On the spectrum and neuro-diverse, a tendency towards creating uncomfortable silences and awkward situations. Former comedian, game developer, software developer, tech nerd (the type that understands how evil it’s presence has become in society) Privacy and equality advocate.
Manchester police currently have a higher body count than the actual attacker with 2 dead to his 1… and for the bigots out there who love to scream ‘facts, figures and statistics’ to support their xenophobia…
MANCHESTER POLICE KILLED 100% MORE PEOPLE THAN THE TERRORIST DID!!! :)
OMG… I used to run a childrens after school project and we were full time during the school hols… So many times we’d organise outings to the lasertag place near us… Had no idea they still existed, it’s probably been almost 20yrs or so… lasertag, roller skating, those activity centres with slides, ropes, tunnels and ball pits… afternoon trips to the cinema to watch a Pixar movie in the summer hols and at least 3 times during the summer break… a big day out to a theme park, museums and other interesting places like cabury world where you can get the kids sick on chocolate samples after scoffing as many as they can and then putting them on a coach for the 2hr drive back… Didn’t do that trip again. :)
A bit meh… weather has been absolute dogshit all week… The wind and rain have started causing my early onset arthritis to play up and I’ve been struggling as a result to crack on with some DIY jobs I needed to finish. Then errands, running my elderly mum about for appointments because she decided to schedule appts in the same fucking place on 2 different fucking days… AAARRRGGGHHH!!! Then wanted me to take her to meet my sister on Friday 30 miles away.
However… here’s the upsides.
My step-niece had her 2nd child and 2nd boy. Finally finished the prep on the bedroom on Thurs evening, plasterer starts Monday… so painting should commence end of next week. I went out for brunch on Tues & Weds whilst waiting for her to finish her appointments… woohoo, 2 cooked brekkies in a row. I was able to sort out lifts for her for Thurs, so I didn’t have to interrupt my work yet again because she expects me to drop everything at her command (I don’t). Dropped her off to go to the cinema with my sister to see some Downton Abbey movie, and I went and got a nice coffee and some cake.
Came back home and played Cyberpunk 2077 for a few hrs this afternoon until my partner got home.
We’re now about to have an early night ;) and watch a little netflix… probably chill.
Yeah, they think they can avoid the fine by blocking the UK… but that won;t have any effect on their past failings to follow the UK laws.
All I can say is… good, imgur can fuck off and hopefully die.
A few weeks back they went on a mass banning spree too after a mass protest from users. I ‘could’ still access it as I use a VPN and have for the last 12-13yrs… the OSA affected me for 2 seconds, as I switched from a server in one country to another… But imgur went to shit a long time ago, bowing to chinese investors and censoring shit, then being bought by a toxic company known for degrading services and running them into the ground whilst pocketing as much cash as they get their hands on.
So imgur has been dying for many years, and this is just finishing it off.
Don’t fret, there are alternatives and they’re not corpo controlled by wankers.
They need to be connected to their servers to be set up… worthless junk. At least you’ve learned a valuable… albeit it, expensive lesson. There is no reason at all to allow these devices to be at the whim of some company. It’s a hill I would gladly die upon, and the only things in my home that connect to the internet are my solar/battery system and my thermostat… both can be integrated into home assistant and only the solar/battery system sends any data about generation and battery health, I’ve even isolated onto guest wifi network to keep it free from the house.
If it’s not compatible with home assistant it’s worthless junk. If it requires their app to function, it’s worthless junk… you are buying a product that can be rendered a brick at any point, and there are literally hundreds of examples of companies doing exactly this.
Stop buying them, unless you own them and control them.
I know that’s supposed to be a joke, but depending on the construction, you might have to build a new stud wall on your side, leaving a small 25-50mm air gap and then the stud wall with the acoustic insulation in it.
I buy Aldi spreadable butter, as well as their blocks of Welsh butter and pay about £3.50 for one of each… and can’t fault either one of them. If I bought the same stuff “branded” in any of the larger supermarkets, I’d be paying almost double that.
Likewise, I’m rather fond of the HP Fruity sauce… £2.50 a bottle or more… Supermarket branded variety… tastes the same, £1.10 a bottle.
I’ve switched from branded stuff to Aldi own brands a lot since the COL crisis a few years ago, that is still ongoing… Not noticed a single drop in quality. But even Aldi have hiked their prices a lot. Frozen beer battered haddock used to be £3.19, is now £4.79, fresh quality sausages used to be £1.79 (6 pack, not the paste filled 8 packs) for caramelised onion/pork/apple/lincolnshire/cumberland and are now £2.49.
My avg food bill for 2, each month used to be £200-220, including food, drink and cleaning supplies… it’s now £300-320, whilst cutting back on a lot of the luxury items, opting for cheaper things in some places or reducing the number of times we buy them… so steak one every 8 weeks instead of once a month. No fish and chips at home, only as a treat if we go out for a meal (not to a chippy as they’re all bad here).
Getting more pissed of as it goes on.
Started fine, Went for a nice 15 mile bike ride on Sunday
Went out for a walk along the sea front on Monday and then did some DIY in the afternoon, gutting a bedroom, pulling plasterboard of 2 walls to put acoustic insulation in, and reboard a textured artex ceiling.
Tuesday, spent the morning unable to see or breathe due to the effects of the dust on Monday, struggled with some work in the morning… So went back to the sea for a walk at lunchtime to clear my head, nose and eyes, had a nice lunch and picked up some cakes for us both for supper that night.
Weds… sat around all day doing some work and waiting for a delivery… Delivery never arrived.
Thurs have spent half the morning dealing with company I ordered insulation from, that wasn’t delivered for the 2nd time… they promised the 19th, then the 24th… Now say they can deliver next week… in OCTOBER!!! Told them I needed it by Friday because they’re costing me time and money… the fuckers decided to cancel the order entirely and said they’d refund. Meanwhile, I needed that to finish the prep for the room as the plasterer was due to start on Monday… So now I’ve had to order the insulation elsewhere, who say 48hrs DPD delivery (should have go to them first) and am actually saving some money as there was a 20% off voucher available. Ordered some expanding foam, gun & cleaner to do all of the gaps around the door frame and studwork, as well as some gaps around the edges of floorboards on external walls (can feel a slight draught where joists sit in the walls and have breached the cavity a little).
So I’ve been getting more and more annoyed as the week went on.
So this afternoon, I went for another 15 mile bike ride to the coast and sat on a bench overlooking the estuary, listening to the birds squawking and flying around, the occasional light aircraft or helicopter from the small airfield about 15 miles away and the countless doggo’s who came to say hello as their owners took them for walks down to the forest a mile down the path.
I finally started to feel a little calmer and relaxed… Which is the entire reason I moved from a city to be near the sea and mountains to begin with… serenity now!!!
Plasterer called back, and can reschedule for next Friday to board and do the ceiling, and pop back the following Monday to skim the walls… insulation scheduled for a 29-30th delivery, which gives me two days to install it… and I can do it in a few hrs.
If it’s anything like when I had to wait for security clearances, so I could actually do the job I was hired for… I got so fed up that I quit after 6 months and they still hadn’t been done.
I was supposed to be doing 2nd line support for local authority, govt, CPS and police systems… I wasn’t even allowed to reset some ones password until clearance was sorted.
I don;t care how good the money was… sitting around on my arse all day doing menial shit way below my pay grade and self worth just wasn’t worth it… But at least I saved up enough money to see me through the next 6 months without taking too much of a hit to living expenses… I was unemployed, I could get my rent and council tax paid… all I needed was day to day expenses for car, food and utilities. :)
Looking after my sisters elderly dog for the week, he’s 13 and has some bad arthritis and pancreatitis. So he has to be monitored and fed a specific diet to try and avoid flare ups, he’s on B12, steroids and pain killer meds too… and drinks a lot of water.
But a flare up we had this afternoon, he also a poop walker… literally walks and poops at the same time, which is bad enough when it’s normal poop… but when it’s runny yellow poop… at least it’s easy to spot across the deck, the paving and lawn.
I also caught him drinking water from a dirty plant pot in the garden… which might explain the flare up… and why he refused to go out for a walk at all today. He’s feeling rough.
Sadly, it also means we have to almost starve him for 18-24hrs, aside from something to take the tablets with. So this evenings meal was a spoonful of rice and boiled egg and his meds… rather than his normal special food… When he has a flare up, it’s starve for 2-3 meals (he’s on 3 small portions a day now) then some chicken, rice and cooked veggies for 1 day, then slowly mix in some of his normal food with the rest.
Aside from dog sitting, ripping apart a bedroom, wallpaper came off today… thursday start removing the plasterboard on 2 internal walls so I can move some electrics about and add new sockets, as well as TV/Satellite/Ethernet ports in the corner, then put some acoustic insulation in the walls before getting them boarded and skimmed ready for paint and carpet.
I also did the skirting in the hallway, so that’s another DIY job down and once painted… another room finished… only 3 more to go (guest bedroom, lounge & dining rooms)
Working class implies the vast majority of people in the country… CHAV is a specific set of male violent thugs, so whilst it is a slur… it’s wrong to imply it describes ALL working class people, when the majority of them aren’t scummy violent thugs.
Got up Monday and started work at 8am… forgetting it was a Bank Holiday… work from home, so not a problem. Got a jump start on the week so I could skive on other days and only work about 25hrs anyway.
Went for a few bike rides out into the countryside on my ebike for some fresh air and exercise.
Finished the decorating in the hall, just waiting to fit the new skirting and architrave as joiner is away until next week and it’s a complicated job around radiators and stairs… I can do simple square/rectangular rooms, but this has about 15 corners and other angles to deal with, and he’s doing some oak trim around the new oak staircase to finish, as well as doing the newel post caps that were on order.
Moved my home office desk/computer into my bedroom for a while, so I can clear out the last two bedrooms ready to decorate next month. Gotta open up some walls in one to fit acoustic insulation and add some extra sockets.
Watched a few movies and some TV shows… It’s been a very quiet week, hardly left the house. Today is a Sunday, about to go out for another ride as the sun came out and she’s cooking up a chicken and dumpling casserole for lunch.
Aside from that, some cleaning and washing to do… a typical lazy Sunday.
Remember growing up and those tubs were 1kg… I saw one recently that was 560g, and they’ve been getting smaller and smaller for years.
Stopped buying them entirely… The last time we bought a tin of quality street was when we where in John Lewis xmas shopping before going away over xmas and they had a 1.5kg tin, you could choose what you wanted in it, and they had 2 new sweets you could add too as a special JL exclusive… We dumped the toffee ones obviously along with a couple of others and got lots of extra orange/strawberry/caramel ones. I think the tin was about £20 though, but only a couple of £ extra over buying 3 tubs of the others, whilst getting better ratio of the good choccies.
Used to buy the frozen large beer battered haddock from Aldi, it was £3.19, and then during the price gouging, it rose to £4.79… then they had the cheek to lower it 10p and put a big label on on it proclaiming the reduced price.
It’s now back up to £4.79 and it’s often missing from the freezers because I think people have stopped buying it… like we did.
Their nice sausages, used to be £1.79, now £2.59.
We used to spend around £200-220 a month on groceries for 2 people… Now we spend £300-320 a month whilst cutting back on a lot of the treaty stuff we used to buy. We’ve also switched where we can to local shops (butchers, bakers) for a few things which is more expensive, but the quality is 500% better.
We stopped shopping in the big supermarkets entirely because the grocery bill would be closer to £400 a month otherwise… So as much as I complain about price rises in Aldi/Lidl, they’re still better than anywhere else.
Plus, if I want to go to a Tesco, it’s a 15 mile round trip now, Morrisons at least a 30 mile round trip, M&S is a 50 mile round trip… we do at least have a B & M, Home Bargains, Lidl, Aldi, Farmfoods & Iceland within a few miles. Most of them less than a 3 mile round trip… The downsides to moving to a more rural location… But the upsides to being nearer to the sea and mountains are immeasurable… So I suck it up and grumble to myself about food prices, stick to the basics from the supermarkets and buy my treaty stuff from local stores… Nice dry cure bacon and the occasional bit of steak for example, sourdough loaves of bread.
If we want some nice fish and chips, there’s a large number of local eateries that do great meals, all of the local chip shops are garbage, the only good one is a 30 mile round trip, same for a decent kebab shop… But almost all of the local cafes and pubs do excellent food at reasonable prices. So we treat ourselves more that way now. Moving here and going mortgage free has lead to a massive quality of life improvement as well as improving mental health and stress levels.
They’re always complaining about those ‘nasty immigrants’ who are both here to simultaneously steal their jobs whilst claiming all of the benefits going.
The simple translation… racists… they’re all racist, xenophobic wankers and this country would actually be better of without them in it rather than those seeking a better life and are willing to work hard to get it.
I still sneak my own food and drink into the cinema when I go… it costs 1/4 of the price that way and the two of us can actually go and see a movie for less than £50 that way. When I was a teenager, you could actually buy 2 tickets & popcorn for less than £10 (90’s)… and we’d sneak a bottle of vodka in.