sunday, bleedin sunday

So this last weekend gone was the bank holiday.

I didn't really have a concrete plan of action, but it was my intention to do a bunch of prep work for putting a load of stuff on e-bay. On the Saturday this mainly involved going through boxes and photographing and weighing stuff.

I spent most of the afternoon doing it and was pleased with the progress. Sunday I'd pretty much earmarked for computer cleaning and sorting. My landlord wants to redecorate my room, so I wanted to start the ball rolling of tidying up the computer area, which needs sorting for several reasons.

My dad is also wanting to buy a new monitor, so I've been spending a lot of time looking through computer specialist websites and I kinda ended up getting the old system building bug. See, I'm also keeping track o the progress of the latest version of the Civ franchise - number 5 - and a while back they posted some system requirements stuff.

And, to be frank, the recommended system is a bit of a monster. Also, I'd started playing Anno 1404 again and was getting a motherload of Crashes-to-Desktop while it was saving (which is just about the worst time for it to crash). Although there's no patch to fix the CTD, some of the stuff out there suggests that more videocard RAM had cured the problem for some people.

In other words, there was a sudden impetus for me to update my machine. I mean, I also spent ages designing a dream system, but that would cost about £1,600 - £1,600 I don't have let me hasten to emphasise - so I also looked at tweaking my existing computers to boost performance.

However, an important part of this would be to finally update to Windows 7 and that means I'd need to spend ages doing "system sorting out" stuff, which is what I had planned for the Sunday. Also, it's good to occasionally clean out your PC case as the build up of dust that tends to occur is not good, so I was hoping to do that.

Instead, my landlord dropped a bit of a bombshell.

My landlord actually has a bit of a knack for managing to want to talk to me at the most inconvenient times - just as I'm sitting down to watch the Belgium Grand Prix, there's a knock at the door and they want 'a chat'.

Anyway, to cut a long story, there were 2 issues.

First off, my collection of boxes is now considered a fire hazard (given the damp problems I'd struggle to see a roaring log fire as a fire hazard in my flat, but never mind) so I need to move them all into the shed out the back.

And secondly, their decorator has booked a holiday right when I'm off at the beginning of October, even though they've known the dates for weeks.

This second point was where it got really confusing, because their solution seemed to be that they want to go into my room and start stripping the wallpaper in advance. I realised later that I don't actually understand how this solves the problem, unless they're saying they're going to decorate it themselves.

Even if they are, I'm kinda stunned that they're suggesting the small room I live in will take more than... ooh, two days to decorate (I'm going to be away for a week).

I dunno, but the basic upshot is that I had to spend the rest of Sunday and Monday sorting through all of the boxes - not just the ones that had stuff in I want to sell now. Of course, ultimately, I want to sell, recycle or throw away 90% of what's in the boxes, but I was thinking I'd have a month to do this and even then that I'd have time after the decoration as well.

However, if the boxes now have to go out in the shed that adds all sorts of complications, meaning it all needs doing as soon as is humanely possible.