to post a picture of the contents of your wallet or purse… Link in the Trackbacks or comments.

• Move your mouse over the picture for descriptions of various bits (note Firefox may abbreviate. You can fix it with this extension — go to Tools / Extensions / Popup Alt Attribute / Options and turn on Show long tooltips in multiline)
• Past photos in this series
• Notes on creating the image map/hot spots with text

Quick reviews of recent DVDs viewed…

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Another one of Jim Carey’s interesting non-rubber-faced roles. Reminded me a bit of Being John Malkovich and 12 Monkeys, but a tad more confusing before you know what’s going on. Very enjoyable.

Coffee and Cigarettes. An all-star cast, mostly playing themselves, in a series of dialogue-driven vignettes, one filmed as long ago as 1987. Clever 2xCate Blanchett bit. Very good Steve Coogan/Alfred Molina sequence. Some great lines. I see a critic on IMDB panned it, but I found it quite amusing.