Slum Life

Hello friends.

So as I mentioned in my last post, I am now living with my mom. But fortunately, i got paid on Saturday, so I’ve booked the ferry tickets to see +Tracey Ryan. And I damn well can’t wait to get out of here. It’s been horrible.

  • There’s no working vacuums
  • The hot water takes ages to warm up
  • Most parts of the house don’t have a carpet
  • You have to put money in the TV to watch it. Luckily i have my TV
  • Nail clippers are very hard to find
  • My bedroom (which used to be my sister’s, so is pink and has glow in the dark fairies on the wall) is full of my sister’s stuff. When i first got here, it had loads of junk, most of which was moved into the attic or thrown out. There’s still some junk in there now
  • No-one opens the curtains. I have to do it
  • No-one closes doors behind them. I have to do it
  • No-one does the washing up. It’s always “someone else’s turn”. I usually end up doing it
  • There’s junk everywhere. Even before i brought my stuff here
  • Pretty much everything is dirty. I’m literally scared to walk around in bare feet. I’m always in my slippers
  • My sister is a lazy, stupid, uncaring git who only gives a damn about herself and whatever boyfriend she happens to be with at the time
  • There’s always stuff left around the floor for people to trip over. Mostly left by my sister
  • When people finish off a toilet paper roll, no-one changes it. I have to
  • There’s no space for my few toiletries (razors and the like). They have LOADS of it
  • They’re both female smokers. They are constantly coughing. Especially mom with her “chest infection”

That’s all I can think of right now, but I’m sure there’s more i haven’t thought of. I might add more later.

For a while there was no internet, but being the genius I am, i used a SIM that my mom uses in a “broadband” dongle, and put it in my phone and used it as a wi-fi hotspot, so now we all have internet instead of just one computer. Although obviously it’s slow. And signal is usually quite bad, and sometimes didn’t work at all. Another problem with the T-mobile/EE SIM is that they block content which they deem “adult”, and when you go over the unfair fair usage policy (which isn’t much), they also stop you watching YouTube, even when the videos are embedded on a website or something. Chances are, if you use YouTube a lot, you’re going to get through that fair use policy very quickly.

I also didn’t have any internet on my phone because I’ve used it all and it doesn’t get renewed until 4th November. So for several days

Because of the lack of internet, I wasn’t able to do much for job searching. I told them that at the job centre and they seemed to let me off. Especially since it’s their fault. But eventually they paid me, and now i have a decent amount of money (for now). I’m going to try not to spend too much of it. I might buy a PlayStation Vita when the knobcentre pays me again on Monday, but other than that, not much else.

On an unrelated note, this my my 50th post. I think I’ve done pretty well. I’ve got over 13,700 views. To other people, that may not seem a lot, but it is to me. I’m sure there’s more popular blogs out there by normal people like me, but ah well. I do seem to be getting several views every day. It’s pretty consistent actually. Just today I’ve had 8, and yesterday I had 7. Last month i had 354!

Here’s my latest stats for the past month:

Stats from the past month

And stats from all time:

Stats from all time

Anyway, that’s all for now. Next time i blog, I’ll be living in Ireland with my girlfriend. Until then, chums. Toodles

Hot and Fast

Hello again comrades.

As anyone in the UK (and in the USA so i hear) will know, it has been hot a lot recently. I know it’s summer, but here in the UK, we don’t usually get sun in summer. But this year, mother nature has made up for all the cold or mild summers we’ve had and has given us sun. Lots of sun. Seriously, we’ve had it for weeks now. My fan has been pretty much constantly on the whole time, even when i’m out. Problem is, i kind of prefer it to be cold. It’s a lot easier to warm yourself up when it’s cold, than it is to cool yourself down when it’s warm. I’ve actually started drinking water instead of juice. And that’s unusual for me.

Anyway, i can’t remember what i previously blogged, but i had an alright graphics card in my now complete computer, but i wanted to upgrade it. So i did, i got a pretty decent graphics card for a pretty low price. Let me see what it was… It was a PowerColor Radeon AX4870. It looks like this:

My PowerColor Radeon AX4870 Graphics Card
Isn’t it beautiful? It takes two PCI-E power cables, i only had one so i had to order a molex to PCI-E converter off eBay. No big deal, didn’t cost much. But anyway, it’s a pretty powerful beast. It can handle my games on almost the highest settings. Beautiful. My computer is how i want it now. Damn, i should have took a screenshot of my Windows performance rating. I might add it in later.

Edit: I screenshot my Windows performance thing. Here you go:

My Windows Performance Index

As you can see, the main thing restricting the base score is my slow ass hard drive. I should have installed Winblows to my SSD instead, then it’d be a hell of a lot higher. I’ve installed Ubuntu to the SSD and from the bootloader (where you select which OS to boot) and the login prompt, it takes less than 10 seconds. Pretty speedy, eh?

I’ve also been dong some Let’s Play videos on YouTube. Mostly different games every time but I’ll continue some. For those that don’t know, my YouTube is here

Also, plans are in motion for moving to Ireland. I’ve got a rough estimate how much it’ll cost, i just need to pack the stuff I’m taking, and for that i need boxes. It’s going to be hard to find a box to fit my 32 inch TV. I don’t have the one it came in anymore. But everything else should fit in boxes. Even my desktop should fit in one.

I’ve been thinking about selling my Galaxy Note and Nexus S. I do love both phones but the Note is too big and the Nexus is too slow. If i sell both phones i could get a Nexus 4, which I’ve been wanting for a while. I’ve been selling some old computer parts on Gumtree (unsuccessfully mostly), and my old HTC Hero. The little cute thing. I’ve actually been thinking of switch to my Nexus S for a while, just because it’s better sized and it’s more beautiful than my Note. I still might.

If you want to see my ads on Gumtree, click here. It’ll open in a new tab.

Oh yeah, I’ve been playing The Simpsons: Tapped out on my Asus tablet, so if you have it, add micol25.

That’s all for now I think. I’m going to watch Silent Running on Film4, then get some food. Toodles

Jobcentre, Star Trek, Moving, and Phones

Hello my children.

This is just a little update to what’s happened. So I’m still unemployed. I went to the jobcentre the other day and signed up for jobseekers allowance. It all seemed to go well. Except they forgot to give me my passport back and i had to go back for it. Luckily i wasn’t too far away. I have to go again on the 8th May. Woo

I got my redundancy pay and lieu of notice pay. It came to just over £2000. Not including my work pay. After deductions (tax and National Insurance), it totalled £2,504.48p. Not bad but not quite as much as I’d hoped.

Anyways, one of the first things i did with it, except pay rent and stuff, was buy a Star Trek Communicator badge off eBay  Actually 2. With the rank pips that go on the collar. That must be the geekiest thing I’ve ever bought. This is it:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/390528832938?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

It’s beautiful. I can be Captain Picard and Tracey can be Captain Janeway. Good price as well considering how shiny they are. Ooh maybe i should buy a couple of phasers and give one to Tracey and we can have a phaser battle. Oh god, what am i saying? I’m 28.

I think the fact I’ve been playing a lot of Star Trek Online and watching a lot of Star Trek has got me in the mood for it. I never really got into Deep Space 9 before but it’s actually pretty good. Next Generation was always my favourite though.

Hmm what else has happened? Well I’ve decided I’m going to move to Ireland. Probably this year, within the next few months. I should start looking for jobs in Ireland as well. That reminds me, i need to do some research into international movers. It’s not like I’m moving my whole house, just a few things from my room. And it wouldn’t need to be quick, I’m not in a rush to get my stuff.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that my Galaxy Note is too big. I think I’d be better suited to something about 4 inches. I want something fairly compact and powerful, like a Galaxy S4, but smaller. That’s 5 inches as well. The S4 mini is supposed to be 4.3, maybe that’d be better but it’s “only” quad core instead of octa core, like the big S4. But quad core should be enough. I’ll do some research anyway. But i definitely want one about 4 inches.

I think that’s all for now. I’ll make another post when i have something else to say. So bye for now.