Another Nice Day

I have a feeling at the moment that things are starting to come together. My tidiness problem now seems less daunting than before. There's still plenty to do, but the stuff I have is at least better organised, in neat boxes (see above), and a first wave of chucking-out or selling-on-ebay means there's less of it than there was before.

So life is good. Yesterday I resolved to take a second trip through my cupboards and see if more space could be freed up, and today I felt quite pleased with myself at clearing almost a whole shelf's full of space. (That's about two-and-a-half standard storage boxes worth of space, for those following along at home.) It was almost a shame to fill that space, but that in turn freed up some more space in other places, so it all comes good in the end. And I'm looking forward to doing more tidying tomorrow. It's quite addictive once you get into it. I wonder what on earth I'm going to do with myself once the grand tidying-up is all done...

I'm also turning my attention to healthy eating. I had a very nice salad for lunch, with vegetables and chicken and rice and everything. It was good. In fact I might have it every day. I also had extra vegetables with my tea, which was also good. I might even have reached the Government-mandated 5 portions a day. Perhaps I should have some fruit to make sure. I'll do that in a minute.

I feel remarkably content right now. I think it must be the time of year. The weather is cold outside - so cold, in fact, that for the last two mornings my heating has come on, despite the thermostat being cranked down super-low due to the summer. But it seems that summer is over. So while it's cold outside, it's now nice and warm inside, which I find very very pleasing indeed.

Life is, as they say, good. And who wouldn't be delighted by that?

Payday

Today is the glorious 27th. Glorious because it is payday. Every month, the 27th is the day when I get paid. Unless the 27th is a Saturday, Sunday, or Bank Holiday, when I get paid on the last Thursday. Or something like that. There's some method to it but I try not to pay too much attention to it.

And it seems that it has been a productive day. When a young boy's thoughts turn to money matters, the frugal impulse kicks in, and I find new ways to ensure that my pennies are properly conserved and stored for the future. So this evening I have been making phone calls a-plenty.

First off, a call to the nice people at the cable company. Long-term readers will know that for some baffling reason I continue to pay them for their lousy service. I made a phone call today to bring that amount down to something slightly less. Not much, it only saves £4.50 a month, but for something I never EVER use, and only seem to hang on to for no good reason at all, it seems like a reasonable saving to be made. And it takes me one step closer to cancelling for good, one day.

Secondly, a phone call to the nice people at Sky. People say bad things about Sky but I got through to them quickly, got straight through to the right department, and told them where they could shove their movie channels. (Which, rather ungraciously, I had been getting cheap for the last three months, although that offer has now expired.) And while disposing of the movie channels, I also got rid of the "News & Events Mix", because there's nothing in it I need, and the only two news channels which matter (Sky News and the other one) are free anyway. No point in paying £21 a month when you can just as easily pay £20 a month. (That's "5 mix" for those playing along at home.)

Earlier in the day, a phone call to BT, from whom I had ordered their whizz-bang "BT Vision" television broadband thingummy. Boxes and stuff were supposed to arrive yesterday, but they did not. A call to BT today reveals that there is "some kind of problem" with my order, which they cannot track down or fix, leaving them with no option but to cancel my order completely. And cancelling this order will take 48 hours. So could I please call back and order again next week?

Sure. Or I could just not bother. Another £14.99 a month saved! Perhaps I'd rather have the money.

Had a quick look around my various online banking accounts and was delighted to discover that the missing £3 (which had gone missing in a previous "lost cheque" shenanigan) was now once again found. Which was nice. This may be the electronic equivalent of finding coins down the back of the sofa.

Registered an internet domain name (a www.something) for possible use in future artistic endeavours.

Bought £100 of premium bonds, in the hope that my number might come up and the resulting millions will pay for those future artistic endeavours.

Looking over my other monthly outgoings, I can't see anything too obvious to get rid of. So that'll do for now. And so it is that, as with every payday, I am briefly a man of means. Hooray! Of course there's a whole month's worth of bills to come yet. :-)

King of iTunes

I love iTunes very much. I admit that I didn't really see the point until someone bought me a Shuffle, which necessitated my downloading of the hitherto unexplored beastie, but I soon fell in love with it.

The recent announcements of the new iPods brought about the urge to secure a 'classic' (well, v2) Nano before it was too late. Having got a nice deal on a black 8gb from Amazon, I picked up a red 8gb on eBay at a similarly irresistible price. (Yes I wuv you, Mr Red Nano, yes I do, yes I do..)

But anyway.. Much as I love iTunes, sometimes there are things you can't do with it. It's not easy to move your MP3s from one disc to another, for example. Not without losing the play counts and ratings. Which you get used to after a while, and it would be a shame to lose...

The nice thing is, I found a devilishly excellent (and considerably nerdy) trick which gives me full mastery over my iTunes. No laborious moving files around for me. Rename tracks individually? Ha ha ha. I pity the fool. 

Tonight I was getting tired of the tracks in my library from many bad compilation albums. The information usually had the artist titles in the track name - meaning I had thousands of tracks called "Peter Andre / Flava" by the popular artist 'Various'. As opposed to the less popular artist, Peter Andre. But I digress... the upshot of it all is that using my considerable excellence and skillo skill, I managed to rename something like 3,000 tracks in the blink of an eye. Which certainly beats typing out all the track names again. 

And therefore, in short, I must admit to feeling rather pleased with myself. Can I be King of iTunes now? Just for a few minutes? :-)

Fine Dining With Antnoise

Be sure to notice the 20% discount I received in recognition of being the world-famous Ant. :)

Motor Control

So here's how I spent my Sunday evening. Eating crackers and cheese, as one does, while catching up on some Calvin and Hobbes comics on the computer.

It all went very well. First I dropped the knife - and after a few minutes peering around on the floor, even after turning on the light and looking around with a torch and everything, I was forced to conclude that it had disappeared.

I went downstairs to fetch another knife, and returned to resume my eating. This continued for several more minutes until I then dropped the box of crackers, resulting in crackers flying all over the floor, accompanied by the crumbs that are inevitably created by the act of carelessly smashing a box of fragile crackers against an unyielding hard surface like the floor.

So I picked up the crackers, swept up the crumbs... and made a mental decision never to attempt any tasks requiring such complex hand-eye co-ordination ever again. I think I'll go to bed - let's hope I can at least manage that.

The People's Choice

I discovered last night that someone else actually reads this blog. This came as something of a surprise, given that I had previously assumed it had a maximum readership of 1, on a good day. But no! Someone else is reading, watching, analysing my every word and phrase. I am being examined, studied, as scientists may study creatures which swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

I don't know if I'm flattered or horrified! How am I to give pleasure to an audience of many people? Wibbling about cardboard boxes is one thing, but an actual proper audience is harder to please. I may have to buff up my act, bring out the 'A' material, guaranteed to be a crowd-pleaser at all times. If not, booing and rotten tomatoes are bound to issue forth from an unsatisfied audience.

It can only lead to a massive decline in quality as we race headlong towards the lowest common denominator. And who wouldn't be delighted by that? So, for all the good readers everywhere, here's a cute picture of a sleeping cat: