Weekend!

Yeah, I would.

Well obviously it’s not the weekend just yet, but I really can’t wait for it! Friday night will be the usual affair of sitting down with a few drinks and watch the old tellybox. Saturday on the other hand will be a little different!

Gem’s mum will be having the girls on Saturday night! Woohoo! So that means that Gem and I WILL be going out somewhere. Initial ideas are going out for a curry (which we seem to be doing more of recently) or going to the cinema. Gem wants to go and watch the new Underworld film, but I just don’t think it’ll be the same without Kate yummy whatserface. Shame. She looks yummy in that full on PVC…tight…fugure hugging….

Moving on….

On Sunday (depending on the hangover situation) we’ll be going car hunting. The Insurance company’s hire car will be going back as soon as we receive the cheque for the old car. Gem’s fallen for a Citreon C3. It does look nice, but the colour of the interior is a bit…blearg. But then again, this is going to be Gem’s car as she’s the one who does the most driving. Problem is though, she’s gone for a car at the first place we visit! We need to look around the other garages first and see what they have on offer. If we don;t find anything, then we’ll go back to the Citreon.

Must go now. I really do need to do some sort of work!

Still here?

Good, so am I! When I remember to post on here anyway!

So the RAM I bought from Crucial has been installed, and it works great! There is one downside though. Because I’ve installed the 32bit version of XP, it can only recognise just over 2gb of the memory. Even so, it runs like a dream!

It still takes a few minuted for the lappy to turn on, but when it’s all up and running…whoosh! The difference in running Flight Sim X for example is just massive! Previously it was running on 512mb RAM, and it took about 5 minutes to load up a mission. Now it taked just a few seconds, and runs without any slow-down at all! Lubness!

All I need to do now is sort out the graphics side of things. The ATi chip I have only runs at 128mb, so as you can imagine, it FSX doesn’t look quite as nice as it should. Unfortunatly, I think the graphcs card is an hembedded jobbie so I don’t think it can be changed. I think I remember seeing somewhere that more memory can be sent to it through the BIOS, so I’m going to look further into that!

Anyway, enough of the techie stuff.

Just before Christmas, Gem had a small accident in the car. No, she didn’t piss herself! A van ran into the car when she was driving. The damage only seemed to be a significant dent on the drivers side wing, but it turns out that there was more damage underneath and as such, the car has been written off as a total loss.

The insurance company got a hire car to us and picked up the Fiesta only a few hours later, which was great! Things have been going swimmingly until we spoke to our solicitor the other day. I’m not going to go into details on here, but things are starting to get a trifle frustrating now. I’m sure we’ll get that sorted out soon though (fingers, and everything crossed!).

We’re also expecting a cheque from the insurance company soon, so we’re about to go car hunting. Problem is though, I’m not sure we can get a half decent car for the amount of money we’ll be getting. I’m very reluctant to have Gem and the kids driving round in a cheap banger. Ah well, let’s see what’s out there first!

The Laptop is back!

A few months ago the laptop was having many amounts of dicky fits and started refusing to do what I asked it to in a sensible amount of time. The HDD was so knackered and corrupted it was just…bollocksed.

Ste managed to convince me that Linux was the way to go, so after many hours of arsing about…it was installed! A pretty easy system to use but a pain the arse to setup, especially if you have no idea on how to code anything. Me!

The biggest pain in the arse came when we tried to install some graphics drivers, and that’s when the whole thing just went tits-up, with me loosing my rag with the lappy…hitting it and subsequently breaking it. Sorry Ste. It just didn’t work out!

So the lappy’s just been sat in the office gathering dust until yesterday when I was a bit bored. I decided to start it up and see what happens. For some bizarre reason, I left the Linux DVD in the drive and the BIOS setup to boot from CD. Wierd, as I don’t remember doing that! I decided that I would try and get rid of Linux from the HDD and try to re-install XP. That would have worked nicely if the HDD was buggered, so I found the original HDD that came with the laptop and put that back in, tried to install XP…IT WORKS!

Wierdly, it seems to run a whole hell of a lot better than it did originally. I’ve figured out that because I’ve installed my own copy of XP, instead of the bloated shite that came with the machine, everything just seems to run more smoothy. Hell, I’ve even managed to install Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X and that runs reasonably, with only 512mb of RAM and next to no graphics card!

OK, so it takes quite a while for FSX to actually load anything, which is why I went and baought some more RAM for it from the Crucial Memory website. 4GB for under 40 quid! Not bad at all if I may say so myself! The only thing to do now is see if I can actually upgrade the processor and graphics card for the lappy. Probably not…

Anyone want to buy an Arcade machine?

Olivia and Danni playing Mario

So the other day I posted saying how skint we are, and trying to get rid of overdrafts etc. I also mentioned that there were a few bits and bobs that I didn’t really want to get rid of. One of such items is the arcade machine that you see pictured to the left.

It’s got over 1,000 games on it, and is an awesome piece of kit. Unfortunatly it’s sat there gathering dust and not being used. So the time really has come that I need to get rid of it. Reluctantly. Really very relucantly. But needs must and as such, it will be going on eBay sometime this week.

The thing that scares me the most is that I don’t know how much money I’m going to get for it. I don’t know how much to start bidding at or anything.

I’m also probably going to start crying like a little baby once it’s on there too. I’ll keep you updated as to when the auction is up and running.

Ah…sod it…*cries*

Been a while ain’t it?!

Firstly, Happy New Year to you all!

Secondly, I know it’s been a while since I updated this blog, so I thought I’d better do something about it!

This post is mostly going to be a whinge about money. Or rather, lack of it.

Currently I’m using an iMac for my daily computer usage at home. It’s a fair few years old and starting to slow right down. A few months ago I dod a complete reinstall which seemed to help for a short while. Unfortunatly it’s started to slow right down again, wich is completely unacceptable, as the only stuff that’s installed on it is Photoshop and Apple Works.

Obviously I’m on the look out for a PC, but it has to be a half decent on, that will quite happily run Flight Sim X without any problem whatsoever. Anyone got any ideas?

I’m also wanting a PS3 at the moment too, but again, funds are not forthcoming. I’ve recently got rid of the Wii and a few games, but the money I got from that has just gone onto paying some yearly fees and some of the overdraft. I’ve also just had a free mobile upgrade and sold my o2 XDA on ebay. I don;t see that money either as it’s going straight onto the overdraft too.

I do have an arcade machine that’s just sat there doing nothing, but I’m really quite reluctant to get rid of it. It has over 1,000 games pre-loaded on it. I also have an extremely rare Nintendo DS that was given to me by the guys at Nintendo on a day out that they arranged to promote a game. I don’t want to get rid of that either.

I got a statement from the credit card company today. They have decided to increase my limit by 500 quid. What the hell?! I’m trying to clear off my debts! I don’t want to be tempted to spend more money that ain’t mine!

On another note, my sister Carla and her t’other half Olly has recently had a baby girl. They’ve also just meoved into a house around the corner from us. Less distance to go when we visit each other and have a few drinkies!

That’s all for now, because I really can’t be arsed. We’ve just bought Condemed for the Xbox 360 for 8 quid today. Gem wants me to play it for her as she’s too scared to play it herself. *sigh*