Another very quiet week.

Hobie is now off the tablets and seems to be coping. I still have grave doubts about his quality of life, though. Being blind and deaf his only interaction with the world around is by smell and touch, the latter often taking him by surprise. As he cannot see or hear, the only way he can be aware of an approach (smell doesn't seem to help him here) is to pick up vibrations from approaching footsteps. That would be fine if we had wooden floorboards, but the floor downstairs is tiled on concrete. Hence he often jumps when you touch him even gently. He has no way of knowing when his food is ready, unless he is already close enough to his bowl to smell its arrival. Happily his internal clock works and, if you touch him around six in the evening, he gets up and makes his way to his feeding area. Air movement tells him when a door is open so he can go outside to do his business. Apart from that, he sleeps. Somehow the word quality seems hugely inappropriate.

My PC came back on Thursday afternoon. There was a problem on Wednesday in that the system couldn't address the hard disks. It turned out that the 633MHz memory chips were not compatible with the processor, so Christophe needed to replace them with the 800MHz variety. I also had a new CPU and a new case, as well as the new motherboard and PSU planned.

Then I found out why the PC was such a bargain.

When I bought it, as a customer return/manager's special, I noticed that, although the box said Windows Vista Home Premium, it booted into XP Media Centre Edition. I was quite happy with that, as I still believe Vista to be related to the mound of cattle detritus alongside the barn next door.

When we started the PC, it wanted to activate Windows - probably because everything had changed. I couldn't activate online as the motherboard has a gigabit network card that needs special drivers installed in Windows. I couldn't get into Windows until it had been activated, so was getting nowhere. I called the activation telephone line, tapped in the numbers that had been generated by Windows and had a refusal. The only alternative then was to retry the telephone activation using the product key printed on the certificate stuck to the old case.

The certificate stuck to the old case was for Windows Vista Home Premium!

So I installed another copy of Windows and thus needed to reinstall all of my software! Deep joy!

I have spent some very interesting time trying to update my Visa details on PayPal. My Visa card expired on 31st July, so I wanted to register the new one. Just the expiry date and CVV to change, everything else is the same. Quite straightforward - you'd think!

They said, "upon checking your account we were unable to verify this credit card because an incorrect billing address was provided. Please enter another billing address or contact your issuer for clarification on the correct primary billing address for this card."

I replied, "The billing address you have is correct. I have just tried again using the same capitalisation, spelling and sequencing that I have just copied from this month's statement.

Let me put this in the simplest terms I can.

I know my address, I live here. Barclaycard knows my address, they successfully send statements here. eBay knows my address, I have had numerous purchases delivered here. Guess what? The address I know, the one Barclaycard knows and the one eBay knows are all the same.

Is there any intelligence in these systems? Does anyone with the authority to think look at this?"

Their response used exactly the same words as their initial email. I have yet to reply. I did, however, complete the satisfaction survey they asked me to do!!

I thought you might be interested to see how the emancipated bonsai is doing. This is it, a little over two feet tall now.

Still no idea what it is, though!

Nice news during the week. It looks like my sister and her husband may be coming here for a break at the beginning of September. We enjoy their visits and are looking forward to this one.

Finally, a piece of video from our Tour de France viewing last week.

Have a good week.

À la prochaine