flake of the week

I've been really flaky just recently.

This is over and above my usual flakiness that is.

The best example is my windscreen. Before Christmas I visited my Dad down in Devon and on the journey down I got a stone chip in my windscreen.

Now it was impractical to do anything about it while I was down there and also it didn't spread. Sometimes cracks and chips can grow and spread, but this one hasn't changed at all - it didn't even react when I hit that huge pothole that bent my wheel.

Plus it'll cost me money to repair. It's not in my eyeline, which they often won't repair and would instead need to replace the screen, so it's only a small amount, but it's still money. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's one of those insurance jobs, so it really is a small amount, but still.

I think I've been blaming the weather for this one - it always seems to be either raining or snowing recently and I don't think they can repair them when it's like that. Or maybe they can - I dunno, that's where the flakiness really comes into it.

Another example is my internet.

A while back John put in the wire to let me access his cable broadband. Since then I've been using it quite a lot and of course the whole intention was that I was going to switch my own phone line broadband off and hence same myself a lot of money.

Trouble is that the cable broadband is rather flaky itself. When it's working I can get some really high speeds, but they only allow you 1gb of bandwidth before they start throttling the connection. 1gb is not a lot.

And even when that's not in effect the connection speed can be all over the place - sometimes really fast, sometimes really slow, and unpredictably so. Plus, it completely dies a hell of a lot.

Now I know how to fix these deaths - you reboot the router by switching it off and on and it re-synchs itself. Problem is of course that I can't get in to do that, because it's in John's house. And h doesn't use the net a lot so he sometimes doesn't notice for several days.

Which all means I can't get rid of my broadband. I therefore had a look for something cheaper and none of the other packages people offer are as good as my current one. So what about downgrading? Well, although there are cheaper options from the same company I'm worried that if I switch something will go wrong.

I've no idea how to change the IP of my router, for example, so I'm worried that if I change it'll go tits up. I could probably sort this out by phoning them, but as previously noted, I've been really flaky about this stuff and haven't bothered.

And there's loads of other stuff. For example, I've got loads of e-mails flagged as needing action covering everything from buying some more clothes to joining forums.

I'm just being totally rubbish.

I also keep wondering where the time goes. I remember not so long ago I had the time to watch anime and scan stuff and do all these little jobs as well, but just recently it seems like I don't have any spare time to do anything.

And then I remember - I must spend at least 8 hours every week playing Anno, absolute minimum. When you factor in work and sleep and shopping all the other crap I have to do that's a huge chunk of all my spare time.