Compare, Aptitude, Earn

This is the view from the front of my flat:

This is the view from the front of my parent's house:


Even in the middle of winter, with everything looking dull and dead, you can still make out the mountains in the distance. Nice.

The aptitude test on Monday seemed to go well enough, but I was surprised by the number attending: four sessions a day with 30 people attending each session. The sessions may have been held over several days- that adds up to quite a few applicants. Aptitude testing is definitely a handy way of whittling down these numbers. The distance some people had traveled was shocking too- Tipperary, Cork, Waterford, Offaly, er... Armagh? And some of them are fully trained up and educated programmers. The prospect of employment looks dim.

But good news on the eBay front- all that crap sold for a grand total of £417.92 (artificially inflated: this value includes postage. Let me milk it a little, eh? Ta). It'll go some way towards the electricity bill.

Brawn

Harrods is not very good. The first time I ever go there, and they don't have any Black Bacon (it wasn't for me, y'see; it was to be a Christmas present for my aunt and uncle). Instead, some traditional Breton brawn caught my eye.

However, an incident occurred after rushing for tube whilst scoffing a chunk of tasty brawn- some gelatine had escaped licks and remained on my fingers as I grasped the handrail on the Piccadilly line train. It smeared along the rail and dissipated into a slightly sticky smudge. This lead to the thought that religious folk who cannot tolerate swine could inadvertently taint themselves by grasping this rail. These Semites (is that the correct collective noun? Forgive my ignorance, for it is exactly that) would clearly be displeasing their deity, who omnipotently witnesses the contamination. Are all accidental desecrations tallied?


Anyway... the npower monkey has been shook off, only to be replaced by a British Gas gorilla. npower have finally backed down over an incorrect bill for £100.90 (thanks to Energywatch and MPAS), but British Gas has been estimating our electricity consumption all year, until their man came round and read the meter recently. The direct debits have been falling a little short; around £442.57 short. Ouch.

Linklater

Channel 4's 'The Art Show' ran a documentary on Richard Linklater. I wasn't planning to watch this, but was caught off-guard by the opening soundbites. Linklater worked on an oil rig until he saved enough money so he could quit and not have to work again. Then he read books, watched movies and planned his vocation as director.

It could be done... reading books and watching movies whilst unemployed was always a guilty ambition. Although Linklater worked hard to earn the money to allow him to slack off: an ideological sticking point, if comparing.

Nevertheless, there's also a fear of what Linklater's critics called "Sophomore Philosophy"; if something like this was attempted it would not be acceptable to present pseudo intellectual tosh. That would be embarrassing.

Then there's the much more pragmatic spectre of a complete lack of creative talent.




My brother says his mate is looking for dishwashers for his restaurant.

For Sale

My console collection was gathering dust, and would have been an unnecessary expense to ship back to hicksville, so it's available on ebay. The collection of PlayStation games and peripherals is attracting the most attention, and is currently going for £56.

Which is just as well, as this weekend turned out to be a little expensive- too much fine food and wine. Bream is quite a tasty fish, but pricey.

Packin'

I received an envelope today, requesting my attendance for aptitude testing. Attendance in my home town. On Monday 20th. I fly back for Christmas on the 23rd. Damn. Fortunately, I managed to get a round trip for £81 from easyjet ... which will also allow a little liberation from the hard partying that will be taking place the weekend before.

Free listing day on eBay tomorrow: cheerio to all those consoles and assorted paraphernalia that have been gathering dust for the last 9 years (yes: nine years- Resident Evil was bought Christmas 1995).
This evening was spent sorting and arranging and photographing and packing home entertainment systems and software.
I'm hoping the PS2 with 12 games will go for a good price- although the demand for slim PS2s may cause it to be ignored- they're going for up to £400 at the minute.

I'll post the pics of the gear being sold tomorrow- it was quite a lot in the end...

The Royal Mail

Some quotes from removal companies (based on 3 x 20 Kg parcels):

Aardvark Removals £1050.00 (funny how a lot of companies name themselves "Aardvark", isn't it? Nothing to do with appearing first in the Yellow Pages or Thompson, eh?)

Amber Moves £1370.05

No more removal companies were researched after these first two. Next up- parcel couriers:

DHL (who have a very friendly website): £52.84

Amtrack: Have a surcharge of £19.50 per parcel plus £1.00 per Kg for all Norn Iron bound consignments.

Fedex and UPS have similar charges to DHL.

And finally, the Post Office: With Standard Parcels a 20 Kg package costs £11.21, and it looks like I can arrange collection for £5.50.

Can you believe some people give the Post Office a hard time? For those must live within limited means, they're not bad at all!


Northern Ireland was on the news a fair bit today... (to provide a little context, there was failure to reach an agreement that would allow the restoration of the devolved governmenzzzzz... AGAIN)
...and I found out Ireland is now one of the world's worst polluters (relatively, of course).

"Humiliation" seems to be the word of the day.

And I want to live there? Of course!

The First Setback

My mate was going to drive from London to our hometown to get his MOT done, providing a handy way of getting everything I own back home. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen now. It was very kind of him to offer, though.

Some time must be spent on investigating transportation of 3 big boxes of stuff. I'll do that tomorrow at work, publishing the costs.

Last week I rang a prosective employer in my hometown about a job I had applied for- they said they were in the process of creating a test that would aid their filtering process. I would hear from them some time this week. 3 days left...


And another problem: the profile editor can't load my profile picture- after the entire rigmarole of downloading Hello picture manager and all!

What a whingy first post...
Redemtion? I made quite a nice tea: The Perfect Ulster Fry