New battery ordered for my laptop. Should be here about 5pm or so from experience. It was only $167 for a new battery. It should improve my battery life significantly. With some luck I will get to be able to watch a movie or two, particularly if I turn down the brightness of the screen and do not use the DVD. Pretty obvious really. Unfortunately I will not have my wireless card at the Qantas Club – the Vodafone one that is – since I will be leaving it here in case the internet access goes down.

I am going down to Jaycar in a moment to pick up some parts so I can get a repair out the door – some transistors which will cost all of $1.50 for 10. 50 years back the same parts would have been about ten times the price for a single transistor. How things have changed. Then again looking the other way CPU’s have maybe 20 million transistors for $50, making individual units for 15 cents quite expensive.

And the SMH is reporting that there are rumours that the 2010 World Cup could be moved here to Oz. That would be really great, but I doubt that this would happen in reality.