Thursday, August 24, 2006

Beautiful weekend but bigtime voltage trouble!


August 21, 2006
What an introduction to winter in NZ - sunny and up to about 16C this weekend. I had a great walk on the beach, watered the garden with the rain pails, drained the water off the wormbin (for those not fully informed about wormbins, you put food scraps in the top and drain "fertilizer water" off the bottom), biked around New Brighton and checked out the pool. You wouldn't believe this place - 50m indoor pool, diving pool with 1 and 3m boards and 5 and 10m platforms, wave pool with little "rivers" around the edges that kids were having a ball in.

But I have a little confession to make about my interactions with the 240V electricity here. I brought a wireless router/phone adaptor from Vonage plus a phone to plug into it all the way from home so I could talk for free to everyone in California. Well, I managed to fry the router and my phone by plugging them into the outlet with only a plug adaptor. Turns out you have to buy a $150 stepdown transformer to protect them from the 240V. So don't bother trying to phone me on my CA number for awhile! I'm waiting for my new router :o(

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