Have a go at the parallel parking game – let’s so how good you lot are. I’ve managed to beat the rest
of the folks at work with a stunning score of 87.72, parking in 5.7 seconds flat… not bad for the only non-driver!
Year: 2004
Scaring Creditors
Following up my earlier post on my financial situation and the various stresses it was causing me, comes better news. I had a conversation today with Direct Legal & Collections – one of my happy little creditors, which I’d been dreading, but it actually went far better than I’d have hoped… I think I scared them…
Dan’s Repayment Calculation Assessment
DL&C Rep: What’s the value of your mortgage?
Dan: I don’t own any property.
DL&C Rep: Oh! So you’re renting?
Dan: Yup.
DL&C Rep: Do you have a partner?
Dan: Yes.
DL&C Rep: And what do they work as?
Dan: She’s a full-time student, dependent upon my contributions to rent and bills.
DL&C Rep: Umm… do you own a car?
Dan: Nope.
DL&C Rep: Right… umm… <sounds of key-pressing>
And so they offered me a nice low-interest, trickle-repayment rate that suits me more-than-fine. Wonderful. All because they’d somehow been lending me money in the first place under the assumption that I had some kind of security. Heh. I think I terrified her somewhat.
Right: that’s my finances sorted out. Now back to the rest of my life…
Money, Money, Money (Or The Lack Thereof)
A thought for current undergrads – do not underestimate the size of your debt. As a newly-graduate, I’ve had the oppertunity to step back and look at the size of my debt… or; to put it another way – the amount my income will be sapped for the next quarter of my life.
Not that I’m in a bad position, mind. I’ve walked out of my degree and straight into a job – and a job I like. I’ll be on a three-month ‘probationary period’ of a less-than great income before I get a nice, beefy income, afterwards. Actually, that’s a little bit arsey – I think a three month probationary period for a new full-time graduate employee is a little unfair when that employee has been working for the company part-time (and vacations) for the last two and a quarter years. I’ll have words with my boss about that when he comes back from holiday next week.
Nonetheless: I sat down today and drew up a spreadsheet detailing all of my different creditors and the money I’m to pay them, and it’s quite horrifying. It’ll be a lot less horrifying come the end of October – when I recieve my first paycheck under my non-‘probationary’ salary – but for now, it’s somewhat daunting. I might do well to investigate these ‘graduate loans’ that NatWest keep telling me about – if I could lump all my nasty interest-gathering debts (as opposed to my nice, non-interest-gathering debts, like my overdraft and my student loan) into a neat pile (along with a couple of hundred pounds extra with which to make repayments for the next three months), I could pay it off in a meaningful manner over the next five years. Sadly, I doubt they’ll be too keen on the idea when they actually take the time to look back over my account history.
On the up-side, though, financially, I’m developing a web site ‘Peter Huntley Ltd.’ which I’m hoping to be able to deploy the first version of this weekend. Which is very definately a Good Thing.
God Violates Intel Trademark
It’s all news, today! Lots of fascinating little stories and nothing about me. I mean, who’s blog is it anyway?
According to The Register, the authoritive source on such matters, God may have infringed upon Intel’s intellectual property. Only moderately funny, but nice and geeky.
In other news, I hear that AMD are planning to release a new dual-processor board designed to accomodate two older Athlon chips, optomised for playing 80s music on MP3. They’re calling it the Duron Duron.
Singing Flowers
Remember those silly plastic flowers that danced? Well, here’s the next inevitable step: a Japanese inventor has developed a device that can be buried in a plant pot and uses vibration to cause the leaves of plant therein to oscillate as speakers.
Grow your own speakers. Yay.
Personally, I’d have far too much fun burying such a device under a friend’s vegetable patch, on a long (buried or otherwise concealed) cable, and have his plants ‘talk back’ to him when he talks to them. Where can I get one?
MEP From Yorkshire States “[Never] employ a lady of child-bearing age.”
The BBC have an article: “UKIP MEP in row over working women”. It’s worth reading, if only to laugh.
Expect to see this particular MEP assassinated by a militarist feminist group within the week.
Developers Play Air Guitar To Megadeth
The Register have a report on a survey of the musical tastes of IT specialists, by profession. If you’re a geek, date a geek, live with geeks, or whatever, it’s worth a look.
Reb, Hell, And Unreal Tournament 2004
After I saw Faye’s weblog post about her own design for hell, I couldn’t help but leave an anonymous comment. If you’ve ever met Reb, my ex-girlfriend from a few years back, perhaps you’ll appreciate.
In other news, I spent far too much of the weekend playing the demo of Unreal Tournament 2004. I haven’t had so much fun with the demo of a computer game since about 1999 (I never have time for demos any more). Wow… it really is something stunning. They’ve really put a lot of work into making it accessible by anybody, too – the hardware specifications aren’t so horrible, and it’ll run on Windows, Linux, or MacOS X! Hell; it doesn’t even require a 3D card (although I wouldn’t like to try it without one!). It’s a doddle to get it running on a network (Bryn and I had a couple of LAN games – driving a tank right into an enemy base with one of you sat on the top with a minigun is sooo much fun), it’s fast and furious, and relies heavily on teamwork. It’s just fab. Have ordered a copy from Amazon.
HSBC Advertising
Gotta love HSBC. No, this isn’t a real ad.
Dan’s Graduation
Scatmania, Version 2
Welcome to Scatmania, Version 2!
After my disasterous data loss the other day, I decided to take the oppertunity to redesign Scatmania into something altogether better-suited to the purpose (i.e. doesn’t use a silly flat-file system). And here it is (well; unless you’re reading this through LiveJournal).
I’ll be graduating this afternoon, which will mostly involve standing around in silly robes while a man talks bollocks in Welsh. After this, I’ll be going out for a meal with my folks, who’ll be visiting for the occassion.
On an unrelated note, does anybody want to join Claire, Bryn, Paul and I on a trip to Alton Towers, some weekday during September (taking advantage of the cheap rates and lack of schoolchildren that’s available at that time of year)? Date to be confirmed, but if you want in, drop us a message or leave a comment.
Scatmania.org Coming Back
Yay!
However, working from backups, I have no record of posts ocurring between Sat 29th Nov 2003 at 4:08 pm, and Tue 2nd Jan 2004 at 01:33 pm, when my blog started posting duplicates LiveJournal, too. Even there, I don’t have a backup of anything but what LiveJournal has.
If, for whatever reason, somebody’s taken screengrabs or saved pages from Scatmania, could they e-mail them to me ASAP, or leave a comment here. It’d be great not to have to try to recover things from memory.
Thanks in advance.
Scatmania.org Gets Deleted
Arg!
The server on which Scatmania is hosted malfunctioned, resulting in the deletion of the entirety of my weblog. I’ll be trying to recover bits of it in the near future, but I’ll probably lose (at least) the last few weeks.
Not happy.
On the upside, I may use this as an excuse to re-write the engine behind my blog, as I’ve been meaning to for some time. Yay.
Watch this space.
Hot Puppies, Troma Night, And A Fantastic Transcript Of A Speech On DRM
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
Went to the castle to see The Hot Puppies yesterday evening. Everything I’d heard was true – they really are very good. They play well, they sing well, they look good… and they exude confidence. A wonderful show.
Troma Night was somewhat shorter than usual, owing to the aforementioned puppi…
Suz. And Naivety.
Just been having on online chat with Suz:
(15:53:41) Dan: It [an online weather forecast on a web site I run] says we should expect a wet weekend, clearing up for an overcast week.
(15:53:54) Suz: and who puts it on the web site?
(15:53:59) Dan: The BBC.
(15:53:59) Suz: i always thought it was paul
(15:54:02) Suz: oh
(15:54:06) Dan: No – it’s taken from the BBC, who take it from the MET office.
(15:54:11) Dan: It’s entirely automatic.
(15:54:28) Suz: oh i see. i wondered why paul had the time or botherdness to do it
Sweet that she thought that Paul was spending about an hour a week keeping an online calendar up-to-date manually.