Today I was woken by a phone call from my dad saying that his video wouldn’t eject tapes, I suggested that he just disconnect it from the mains, to see if it resets the mechanism, but five minutes later I get another call saying it didn’t work. So I dragged myself out of my nice warm bed to trek to his house (and it was bloody freezing outside). Upon arriving I took the lid off the video to see if I could see anything obvious, and no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find anything, so came to the conclusion that the electronics were knackered. It would switch on and start playing as soon as I plugged it in, and none of the controls on the remote or front panel would respond, and couldn’t even get the tape out manually, so gave it up as a lost cause. Dad said that he’ll just buy a new video, so as I was at a loose end for the day, I said that I’ll come down and look with him, as he is a complete technophobe. We found a video of the same brand and better spec than his broken video for £99.95 in Comet, which is nearly £200 less than he paid for his now dead video just 4 years ago. But my big achievement of today was to get him to pay by debit card, instead of cash, something he never did before, always finding how much the goods he wanted to buy was and withdrawing that amount from his bank account. Initially he didn’t want to use the debit method, but I talked him into it, and now he thinks it’s a great idea, saves carrying cash around, something I have been trying to tell him for ages. He was always put off by the old method of signing loads of paperwork to make the purchase, but it’s now a lot easier, probably easier than paying cash, as you just hand over the card, then input the pin number, sorted! But the bizarre thing is that he didn’t even know his pin number until today, the letter which contained the pin, still had the seal on it, and he got the letter almost a year ago; I am slowing dragging him into the 21st century! Also Today I have ordered the goods that I wanted from dabs.com on my Dad’s debit card, and I will pay it back when I get my tax rebate. It makes sense to order it now as I will be off work for the next two weeks, so I can personally accept the delivery. Even better news was that the collective price had dropped by more than £20 since I checked last night, result!!! I should have my new toys before the weekend, so I think that Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 will be promptly installed to see all the pretty Direct X 9 graphics that I am missing at the moment, can’t wait!!!