Weekly Log - 8 through 14

Monday Dec 08

Another national holiday. We have plenty in the end of the year. Whoever was in charge of distributing them really messed up bad: we have about 4 holidays during Spring, next to none during Summer, a lot of them in Winter. Not that I mind, I like rain and cold myself, but think about all the beach-going people...

Anyway, I went out, spent most of the morning browsing around music stores (Mum wants to buy a guitar for my brother, and I'm checking if it's doable) and on the afternoon, I went to meet a friend. We sat down, chatted the whole afternoon, laughed... (Kung Pow was on too) good times.

Tuesday Dec 09

What a day... Mum from one side asking for money... Pops from the other, complaining about her asking for money... me in the middle, trying to find an effin way to pay for everything without us having to go hungry, losing the transportation passes or getting water, web or electricity cut. Frankly, where the heck did money go? My Mum got paid on the 4th, we're outta cash already! Well, I kinda know... we paid the rent on time this month, 80% of it was gone, then a bill or another took the rest.

I was upset to kingdom come, so I messaged a friend and went out for a beer before returning home. Turns out, some good news actually awaited me there for a change: my Mum is going to sign a contract for the next 6 months. Maybe this is the chance to straighten up our finances and our lives once and for all.

Wednesday Dec 10

In search of a better way to share files between Lorna (in case you don't know, Lorna is my home desktop computer. Yeah. I give them names, which probably accounts for how important a PC is in my daily life...) and the office PC. SkyDrive is trash: before leaving the house, I left five files uploading for it. When I got to the office... yeah. Zero. And here I had plans to start working on a few character sheets and dungeon maps...

On another issue (which is, again, becoming increasingly common), I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to pay my bills. I resent the folks telling me to calm down. Very much in fact, because it makes me even more nervous. I resent being told over and over I should go back to college, and being asked when am I going back to college, and why haven't I checked the issues with college, when I have two shirts fit for Winter and we're having trouble buying food again, and it's a 900 euro tuition, which is more than me and my Mum make together in a month...

My friend's Mum came out of a surgical intervention with flying colors though: first good news I had today.

Thursday Dec 11

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Windows sucks.

My sound card was dead when I went home yesterday. Supposedly. Until I found out, for some reason, Windows had decided it was a good idea to uninstall all sound drivers and wouldn't let me reinstall them. I spent a good deal of the night researching how to solve the problem: as I was downloading new drivers, the whole machine began to lag. While waiting for the motherfucker to arrive, I fell asleep. Already pissed, both at the machine and myself, I attempted to solve it again this morning, to no avail. My wandering hand tentatively reached out for the Ubuntu installation CD... frustration overcame fear, loathing overcame insecurity. I left it installing before I went out to work. After some minor configuration problems, I got it to work in perfection.

So goodbye and farewell again, spawn of Gates. I will lose my love for The Sims 2, or perhaps attempt to find a laptop with Windows and install it there, the sort of machine I'd use to bring to work or take on vacation. A secondary machine, where I can play The Sims 2 and shut off every time it gives me trouble, without compromising Lorna. A machine I can put away inside the closet and forget when I'm tired of its OS. My main machine only has one pleasure, and it's a Unix-based system.

Friday Dec 12

Crow, it seemed like the end of the week would never arrive. Another week I'm not gonna miss! It was raining this morning, and it's my Mum's free day. Or at least, one she took: she has been working her breaks lately. So, basking in the glory that is Unix (just took me a while to get Adobe flash to work, but then again, it was mostly due to my own stupidity), I spent most of the night organizing my comics and .pdf books. I'm getting quite a collection and can't find anything among the folders anymore. Deadpool is awesome, by the way. I love a character who's aware he is a comic book character. Screw the fourth wall.

Saturday Dec 13

With exception of some cleaning up and laundry doing, I spent most of my Saturday under covers. It was freezing and rained all day. I wanna go out! No money and nowhere to go sucks on toes.

Sunday Dec 14

Other than more very winsome D&D and arguments up the butt at home, nothing much to report. Same old same old: money, more money, money again, my brother, and bills, which leads, of course, to money again. By the time I finally fired up the d20 I was so pissed I could've choked someone. It's stuff like this that reminds me why I wear a die around my neck. If it wasn't for friends and the Game, I would've blown my brains out a long time ago.

Finding new and cool things in old places is amazing. You know when you get yourself a new album and listen to it diagonally, picking your favorites and putting it away? I'm finding songs I didn't know I liked in all the old albums. I have to mention Kill Bill's soundtrack again, because it's... just amazing. It's a great lineup of artists and songs.