h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The District Gnurse came and went in the morning, followed by the 'fridge engineer. It turned out I knew him - he came out earlier in the year to fix my dishwasher.

He found a huge block of ice way up inside the machine that had escaped the overnight defrost - he said it would have taken three or four *days* to melt unaided. But his steam gun cut through it... Then, he fitted an aftermarket heat-conducting strip from the defrosting element to the "drain hole" at the back. Apparently the drains freeze over because the defrosting element isn't powerful enough, then kilos of ice build up from there backing up into the machine. It's a design fault.

But he says it's fixed now, and the problem shouldn't recur. All I have to do now is wait for the bill...

My new laptop finally arrived, while I was on the 'phone with the insurance company chasing up the old one. It turned out they had unilaterally decided that, despite the machine being classed as "unrepairable", and my paying £15 to have it returned, that they wanted another £60 for the repairs they had attempted (against my specific instructions ) and wouldn't release it till I paid. Words were exchanged. Money was not. It's on its way back now.

The new one looks nice, but not as nice as the old one. It's just got a flat, black plastic-y finish, rather than the embossed aluminium of Bob's one. But it's very thin - the whole thing is narrower than the bottom half of Bob's - and reasonably light. I had hours of fun deleting Windows - the BIOS was rigged to look like it was letting you do things, then at the last second it would make the Windows partition read-only for "safety". I eventually got round it, though, and now the HDD has no partitions on it.

I probably won't get it doing anything useful by tomorrow, but I'll be spending Sunday/Monday turning it into either a Hackintosh, a Steam Machine or both.

I watched "Law & Order". I'm about to watch last night's "Boss".