|
After spending the entire month of October gallivanting all over Europe, life is gonna seem a little quiet now.
We’re trying to get things back into order. We need to get on to AMEX to see if they will fix my nice new camera which suffered so badly in Venice. (See how easy it is now for the names of exotic locations to simply roll off the tongue.)
Actually, we did manage to get AMEX to give us a cheque to replace our digital set top box that died while we were away. Apparently it was frightened to death when Sam invited a group of his footy mates over to watch a game on the big screen. Suddenly it wouldn’t receive anything.
We took the opportunity to upgrade our simple little set top box to the not quite top of the line Topfield Dual Tuner PVR with 120GB hard drive. What a nice bit of kit that is! (Three days in London and I’m talking like a local.) Thank-you Sam for being nice enough to kill the old box. Sorry that you had invited all your footy mates around to see the game on the big screen and they pummeled you out the back when you couldn’t deliver.
There was a very nice dinner with Tim and Glyn and their house guests, Andrew and Tony who were visiting from the U.K. Much food and alcohol was consumed by all and a good time was had. I really need to get serious about the gym again.
Greig spent four days in Melbourne for work. Well, he spent two days in Melbourne for work and two days for him. I took the opportunity to go absolutely wild back in Sydney and cleaned the shed.
As November draws to a close, the Christmas “silly season” starts. The first of the Christmas parties was at the abode of Chris and Aaron. We met Aaron through 2010, the support group for gay youth a few years ago. Not that we attended 2010, it’s just that they are attached to the Gay and Lesbian Counseling Service and we had affiliations with them.
A few years later we met Chris. Actually it was Jimi who met Chris and introduced him to us. It was just one of those wild co-incidences that Chris lived with Aaron. It’s not a very interesting story, but I thought worth mentioning to take up some space.
I should also mention my car. Or, more correctly the security system that I was sold with my car. I was told by the car salesman (and if you can’t believe a car salesman, who can you believe?) that if I wanted the interior of the car protected by an infrasonic alarm then I would have to buy the super-duper, top of the line Subaru Immobilizer System, which will make my car unstealable. Actually, it’s not a Subaru part at all. It’s made by a company called Brant and badged Subaru. I only mention this fact for the benefit of Search Engines.
Anyway, the immobilizer system is too good. It keeps on immobilizing the car when I don’t want it to be immobilized. For example, often when I go to start the car, it won’t. I need to re-arm the alarm and then disarm it again and then the car will start. It’s a real pain in the arse.
Even better, the alarm comes with a keypad system that you are required to input a four digit code every time you want to start the car. How much of a pain in the arse is that? Luckily it has a “Manual Mode” where you can tell it not to auto arm every time you stop the car. The problem is that is sometimes decided to arm itself anyway, meaning that you need to put in the four digit code to get the car started. You can never tell when it’s gonna do that so you crank the engine for a few seconds, realize that it ain’t gonna start, smile weakly at your passengers in embarrassment and then enter the code into the loud squawking keypad.
Subaru haven’t been able to isolate either of these problems so for the past four months I’ve just had to live with them. Actually, only three months. Jimi had to live with them for a month, hence the frantic text message to us while we were in Florence because he couldn’t get the car started and it was in a timed parking zone.
Subaru Service have had a couple of goes at fixing it to no avail. The real interesting thing was when I first brought the car in with the immobilizer problems and the guys in the Service Department were shocked that I’d been sold it. (You got the impression from them that they thought it was a piece of shit, but stopped short of saying it out loud.) When I told them I wanted the infra-sonic cabin protection, they dutifully unformed me that infra-sonics was part of the base alarm. All the immobilizer system is, is more things to go wrong.
They’ve got until the end of the year to fix it or else Subaru are removing it and making good any holes in the dashboard at their expense. The A.C.C.C. frowns on dealers who oversell products.
Having said all that, I should say that once started, my new Suby runs like a dream. It’s just a little bit of a gamble as to whether or not it will start each time.
More news as it comes to hand.
|