Be Excellent To Each Other

Aww, one of my website customers in Portugal has sent me a present. (I predict the custard things won't last the day)

Finished work for Christmas, in my pyjamas, red wine in my glass, a tube of Pringles and Gremlins on the telly.

Take the Pringles off the Telly!

Or the Gremlins will eat them?

Would take too long and be TL;DR if I explained it all, but, I am moving very soon.

After the battle with my landlady Environmental Services have been leaning on her very hard. The fine stage began, so she tried to trick me into staying here (paying the rent and billls) whilst she decorates the entire flat, then wanted me out. She served me a Section 21 shortly after, then tried getting me to pay the £350 to evict, erm, myself.

The trust who are housing me (in a brand new, quite spectacular build with granite work tops) have now completely taken over the arguing etc. They've been truly amazing and I feel truly blessed. Thankfully not only have the trust advised me to refuse access, but so has the guy at Environmental Services, stating and I quote "That would absolutely destroy those beautiful computers". He did say he was a gamer when he came around

So yeah, within two months I shall be the eaves of a building with lots of windows that all look straight over the sea.

I can't fucking wait tbh. I've spent half the winter with family, because it just wasn't possible to keep this place warm. I mean FFS, my cooker is so rusty from the damp that I have to bin it.

Almost feels like it should belong in the Nay but Yay thread but glad to see something positive is happening :-)

TBH the nay part is pretty much over, given that the trust are taking care of everything. They're truly amazing. I bought them a huge bunch of flowers today

Great news JC!

Seren, sitting in the least comfortable seat ever.

Look at those curls!

We’ve only just got a marble run and they are the best toys ever.

Can confirm, best

This should probably go into the nay thread, but this Saturday morning our venerable 42" Panasonic plasma met its fate thanks to a two-year old with a bad temper carrying a plastic stick

Although, it's been quite nice not having a TV in the house for the weekend. I'm not in any rush to replace it.

Off to the Barbican tonight to hear the VPO play Mahler's 9th Symphony. Long been one of my favourite pieces but shamefully I've never heard it live. Of course, my teenage years might have been happier had I never discovered its morose and moribund themes.

Have a morose and moribund evening!

Hope it makes you sad and depressed Kern, fingers crossed you don't enjoy it!

The kids are at my moms house so this is the first date night that MrsVision and I have had in about 4 years... Amazing!

Enjoy!

Don't look, but I think that lady at the bar is checking you out.

After around 5 years of it being broken, I've finally got round to fixing the clothes horse with a 20p nut and bolt.

I can now hang clothes off it without the worry of it falling over. Today has been a good day

I don't like the Australian system of sports seasons finishing with the top couple of teams in the league going into a 'finals' system to determine which team ultimately wins... but in this case it worked for me as the 'mighty' Highlands Reds soccer football team (finished 3rd in a league of 5 teams) won both the semi and the grand final - we beat the team that had been top of the league all season with two slightly cheap goals.

$250 prize money immediately taken to the pub and spent on booze, natch.

Going to Green Man festival. Eels and gwenno there

I have a new king sized bed and a new mattress and IT IS GLORIOUS

I successfully syringed all the gunk out of my left ear today and can hear in stereo again.

Living taytay's 'gram life

After nearly a month the finish line is in sight.









Finally onto the kitchen !

That is a lot of screens.

Aye a lot of cleaning tbh. They looked lost in my old flat now it seems I've found them.

Tickets for Duff Mackagan and Shooter Jennings, get!

For anyone wondering, that’s not the Ace of Cakes guy.

It’s the guy from Happy Gilmore, right?

I've had official confirmation from HMG that I'm eligible for retirement pension from early July and have been invited to apply for it. Which I have.

So that'll be about £8k extra income and if I continue working, no NI deductions, so that's another couple of hundred quid a month.

Or I might just downscale everything, move to a cheaper house, and retire. But the current Mrs. W will no doubt have an opinion about that.

This suggests that the next Mrs W may be more amenable?

To the Philippines!

I looked at my government pension account the other day, apparently i'm short of contributions for one year, not sure what I should do about that, if anything?

Apparently, with my gap, I need to put in another 11 years before 2043 to get my full allocation of £168 a week.
Nothing to worry about then.

I forgot to mention that the swifts arrived last weekend. As usual, this makes me very happy.

We got swifts a month ago. Way too early.

My home internet through BT has been awful for a while. We've suffered frequent disconnections and slow speeds (down to 4 Mbps on an estimated 40 Mbps connection).

Yesterday, as I was off work I decided to face the music and report a fault. My expectation was hours on hold and combative call centre agents. The reality was a 10 minute Live Chat session and a fixed connection in less than 24 hours. It's now connected at just shy of 40 Mbps and rock solid. I guess things have improved in the world of fault support.

I think, like many things, it’s all down to how much the person you’re connected with can be arsed.

When we had problems over a few days with no connection whatsoever, we were paired with someone who confirmed that the line and box were all fine and it was absolutely without a shadow of a doubt our home wiring to blame and a wire had obviously been damaged so they’d send out an engineer for £140 and we’d have to pay for new wires.

We declined their generous offer in the knowledge the wiring was fine, and whilst researching which company to mo e to as we were no longer under contract it all magically fixed itself. All those wires must have grown back together something. The internet. One of nature’s true miracles.

I had forgotten the amazing word "shibboleet."

Haha, that’s perfect.

I stay with Sky for broadband after a similar surprisingly pleasant experience. My internet was iffy and I eventually sucked it up and called them; after asking a few questions and checking the basics they had an Openreach engineer out the very next day who fixed a dodgy cable in the close and that was it. A couple of years later a similar fault happened with part of the cabling inside my flat; but before the master socket so still their problem. They were happy to take me at my word about the problem (you could disconnect the phone line by standing on a specific spot on the floor) and with no fuss had a guy out two days later to re-run the cabling and it was sorted.

haha steve wanted a secret word the other day as the digital tv box was broken
he had tried everything but the helpdesk made him do it all over again, then sent it on to second line who emailed they had sent us a new box. new box works, yay!

Is that the same as a safe word?

Just applied for a new job. Same as my old job at another Uni, but weirdly 2 grades higher and (at least to start with) £5k more a year.

I've been at my current job since 2005, so I feel a bit weird applying for something else.

Wish me luck!

Good luck! I didn’t have an interview for nine years before I left HP. It was weird

Excellent! Good vibes coming your way.

Good luck, Davpaz!!!