We had to get back to Brisbane, so though the ground was still very wet, we carefully manoeuvered our way back onto the bitumen and bid farewell to the Procters.
We dumped the black water at Wyllie Park and drove on to Lawnton to find the showground lots of other campers including a caravan in my favourite space. We set up in Brian Galland's favourite space and settled in.
I needed to retrieve the email so we went to Patricks Rd. I couldn't get the iBook to talk to the DSL modem so I set up an account on the eMac and printed out all the emails.
We returned to Lawnton and bought Thai takeaway for dinner.
Jean had a hair appointment in Mitchelton and I had to go into town to visit Next Byte to see what could be done about the iBook. In the end I decided that the cost of repair ing it would probably be more than half the price of a new one and a new one would have better functionality so I bought another 12" iBook. This one has a G4 processor, 512Mb of RAM, a combo drive and an airport card so I'm now equipped to run Tiger, to burn CDs, and to wireless link wherever I can find a hot spot.
I had major dramas trying to set up the new machine. I failed to notice that one can't change the "short name" of an account and I chose not to have the installer copy the files from the old iBook. I finished up with a somewhat dubious installation and not a lot of sleep.
We went shopping and got back to the Motley in time for lunch.
I had decided to bite the bullet and re-initialise the disk on the new iBook and do a new install. This time I did all the right things and it worked beautifully. Now I have a new machine with lots of grunt and all my work is back in place. All I have to do is solve the problem of communicating with the backup drive and the mystery of the CDMA modem and all will be well again.
We went to Clontarf with the Marretts for the Redcliffe Kite Fest. I was a bit disappointed because they relegated the "public" to a second rate site down the beach and because the "members" kites were a bit naff.
When the wind got up a bit, the "experts" flew their very pretty inflatables which aren't real kites because they have to be lofted by another kite. Later in the day, the "experts" gave way to the ordinary members and we flew lots of kites in the "public" site. Sarah and Andrew looked after the kids while I helped parents who were having trouble with their kid\'s kites. It finished up being a good day.
The Motley was booked in for a service so we were out early and spent the day in the Little Motley visiting and shopping.
We visited a furniture shop to test the prices and to see if we could buy a table for Sarah so that we could take the mahogany table to Barbara to go with the eight chairs which none of the children seem to want to keep.
We dropped in to Patricks Rd to do the email. Sadly even this facility is broken and I didn't get much done at all.
We picked up the Motley at four and returned to the showground. As we are leaving tomorrow, I spent the remained of the afternoon doing chores and retired to the Motley pretty well knackered.