Archive for the ‘ EvilHouse ’ Category

Stray thoughts

Author: Striker

Nov 4

The housing issue in my last post still bothers me, and even though I’m in talks with a friend of mine about going halves in the home-loan, I’m still pretty nervous about the possibility of losing the family home.

Without a shadow of a doubt, finding someone to go halves in a home-loan with is my main priority.

If for whatever reason this falls through, then I have no idea what to do with my life.
My options are renting for a few years, until my business has enough tax returns to prove that it’s making money, or living in a caravan.

I’ve been giving the caravan thing a lot of thought. I could buy a decent van and tow vehicle, kit them out, and life would cost me practically nothing.
While I’d like the vanning life, it’s certainly not the life for a family, and as anyone who knows me knows, family life is what I want.

I think that if I lost the family home, I’d lose my sense of self, and a lot of my identity with it.

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Lifestyle choices

Author: Striker

Oct 13

Right now I’m trying to find someone who wants to share in a home-loan with me. They would need a decent job, obviously.

Mum’s estate is going to sell the house at some point, and I either need to have a loan ready to buy it, or I need to move.

I hate moving house. There’s very little that I hate more.

I’ve been thinking about what if I don’t get a loan, as I don’t have two years of tax returns for my business, my borrowing capacity is fairly low.

The two choices are to rent a place, which is fairly self explanatory, or to buy a caravan.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the latter. It would be a decently sized caravan, with shower and toilet inside, queen size bed, satellite TV, huge battery bank, solar panels, etc.

I’d own it, no chance of being evicted, and if I wanted a change of scenery, I’d just hitch up the tow vehicle, and drive off.

The idea of close to self sufficient living is fairly appealing to me. I like the idea of not owing money, not having regular bills, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, the last thing I want is to lose the family home, but I also don’t want to piss money in to someone else’s pocket, especially if I have nothing to show for it.

There’s a lot of thinking going on in my life at the moment, but I’m no closer to a decision on any of it.

I know that most of all, I want to keep this house, but I have to find someone else who wants to go halves in the loan, halves in repayments, then get bought out at the end of it (so essentially when it’s all done, they lived rent-free, and if the housing market goes up, possibly turns a small profit).

If you know anyone, let me know.

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Yin goes missing

Author: Striker

Oct 1

My two lovely cats, Yin and Yang are always eager to get out of the garage, which is where I keep them when I’m not at home.

They’re always at the door as soon as they hear me come home, and dart through it as soon as I open it.

This morning, Yin was nowhere to be seen, and when I got home from work this afternoon, she was still missing.
The garage is a huge mess. Everything that’s been in the way over the last year got tossed in there, so when I didn’t see Yin, I though she may have got trapped under something when it fell over.

I started tearing stuff apart, tossing it through the door in the laundry, then when that wasn’t working quick enough, I opened the garage door, and started throwing stuff all over the driveway.

Eventually I saw a shadow move, and started digging there. Shortly afterwards, I found Yin, alive and well. She was scared out of her mind, and had obviously been hiding from something.

Both cats are currently asleep on the top of the lounge, right behind my head.

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Overdue cleanup?

Author: Striker

May 25

It’s been seven months since I moved in to mum’s house, and while WauloK made the living-room and dining-room presentable and liveable while I was in my totally depressive state where I couldn’t function (thank you!), I’ve been totally slack.

The biggest issue as far as I was concerned was my bedroom, which is the master bedroom in the house, and used to be mum’s room.
When I moved in here, I grabbed a bunch of boxes of my stuff, threw them in to the room, and aside from hanging a couple of shirts in the closet that’s been that for the last seven months.

I’ve wanted to get stuck in to things for a long time, but every time I looked at her clothes, things didn’t go so well.
Adam came over last night and helped with that. I held the garbage bags open while he put her clothes in. It made the whole job a lot easier, and because he lost his mum only a couple of years ago, he knows how painful the cleaning process can be.

The end result of the cleaning is that the room is almost spotless, just two little corners of clutter, and the rest of the room is now, for lack of better words “mine”.

From here I’m looking for a charity.
I’m not interested in Saint Vincent’s or The Salvation Army, as they take donations then sell things to the public.
What I’m looking for is a charity that will take mum’s clothes, and give them free of charge to women that need them.

The only idea that I’ve come up with so far is a women’s shelter, but being a guy, I would imagine that I can’t just walk in there and drop them off.

After only five hours sleep, I woke just after 9am, and took a look around the room.

I think this is a turning point in my life. I once again have my own space, my comfort zone, and I’m currently working on setting up an office, not that I imagine I’d use it too much, as I live on a laptop so I have little need to be chained to any one location.

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iiNet quota upgrades.

Author: Striker

Apr 28

So iiNet has once again come to the party and upgraded their ADSL2+ quotas.

This time from 60/60 to 70/70 (70gb peak, and 70gb offpeak).
Shaping for Home5 plans and above has also been lifted from 128k to 256k.

140gb of quota per month is a ridiculous amount. EvilHouse doesn’t use anywhere close to this amount, and never has.

WauloK was suggesting that we both start streaming porn to try and make up the quota we are not currently using.

I suggested we both find girlfriends instead, and downgrade our plan.
(Applications for the position of girlfriend can be sent to us via face-book) ;)

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Sold mum’s car

Author: Striker

Mar 19

Well, after fucking about for months, I finally sold mum’s car.

A friend of mine, Mark, helped get it running properly again, but nothing could be done about the hail-damage.
I’m now down to three cars on the driveway. WauloK’s, my daily driver, and a broken Fairlane Ghia.

Cleaning out the car entirely filled the large garbage bin, and it doesn’t get collected again until Monday.

Speaking of Monday, it marks the start of two weeks of travelling around NSW and QLD. I’m going to be a tourist for a while. It should be a lot of fun.

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Lawn care

Author: Striker

Feb 24

So I’ve come to the realisation, after being responsible for lawns for the first time in 20 years, that I just don’t want to do it.

Truth be told, I’ve always known that I don’t want to mow the lawns, or take care of gardening, but when the front and back yards hit 4 foot high in some places, it was time to do something.

WauloK contacted Jim’s Mowing, and after some “missed appointments”, the guy showed up yesterday, mowed everything, pulled out a bush and cleaned up.

As it stands, I’m hiring him on an ongoing basis to bring the lawns up to good condition. Regular mowing, spraying and fertilising.
I’m also going to have him pull out the rest of the bushes, and perhaps rebuild mum’s retaining wall as it is leaning to the point where it will fall over.

We also had some discussion about drainage, as when it pours here, there isn’t sufficient drainage to move all the water. While I’m not sure we’ll get to it, it’s great to see that he had a working solution.

Hopefully in 4-6 months, EvilHouse will have beautiful lawns with thick, healthy grass.

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Lack of water

Author: Striker

Jan 29

It’s amazing how we take water coming from our taps for granted.

This morning I left the house, and there was a water crew digging up a neighbour’s front yard. Water running down both sides of the street, and even bubbling up out of the Telstra pit out the front of my house, flowing in to the drain.

I didn’t think much of it, and when I came back from doing the shopping, decided I wanted to take a shower, and wash up some stuff.
Unfortunately, we have no water.

Hopefully things will be back shortly, and the water in the Telstra pit won’t affect our phone line or ADSL.
I’m still online, so it can’t be too bad at the moment.

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Broadband update

Author: Striker

Jan 22

INTERNET
ADSL: CONNECTED
Mode: G.992.5 (ADSL2+)
Upload: 1023 Kbps.
Download: 12675 Kbps.
UPTIME: 0:01:57:18

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Filed under: EvilHouse Tech

Broadband update

Author: Striker

Jan 18

Wow, two broadband updates in one day.

LOLO is back up, and Telstra have processed the line changes, so the line now shows as theirs, and not on iPrimus ULL. Brilliant.

The service at the old place is less than six months old, so an ETF (Early Termination Fee) will apply if I relocate it.
Not wanting to waste any more time, my ii-Contact suggested starting a new broadband service at the new EvilHouse, and waiting out the few days with the old service, then cancelling, so the ETF won’t be charged.

New service has been applied for, but connection date/time is currently unknown.

Time to update the broadband router with the temporary username/password for the new service.

There are no words to express how happy this makes me. 3G internet has been the word internet experience of my life.
Even the days of the 2400 baud modem were more pleasant.
While the speeds were slow, there was barely anything to transfer.

Today’s internet is a different place entirely. HUGE data caps that get blown in just a few days, because the amount of stuff to do on the net these days is so much more data-intensive.

People talk about downloading “Linux ISOs”, and other such things.
Has anyone tried playing SecondLife? This monster can easily suck down more than a gigabyte of data in a few hours, depending on what you do.

Then there’s ABC’s iView, youtube, streaming radio stations.

Take a typical Monday night. WauloK and I sitting on the couch, streaming Audio from Tech Talk Radio while we’re also streaming video from the cameras in the studio.
Two different types of streaming at once, and then I (or both of us) log in to SecondLife.

When we are graced by ADSL once more, this will be our reality.

3G can’t even handle one SL session, or one video streaming session. We’re currently operating of off two 3G USB connections just to listen to the show, and sit in the text-only chat-room.

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