A breakdown in transmission

"Earth to computer. Earth to computer. Earth to computer. Are you receiving me?"
silence
"Earth to computer. Earth to computer. Earth to computer. Are you receiving me?"
faint crackle...
"Earth to computer. Earth to computer. Earth to computer. Come in Computer...?"
"... you. Can y... hear...crackle?"
Which is where I am now. I am getting some success. What I have ended up with, in my attempt to buy something cheap and basically functional it seems, is a @£$&6 generation before this gamers computer. ie, really good at playing games fast, and fast LAN, and great graphics, down and upload speeds - none of which I need in the least, and not much compatibility with my old stuff - my work and my pictures. It was cheap because game kiddies want the latest and best, not last week's latest and best, and no-one else wants the bell-and-whistles with the complexities that come with it (the instruction are full of stuff about how to overclock (I thought that meant too much overtime) and set temperatures etc. I don't understand 1/10 of it. No interest.) However for doing the basic necessities... I have the original discs for my camera, and for my word processing package... it doesn't want to talk to either (ie all my books, bar the last 2 -which are in Word), or my old outlook express with all my old addresses and messages. On the other hand at least it is now working, and can deal with the internet and new incoming messages, and I can write on it in Word. I'm hugely grateful to Mark for his help getting this far. Still, I feel like I'm climbing a hill to look at a view I really don't need to see.

I went to catch prawns at NE river the other night. Which was both successful and not... rather like computers or writing really. We did catch some. They were not very big, and it took us more or less 4 hours to catch 860 grams between two of us. I also made the personal acquaintance of a little scorpianid fish (a cousin of the gurnard perch, the soldier fish Gymnapistes marmoratus when Norm handed me a scoop net to empty. I thought it was a prawn and so did he. It wasn't, which I found out making the acquaintance of the venomous spines. It hurts like hades for around an hour and half. They seem very very very common in the seagrass and even over the sand. Foolishly I flung it at the water, not the sand. We did chase one jumping prawn onto the beach, which was quite satisfying.