Category: Personal

No, contrary to my co-worker’s assumptions, I don’t really have time to re-draw a set of web buttons in a different shade of green just because he’s indecisive about the last three shades of green were ‘wrong’, but he didn’t know by which direction and wasn’t able to give any indication of what colour they should be…

…perhaps I’d be faster to write a program that generates them on the fly to a template, and call it from the site code… but I don’t have time for that either.

Ho hum.

Thank you to Faye for pointing out that Reb (you know, the girl I was going out with for a couple of years a few years back) has posted a comment to my blog. That’s cool – I didn’t know she read Scatmania…

…hang on, wait a minute – she probably doesn’t read Scatmania… hmm… <checks the logs>…

This might get messy – read on at your own risk.

Tracing Footsteps

She came to the site from a Tiscali broadband account (IP address 80.46.161.169, Windows XP, Internet Explorer 6, if anybody else feels like tracing her movements <grinz>) on the afternoon of Saturday 25th June – so she’s back in the UK (presumabley Spain or wherever-she’s-been wouldn’t keep her). She posted her comment at about half past one, then came back at about a quarter to ten in the evening to look back at the same post (perhaps to see if I’d responded yet). There’s no evidence to suggest that that IP address has ever connected to any other Big.FatBeast sites before, which implies that she probably was ‘directed’ to the site for the purpose of reading this post, rather than being a regular reader.

Unless she came from a secured site (Internet Explorer doesn’t send a referrer header when coming from a secure site), she came directly to the site (no referrer was set on either of the two visits), suggesting that she either typed the URL directly or that she clicked on it in some non-browser window (e.g. POP3 e-mail, instant messenger, etc.).

These facts – her not being a regular reader, and her visiting from a non-web link – suggest that somebody who does frequently read Scatmania regularly decided that she ‘ought to see’ that particular post, and told her. Which is interesting, because I wasn’t aware that any of my regular readers maintained contact with Reb.

The last visitor to Scatmania before her was a non-regular, too: somebody working for the Inktomi corporation in Calafornia, which doesn’t seem to be a likely lead. A better bet is the last person to have paid a reasonable deal of attention to the post in question, an AOL UK user who appears to be a regular reader who follows my LiveJournal feed.

Fascinating, isn’t it.

Questions Answered

Anyway; I digress. If my clipboard remembers rightly, Reb said:

Where all the money you owe me from the House London ?

I’m normally not so picky about people’s spelling, punctuation, and grammar (mine’s not great), but because it’s Reb, and it makes me feel better to put her down, I’ll make an exception:

1. “Where all the money” – it just me, or there a very obvious conjunction missing here?
2. “the House London” – there it again!
3. “House” – it’s a noun, not a pronoun; no need to capitalise.
4. “London ?” – one too many spaces, there.

Not bad for an 11-word sentence, Reb!

I’ll be answering your question in due course; scroll down to ‘The Million Dollar Question’, below.

Reb writes to Faye’s journal:

Re: I’m Confused
“I’m Confused”

Darling with Dan you must be !!

In bed I taught him all he knows… And it did’nt take long.

Reb

Speaking of confused… I am… I have no idea what on Earth she’s trying to say, here! But let’s try to take it apart anyway:

1. “Darling with Dan you must be !!” – was this reply directed at me, or Faye, or The Devil (you replied to the latter). I guess you must be directing it at Faye. In this case, I’m sure she must be confused… I have no idea what you’re trying to say, and I doubt she does either. However, if you’re trying to imply a sexual relationship between her and I, you’re badly mistaken. Perhaps you’re mistaking me for one of those other long-haired Prestonians you screwed over? (Craig, Nicholas… etc.)
2. “In bed I taught him all he knows… And it did’nt take long.” – *shocker* Yes, it’s true! My secret is out! *shocker* Reb – you’re the only person with whom I’ve ever had a sexual relationship, or, at least, I’ve never done anything original with anybody else since breaking up with you – all those other men and women meant nothing! Please take me back!! *shocker*
   But more seriously now – you’re fucked in the head, girl: the only thing that could be perceived as true in your statement would be “And it did’nt take long.” – after all, the thought of having sex with me seemed never to be on your mind… at least, after we’d gotten together it wasn’t, anyway.
   Taught him all he knows… jeez; if I kept the reciept from the lesson, could I give it back? Unwanted gift?

The Million Dollar Question

Okay, so we’re not talking about a million dollars here, but I thought it was a cool heading anyway. Besides, Reb’ll probably argue that a million dollars is close to the mark, or some such shit. In any case –

In answer to your badly-worded question about money, I reiterate the point I made in August 2002: as soon as you show or demonstrate any evidence at all that I owe you any money at all, I’ll consider your point. By my estimations, it’s you who is indebted to me, on account of the thousands of pounds (which, as a student, I didn’t have) I spent, the hours I worked, and the possessions I sold in the deluded suspicion that it could possibly satisfy you or make you happy. But in the end, this was my fault, and my sacrifice, that I am still paying for (and will be for years to come). And, more to the point, I’d rather have to deal with these repercussions than ever have to see or speak to you again.

Well; that was brutal, but I feel better for it. How about the rest of you.

I promise I’ll post something cheery within the next hour or so…

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…

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.

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.