Over the last few weeks I've been reading "Mustaine," which, rather predictably, is the autobiography of one David Mustaine, lead singer of my favourite band, Megadeth.
The book was pretty good. It's certainly very readable and you get a good insight into Mustaine's life. What I would say, though, is that it feels very trimmed down. Of course, this is true of all biographies, because you have to hack stuff away simply in order to avoid a multi-volume overload.
The problem is more that because Dave has had such an eventful life, this means quite a bit of stuff that's skimmed over is still pretty interesting. I mean, for a lot of people that warrant biographies you can skip past big chunks of their life where they didn't do the bit that was interesting about them.
However, Dave had a fairly unique - and not particularly fun - childhood that informs quite a lot of what came after, so you can't skip that. Then he was a homeless drug dealer, which is not something you can skip. Then he broke into the music world when he was becoming an adult and you can't skip that. And then you have Megadeth, with its constantly changing line-ups and massive success, the rivalry with Metallica, his drug use and abuse, his wife and kids, his finding God, the trouble his big mouth has gotten him into, the injury of his arm...
And it's not like he's now retired, or even like his career has hit the skids, so something has to give. In this case the 'give' takes the form of a skimming past stuff once you get out of the first years of Megadeth. So the earlier years have the most detail and then there are choice highlights from the later years.
It works quite well, and everything in there is entertaining and interesting, but you do sometimes feel a bit like you want to know more. In particular, touring and his process of writing songs are given very short shrift. Which is okay as I'm sure those things would only be of interest to fans, rather than the ordinary public, but if you're looking for details on what all the songs are about, you'll find meagre pickings (as I understand it, there was actually talk of doing a separate book on the songs, so this might be part of why they're not really covered).
What also feels a little short-changed is some of the well known feuds. In particular, Kerry King and Pantera are both mentioned, but almost more in passing than "here's what happened" detail. I can kinda understand that as most of these have been healed or fizzled out, so they may not seem important now and it wouldn't be fair if the book was entirely Dave banging on about old grudges.
But what about the big one? The Metallica thing.
Well, it's clear from the book what Dave's perspective on the whole thing was and is. He's certainly not changed his tune in that he feels hard done by, although he acknowledges several times that he was "a handful."
The main impression I got was that it's difficult to see how it could have worked any other way. I mean, a lot of the book is about how he was a chronic drug abuser and alcoholic and when he did drink he was an angry and dangerous drunk. And it took him several decades before he even came close to sorting all that out.
I mean, if Megadeth wasn't entirely his band and instead he'd been in other collaborative bands (which is what Metallica in the early days was) then you get the distinct impression he'd have been kicked out of those bands too. But since Megadeth was his, you get the situation where he's constantly firing people in a similar fashion to how he was kicked out.
Now to be fair there is a distinct difference - most of the people he fired were more like 'hired guns' than people who'd really been an integral part of Megadeth's song writing. And they all went for pretty reasonable reasons, although it's interesting he admits he's not very good at firing people.
But the point is more that okay, he was hard done by, they didn't fire him in a good way, and in his eyes he should have been the guitar player in the biggest band in the world, and yet that was a hell of a long time ago and Metallica have written an awful lot of albums that got them much more success than those early songs did.
Friday, 24 September 2010
Thursday, 23 September 2010
system building pt2
God, I'd completely forgotten what a pain it is to re-install a system.
Specifically I'm talking about re-installing XP on my old machine. My original plan (can't remember if I discussed it) was to use this machine as a file server and to watch TV on, but that hit a bit of a snag. Well, there have been a few snags, actually.
I mentioned before about how I had to change my plans for cases. My new case, which is all clever and stuff ended up with my old machine bits in because the GFX for my new rig was too big to fit. Well, something I also thought about doing was dusting off my old acrylic case and using that for my file-server machine.
However, couple of problems. First off, it turns out this old case id damaged, but also it's old so it's using 8cm fans. New cases tend to use 12cm fans, which are bigger, so they can shift he same amount of air but run slower and therefore are quieter. So the problem is acrylic case is broken and also very old. Also, it's got loads of blue lights in it.
I had forgotten Id' originally built this machine with the idea of using it as a sort of "show off" modding case, so when I had transferred all the gubbins (which took hours) and fired it up I was blinded by all the fan-lights and stuff. So the upshot is I need yet another case.
Especially since my plan of using this as a file server can't be implemented. Basically, I bought two new copies of windows 7 - one 32bit and one 64bit. The 32bit was for my old rig and the 64 for my new rig. But what I didn't know was that a 32bit system can only support about 3.5gb of RAM in total (i.e. including the video RMA). But what I also didn't know was that all core2 duo processors are 64bit compatible.
So essentially I've bought a useless version of windows 7. Except, I though, maybe I could run it on my old normal machine and by another 64bit copy. But this time before simply leaping into it, I tried testing out my hardware and software with windows 7.
Generally speaking I was hugely impressed. I was rather afraid that windows 7 would have horrible compatibility problems, but in reality it run nearly everything - even my old copy of Office 2000 and Photoshop 7! But the important bit is the 'nearly', because there is no driver for my A3 scanner.
And my A3 scanner is critical to the whole deal, which meant another change of plan. So, I installed the 32bit Windows 7 on my old games rig and will be using that as the file and print server and TV machine. Which really is a bit of a waste, but I have to keep using my old normal machine so that I can still use my scanner.
But I've decided to upgrade it to Windows XP. see, the old machine used Windows 2000, but my copy of XP of course is now not needed for my games machine, so I'm installing it from fresh. And it's taking ages.
See, the machine of course is slow compared o the newer ones, but also, Windows XP isn't the quickest installing thing anyway. I'd been thorough impressed by how quick it was to set Windows 7 up, but SP has taken me days.
I guess a part of that, though, is that windows 7 is relatively new, so it doesn't have as many patches. XP, being old, has literally hundreds of patches to download. But also, a lot of them take a long time to install compared to the windows 7 ones.
But also, the update process for Windows 7 seems much more comprehensive. I mean, it had lots of hardware patches and stuff where XP's doesn't. A great example of this is the printer - for XP I had to go on a mission to find a driver, but with Windows 7, the driver was there for download from the windows update site, which it found and installed automatically, so it was a piece of piss.
But yeah, it's never easy tweaking and upgrading, and now I've the added expense of buying another new case. And I should really get a better PSU too...
Specifically I'm talking about re-installing XP on my old machine. My original plan (can't remember if I discussed it) was to use this machine as a file server and to watch TV on, but that hit a bit of a snag. Well, there have been a few snags, actually.
I mentioned before about how I had to change my plans for cases. My new case, which is all clever and stuff ended up with my old machine bits in because the GFX for my new rig was too big to fit. Well, something I also thought about doing was dusting off my old acrylic case and using that for my file-server machine.
However, couple of problems. First off, it turns out this old case id damaged, but also it's old so it's using 8cm fans. New cases tend to use 12cm fans, which are bigger, so they can shift he same amount of air but run slower and therefore are quieter. So the problem is acrylic case is broken and also very old. Also, it's got loads of blue lights in it.
I had forgotten Id' originally built this machine with the idea of using it as a sort of "show off" modding case, so when I had transferred all the gubbins (which took hours) and fired it up I was blinded by all the fan-lights and stuff. So the upshot is I need yet another case.
Especially since my plan of using this as a file server can't be implemented. Basically, I bought two new copies of windows 7 - one 32bit and one 64bit. The 32bit was for my old rig and the 64 for my new rig. But what I didn't know was that a 32bit system can only support about 3.5gb of RAM in total (i.e. including the video RMA). But what I also didn't know was that all core2 duo processors are 64bit compatible.
So essentially I've bought a useless version of windows 7. Except, I though, maybe I could run it on my old normal machine and by another 64bit copy. But this time before simply leaping into it, I tried testing out my hardware and software with windows 7.
Generally speaking I was hugely impressed. I was rather afraid that windows 7 would have horrible compatibility problems, but in reality it run nearly everything - even my old copy of Office 2000 and Photoshop 7! But the important bit is the 'nearly', because there is no driver for my A3 scanner.
And my A3 scanner is critical to the whole deal, which meant another change of plan. So, I installed the 32bit Windows 7 on my old games rig and will be using that as the file and print server and TV machine. Which really is a bit of a waste, but I have to keep using my old normal machine so that I can still use my scanner.
But I've decided to upgrade it to Windows XP. see, the old machine used Windows 2000, but my copy of XP of course is now not needed for my games machine, so I'm installing it from fresh. And it's taking ages.
See, the machine of course is slow compared o the newer ones, but also, Windows XP isn't the quickest installing thing anyway. I'd been thorough impressed by how quick it was to set Windows 7 up, but SP has taken me days.
I guess a part of that, though, is that windows 7 is relatively new, so it doesn't have as many patches. XP, being old, has literally hundreds of patches to download. But also, a lot of them take a long time to install compared to the windows 7 ones.
But also, the update process for Windows 7 seems much more comprehensive. I mean, it had lots of hardware patches and stuff where XP's doesn't. A great example of this is the printer - for XP I had to go on a mission to find a driver, but with Windows 7, the driver was there for download from the windows update site, which it found and installed automatically, so it was a piece of piss.
But yeah, it's never easy tweaking and upgrading, and now I've the added expense of buying another new case. And I should really get a better PSU too...
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
weight for it
Well, I'd lost another pound when I weighed myself this last weekend.
I have to confess I'm a little disappointed with that, but also not entirely surprised. See, having now established that to get an at least vaguely accurate reading from my pedometer I need to put it in my breast pocket, I've had something of a shock about my walking. Previously I thought I was doing okay, but the pedo has revealed that I must actually have been falling some way short.
I therefore decided I was going to try getting up even earlier and going for a longish walk first thing, rather than the shortish stroll I've been doing. This did not work well.
The real problem is my totally weird behaviour when it comes to going to work. I mean, I don't officially start work until 9am, but I generally get to work at about 8am. And I honestly don't really know why.
Part of it may be that I'm a bit of a morning person. I like being up before everyone else. One of the things I like about my morning walk is that most of the rest of the world (as it were) is still sleeping.
Part of it is traffic. The route I use to work involves a roundabout that causes a lot of delay. Generally speaking, during term time, if I get there after about 7:45 it will add at least 15 minutes to my journey time. Now considering my journey to work is about 30 minutes on a morning, you can see how that's nor much fun.
Also, I have a particular loathing for sitting in traffic jams. I will actively seek out and use alternative routes even if they are much longer if it means I can avoid sitting in a jam. Even if the extent that the extra time taken on the alternate route might outweigh the time spent in the jam.
It's because it feels like utterly wasted time.
Another part of it is that it's part of my campaign to get RED to shift to flexible working. Id' love to be able to go home at 5 instead of 5:30. Or to save up and toddle home at 3:30 on a Friday. Or even take an extra day off.
But I don't think these really explain it. I think the real explanation is that I established the time I get up when I last worked at dstl (where they do have flexi) and I have simply stuck with it ever since. In other words, it's a routine I've now established and for me that's difficult to alter.
So when I started on the whole walking thing, I started getting up at 6:30, rather than my usual 6:45. The idea was that this would let me go for a 15 minute walk and still maintain the same basic schedule in the morning. And it worked well, but then I discovered the fact that my pedo readings were way off, so I started thinking about how I could squeeze in extra walking.
And the answer I came up with was to get up at 6:15 and go for a longer walk - to do my Saturday and Sunday walk. That way I'd easily bump up the mileage. Only there's a big problem - I just can't get up at 6:15 and go for a long walk like that. It's a real struggle, so all I end up doing is the same short walk and then getting into work even earlier!
Of course, I know the real answer. The real answer is to add an extra walk to when I get home. Problem there has been that all this fannying around with boxes and decorating my room and e-bay rubbish has meant that I'd just not had the time to do that.
I guess after my holiday when all will hopefully be sorted I can do a more sensible, planned routine and do the walk after work.
Anyway, last week I struggled to get even my minimum amount of walking in. I've been making so many trips to the post office to post e-bay stuff and spending the evenings parcelling it all up that I couldn't really do as much walking as I'd have hoped, despite the whole attempt at getting up even earlier.
It also didn't help that I wasn't quite as strict with the diet as I had been. I mean, I didn't completely fall off the proverbial wagon, but there were certainly a couple of days of non-plan eating.
I could blame this all on the horrible disruption I've been experiencing as part of the room redecorating sage, but the truth is I should be working around that.
I have to confess I'm a little disappointed with that, but also not entirely surprised. See, having now established that to get an at least vaguely accurate reading from my pedometer I need to put it in my breast pocket, I've had something of a shock about my walking. Previously I thought I was doing okay, but the pedo has revealed that I must actually have been falling some way short.
I therefore decided I was going to try getting up even earlier and going for a longish walk first thing, rather than the shortish stroll I've been doing. This did not work well.
The real problem is my totally weird behaviour when it comes to going to work. I mean, I don't officially start work until 9am, but I generally get to work at about 8am. And I honestly don't really know why.
Part of it may be that I'm a bit of a morning person. I like being up before everyone else. One of the things I like about my morning walk is that most of the rest of the world (as it were) is still sleeping.
Part of it is traffic. The route I use to work involves a roundabout that causes a lot of delay. Generally speaking, during term time, if I get there after about 7:45 it will add at least 15 minutes to my journey time. Now considering my journey to work is about 30 minutes on a morning, you can see how that's nor much fun.
Also, I have a particular loathing for sitting in traffic jams. I will actively seek out and use alternative routes even if they are much longer if it means I can avoid sitting in a jam. Even if the extent that the extra time taken on the alternate route might outweigh the time spent in the jam.
It's because it feels like utterly wasted time.
Another part of it is that it's part of my campaign to get RED to shift to flexible working. Id' love to be able to go home at 5 instead of 5:30. Or to save up and toddle home at 3:30 on a Friday. Or even take an extra day off.
But I don't think these really explain it. I think the real explanation is that I established the time I get up when I last worked at dstl (where they do have flexi) and I have simply stuck with it ever since. In other words, it's a routine I've now established and for me that's difficult to alter.
So when I started on the whole walking thing, I started getting up at 6:30, rather than my usual 6:45. The idea was that this would let me go for a 15 minute walk and still maintain the same basic schedule in the morning. And it worked well, but then I discovered the fact that my pedo readings were way off, so I started thinking about how I could squeeze in extra walking.
And the answer I came up with was to get up at 6:15 and go for a longer walk - to do my Saturday and Sunday walk. That way I'd easily bump up the mileage. Only there's a big problem - I just can't get up at 6:15 and go for a long walk like that. It's a real struggle, so all I end up doing is the same short walk and then getting into work even earlier!
Of course, I know the real answer. The real answer is to add an extra walk to when I get home. Problem there has been that all this fannying around with boxes and decorating my room and e-bay rubbish has meant that I'd just not had the time to do that.
I guess after my holiday when all will hopefully be sorted I can do a more sensible, planned routine and do the walk after work.
Anyway, last week I struggled to get even my minimum amount of walking in. I've been making so many trips to the post office to post e-bay stuff and spending the evenings parcelling it all up that I couldn't really do as much walking as I'd have hoped, despite the whole attempt at getting up even earlier.
It also didn't help that I wasn't quite as strict with the diet as I had been. I mean, I didn't completely fall off the proverbial wagon, but there were certainly a couple of days of non-plan eating.
I could blame this all on the horrible disruption I've been experiencing as part of the room redecorating sage, but the truth is I should be working around that.
Tuesday, 21 September 2010
new PC
I've been building a new PC.
Well, no, that's not quite the entire story. I have been building a new PC, but I've also been rationalising my existing PCs.
I currently have 5 PCs in various states of working order and of various performance levels. I also have several of the (now famous) plastic crates worth of "PC gubbins" out in the shed.
The idea is to eventually end up with 3 computers.
The first will be a dedicated gaming rig, which is the new computer I'm building. This is a really powerful machine, the juicy bits of which are a quad-core, 2.8ghz core i7 chip, 8gb of RAM (using 4*2gb sticks to take advantage of hyper threading), a Velociraptor 2 drive, which spins at 10,000RPM and is SATA 2 (couldn't afford one of the SATA 3 ones), and a 5970 ATI card, which has, I believe, 2gb of RAM and a dual-core processor with a clock speed of 1ghz, which, when you think about it, is like having what was a reasonably good computer from a few years ago sat inside my computer :/.
It's also going to be running windows 7 64bit and should basically be able to cope with anything the gaming world can throw at it for a good few years to come.
The second machine is what I'm currently using as my games machine. The idea is that I'll upgrade this to windows 7 32 bit and will use it as my regular, run of the mill machine. However, I'll also be able to play older games on it using the windows 7 XP mode thing. I'm also updating it to have two relatively cheap ATI cards running in cross-fire (more an experiment than a necessity, if I'm honest) and am bumping up the RAM.
The third machine will be what I'm currently using as my regular machine, but will essentially become a file server with my printer on it and also a whole bunch of hard-drives for storing stuff and doing back-up, etc. I'm also going to put this machine next to my TV, so I can watch stuff on it (really, my new TV is more like a monitor). I'm upgrading this machine with some more RAM too as it was cheap, but also, crucially, a Blu-Ray drive, so I should be able to watch Blu-Ray stuff (well, if I ever buy a Blu-Ray disk that is :/).
Everything else I'll put on e-bay and then, since most of it is so old and won't sell, I'll take it all down the recycling place.
It's been ages since I last built a machine and stuff has moved on quite a bit, but some things stay the same. The main thing that stayed the same is the fact that I made some gigantic cock-ups.
The main cock-up this time was with the power supply. When I was putting the system together, I started out with my absolute dream system, which cost a small fortune, and then stepped things back to a more affordable level. However, I think I must have gotten rather mixed up with the case and power supply.
Basically, the case I bought has a power supply that's recommended for it and initially I was buying the pair. But I think at some point I decided to look for cheaper alternatives, and managed to confuse myself that I'd changed the case, so I picked a different power supply.
Except I hadn't changed the case, and the case has an odd design in that the power supply is at the bottom, so you need rather long cables and the supply I bought fell short. Now, this wouldn't be such a problem, because my other supply has super long cables, but the new PSU is also not sufficiently powerful to run both the cross-fire graphics cards if I swap them over.
So, in other words, I've had to buy the first PSU I picked as well :/.
My existing games machine case is actually an over-sized one and it was originally my intention to put the new gubbins in there. However, when the new case turned up, it was a really nice case with some neat features, so I tried to put it in there. But, as well as the unusual design, I also found that the graphics card just wouldn't fit.
Now to be fair, that's not really the fault of the case, because the card is an absolute monster. I was actually quite shocked at the size of the card when it turned up. It's actually longer than the motherboard is wide. In fact, it's almost as big as the motherboard is tall!
Which kinda backs up what I was saying at the beginning about the graphics card being like a mini-computer.
Well, no, that's not quite the entire story. I have been building a new PC, but I've also been rationalising my existing PCs.
I currently have 5 PCs in various states of working order and of various performance levels. I also have several of the (now famous) plastic crates worth of "PC gubbins" out in the shed.
The idea is to eventually end up with 3 computers.
The first will be a dedicated gaming rig, which is the new computer I'm building. This is a really powerful machine, the juicy bits of which are a quad-core, 2.8ghz core i7 chip, 8gb of RAM (using 4*2gb sticks to take advantage of hyper threading), a Velociraptor 2 drive, which spins at 10,000RPM and is SATA 2 (couldn't afford one of the SATA 3 ones), and a 5970 ATI card, which has, I believe, 2gb of RAM and a dual-core processor with a clock speed of 1ghz, which, when you think about it, is like having what was a reasonably good computer from a few years ago sat inside my computer :/.
It's also going to be running windows 7 64bit and should basically be able to cope with anything the gaming world can throw at it for a good few years to come.
The second machine is what I'm currently using as my games machine. The idea is that I'll upgrade this to windows 7 32 bit and will use it as my regular, run of the mill machine. However, I'll also be able to play older games on it using the windows 7 XP mode thing. I'm also updating it to have two relatively cheap ATI cards running in cross-fire (more an experiment than a necessity, if I'm honest) and am bumping up the RAM.
The third machine will be what I'm currently using as my regular machine, but will essentially become a file server with my printer on it and also a whole bunch of hard-drives for storing stuff and doing back-up, etc. I'm also going to put this machine next to my TV, so I can watch stuff on it (really, my new TV is more like a monitor). I'm upgrading this machine with some more RAM too as it was cheap, but also, crucially, a Blu-Ray drive, so I should be able to watch Blu-Ray stuff (well, if I ever buy a Blu-Ray disk that is :/).
Everything else I'll put on e-bay and then, since most of it is so old and won't sell, I'll take it all down the recycling place.
It's been ages since I last built a machine and stuff has moved on quite a bit, but some things stay the same. The main thing that stayed the same is the fact that I made some gigantic cock-ups.
The main cock-up this time was with the power supply. When I was putting the system together, I started out with my absolute dream system, which cost a small fortune, and then stepped things back to a more affordable level. However, I think I must have gotten rather mixed up with the case and power supply.
Basically, the case I bought has a power supply that's recommended for it and initially I was buying the pair. But I think at some point I decided to look for cheaper alternatives, and managed to confuse myself that I'd changed the case, so I picked a different power supply.
Except I hadn't changed the case, and the case has an odd design in that the power supply is at the bottom, so you need rather long cables and the supply I bought fell short. Now, this wouldn't be such a problem, because my other supply has super long cables, but the new PSU is also not sufficiently powerful to run both the cross-fire graphics cards if I swap them over.
So, in other words, I've had to buy the first PSU I picked as well :/.
My existing games machine case is actually an over-sized one and it was originally my intention to put the new gubbins in there. However, when the new case turned up, it was a really nice case with some neat features, so I tried to put it in there. But, as well as the unusual design, I also found that the graphics card just wouldn't fit.
Now to be fair, that's not really the fault of the case, because the card is an absolute monster. I was actually quite shocked at the size of the card when it turned up. It's actually longer than the motherboard is wide. In fact, it's almost as big as the motherboard is tall!
Which kinda backs up what I was saying at the beginning about the graphics card being like a mini-computer.
Monday, 20 September 2010
an end in sight?
In theory, today is going to be the last day my landlord need to get into my flat to do decorating.
Well, no, that's not true - today is the last day before I go on holiday and he does the final phase. The final phase, as I understand it (though stuff seems to change constantly) will be to paint the newly installed wallpaper, wash the carpet and wash the curtains.
He had planned to paint the ceiling, but instead he's washed that. Also, there was mention of touching up wallpaper that's above the dado rail (the new stuff is going in below the rail) and repainting the skirting and window ledges (the gloss paint bits, as opposed to the emulsion on the wallpaper). However, I haven't a clue whether he's still going to be doing those.
As mentioned, everything seems to change every time I ask him about it. Originally, he wasn't going to do the new wallpapering until I was gone, for example, but that's what he's supposed to be doing today. What he's been doing was stripping the wallpaper in preparation for this and that was done in bits over a few days.
The entire wallpapering he reckons he can do in one day, because his mate is going to help him. That seems like a very generous mate to me, and I'm basically expecting to go back tonight and find it half done. I think they're being over-ambitious.
What does strike me mainly though is firstly why are they painting the wallpaper? This seems daft to me, but I must confess I know almost nothing about decorating.
But I'm also struck that, if a mate was available and my landlord's wife chipped in they didn't need to do all this pre-emptive bollocks (and make my life horrible) at all. I mean, when I'm gone they can move the furniture for easy access and then you're talking 1 day for stripping and cleaning, 2 days for wallpapering, (or 1 is help available) 1 day for painting (if that - if you don't bother with the gloss stuff, which is fine, then it seems more like half a day to me) and then maybe 2 days for carpet cleaning (do half of it, let it dry, move furniture, do rest, let it dry).
So that's 6 days effort if you're doing it on your own, probably only 4 if you can get someone to help. I'm going to be away for 7 days, so it all fits in.
And even if you do the stripping and cleaning beforehand to give yourself a bigger comfort margin, then you could do that in the last week before I go. I mean, they won't get access to my room until the 2nd of October, so that means I've now got a further two weeks of completely disrupted living because he's done this crap so early.
Which is, I might add, on top of the last week of the same disruption and a good couple of weeks before that pissing about with the boxes, shed and e-bay.
It all just smacks of rubbish organisation. Especially when you consider my landlord is retired, so has loads of free time on his hands.
Well, no, that's not true - today is the last day before I go on holiday and he does the final phase. The final phase, as I understand it (though stuff seems to change constantly) will be to paint the newly installed wallpaper, wash the carpet and wash the curtains.
He had planned to paint the ceiling, but instead he's washed that. Also, there was mention of touching up wallpaper that's above the dado rail (the new stuff is going in below the rail) and repainting the skirting and window ledges (the gloss paint bits, as opposed to the emulsion on the wallpaper). However, I haven't a clue whether he's still going to be doing those.
As mentioned, everything seems to change every time I ask him about it. Originally, he wasn't going to do the new wallpapering until I was gone, for example, but that's what he's supposed to be doing today. What he's been doing was stripping the wallpaper in preparation for this and that was done in bits over a few days.
The entire wallpapering he reckons he can do in one day, because his mate is going to help him. That seems like a very generous mate to me, and I'm basically expecting to go back tonight and find it half done. I think they're being over-ambitious.
What does strike me mainly though is firstly why are they painting the wallpaper? This seems daft to me, but I must confess I know almost nothing about decorating.
But I'm also struck that, if a mate was available and my landlord's wife chipped in they didn't need to do all this pre-emptive bollocks (and make my life horrible) at all. I mean, when I'm gone they can move the furniture for easy access and then you're talking 1 day for stripping and cleaning, 2 days for wallpapering, (or 1 is help available) 1 day for painting (if that - if you don't bother with the gloss stuff, which is fine, then it seems more like half a day to me) and then maybe 2 days for carpet cleaning (do half of it, let it dry, move furniture, do rest, let it dry).
So that's 6 days effort if you're doing it on your own, probably only 4 if you can get someone to help. I'm going to be away for 7 days, so it all fits in.
And even if you do the stripping and cleaning beforehand to give yourself a bigger comfort margin, then you could do that in the last week before I go. I mean, they won't get access to my room until the 2nd of October, so that means I've now got a further two weeks of completely disrupted living because he's done this crap so early.
Which is, I might add, on top of the last week of the same disruption and a good couple of weeks before that pissing about with the boxes, shed and e-bay.
It all just smacks of rubbish organisation. Especially when you consider my landlord is retired, so has loads of free time on his hands.
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