My landlord has gone away on holiday for about a week and a half.
This is good timing and bad.
The good part is that it means I can get into the shed. I've a lot of stuff I need to get rid of in there, both from a space point of view, but also from a getting some cash point of view.
He's basically blocked in all my stuff in a corner, which is staggeringly annoying if I want to get something out, but I mean, it's his shed, I shouldn't really expect to have easy access, should I?
I'm particularly expecting to sell a lot of the figures I've collected. I think these were one of my madder moments from the recent years. They take up quite a lot of room and I don't actually have anywhere to put them. Unfortunately they also lose value quite quickly - once a series is a few years old, people don't want the figures. In fact, they don't sell all that well even if they're a current series, in my experience.
Still, I've so many of them I should do okay with getting a bit of money, which I sorely need.
I'm struggling with the finances quite badly. I'm just about living within my means, but I really need to see about getting something done in terms of a loan to replace the credit card debt. The payments for the cards are killing me and obviously being credit cards you're mainly just paying off interest, rather than the debt itself.
It's not so good in that it's a bit late - I had thought he was going away last week, which would have worked a lot better from a timing point of view. It also means the weather is now proper autumn, so it's been raining a lot, making it difficult to do some of the stuff I want to / need to. So, for example, giving the car a clean will be a bit of a trick shot.
Showing posts with label sorting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sorting. Show all posts
Monday, 16 September 2013
Wednesday, 10 October 2012
box sorting
No blog yesterday as at the point I was going to start writing it I was handed something to do.
That something was a bit of a mess and took all afternoon to get even vaguely on the right track. It actually poxed up all my afternoon, to be honest, but there you go.
This last weekend was incredibly busy. As well as the Korean Grand Prix and all the recorded telly I had to watch I also had to do deal with a huge pile of washing (all my holiday stuff plus the work week), sort out the boxes / shed situation and clean my car.
Well, cleaning my car was not something I had to do, but I wanted to do it to take advantage of my landlord being on holiday. Three days later it's unfortunately now dirtier than it was. There's some house building going on near the industrial estate where I work and they've been digging out a huge amount of earth and leaving trails of muck all over the roads, so with it being rainy it's made a right mess of everyone's car - it's like everyone in the estate goes rallying to get home!
I did also need to sort my boot contents out after the holiday, so I did that too.
The boxes was a bit unfortunate - I'd actually planned to do it anyway as I usually do when my landlord goes away at this time of year, but he also left me a note basically asking me to do it, which made it a priority task. However, the weather was crappy across the week and it been my intention to spread it out a bit.
What I'd been hopping to do was most of the box moving and some of the more basic sorting in the evenings during the week. However, rain and dark is not really the best combination for doing it.
As such that meant I had to do the whole thing at the weekend - a weekend when I had a big long list of other stuff to do as well.
Now I did basically do it, but it was pretty poor in terms of really sorting out, tidying up and identifying things to e-bay. Really I've just moved a load of crap from my bedsit out to the shed and ensured what's in the shed is properly boxed and stacked.
It's a little frustrating from several perspectives, but it is what it is.
It does emphasise to me that I need to move now that I've decided to stay working where I am. Indeed, I've decided I really need to move to Alton, though first I need to not spend my pay rise for a few months so I can build up a deposit!
That something was a bit of a mess and took all afternoon to get even vaguely on the right track. It actually poxed up all my afternoon, to be honest, but there you go.
This last weekend was incredibly busy. As well as the Korean Grand Prix and all the recorded telly I had to watch I also had to do deal with a huge pile of washing (all my holiday stuff plus the work week), sort out the boxes / shed situation and clean my car.
Well, cleaning my car was not something I had to do, but I wanted to do it to take advantage of my landlord being on holiday. Three days later it's unfortunately now dirtier than it was. There's some house building going on near the industrial estate where I work and they've been digging out a huge amount of earth and leaving trails of muck all over the roads, so with it being rainy it's made a right mess of everyone's car - it's like everyone in the estate goes rallying to get home!
I did also need to sort my boot contents out after the holiday, so I did that too.
The boxes was a bit unfortunate - I'd actually planned to do it anyway as I usually do when my landlord goes away at this time of year, but he also left me a note basically asking me to do it, which made it a priority task. However, the weather was crappy across the week and it been my intention to spread it out a bit.
What I'd been hopping to do was most of the box moving and some of the more basic sorting in the evenings during the week. However, rain and dark is not really the best combination for doing it.
As such that meant I had to do the whole thing at the weekend - a weekend when I had a big long list of other stuff to do as well.
Now I did basically do it, but it was pretty poor in terms of really sorting out, tidying up and identifying things to e-bay. Really I've just moved a load of crap from my bedsit out to the shed and ensured what's in the shed is properly boxed and stacked.
It's a little frustrating from several perspectives, but it is what it is.
It does emphasise to me that I need to move now that I've decided to stay working where I am. Indeed, I've decided I really need to move to Alton, though first I need to not spend my pay rise for a few months so I can build up a deposit!
Friday, 5 October 2012
nihon grand prix
Japanese grand prix this weekend.
Unfortunately, this is the second big victim of the BBC's deal. The Japanese Grand Prix is usually quite a good one, particularly when it's held at the Suzuka circuit as it has been the last few years.
It's not quite a big a victim this time, since the practice sessions, qualifying and the race are all being broadcast on 5Live / 5Live extra. Some of the ones where they've done highlights they've not kept to this promise they made pre-season (notably Canada). And certainly I don't think there are any other big sporting events on to 'get in the way'.
However, there will be an annoying challenge, in that because it's in Japan the events are held very early in the morning (our time). Now sports reporters on the news are particularly chronic when it comes to F1 - football they'll do stuff like say "if you don't want to know the result turn over" or at the very least there's a bit of a pre-amble for you to change over. With F1 they'll launch straight in with "Lewis Hamilton has won the British Grand Prix..."
And online is no better - the headline will be "Lewis Hamilton wins in Britain" and you'll obviously see it instantly without even trying. It becomes a nightmare of trying to avoid hearing the news, which is very difficult when you actually have to do it - my alarm clock is a radio alarm and news at the weekend can be rather oddly distributed instead of being on the hour.
I'm still pretty much sticking with Alonso for the title. I think the others will squabble too much over points and while the Ferrari seems to have dropped back somewhat in terms of pace, Alonso is still picking up healthy points at each race. The reliability of the Ferrari has been extraordinary when you think about it - they've had very few retirements between both drivers, particularly when it counts on race day.
It will be quite the busy weekend, actually, as there's the race, but also my landlord is on holiday (again!) and I've got a bit of a mission to have a sort out with my boxes out in the shed. It's just the right time of year to do it (so long as the rain holds off) since the temperature is generally about right for lots of box lifting and shifting.
Unfortunately, this is the second big victim of the BBC's deal. The Japanese Grand Prix is usually quite a good one, particularly when it's held at the Suzuka circuit as it has been the last few years.
It's not quite a big a victim this time, since the practice sessions, qualifying and the race are all being broadcast on 5Live / 5Live extra. Some of the ones where they've done highlights they've not kept to this promise they made pre-season (notably Canada). And certainly I don't think there are any other big sporting events on to 'get in the way'.
However, there will be an annoying challenge, in that because it's in Japan the events are held very early in the morning (our time). Now sports reporters on the news are particularly chronic when it comes to F1 - football they'll do stuff like say "if you don't want to know the result turn over" or at the very least there's a bit of a pre-amble for you to change over. With F1 they'll launch straight in with "Lewis Hamilton has won the British Grand Prix..."
And online is no better - the headline will be "Lewis Hamilton wins in Britain" and you'll obviously see it instantly without even trying. It becomes a nightmare of trying to avoid hearing the news, which is very difficult when you actually have to do it - my alarm clock is a radio alarm and news at the weekend can be rather oddly distributed instead of being on the hour.
I'm still pretty much sticking with Alonso for the title. I think the others will squabble too much over points and while the Ferrari seems to have dropped back somewhat in terms of pace, Alonso is still picking up healthy points at each race. The reliability of the Ferrari has been extraordinary when you think about it - they've had very few retirements between both drivers, particularly when it counts on race day.
It will be quite the busy weekend, actually, as there's the race, but also my landlord is on holiday (again!) and I've got a bit of a mission to have a sort out with my boxes out in the shed. It's just the right time of year to do it (so long as the rain holds off) since the temperature is generally about right for lots of box lifting and shifting.
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
re-arrangement
So I thought I'd blog today about the sort out of my telly corner I did while I was setting up the BT vision box.
Basically the BT vision box represented something of a crunch point for the TV stack, particularly in terms of plugs. I have a long-lead gang plug that has six sockets and surge protection and in days gone past this was plenty for the TV corner. However, just recently I've added a few things to it that meant I've actually changed another ganger off it too.
But even with this extra capacity I didn't have a slot for the BT vision box. Part of the problem has become redundancy versus convenience.
A while back I decided to get Blu-Ray, but I was not keen on the players and proper multi-region machines cost an absolute fortune. There are machines where, like with some DVD players, you could essentially 'crack' them to be multi-region, but this generally involves farting about with firm-ware that you constantly have to update.
My solution then was to get a PC I could use as a media centre. I blogged at the time how this turned out to be a huge faff as well, but I've come to a point of it working okay.
Now being what it is this PC can obviously play multi-region DVDs, but because of the faff involved I ended up keeping my multi-region DVD player. I'm not really explaining this very well. Basically when trying to add the BT vision box I already had these electrical devices to account for:
A 6-point surge protected ganger with the following plugged in:
The four plug ganger had the PC plugged in but meant I could also plug in the following as needed:
So as you can see at worst case that adds up to more sockets that I had available. In practice I never needed all things on at all times, but faffing about around the back of stuff to unplug things (and making sure you got the right plug!) was a pain.
There were also a couple of other issues. Firstly my picture through my PVR (via the aerial input) has been quite poor lately. It has a lot of interference and no amount of switching plugs and cables seemed to fix it. The solution was simple - use the SCART, but they were in an unknown box in the shed.
Secondly I don't use my VCR at all - now that we've switched over to digital I don't need to keep it as a back-up.
Thirdly there was the redundancy of having the DVD player and the PC.
And lastly my Amp has only 2 optical digital inputs. As such a bit of rationalisation was in order and I decided to have a bit of a clean-up too.
I've taken the VCR out of the loop, but in the end I decided not to get rid of the DVD player. Instead I've switched the optical cable it had to the box. My theory now is that if I want to just quickly watch a DVD the player is there, but if I want to watch it properly with the full sound thing I will have to use the PC.
Hopefully as I get used to it I will find the DVD becomes properly redundant like the VCR. However, part of the issue there is I've been using a wireless mouse and keyboard and while the keyboard works well, the mouse is a pain as I like to take the batteries out and that means re-synching it every time I use it.
I also found my other SCART cables and plugged the PVR in via SCART. The noise is all gone and the picture is a little better, though as I was afraid it has a few issues with up-scaling, but then that's a pretty standard issue many people have.
So there you have it - my only plugging in I need to do is for the base amp / lamps and I'm fine with those. Although as mentioned yesterday the BT box's LEDs are incredibly bright and it's weirdly fronted so I can't easily block the light. I may try and stick some tape over it (I'm unsure if this is where the receiver is for the remote signal) or simply plug it in when needed.
Basically the BT vision box represented something of a crunch point for the TV stack, particularly in terms of plugs. I have a long-lead gang plug that has six sockets and surge protection and in days gone past this was plenty for the TV corner. However, just recently I've added a few things to it that meant I've actually changed another ganger off it too.
But even with this extra capacity I didn't have a slot for the BT vision box. Part of the problem has become redundancy versus convenience.
A while back I decided to get Blu-Ray, but I was not keen on the players and proper multi-region machines cost an absolute fortune. There are machines where, like with some DVD players, you could essentially 'crack' them to be multi-region, but this generally involves farting about with firm-ware that you constantly have to update.
My solution then was to get a PC I could use as a media centre. I blogged at the time how this turned out to be a huge faff as well, but I've come to a point of it working okay.
Now being what it is this PC can obviously play multi-region DVDs, but because of the faff involved I ended up keeping my multi-region DVD player. I'm not really explaining this very well. Basically when trying to add the BT vision box I already had these electrical devices to account for:
A 6-point surge protected ganger with the following plugged in:
- TV
- PVR
- DVD player
- Dolby digital Amp
- Sub-Woofer
- four point ganger
The four plug ganger had the PC plugged in but meant I could also plug in the following as needed:
- 2 * lamps on timers (my landlord is paranoid about security and likes me to have these on during winter)
- Bass guitar amp
- VCR (yes, kicking it old school)
So as you can see at worst case that adds up to more sockets that I had available. In practice I never needed all things on at all times, but faffing about around the back of stuff to unplug things (and making sure you got the right plug!) was a pain.
There were also a couple of other issues. Firstly my picture through my PVR (via the aerial input) has been quite poor lately. It has a lot of interference and no amount of switching plugs and cables seemed to fix it. The solution was simple - use the SCART, but they were in an unknown box in the shed.
Secondly I don't use my VCR at all - now that we've switched over to digital I don't need to keep it as a back-up.
Thirdly there was the redundancy of having the DVD player and the PC.
And lastly my Amp has only 2 optical digital inputs. As such a bit of rationalisation was in order and I decided to have a bit of a clean-up too.
I've taken the VCR out of the loop, but in the end I decided not to get rid of the DVD player. Instead I've switched the optical cable it had to the box. My theory now is that if I want to just quickly watch a DVD the player is there, but if I want to watch it properly with the full sound thing I will have to use the PC.
Hopefully as I get used to it I will find the DVD becomes properly redundant like the VCR. However, part of the issue there is I've been using a wireless mouse and keyboard and while the keyboard works well, the mouse is a pain as I like to take the batteries out and that means re-synching it every time I use it.
I also found my other SCART cables and plugged the PVR in via SCART. The noise is all gone and the picture is a little better, though as I was afraid it has a few issues with up-scaling, but then that's a pretty standard issue many people have.
So there you have it - my only plugging in I need to do is for the base amp / lamps and I'm fine with those. Although as mentioned yesterday the BT box's LEDs are incredibly bright and it's weirdly fronted so I can't easily block the light. I may try and stick some tape over it (I'm unsure if this is where the receiver is for the remote signal) or simply plug it in when needed.
Friday, 11 November 2011
abu dhabi du
It's the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this weekend.
I can't say I'm particularly looking forward to it as it's not really produced any classics so far. It's one of the newer races and it's also one of the duller ones.
From memory it's held in the evening, so it starts out fairly light but the sun sets during the race and it's dark at the end. This doesn't really add much to the race, but I guess it's something different.
It's also the circuit where it goes under the weird hotel which has loads of glowing lights on it. Also, the exit from the pits is a tunnel. Again, neither really add anything to the race, but it's something a bit different.
It's also the second to last grand prix. The season is way too long this year - the last race is Brazil, which is usually a good race, but it's way out at the end of November and the new season starts mid-March next year.
I appreciate with F1 being a properly global sport you can go on for a long time, but I think it's kinda reached a maximum length this year. Also, by adding more races you actually amplify the effect of dominance. So this year there have been lots of races where Vettel has already won the title.
To be honest, I don't think it matters as much in F1 - they still want to win each race, but the heat does go out of it a little.
Other plans for the weekend are... to be honest, I'm not sure. I know I need to do a big shop and one of the things I did do when I got back of holiday was identify a bunch of stuff for e-baying.
In fact I'm actually almost out of stuff I could put on e-bay in the shed. Indeed, I've actually got loads of empty stacking boxes in the shed that I've positioned to give the illusion that the space is has still got loads in it, but actually they're mostly empty.
Well, I say that - there's still quite a bit I could get rid of, it's just it would take quite a lot of sorting out, and I'd say half of what's left is really only tip-worthy if I was forced to dispose of it.
Also I've actually cheated. I've brought all of my manga in and stacked it up on top of my smaller set of shelves.
I do actually want to sell most of these titles, it's just that I'm either waiting for them to finish (which could take a few years in some cases :/) or to get a good chunk that I can sell as a batch (1-10 say) and then when new volumes turn up I'll sell them individually.
This doesn't get me such good prices, but it reduces the amount of stuff I've got hanging about.
Oh, I also made a bit of a decision - I want to rip some of the DVDs I've got so that I can get the originals on e-bay. Having spent quite a lot of time recently sorting through things there's a lot that clearly isn't going to be of "classic - must keep" status so I think I'll rip them and sell them.
That does mean I need to work out a quick, easy and efficient way of doing that. And of course it means there's a weird bit of transference going on - I won't be doing what I really need to (watching stuff) but I'll still be able to sell it :/. Also, I'm going to spend hours (?) ripping it when I could be watching it... ?
I can't say I'm particularly looking forward to it as it's not really produced any classics so far. It's one of the newer races and it's also one of the duller ones.
From memory it's held in the evening, so it starts out fairly light but the sun sets during the race and it's dark at the end. This doesn't really add much to the race, but I guess it's something different.
It's also the circuit where it goes under the weird hotel which has loads of glowing lights on it. Also, the exit from the pits is a tunnel. Again, neither really add anything to the race, but it's something a bit different.
It's also the second to last grand prix. The season is way too long this year - the last race is Brazil, which is usually a good race, but it's way out at the end of November and the new season starts mid-March next year.
I appreciate with F1 being a properly global sport you can go on for a long time, but I think it's kinda reached a maximum length this year. Also, by adding more races you actually amplify the effect of dominance. So this year there have been lots of races where Vettel has already won the title.
To be honest, I don't think it matters as much in F1 - they still want to win each race, but the heat does go out of it a little.
Other plans for the weekend are... to be honest, I'm not sure. I know I need to do a big shop and one of the things I did do when I got back of holiday was identify a bunch of stuff for e-baying.
In fact I'm actually almost out of stuff I could put on e-bay in the shed. Indeed, I've actually got loads of empty stacking boxes in the shed that I've positioned to give the illusion that the space is has still got loads in it, but actually they're mostly empty.
Well, I say that - there's still quite a bit I could get rid of, it's just it would take quite a lot of sorting out, and I'd say half of what's left is really only tip-worthy if I was forced to dispose of it.
Also I've actually cheated. I've brought all of my manga in and stacked it up on top of my smaller set of shelves.
I do actually want to sell most of these titles, it's just that I'm either waiting for them to finish (which could take a few years in some cases :/) or to get a good chunk that I can sell as a batch (1-10 say) and then when new volumes turn up I'll sell them individually.
This doesn't get me such good prices, but it reduces the amount of stuff I've got hanging about.
Oh, I also made a bit of a decision - I want to rip some of the DVDs I've got so that I can get the originals on e-bay. Having spent quite a lot of time recently sorting through things there's a lot that clearly isn't going to be of "classic - must keep" status so I think I'll rip them and sell them.
That does mean I need to work out a quick, easy and efficient way of doing that. And of course it means there's a weird bit of transference going on - I won't be doing what I really need to (watching stuff) but I'll still be able to sell it :/. Also, I'm going to spend hours (?) ripping it when I could be watching it... ?
Monday, 27 June 2011
well that was tiring
So last week I took Thursday and Friday off.
The big plan was to attack the stuff in the shed and identify things I could get onto e-bay and also stuff I should really throw away. It was a big success.
Basically I've now got about 5 stacking crates in the kitchen with stuff in them to get on e-bay over the coming months (the British GP holiday happens soon, so it'll be a steady process). I got loads of stuff up this last Sunday and I'm pretty sure a good chunk of it will sell, hopefully generating some cash in the process.
Also, out in the shed I've also got about three or four stacking crates with stuff that I am poised to sell, but am awaiting the last few volumes of or that I just couldn't quite bring myself to take the plunge on. If there'd been less in the sell immediately pile I think I'd have bitten the bullet, but since I've so much to sell straight away I left them be for now.
I've actually done a sneaky manoeuvre in the shed of using empty stacking crates to fill up space. My landlord tends to encroach on the pile, so by filling up that space it ensures I can maintain access.
It does, however, mean I'm reaching a point where there's not going to be that much left out there to sell or throw away. This is good in that it means my life is a bit more streamlined, but bad in the sense that it means I've now freed up the cash "trapped" out in the shed.
Therefore, in order to free up any more cash my only real choice is to dive into the piles of unwatched stuff. Thankfully, it looked increasingly likely that watching and reading some of this stuff will now be a viable option over the summer.
See, the shed stuff went so well on Thursday that I actually finished it all. In fact, so efficient was it that I actually also gave my car a full clean (inside and out, including polishing it) in the afternoon/evening. This, I guess is the upside to long daylight hours that I was bemoaning as cramping my sleep last week.
It did mean I was totally knackered and, to be frank, am still a bit tired.
Friday became a day of recovery. I did very little, although I did manage to tick a few other boxes I hadn't thought about, one of these being watching a load of stuff I'd recorded. I basically went into Sunday with no programs left to watch on my PVR.
I'm therefore hoping this helps me out big time by meaning that when the summer schedule really hits and there's nothing worth watching on I can concentrate on watching some DVDs which I can then start ebaying across autumn and winter.
The big plan was to attack the stuff in the shed and identify things I could get onto e-bay and also stuff I should really throw away. It was a big success.
Basically I've now got about 5 stacking crates in the kitchen with stuff in them to get on e-bay over the coming months (the British GP holiday happens soon, so it'll be a steady process). I got loads of stuff up this last Sunday and I'm pretty sure a good chunk of it will sell, hopefully generating some cash in the process.
Also, out in the shed I've also got about three or four stacking crates with stuff that I am poised to sell, but am awaiting the last few volumes of or that I just couldn't quite bring myself to take the plunge on. If there'd been less in the sell immediately pile I think I'd have bitten the bullet, but since I've so much to sell straight away I left them be for now.
I've actually done a sneaky manoeuvre in the shed of using empty stacking crates to fill up space. My landlord tends to encroach on the pile, so by filling up that space it ensures I can maintain access.
It does, however, mean I'm reaching a point where there's not going to be that much left out there to sell or throw away. This is good in that it means my life is a bit more streamlined, but bad in the sense that it means I've now freed up the cash "trapped" out in the shed.
Therefore, in order to free up any more cash my only real choice is to dive into the piles of unwatched stuff. Thankfully, it looked increasingly likely that watching and reading some of this stuff will now be a viable option over the summer.
See, the shed stuff went so well on Thursday that I actually finished it all. In fact, so efficient was it that I actually also gave my car a full clean (inside and out, including polishing it) in the afternoon/evening. This, I guess is the upside to long daylight hours that I was bemoaning as cramping my sleep last week.
It did mean I was totally knackered and, to be frank, am still a bit tired.
Friday became a day of recovery. I did very little, although I did manage to tick a few other boxes I hadn't thought about, one of these being watching a load of stuff I'd recorded. I basically went into Sunday with no programs left to watch on my PVR.
I'm therefore hoping this helps me out big time by meaning that when the summer schedule really hits and there's nothing worth watching on I can concentrate on watching some DVDs which I can then start ebaying across autumn and winter.
Monday, 17 January 2011
rain, rain
Rain, rain, go away, come back another day.
Not sure if this seems insensitive given what's happened in Australia and Brazil, but we seem to have been rained on constantly for weeks now. Obviously nothing like the scale of what they've had and they are massive tragedies, but this is my blog so I can only really talk about what's happening to me.
This morning's journey to work was horrible. We've had rain in some form pretty much every day for several weeks, but this morning it was really coming down. And given I set off for work in the dark and just when the traffic's starting to build for rush hour, you can guess why it wasn't much fun.
There's one part of the A31 in particular that seems to form a stream with even the slightest rain. Today it was like driving through a small river. I was actually overtaking a slow moving vehicle and managed to just be in its spray when we hit the river and my windscreen was completely wiped out by it. It took two or three swipes before I could see again, which was not nice.
I guess about the only good thing to say about it is that at least it's coming down as rain and not snow!
Oh - on that note, last weekend when I went shopping the snow had finally cleared from Tesco's car park. It obviously snowed some time back, and they'd piled it all up and the mound they created took ages to go - it was rather bizarre seeing it when it was turning mild and all the other snow had gone, but there was this big pile of nearly black snow.
This last weekend was predicted to be a little bit of a respite from the rain and although it did drizzle a couple of times, I took the combined opportunity of my landlord being away on his winter holiday to sort through some of the boxes in the shed.
My two main goals were to move some stuff that's drifted into my flat back out to the shed and to sort out the blue boxes, which contain my scanned magazines and artbooks. I did these, but it was incredibly hard work and I'm still aching badly today.
What I didn't do was sort all of the boxes. I'd hoped to make a complete list of what was in every box and to wrap everything up in plastic bags, but this proved to be just too much to achieve in one day. I did more than half of it, but when it got to dinner time and I was still way off I decided to quite while I was ahead.
On Sunday I also cleaned the car and, because it was flat-cleaning weekend but I'd been so busy with the boxes, I cleaned my flat then too. It was, to be frank, quite the painful experience as I really ached on the Sunday.
Anyway, at least now I've got a bunch of stuff identified to e-bay, so I can get that ball rolling. Well, assuming we're not going to get a sudden covering of snow as I seem to remember happened last year.
Not sure if this seems insensitive given what's happened in Australia and Brazil, but we seem to have been rained on constantly for weeks now. Obviously nothing like the scale of what they've had and they are massive tragedies, but this is my blog so I can only really talk about what's happening to me.
This morning's journey to work was horrible. We've had rain in some form pretty much every day for several weeks, but this morning it was really coming down. And given I set off for work in the dark and just when the traffic's starting to build for rush hour, you can guess why it wasn't much fun.
There's one part of the A31 in particular that seems to form a stream with even the slightest rain. Today it was like driving through a small river. I was actually overtaking a slow moving vehicle and managed to just be in its spray when we hit the river and my windscreen was completely wiped out by it. It took two or three swipes before I could see again, which was not nice.
I guess about the only good thing to say about it is that at least it's coming down as rain and not snow!
Oh - on that note, last weekend when I went shopping the snow had finally cleared from Tesco's car park. It obviously snowed some time back, and they'd piled it all up and the mound they created took ages to go - it was rather bizarre seeing it when it was turning mild and all the other snow had gone, but there was this big pile of nearly black snow.
This last weekend was predicted to be a little bit of a respite from the rain and although it did drizzle a couple of times, I took the combined opportunity of my landlord being away on his winter holiday to sort through some of the boxes in the shed.
My two main goals were to move some stuff that's drifted into my flat back out to the shed and to sort out the blue boxes, which contain my scanned magazines and artbooks. I did these, but it was incredibly hard work and I'm still aching badly today.
What I didn't do was sort all of the boxes. I'd hoped to make a complete list of what was in every box and to wrap everything up in plastic bags, but this proved to be just too much to achieve in one day. I did more than half of it, but when it got to dinner time and I was still way off I decided to quite while I was ahead.
On Sunday I also cleaned the car and, because it was flat-cleaning weekend but I'd been so busy with the boxes, I cleaned my flat then too. It was, to be frank, quite the painful experience as I really ached on the Sunday.
Anyway, at least now I've got a bunch of stuff identified to e-bay, so I can get that ball rolling. Well, assuming we're not going to get a sudden covering of snow as I seem to remember happened last year.
Friday, 14 January 2011
got ahead of myself
One of the slightly annoying things about not meeting my weight target is that I'd actually pre-written a whole load of celebratory posts.
I'd basically done a weeks worth that discussed how much I'd lost, how I'd done it and what the plan was for the coming year. Obviously these became rather scuppered, because I didn't actually meet my target (by some way) and so hadn't lost what I said and it somewhat ballsed up the plan for the future.
I think what I'll do is re-work these and post them when I do finally meet that target, as the target is a bit of a milestone anyway, since it represents a transition from morbid obesity to just plain old obesity. Still not a good weight to be, and there's some debate as to how accurate and representative the indicator I'm using is, but I think it's good to mark these things.
As I think I mentioned before Christmas, I did basically loose some 40 pounds, which is the best part of 3 stones, which is great, although it does highlight how big I was that this still didn't take me out of the morbid obesity zone.
I also completely failed to do a lot of the stuff I'd planned to over Chrimbo.
Usually, I try to ensure I do a back up of my electronic files when I have these holidays (usually I do it at Chrimbo, Easter and then my 'summer' holiday, which is usually actually more like an autumn holiday). I did do the essential backing up, but it's usually accompanied by some specific sorting and tidying as well as some redundancy stuff (having multiple copies in case both the original and other copies go tits-up).
It was this stuff that I failed to do. I also failed to watch much in the way of DVDs (anime or regular), which was another thing I'd decided was important. I'd thought I really should watch stuff, because at the least, if the weather stays improved I can start e-baying again.
But I didn't do that either. What I did do was sort of inspired by the back up and another thing I've been crap at - scanning.
Basically, the back-ups I did took absolutely ages - several days. The reason was because I've got so much stuff on my hard-drives it takes yonks to copy it all. But also, there's a hell of a lot of duplication, and some stuff in particular I know isn't properly organised.
The thing I ended up focusing on were my scans - all those scans I've done of Japanese magazines over the last 4 years. I thought if I could properly sort them out I'd be able to go through them and see what I could perhaps upload to animepaper and possibly even my own scan site.
The big problem I'd given myself was that I hadn't named things properly. A lot of scans were just numbered sequentially, so I couldn't search to see what Sengoku Basara scans I had, for example. But also, I'd been horribly inconsistent in terms of how I'd named things and then there was the age old problem of not being able to identify series at the time.
So I thought Id' go through and sort them. Only it turned out this was the job of weeks, not hours as I'd initially hoped. And that was with the discovery that windows 7 actually has some features that make the process pretty damn smooth.
Anyway, the point is I did manage to go through all the scans and rename and standardise everything but a small handful of stuff. And it seems to have done the trick a bit - I'm quite keen to get caught up with my backlog of magazines and have so far scanned 4 animages over the last week or so.
I'd basically done a weeks worth that discussed how much I'd lost, how I'd done it and what the plan was for the coming year. Obviously these became rather scuppered, because I didn't actually meet my target (by some way) and so hadn't lost what I said and it somewhat ballsed up the plan for the future.
I think what I'll do is re-work these and post them when I do finally meet that target, as the target is a bit of a milestone anyway, since it represents a transition from morbid obesity to just plain old obesity. Still not a good weight to be, and there's some debate as to how accurate and representative the indicator I'm using is, but I think it's good to mark these things.
As I think I mentioned before Christmas, I did basically loose some 40 pounds, which is the best part of 3 stones, which is great, although it does highlight how big I was that this still didn't take me out of the morbid obesity zone.
I also completely failed to do a lot of the stuff I'd planned to over Chrimbo.
Usually, I try to ensure I do a back up of my electronic files when I have these holidays (usually I do it at Chrimbo, Easter and then my 'summer' holiday, which is usually actually more like an autumn holiday). I did do the essential backing up, but it's usually accompanied by some specific sorting and tidying as well as some redundancy stuff (having multiple copies in case both the original and other copies go tits-up).
It was this stuff that I failed to do. I also failed to watch much in the way of DVDs (anime or regular), which was another thing I'd decided was important. I'd thought I really should watch stuff, because at the least, if the weather stays improved I can start e-baying again.
But I didn't do that either. What I did do was sort of inspired by the back up and another thing I've been crap at - scanning.
Basically, the back-ups I did took absolutely ages - several days. The reason was because I've got so much stuff on my hard-drives it takes yonks to copy it all. But also, there's a hell of a lot of duplication, and some stuff in particular I know isn't properly organised.
The thing I ended up focusing on were my scans - all those scans I've done of Japanese magazines over the last 4 years. I thought if I could properly sort them out I'd be able to go through them and see what I could perhaps upload to animepaper and possibly even my own scan site.
The big problem I'd given myself was that I hadn't named things properly. A lot of scans were just numbered sequentially, so I couldn't search to see what Sengoku Basara scans I had, for example. But also, I'd been horribly inconsistent in terms of how I'd named things and then there was the age old problem of not being able to identify series at the time.
So I thought Id' go through and sort them. Only it turned out this was the job of weeks, not hours as I'd initially hoped. And that was with the discovery that windows 7 actually has some features that make the process pretty damn smooth.
Anyway, the point is I did manage to go through all the scans and rename and standardise everything but a small handful of stuff. And it seems to have done the trick a bit - I'm quite keen to get caught up with my backlog of magazines and have so far scanned 4 animages over the last week or so.
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
my achy, breaky legs
I hadn't really intended to bibble on about the grand prix for so long yesterday, but I wrote the blog out and then realised it was quite long, so I thought I'd save the rest until today.
When I write these blogs I do so in Word, before cutting and pasting them into the new post ting on the blog. I do this partly as it allows me to pre-write and edit them (and yet still all those typos get through!), but also because it's easier to judge the length. I like to try to make them about a single A4 page long or just under. I figure much longer than that and they'll take too long to read through.
Anyway, the other thing I wanted to mention was how my shed sorting plan had gone.
It went pretty well.
Well, that was easy.
I kid. The essential plan of action was for me to take all of the boxes out of the shed on Saturday morning. I was then going to spend the rest of Saturday going through them, with the idea that I could finish off sorting them out on Sunday morning and then put them all back in the shed Sunday afternoon.
It didn't entirely work like that, because there were so many boxes I found it difficult to really sort them out in a practical sense. I therefore brought them all into my bed-sit Saturday morning and started sorting, but discovered I needed more room and put half of them out in the corridor that connects me and my landlord (which was the type of reason this seemed a good time to do it, while he's on holiday).
Having done that, I sorted the half of the boxes I had left and then took these back out to the shed (although in a ramshackle way - I left the stacking order until I'd sorted the other boxes) on the Saturday. I then moved the corridor boxes into my bed-sit and sorted those. y that time it was late and I was tired, so I went to bed.
When I got up on Sunday I discovered that Saturday had really been too much and I was really tired and I also had a lot of aching muscles. So, after a slow start, I moved the rest of the boxes back out to the shed and stacked them all up in what I consider to be a reasonable efficient order.
What I've tired to do is compensate for the problems I discovered when I put them out the first time.
Problem 1 was the order the boxes were in. They were pretty random and I'd put a lot of stuff on e-bay, but not in a sensible way - some boxes had e-bay stuff and non-eBay stuff and where buried under other boxes. Problem 2 was that I hadn't kept a record of what was where. And problem 3 was that e-bay stuff had to go in the shed, which was a pain in the arse.
This time I've therefore kept a load of e-bay stuff in the kitchen. I've also numbered the boxes and kept a note of what's in each box. I've also stacked the boxes in what I believe to be a sensible order.
I also have the advantage that I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff, so quite of the boxes are actually half empty, which gives me more room to put other stuff in and also makes them lighter and therefore easier to shift around.
Anyway, the real upshot was that Sunday afternoon I was really tired and so didn't have the energy to do a great deal of e-baying. I put a few on and took photos and weighed things, but I ran out of steam, so there's quite a lot left to do. In a way, that's better as the last time when I had nearly a hundred things on at once was an absolute nightmare, although it did mean I didn't take full advantage of the free listing day.
When I write these blogs I do so in Word, before cutting and pasting them into the new post ting on the blog. I do this partly as it allows me to pre-write and edit them (and yet still all those typos get through!), but also because it's easier to judge the length. I like to try to make them about a single A4 page long or just under. I figure much longer than that and they'll take too long to read through.
Anyway, the other thing I wanted to mention was how my shed sorting plan had gone.
It went pretty well.
Well, that was easy.
I kid. The essential plan of action was for me to take all of the boxes out of the shed on Saturday morning. I was then going to spend the rest of Saturday going through them, with the idea that I could finish off sorting them out on Sunday morning and then put them all back in the shed Sunday afternoon.
It didn't entirely work like that, because there were so many boxes I found it difficult to really sort them out in a practical sense. I therefore brought them all into my bed-sit Saturday morning and started sorting, but discovered I needed more room and put half of them out in the corridor that connects me and my landlord (which was the type of reason this seemed a good time to do it, while he's on holiday).
Having done that, I sorted the half of the boxes I had left and then took these back out to the shed (although in a ramshackle way - I left the stacking order until I'd sorted the other boxes) on the Saturday. I then moved the corridor boxes into my bed-sit and sorted those. y that time it was late and I was tired, so I went to bed.
When I got up on Sunday I discovered that Saturday had really been too much and I was really tired and I also had a lot of aching muscles. So, after a slow start, I moved the rest of the boxes back out to the shed and stacked them all up in what I consider to be a reasonable efficient order.
What I've tired to do is compensate for the problems I discovered when I put them out the first time.
Problem 1 was the order the boxes were in. They were pretty random and I'd put a lot of stuff on e-bay, but not in a sensible way - some boxes had e-bay stuff and non-eBay stuff and where buried under other boxes. Problem 2 was that I hadn't kept a record of what was where. And problem 3 was that e-bay stuff had to go in the shed, which was a pain in the arse.
This time I've therefore kept a load of e-bay stuff in the kitchen. I've also numbered the boxes and kept a note of what's in each box. I've also stacked the boxes in what I believe to be a sensible order.
I also have the advantage that I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff, so quite of the boxes are actually half empty, which gives me more room to put other stuff in and also makes them lighter and therefore easier to shift around.
Anyway, the real upshot was that Sunday afternoon I was really tired and so didn't have the energy to do a great deal of e-baying. I put a few on and took photos and weighed things, but I ran out of steam, so there's quite a lot left to do. In a way, that's better as the last time when I had nearly a hundred things on at once was an absolute nightmare, although it did mean I didn't take full advantage of the free listing day.
Friday, 22 October 2010
shed processing
Plan for the weekend is to get into the shed and have a good sort through all my boxes.
My landlord has gone away on holiday, so I'm going to use the opportunity to shift stuff around and have a good sort out. Last time I had a look at the small crates I was pretty sure there were several crates worth that I can put on e-bay.
The main thing, though is to go through the big crates as I'm pretty sure I can sell/throw away quite a lot of that stuff as well. I also know there's stuff there that I just chucked in a crate to get it out of the way while my landlord was decorating.
I don't think I'll actually e-bay stuff this weekend, but might do some of the prep work - take photos, weigh things, work out postage, etc. But I'm not going to be overambitious - if I get some of that done it's a bonus. The only aim is to actually sort the boxes out.
I'm pretty much expecting that this will be my last go through of stuff in the shed for a good while. Certainly I'm hoping to repopulate my shelves in a sensible way such that I won't have to go out to the shed to get stuff. Hopefully I might even start watching/reading stuff on those shelves such that I can then e-bay those too.
Anyway, in order to clear the decks for the sort out I've actually been doing some of my weekend chores during the week, since, as mentioned, my landlord hasn't been here, so I wasn't at risk of disturbing him (I've decided I really need a new vacuum cleaner- my current one is falling apart!).
The only possibly fly in the ointment is that it's the Korean Grand Prix this week, which could account for quite a few hours. Also, quite a few good shows have started on TV now that we're properly into the colder months, so I'm hoping I don't get too far behind if I spend all my time sorting through boxes.
I guess on the upside it'll be more in the way of good exercise!
My landlord has gone away on holiday, so I'm going to use the opportunity to shift stuff around and have a good sort out. Last time I had a look at the small crates I was pretty sure there were several crates worth that I can put on e-bay.
The main thing, though is to go through the big crates as I'm pretty sure I can sell/throw away quite a lot of that stuff as well. I also know there's stuff there that I just chucked in a crate to get it out of the way while my landlord was decorating.
I don't think I'll actually e-bay stuff this weekend, but might do some of the prep work - take photos, weigh things, work out postage, etc. But I'm not going to be overambitious - if I get some of that done it's a bonus. The only aim is to actually sort the boxes out.
I'm pretty much expecting that this will be my last go through of stuff in the shed for a good while. Certainly I'm hoping to repopulate my shelves in a sensible way such that I won't have to go out to the shed to get stuff. Hopefully I might even start watching/reading stuff on those shelves such that I can then e-bay those too.
Anyway, in order to clear the decks for the sort out I've actually been doing some of my weekend chores during the week, since, as mentioned, my landlord hasn't been here, so I wasn't at risk of disturbing him (I've decided I really need a new vacuum cleaner- my current one is falling apart!).
The only possibly fly in the ointment is that it's the Korean Grand Prix this week, which could account for quite a few hours. Also, quite a few good shows have started on TV now that we're properly into the colder months, so I'm hoping I don't get too far behind if I spend all my time sorting through boxes.
I guess on the upside it'll be more in the way of good exercise!
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.
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
it still hasn't ended
So yes, the second problem my landlord hit me with.
Despite the months of notice I'd given, "their decorator" had booked a holiday for the exact same week I was away. I still don't get what they meant by "their decorator" but either way I offered to take the week before instead. Only they couldn't do that week either because they were apparently going away for two days.
Which made me even more confused. I mean, apparently their decorator wasn't going to be away that week, but he also wouldn't be able to do the work because they would be away for two days. Given how small my room is (and we're just talking the bed/living room here) it seems bizarre he couldn't do it in the available time.
Anyway, the upshot of this seemed to be that they would have to do it themselves during the week I was away, but because it would be too big a job they would a) have to scale back on it and b) have to do the prep work before I went.
I didn't really mind a, but b poxed me up for multiple reasons.
First off, I'd have to do all sorts of furniture moving so that John could get access to the walls on various days, but also the secret of the bed would inevitably be revealed.
The secret of the bed is that I'd destroyed it. To be fair, it was a really cheap bed, but also, the real problem was of course my huge bulk. For years I've been propping the underside of the bed up using piles of magazines (it's become what I do with all those Japanese magazine I buy!) and there's no way I could loose enough weight for the un-propped bed to support me in that sort of timescale.
Plus of course it gave me somewhere to put the magazines. So now I needed to move all the boxes with magazines into the workshop all in one go as well, and then switch to using my fold-out settee bed thing and tell my landlord to get rid of the old bed.
And that's what I had to do this last weekend - I spent all day Saturday moving furniture around, cleaning the mess I discovered underneath and moving crates and crates of (heavy) magazines into the shed.
What makes this all even worse is that my computer table where I have my computers is a total nightmare. I actually have several machines from where I've upgraded over the years and (pack-rat tendencies kicking in again) I've never disposed of the old ones, but there's also all the peripherals like the printer and scanner and speakers and monitor, etc, etc, there too.
So I've now got a kitchen full of cables and crap while I wait for my landlord to do the bit next to the computer. I requested he do it first, but given how long it took him to empty the shed, Christ knows when he'll get done.
And even when he is done, if I put it all back I'll then have to move it all again before I go on holiday so he can do the actual decorating.
But then there's another factor - the shed is likely to get quite cold and damp over the winter, so if I'm going to sell my stuff I need to do it now. And that means torturous hours of taking photos, prepping and uploading e-bay auctions, then parcelling stuff up before finally lugging it all down to the post office and standing there blowing my entire lunch hour getting the stuff sent.
Now I've posted before about how tedious and rubbish e-baying is, but the scale has now become bonkers. Last Sunday I had more than 40 auctions end while I spent literally all day posting more than 70 more. Now not all things sell, but (and I've actually been kinda impressed by this) nearly 60 of those 70-odd did sell.
To put that in perspective, normally I sell around 20-25 things in one go. And I never have big amounts across multiple weeks. I mean, maybe I'd sell 30 items across 3 weeks if some of them didn't sell and had to be re-listed. I've more than doubled that in two weeks, and all while I've been doing all the other crap too.
So, given how my muscles are still aching and we're nowhere near an end point, you can see why I'm moaning.
Despite the months of notice I'd given, "their decorator" had booked a holiday for the exact same week I was away. I still don't get what they meant by "their decorator" but either way I offered to take the week before instead. Only they couldn't do that week either because they were apparently going away for two days.
Which made me even more confused. I mean, apparently their decorator wasn't going to be away that week, but he also wouldn't be able to do the work because they would be away for two days. Given how small my room is (and we're just talking the bed/living room here) it seems bizarre he couldn't do it in the available time.
Anyway, the upshot of this seemed to be that they would have to do it themselves during the week I was away, but because it would be too big a job they would a) have to scale back on it and b) have to do the prep work before I went.
I didn't really mind a, but b poxed me up for multiple reasons.
First off, I'd have to do all sorts of furniture moving so that John could get access to the walls on various days, but also the secret of the bed would inevitably be revealed.
The secret of the bed is that I'd destroyed it. To be fair, it was a really cheap bed, but also, the real problem was of course my huge bulk. For years I've been propping the underside of the bed up using piles of magazines (it's become what I do with all those Japanese magazine I buy!) and there's no way I could loose enough weight for the un-propped bed to support me in that sort of timescale.
Plus of course it gave me somewhere to put the magazines. So now I needed to move all the boxes with magazines into the workshop all in one go as well, and then switch to using my fold-out settee bed thing and tell my landlord to get rid of the old bed.
And that's what I had to do this last weekend - I spent all day Saturday moving furniture around, cleaning the mess I discovered underneath and moving crates and crates of (heavy) magazines into the shed.
What makes this all even worse is that my computer table where I have my computers is a total nightmare. I actually have several machines from where I've upgraded over the years and (pack-rat tendencies kicking in again) I've never disposed of the old ones, but there's also all the peripherals like the printer and scanner and speakers and monitor, etc, etc, there too.
So I've now got a kitchen full of cables and crap while I wait for my landlord to do the bit next to the computer. I requested he do it first, but given how long it took him to empty the shed, Christ knows when he'll get done.
And even when he is done, if I put it all back I'll then have to move it all again before I go on holiday so he can do the actual decorating.
But then there's another factor - the shed is likely to get quite cold and damp over the winter, so if I'm going to sell my stuff I need to do it now. And that means torturous hours of taking photos, prepping and uploading e-bay auctions, then parcelling stuff up before finally lugging it all down to the post office and standing there blowing my entire lunch hour getting the stuff sent.
Now I've posted before about how tedious and rubbish e-baying is, but the scale has now become bonkers. Last Sunday I had more than 40 auctions end while I spent literally all day posting more than 70 more. Now not all things sell, but (and I've actually been kinda impressed by this) nearly 60 of those 70-odd did sell.
To put that in perspective, normally I sell around 20-25 things in one go. And I never have big amounts across multiple weeks. I mean, maybe I'd sell 30 items across 3 weeks if some of them didn't sell and had to be re-listed. I've more than doubled that in two weeks, and all while I've been doing all the other crap too.
So, given how my muscles are still aching and we're nowhere near an end point, you can see why I'm moaning.
Monday, 13 September 2010
when will it end?
I'm a bit sick of this now.
I'm pretty sure I've discussed most of this before, but the difference now is that I'm thoroughly bored of it all.
Basically, a while back, my landlord asked me if he could get into my place at some point to decorate. This would obviously need to happen while I was away, to avoid me having to sleep in a room of stinky fumes.
Okay, it took me a while, but I arranged a holiday for the end of September/beginning of October when I could pop down and visit my Dad (his birthday is early October) and also have a few days off. I informed my landlord of this well in advance - months and months ago, in fact.
But there was an attendant issue - I have so much stuff that was packed into so many boxes, my room was basically like some sort of warehouse. So, my landlord also wanted me to move all the stuff up into the attic.
This meant I was faced with the Herculean job of having to sort through all the boxes and decided to either keep, throw away or sell everything. My preference of course was to sell as much of the stuff as I could. That way I would earn a bit of money back and also it would alleviate the pack-rat tendencies I have which were a big part of why I'd accumulated all the stuff in the first place. If it's going to a good home (or even a bad one), I'd be able to let go much easier than if it was just going into the bin.
I therefore hatched a plan. I would go through all the cardboard boxes, deciding what to chuck away and also repacking everything into plastic stacking crates. I'd also be careful to make sure that 'keepers' got put together and 'sellers' got put together. Once complete, these would be lifted up into the attic and from there I could sell stuff at my leisure.
I had several months to do this before I went on holiday and my landlord would redecorate while I was away.
A perfect plan and phase 1 went well - I sorted through it all, repacked it, chucked quite a lot of stuff and put some of it in the attic and was awaiting my landlord's help in putting more of it up. Only that didn't happen.
Instead, I got called in for a chat where they dropped a bit of a bombshell.
First off - and most importantly - was that my stuff represented a "fire hazard" and therefore couldn't be kept in my room or go in the attic. Instead, it would need putting in the "workshop" (actually a big shed). A space would be cleared for me, but, given the fire hazard status, I would have to move it all right away.
But this also meant that accessing individual boxes would become very complicated. The attic meant relatively good accessibility to all the boxes, but in the shed those at the back would be difficult to get at. So that meant I had to resort it all to maximise convenience. Also, because people could look in the shed, I'd need to cover stuff up so it couldn't really be seen.
So I got ready for the big move, but then had to wait ages while my landlord failed to clear the space. I was therefore completely in limbo, where I could have been using the time productively.
This meant that instead of the couple of boxes a day I'd hoped to do over, say, a week, I had to move all the boxes in a single day. But also, because the boxes had taken up so much room, I'd had to rearrange the furniture in my room to make space.
And this is where we get into the other problem my landlord hit me with.
Actually, having typed all this out, it's way too long, so I'm going to break it into two - more tomorrow.
I'm pretty sure I've discussed most of this before, but the difference now is that I'm thoroughly bored of it all.
Basically, a while back, my landlord asked me if he could get into my place at some point to decorate. This would obviously need to happen while I was away, to avoid me having to sleep in a room of stinky fumes.
Okay, it took me a while, but I arranged a holiday for the end of September/beginning of October when I could pop down and visit my Dad (his birthday is early October) and also have a few days off. I informed my landlord of this well in advance - months and months ago, in fact.
But there was an attendant issue - I have so much stuff that was packed into so many boxes, my room was basically like some sort of warehouse. So, my landlord also wanted me to move all the stuff up into the attic.
This meant I was faced with the Herculean job of having to sort through all the boxes and decided to either keep, throw away or sell everything. My preference of course was to sell as much of the stuff as I could. That way I would earn a bit of money back and also it would alleviate the pack-rat tendencies I have which were a big part of why I'd accumulated all the stuff in the first place. If it's going to a good home (or even a bad one), I'd be able to let go much easier than if it was just going into the bin.
I therefore hatched a plan. I would go through all the cardboard boxes, deciding what to chuck away and also repacking everything into plastic stacking crates. I'd also be careful to make sure that 'keepers' got put together and 'sellers' got put together. Once complete, these would be lifted up into the attic and from there I could sell stuff at my leisure.
I had several months to do this before I went on holiday and my landlord would redecorate while I was away.
A perfect plan and phase 1 went well - I sorted through it all, repacked it, chucked quite a lot of stuff and put some of it in the attic and was awaiting my landlord's help in putting more of it up. Only that didn't happen.
Instead, I got called in for a chat where they dropped a bit of a bombshell.
First off - and most importantly - was that my stuff represented a "fire hazard" and therefore couldn't be kept in my room or go in the attic. Instead, it would need putting in the "workshop" (actually a big shed). A space would be cleared for me, but, given the fire hazard status, I would have to move it all right away.
But this also meant that accessing individual boxes would become very complicated. The attic meant relatively good accessibility to all the boxes, but in the shed those at the back would be difficult to get at. So that meant I had to resort it all to maximise convenience. Also, because people could look in the shed, I'd need to cover stuff up so it couldn't really be seen.
So I got ready for the big move, but then had to wait ages while my landlord failed to clear the space. I was therefore completely in limbo, where I could have been using the time productively.
This meant that instead of the couple of boxes a day I'd hoped to do over, say, a week, I had to move all the boxes in a single day. But also, because the boxes had taken up so much room, I'd had to rearrange the furniture in my room to make space.
And this is where we get into the other problem my landlord hit me with.
Actually, having typed all this out, it's way too long, so I'm going to break it into two - more tomorrow.
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