In further news, all hardware sucks.

I can't open my laptop because one of the screwheads has been almost completely stripped by whoever opened it last. I am very unhappy about this, as I want this laptop working again, as soon as possible, and at present I can't even get into it to recover the hard drive! Has anyone reading solved this particular problem in practice, not just theory?

Second hardware suck is that the printer/scanner only works on the USB 1.1 port on the Mac, not the USB 2 PCI card, so scanning and card reading are dog-slow. It does work properly on the slow socket, just painfully. (The mouse, keyboard and camera all work fine on the PCI card USB 2 ports.) It appears to be a reasonably smart piece of hardware, too, not just a braindead WinPrinter. arkady has apparently had similar problems having to play musical ports with the USB 2 card on her Mac. It's what happens when cheap hardware meets cheap hardware.

Under the oak and the iron.

arkady and I went to the London Fetish Fair this afternoon and had a lovely time. The new venue is much better — much larger and the City is a tumbleweed zone on weekends — except the lack of drinkable beer.

Arkady was wearing her Trinity outfit (black PVC catsuit, black PVC corset, Underworld coat) and I had the mesh top, the waist clincher, the short mesh skirt, stockings and the new Nice Boots. She also brought Marius in his bondage gear. Unsurprisingly, he was a major hit. Though quite a few curious people blanched when she quoted circa £800 for something comparable. I dunno, these fetishists are supposed to be cashed up for just the right thing ...

I spoke to the woman at Top To Bottom Leathers about an extended version of the clincher, and she's way too busy with the current backlog to do a new pattern; but she was very interested in seeing how it fit, and was very pleased that I liked it a whole lot. (And that I keep recommending her to you lot. I got a pile of cards from her too.)

We saw narnee and met James, conflux and thekumquat. I bought Sahra a rubber necklace with a purple cut-glass jewel on it to match her purple PVC catsuit (darn these pretty girls!), and did not buy Arkady a new leather corset that would have fit her perfectly. Aieee. I did get photos of the two. We failed to meet webcowgirl and shadowdaddy — they had gone straight to Camden, and I had to nick off home early to take care of redcountess and the kitties. And it was bloody freezing.

Tonight we sleep in separate ditches.

Who stays awake two to three days at a stretch more often than occasionally?

I last did this sort of thing on any sort of regular basis when I was editing a student newspaper ten, no eleven, years ago. (At 28, I was the Old Man of the office.) I'd make it through the last few hours having a Berocca every hour and a Sudafed every second hour. Your writing quality gets really crap by about hour thirty, by the way — the grammar and punctuation is there, but having anything at all to say or saying it at all well goes right out the window. (Though I did write one of my best articles ever around hour 34. I had all my notes right in order, though.)

Best bit is going home afterwards on the tram, around hour 40, and looking both trashed and meeeannn. Because junkies try to buy drugs from you, and take it personally when you say you're not a dealer. Well, they did me, anyway. They also did it when I'd had a REALLY BAD DAY at work. Even skinny weedy BOFHs don't get hassled walking down dark alleys when they're projecting that.

Sleep. Sleep is definitely my favourite drug ever. Well, no, cloves are. But sleep is up there.