So this weekend I got a letter in the post from Reed. It’s one of those “invitations” one sometimes gets when on the Work Programme – a laughable description, to make one more employable. In any case, I am invited to attend at 10:00 on Tuesday (tomorrow) for an induction, and by the way it’s mandatory and if I don’t attend then I can be sanctioned and lose benefits. Of course, what’s not said is that since I have to sign-on tomorrow morning at 11:40 which is also mandatory, then I cannot possibly attend both and can be sanctioned anyway. That said, I only get £67 a week to live on, so once I pay to get to their mandatory interviews, there’s not a lot left – I used to have savings from when I worked. (more…)
Repairs
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And today, Louise is helping me try to repair my dead M15X. It’s tough using an ancient HP laptop when I have a quad core i7 Alienware sitting idle… We have cleaned up the CPU and GPU but now we need thermal gunk and gunk-proof insulating tape to put it back together and test it. Oh, and if it works, I’ll need to buy a new hard drive for it since I re-used the old one… oh well.
More delivery woes
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And it comes as no surprise that the delivery via Yodel, with a deliver-by date of two weeks from now, arrived before the Parcelfarce delivery, ordered before it, with a “Guaranteed next-day delivery”.
Oh well, at least I now have a waterproof jacket… (at least I hope it’s waterproof)
Standard Issue Noms
It’s funny how sometimes you can write daily as the ideas flow, and at other times, you’d love to write, but have nothing to say. I’m not one of the people who has an author’s mind. I can’t discipline myself to write a novella every time I set hand to keyboard, and I’m not knowledgeable enough about politics to write political rants and journals as some can. And so I’m left with just writing whatever comes into my head at the time, and hoping that someone finds it worth reading (or at least mildly entertaining). (more…)
Birthday Weekend – Part 2
It’s been fun so far, at least mostly. I’ve had Louise with me all weekend and she’s been wonderful.
We started Friday evening in the Euston Tap with drinks. In the end only 5 people showed up but was fun nevertheless. Most of us are also Ingress players so we claimed the local portal for the evening. Entertainment was provided by a high level Resistance player who goes by the handle LeJean, who tried (and at one point almost succeeded) to take it – though we did have a secret weapon in reserve, and later by a newer player Londonlime, who made a much briefer effort. Thanks to Geekylou and AgroKK for the defence. (more…)