Not an exceptionally exciting or productive day so far.

First of all, after (finally!) receiving the VCD kit from FabMart last night, my daughter’s monitor decided that it was a good day (night) to die. I think it has been watching too much StarTrek TNG, and Worf is a bad influence.

Woke up this morning, sent monitor for repair, and nabbed Biju’s monitor off his desk – he is off to Coorg anyway, so he won’t notice till Tuesday. Even then, he may not notice at all….

Got monitor home, plugged in new card, installed software (Windows only – boo!) and prepared to be amazed.

Bah. I have been had. I expected a simple hardware based MPEG1 encoder and capture card. Instead, what I got was an extremely cheap capture card (of the sort I already have) and a software MPEG1 encoder, plus copies of highly redundant capture, editing and CD-burning software (I have all that stuff under Linux). Miserable performance, as can be expected of a “real-time” software encoder. Looks like 90% of the pricetag was for this highly redundant software.

And of course no way I can go to Brigade Road now to buy a real encoder card to save the weekend. Complained to Fabmart (had they delivered when they promised they would, I would have been able to recover), arranging to ship things back.

Garage has been rearranged and cleaned (I carried the responsibility, others carried the boxes). One quarter has now been vacated for my den. Next week, I get the carpenters in to start partitioning the place (nope, not using fdisk) and laying some kind of flooring.

Courier delivered the Asterix VCDs from FabMart. Great quality, Anjali is thrilled (though Shubha keeps grumbling about household money going down the drain). At least we can spend the weekend watching 7 Asterix movies.

Bah. Make that 6 movies. FM’s supplier goofed, and the “Asterix and Cleopatra” cover had “Asterix in Britain” – giving us a grand total of two “Asterix in Britain” VCDs. Hollered.

The day is not yet over. Maybe I will have more to report later.

Update 06:54PM: I knew it! The day isn’t over yet! Just got a call from my cellular phone service provider (Airtel), telling me that they are unable to deliver this month’s bill to me. They have finally woken up to the fact that our address has changed more than a year ago. And they also admit that they lost both the letters we sent informing them of this. Don’t ask me how the bills have been coming to us so far. And I am sure this is not the end of it….