packing ourselves

As the classic kiwi saying goes, “we're packing ourselves”. In contrast to the usual meaning, however, it's not that we're in a heightened state of anxiety. Rather we're sorting and itemising and boxing for shipping. I even bought the expensive packing tape with the built-in dispenser. Oh yeah... it's the weekend o' cardbordic fun round here.

It's been quite a success. I pity the poor fool who has to lift the three large boxes that happen to be labelled “fragile”—a reminder for the truck driver of his human frailty, I fear, with the contents being mega-weighty rather than actually breakable.

We're already missing things we've packed. Chief among them would have to be the humble cordless phone, particularly in our relatively densely populated flat... there are just too many interjecting comedians passing by if you stand in the hall (I hear). My chef's knife has also been packed (in our “on plane” luggage, of course). Nick has already been shopping for replacements for both, though so far unsuccessfully!

Though we've well and truly broken the back of the packing, we've now run out of that stylie extra-strong packing tape, which has put a hold on the proceedings. That's actually given an opportunity to turn the lounge room back into an ordered living space again. Quite an improvement on the previous scene, a chaos of packed, to be packed, not to be packed, spare packing materials, and, being us, electronics.

In that vein, Nick and I managed to find the time today to repair exactly 1.8 Apple AirPort basestations. I'd been fearing the loss of wireless networking, with Nick's basestation too attached to London. There is a specific problem that has plagued the power supply of this particular model, something Nick and I had repaired on his one some three years ago. So a week or so ago I'd taken a gamble and bought a dead one off eBay. Sure enough, it had the characteristic hiss that suggested the capacitors in the power system had blown. Nick, meanwhile, had also acquired another dead one last week, to repair and sell. Now you have to buy the required capacitors in sets of five; each repair needs two. Being a man of foresight, after our repair three years ago Nick kept the remaining three capacitors and brought them here to London with him. So with a little of the traditional potion of solder, hold 'er, coil and trouble, and sure as eye of newt and leg of something else, I have a working wireless basestation! Rock. Nick being a generous soul let me use two of the three capacitors, leaving his recent acquisition currently one capacitor short of, well, capacity, I guess? We'll be rectifying that soon, I imagine. Meanwhile, like almost everything else, mine is already packed.