Good Morning, Faithful Readers

• 31st August 2004 at 09:00

Hello! As you may have noticed, there has not been an entry for quite some time. Well, since I am on a mobile phone connection, now seems like the best opportunity to give you all an update. Well, at least it's GPRS so in theory I'm paying by the MB rather than the minute...

OK, so, last time I gave you a proper entry, I was going on about my new computer. Well, I still haven't finished setting it up, and as the later entries indicate, I've only had a few brief opportunities to try out any of my games. I have 3 new ones - Painkiller, Doom 3 and Far Cry - and have hardly played any of them. Far Cry is still in the celophane wrapping...

So, how come, in 2 weeks, I haven't given them a go? Well, I've been rather busy.

For a start, I have once again contracted family-friend-has-a-problem-with-their-computer-so-go-and-fix-it-itis. I have spent around 8 hours on their computer, re-installing the operating system 4 times (Windows ME, don't say anything), deciding their hard drive is broken, ordering a replacement, replacing it, trying to install WME and being told by the manufacturers recovery cd that the hardware configuration isn't expected and that it won't install, and then spending an hour installing a different operating system only to be told by the man that it's not what he wants, so I've got to go back this week and sort him out.

Then there's the flat in Bath that we need. For those of you who don't know, Tristan, Laura and I will be getting a flat in Bath next year. Tristan has a job up at the uni for 6 months (probably more), and Laura now has a job as a PHP developer - congratulations! And I want to see my girlfriend as much as possible, and the rest of the time I'm just going to bum around doing websites - more on that later.

So, last weekend, I went over to Bath to look at houses, and dragged Leela along for a second opinion. Having rung every single letting agency in Bath and the surrounding area, I aquired a list of 4 houses to visit, 3 from the same company. It appears that three bedrooms is not a popular number. We were looking for a three bedroom house, not too far from the town, preferably furnished, with a decent living room and decent bedrooms, each room with enough space for a desk. Oh, and Tristan's room must be big enough for him to lie on the floor...

The first house that we looked at didn't really fit any of the criteria. First of all, there were 4 bedrooms. Then there was the fact that it was a 15 minute car drive out of town, and when you add on to that the fact that the lack of furniture went so far that there wasn't even any carpet, I decided that this wasn't really the place. And that was before the letting agent guy told us that the rent was ridiculously high. However, that wasn't a totally wasted trip, because he had a friend who wanted a website! The friend rang me on the Monday after I got back, told me what he wanted, and now I'm working on that, in between visiting the family friend with the broken hard drive.

Anyway, I was talking about the houses. The next letting agency we went to was just around the corner from my house last year, and he directed us to a house a few roads away from that. Good start, I thought. Lacking any sense of direction, we got out a map and found that the house was just around the corner from Nat/Simon/Tony's old house, which makes it about a minutes walk from my flat last year. And I later discovered Andy lives at the other end of the road! So that's location sorted.

Next up we looked at the property. I can't remember what it looked like from the outside, I was too busy talking to the man, but inside there's a little corridor leading to stairs up. Before the stairs is a door into the lounge/dining room, which is rather luxury, with nice new wooden floors. Next to that is a kitchen and a bathroom, both of which are great, and out the back is a garden and a shed where Tristan can hopefully store his bike, and where we can lock him when he misbehaves. Upstairs, there are 3 bedrooms - mine is massive, it's great. Tristan and Laura can fight over the other two, which are both decent sizes. I think this method of room allocation is fair, since I did spend around 4 days and a months-rent-worth looking for the house... whether they'll agree or not, who knows :p

However, given the price and the smaller bedrooms, we went to look at the other two places. Unfortunately we couldn't look at one of them because they didn't have it, and the other one was even further away than the first. It was also a 4 bedroom property (how come letting agents get the numbers 3 and 4 confused?) so again, was more expensive.

This made it a choice between:

• Getting the only suitable flat in bath
• Not getting the flat, waiting another couple of weeks before ringing the places again in the hope that they'll have something new, spending another few days and another few hundred pounds going to Bath and visiting places, risk not finding anything then, and either way, not having somewhere for us to move into when required

We now have to wait for the trans-atlantic post to deliver Tristan his application form and for it to get back over here, and if it travels quickly enough, we'll be able to move in from the 8th of September. Which is handy, since I believe that's about when Laura starts her job.

As I said, since then my time has mostly been spent sorting out this guys computer and working on the other mans website. Not to mention the other 4 websites which all need to be finished as soon as possible. But, last weekend being a bank holiday, I came up north to visit Leela, and haven't left yet. Came up on Thursday to avoid the bank holiday traffic, spent Friday websiting on my laptop until she got home from work, and then she had 3 days off, which was cool. Saturday we went to Nottingham, where I bought some new shoes which are identical to my old ones, and yesterday we went to Pizza Hut - I've never been to one before, and I loved the free refils on the drinks, although I only had 4. I also love the unlimited refills ice cream factory thing, although in the future I think it may be an idea to use less chocolate sauce. I finished the jar and felt sick... But she is back at work today, and she's just left the house, so I'm waiting for her lovely flatmate Pete to leave and then I'm going to head off for home. Ooh, perfect timing, he's just shut the front door. Bye then!

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