  Lightning bloggage again: I ventured into the West End today - I certainly wouldn't ordinarily do such a thing on the last weekend before xmas, but I was seeing off my beloved to Newcastle for the next few days, and I wanted to get a component that would reduce my stress quite a bit. For however long it is, I've been using an external USB hub with its own power supply, which despite being upstream of a surge-protected box, would momentarily drop all of it's connections when the fridge switched itself on. Not every time, just often enough to cause my computer activity to be suspended by a minute or so, while the hub remembered it had in fact been a hub, once upon a time, and decided to take it up again. Meanwhile the G4 had decided that my USB audio devices were no longer obtainable, and reverted to the internal ones, and these had to be reset manually, twice or three times in a day.
Gets to you after a while. I had considered building a script that would restore the audio settings onclick, but it was a preposterous thing to have to do. Instead I bought a new component, endured the befuddling nonsense of non-liability on the grounds of it not saying suitable for Macintosh clearly on the side of the box. I mean, a PCI card is a PCI card, isn't it? Why would it not work, specifically? No-one was very keen to discuss it.
I brought home the card, I stuck it in the G4 and it works. And he saw that it was good, which is more than can be said for the grey miasma of hysteria and carnage that was Oxford Street, seen from the Tottenham Court Road end, at about three o'clock this afternoon. The magic of xmas hung over the scene like a toxic cloud. Time for a shower, and then, more enjoyment! 
