Gees, a couple of days without the 'net - how scary!

I spoke too soon on Saturday night. No sooner had I finished posting on the Battle Store forum, the modem decided to just, well, die. I had been having trouble with it lately. First one had to physically hold the power button in the keep it on. Then on Sat night it decided that it would constantly disconnect then re-connect in fifteen second cycles. So, I powered off, then restarted. The lappy did, the modem didn't. Sheesh!
So, after a scary couple of days of not having the internet - I'm back online. It took me an hour and a half to configure the new modem to the lappy, after a lot of swearing, hair-pulling, crying and threats of physical violence to the hardware. S'Funny - you follow the instructions, and you blindly believe that it would work first time. Nope, never that simple. In the end persistence paid off, and all I needed for it to work was a change of one setting in the setup, and the old password Telstra sent me. Bingo! I'm back on.
I did venture into a Telstra store yesterday and inquired about a replacement modem. $129 they wanted to charge. Practically every other place I looked at had something cheaper. The sooner this contract finishes the better I say! At the beginning the estimated (minimum) contract price was $824. Reckon I'm well over that already...
So, done the Xmas shopping for the nephew and nieces. I ventured up to Tuggerah with Pete (in the wars again with his case manager - a story I'm not retelling here) and purchased a swag of stuff for the kiddies - but limited myself to a set budget. There's not much from uncle Geoff this year, so they'll have to make do. Mind you, the parents usually more than make up for it so I don't think they'll be too upset.
Caught "Little miss sunshine" today. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Probably the best movie I've seen this year. Olive's pageant dance routine at the end was utterly hilarious! The only more dysfunctional family I've seen on the screen is the Simpsons.
Anyway, other things to do. Laters!