Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Subject: IE7 is a pile of shit. Time: 2:14 pm. Mood: pissed off. Music: The Grid - Swamp Thing.

I've been fighting with my computer for the last week or so (it turned out that the main processor was running about 30C too hot - for the last two and a half years), but it's been having a couple of issues before then. Specifically, recently, with accessing certain websites. Those of you who are familiar with my love of computer games will be completely unsurprised to learn that I'm quite the avid viewer of Zero Punctuation, an ex-pat Brit now in Australia who specialises in particularly snarky reviews tied to quite amusing animation. The upshot is that this is one of those websites that wouldn't work properly. And given that it works fine on Bally's PC, I've been forced to upgrade to Internet Explorer 7. First things first - Internet Explorer 7 is a fucking PILE. I despise almost everything about it - the address bar is in the wrong place, the Stop and Refresh buttons are in the wrong place, tabbed browsing is a pain in the arse (although fortunately you can disable that), it's a resource hog that runs slowly on my replacement CPU (I've had to kick back to my old Athlon 2000 now the 3200's blown - yeah, I know, I need a new PC), the new button bar is a complete waste of time and space (what does it do that isn't in the menu bar again?), and it just generally annoys the crap out of me. And the worst part of it? I still refuse to go over to Firefox. I've never been sold on this OMG FIREFORKS thing, largely because I've always viewed it as complaining about Microsoft - and, while M$ are undeniably a group of money-hungry bastards, I don't actually hate them. I see them much like I see Tesco - yes, there's a bit of anticompetitive stomping going around, but the main reason they dominate the market is that they're generally fairly good at what they do. Tesco isn't taking over the world entirely because they walk all over village corner shops; they're doing it because, generally, their product is the best available for the most reasonable price. The main thing they both need to realise, though, is that progress for the sake of progress is not necessarily a good thing, and that their dominant position doesn't (or at least, shouldn't) give them carte blanche to shit on the consumer. Still, at least I can watch the adventures of Ben Croshaw and his funny hat now. Also, Blurty's mood listing needs more options. Where's "bemused"? Or "puzzled"? Or "just generically fed up"?

House's House Of Whining: 7 whines - State your complaint

Subject: Evil And Frickin' Hard Music Meme Time: 1:43 pm. Mood: thoughtful. Music: R.E.M. - Monty Got A Raw Deal.

Pinched from Kirk, who pinched it from Jenny, who pinched it from The Onion, or something. Simply, pick your favourite album from each year you've been alive. The key word there? Simply. In fairness, large parts of this turned out to be easier than I thought. I always exclude Best Ofs from these sorts of lists, which by definition are otherwise likely to dominate. However, they do seem to dominate my CD collection, which means that what's left turns out to be rather thin in certain cases. Where that doesn't happen, the result is hell. Still, I can't resist a good music pondering session. Thanks to the good people at Catraxx, which neatly includes a report function to fart out a list of my albums grouped by year. Some annotations en route. 1980 no selection I don't actually own any albums from 1980. Hmmm. 1981 no selection Two albums - one's a Greatest Hits and the other one I've never got round to listening to, so... 1982 no selection Just one Best Of here. 1983 no selection Nothing here at all. 1984 no selection Or here. 1985 Dire Straits - Money For Nothing There was only one other album here. This is better. 1986 James - Stutter Default. 1987 U2 - The Joshua Tree Also default, but it would almost certainly have won anyway... 1988 James Strip-Mine Default again. Better than Stutter, though. 1989 The Cure - Disintegration Finally, some thought needed! Edges out the big contender (The Stone Roses) simply by being masturbated over less. 1990 no selection I have one album from 1990 - The Simpsons Sing The Blues. Yeah. 1991 U2 - Achtung Baby Best. Album. Ever. 1992 R.E.M. - Automatic For The People 1993 Enigma - The Cross Of Changes 1994 Massive Attack - Protection 1995 Pulp - Different Class 1996 Sneaker Pimps - Becoming X Just edging out four others - R.E.M.'s New Adventures In Hi-Fi, Saint Etienne's Tiger Bay, Manic Street Preachers' Everything Must Go and The Divine Comedy's Casanova. And I'm still not sure if I got the right one. 1997 James - Whiplash 1998 Fatboy Slim - You've Come A Long Way, Baby Oh, god, this was hard work. When I eventually get round to finishing my Top 50 albums of all time list, 1998 will provide fully half of the top 10 - this, Air's Moon Safari, The Corrs' Talk On Corners, Garbage's Version 2.0 and I Bificus by Bif Naked. And there's several other solid contenders too, most notably The Divine Comedy's Fin De Siècle... 1999 Beth Orton - Central Reservation Four-way fight between this, Christina Aguilera (seriously), Sigur Ros and Moby, but thinking about it it's a no-contest. 2000 Toploader - Onka's Big Moka A surprisingly slow year consisting mostly of very ordinary followups to previous better works - The Corrs, U2, Saint Etienne and Enigma, I'm looking at all of you. 2001 Cara Dillon - Cara Dillon Bally's fault. BUY IT. Better still, go and download Black Is The Colour. Then BUY IT. 2002 Doves - The Last Broadcast More cruddy followups, unfortunately... 2003 Sarah McLachlan - Afterglow I know admitting to liking this is virtually a criminal offence, so don't comment. :-p 2004 Jem - Finally Woken 2005 Saint Etienne - Tales From Turnpike House My second 10/10 album ever. It's been a very long time since an album last grabbed me like this one did. 2006 Charlotte Gainsbourg - 5:55 2007 The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible A very early entry for album of the year, and it was never bettered. 2008 so far Moby - Last Night I think.

House's House Of Whining: 3 whines - State your complaint

Subject: Blarg. Time: 11:42 am. Mood: tired. Music: none.

I went through the whole of yesterday without consuming any caffeine. (It's the JSA cycle - fortnightly cash means that at the very end you tend to run out of money, which means there was no milk left for coffee and no Coke either.) Never let me do that again.

House's House Of Whining: 4 whines - State your complaint

Subject: The Housing Saga (7) Time: 3:00 pm. Mood: relieved.

I never thought the appeal to sense might work on a being without a brain. :-p Delaying the handback of the keys until Tuesday (the earliest I can return them due to the Bank Holiday) is apparently doable - the only cost is six days rent (£100 ish), which I can just about handle.

House's House Of Whining: 5 whines - State your complaint

Subject: The Housing Saga (6) Time: 2:29 pm. Mood: frustrated.

Even moving out isn't an option. A plan was formed - rent a storage unit to dump my crap in pretty sharpish for a week, leg it to Stoke on Wednesday, and borrow Andy over the weekend to lunk everything down. That in mind, I today paid a visit to Apex Self Storage, a company that Arawak Walton used back in the day - and conveniently have a site on an industrial estate about ten minutes walk from my flat. After much deliberation about size requirements (a 25 square foot unit looks surprisingly tiny, so I pretty much decided on a 50 sq ft), it was time to discuss access. Unfortunately, because it's the Bank Holiday this weekend, they were going to be closed after 1pm on Saturday, and all Sunday and Monday (the planned transport days), which means I'd need to fork out the extra beans for 24 hour access (which I would have needed anyway to load up, due to the problems of the timeframe). And not only do they not have any 24 hour units spare right now, but due to a hilariously stupid pricing system I'd need to stump up a silly amount of money up front. Their charging is based on a 28-day cycle, so I'd need to pay - up front - four week's deposit and four week's rent. Any unused portion would be refunded after I cleared out after the week - which means that I would need to pay £230.80 immediately in order to rent a unit for a single week, at which point they would refund the £201.95 excess. I, of course, currently get about £110 per fortnight - I don't have £230.80 going spare. I do, however, have a brain that's going spare very quickly...

House's House Of Whining: 4 whines - State your complaint

Subject: Just found a repeat of Pushing Daisies. Time: 9:58 pm. Mood: ecstatic. Music: the aftermath of the Chelsea match on the radio.

The only appropriate word is "Awwwww!" And Bally was right - I wouldn't be surprised if "Amelie: The Series" was precisely the remit (with a helpful slice of They Fight Crime on the side). :-p In other news, Chelsea just choked against Wigan (1-1, Heskey in injury time). I am very happy.

House's House Of Whining: 8 whines - State your complaint

Subject: The Six Word Meme Thing Time: 5:15 pm. Mood: sore. Music: Black Sabbath - War Pigs.

Yeah, you know what this is by now. I think everybody's been tagged (I suck at tagging people and didn't know who hadn't been called out already, because this has obviously spread to people whose blogs I'm not party to), so I think I can now safely drop mine. I came up with two; I've assured Bally he will hate them both. Four's enough: the miracle never happen. or... (the one I'd go with if pressed) When your best just isn't enough.

House's House Of Whining: 1 whine - State your complaint

Subject: Reason #1094 why Job Centres suck. Time: 3:45 pm. Mood: frustrated. Music: Cheap Trick - Surrender.

One of the requirements of keeping JSA is that you have to be able to claim that you're actively looking for work. They define this as "contacting" two employers per week, be that to ask about jobs or to submit an application or whatever. As such, it is necessary for me to contact employers, and to attempt to apply for jobs. So, after much perusing through various copies of the Evening News and online and such, I managed to sort out a couple of potential applications (the University of Manchester are looking for people in various departments, and having finally made sense of PC World's website I've established that there's a vacancy in their Warrington branch - I can stick that out for three months and then request a transfer to Ashton Old Road in due course). Here is where it gets awkward. The main reason I've come to consider myself completely unemployable is that I've only had one job since University, at that scumbag housing association, and I got fired from it. (Well, officially I got fired. In practice they were looking for any excuse to get rid of me - as I've noted elsewhere, they haven't hired a replacement Finance And IT Assistant since, citing a "staff restructuring" which also resulted in the dismissal of the Central Services Manager). So when asked on any application form why I left my previous job, I'm in fairly deep shit. I could claim that I lost my job as part of a company restructuring, but officially I was fired and I'd be screwed if that came out - particularly as I also need to figure out what I can do about references. So, when I went to sign on on Friday, and give them the bit of paper that tells them what I've done and who I've contacted and so on, I asked the guy for some advice on how I can answer that question. His response? "I can't really give you any advice on that matter, because if you ended up not getting a job due to us giving you bad advice... you know." Somebody please explain to me again why I bother?

House's House Of Whining: 4 whines - State your complaint

Subject: Washing machines suck. Time: 4:16 pm. Mood: pissed off. Music: Ash - Oh Yeah.

My washing machine has never previously had a problem dealing with my football shirts. I'm always extremely careful to do them on a suitably low temperature and such (largely because I'm a Manchester United fan and therefore they're all bright red, which has a legendary tendency to run horribly) , but in general they come out intact. Today however, it seems to have decided to support Manchester City. The United shirt with a Vodafone logo larger than the Manchester United crest no longer has a Vodafone larger than the Manchester United crest - because it no longer has a Vodafone logo. Or "vodaf". And it probably won't have the next O shortly either. I've found the o and f, but the v, d and a seem lost. The United shirt with a horrible white stripe down the back no longer has a horrible white stripe down the back. That stripe is now in my bathroom cabinet. The number 11 on the one shirt I've had printed has become extraordinarily blotchy. This has never been a problem before.

House's House Of Whining: 4 whines - State your complaint

Subject: Automatic lock-ins. Time: 7:26 pm. Mood: frustrated. Music: Space - Magic Fly (no, not that Space, Bally).

I can't find my door entry fob for my flats. Anywhere. And I'm stuck in here without it - if I go out I can't guarantee getting back in. Grr. The last time I know I had it was Thursday, when I used it to get back in after failing to buy a newspaper. I went out today and got back to find it not attached to my keyring (the ring it's attached to is broken and very loose), which means either it never left when I went out today (and is therefore still in the flat somewhere) or it's come out of my pocket somewhere outside (and is therefore lost to the mists of space-time somewhere between here and Asda, and would be a bitch to find). Preliminary investigations have suggested it's not the former. Bah. Oh, and still no news on the job front, for the curious on that score.

House's House Of Whining: 1 whine - State your complaint

Subject: Some things you never forget. Time: 12:24 am. Mood: full. Music: Fatboy Slim - That Old Pair Of Jeans.

I cooked Spag Bol tonight for the first time in about two years. It beats the living shit out of subsisting on ready meals...

House's House Of Whining: 10 whines - State your complaint

Subject: Getting Better Time: 4:59 pm. Mood: sore. Music: Grimethorpe Colliery Band - Rodrigo's Concierto De Aranjuez.

Shed Seven were awesome. I probably need a cold-and-flu update. I didn't bother going to the doctor in the end - the lump was a lot smaller by Saturday, and the next-nearest NHS place was apparently the Manchester Royal Infirmary, which a) would have been rammed and b) is another half-mile walk after getting a train into town, which I'd rather not do (I felt seriously shitty - most of Friday I could barely get out of bed). Anyway, the lump is now only giving me problems when I try to eat breakfast - I've managed to eat a whole bowl today for the first time in a few days, though. Don't get me wrong, it's still there and I still don't feel brilliant, but it's a damn sight smaller than it was. There's still the odd bit of nose gunk, but most of that's now dissipated. I'm mostly contending with the aftermath of the infection, which basically means lots of scabs around my left nostril. (And now I'm remembering why Ophelia banned me from talking about my colds many years ago...)

House's House Of Whining: 3 whines - State your complaint

Blurty for Cyril Slartibardfast. View: User Info. View: Friends. View: Calendar. View: Memories. You're looking at the latest 20 entries. Missed some entries? Then simply jump back 20 entries.