Apart from book reviews, reviews of old Doctor Who series, and the odd meme, this lj has been a bit quiet of late. This basically reflects the fact that it has been so sweltering hot recently that apart from work and commuting (in the blessedly air-conditioned office and car) I have only had the energy to read books and write about them, and have been deliberately choosing short books at that.

Anyway, I went out and bought a new TV today. The old one had never had great picture quality, and then the remote control packed it in a few weeks back; it was still within a few weeks of the two year guarantee, so I brought it back to the shop this morning. They promised to fix it, but mentioned a minimum repair period of three weeks. Thinking of my poor square-eyed children, unable to feed their addiction, I consulted with Anne by phone and decided to buy a new one – we can always sell on (or indeed give away) the old one to a good cause.

I immediately spotted the ideal new LCD TV in Fnac, but they refused to sell it to me as the one on display was their only one in stock. I bought a scanner off them anyway, and went exploring. Krëaut were ruled out due to having no staff presence and no serious explanation of which models were best. Vanden Borre got my custom due to very good customer service, both from staff and in terms of explaining what features each model had on the labels attached. Not that it really mattered, as they had the model I had already decided on in Fnac.

So, bought it, brought it home, plugged it in. I was slightly surprised to hear that both daughters had been waiting eagerly for this – I knew that U is a total addict to Fimbles and Miffy DVDs, but one never knows exactly what B is taking in. We were all rather more concerned to find that the new LCD TV was having problems settling in – colour faded within minutes to black and white if you were lucky, then various screen glitches began to manifest until you turned it off in disgust; when turned on again it functioned perfectly well for a minute or so and then the old problems resumed.

Much anxious fiddling with cables and scanning of the internet ensued, with the only plausible solution apparently to unplug it for an hour or so. So I did.

And now it works perfectly.

In the meantime I had bollocksed up the internet connection for the home computer and spent another frustrated hour tinkering with that before it too came right. And then I installed the scanner successfully. So I am feeling like I am Super Tech Man right now.

Plus I bought a headset so I can Skype from home. F now wants a demonstration tomorrow morning. I hope it is a bit cooler. may be interested to know that the second thunderstorm did indeed turn up in the end.