ost2life.co.uk

That’s all really. If you celebrate it, have a good’n otherwise I hope you enjoy December 25th. And to all, a happy new year.

X

Yes, for those of you paying attention I was unemployed between september first and november eleventh. Actually that’s a bit dishonest. While it’s true that for most of that time I was not working, I did have a few short term jobs. Two days at e-zec ambulance services, a week and a bit entering competition entries into a database for fat face and of course a two week stint at one stop. One stop was the place in fact that gave me the drive to go – after an absence of two years, almost to the day – crawling back to the coop. On November eleventh I made my illustrious return to the society with a debut at sultan road, a little store in a lovely area of Portsmouth called Buckland, known to the locals as dolesville and to everyone else as Little Baghdad. Honestly guys, if you’re ever curious as to the definition of “sink hole estate” I suggest you pay a visit, but don’t forget a stab vest, leave your cash and valuables in a nicer area, and for the love of all that is holy do not feed the animals. There’s a woman in the area who – and I wish I was making this up – tries to pay for her morning bottle of vodka with her WELFARE MILK VOUCHERS while HER CHILD IS IN THE PRAM RIGHT THERE. Evolution definitely took a wrong turn there. Anyway 3 months of mostly unemployment has left me very broke so I’m off for sleep before I go to work 27 hours in two days

So, it’s been nearly two weeks since I was handed my notice, I’ve still not been able to find a job, but I have now officially signed on. This is something that I have been dreading, not for any snobby reasons, though some of the white lightning swilling wasters that you see at the job club do make you think twice, mostly it’s because it’s almost like admitting defeat, that despite my planning and hoping, I’m not going to be able to get a job sorted before things start backing up. Luckily, all the unpleasantness was made infinitely more bearable thanks to Carol, the kind and funny woman who guided me through the process, put me at ease about everything and answered all my stupid questions as if she’d not already answeres them twenty times that morning.
So thank you Carol. You’re a star.

Here goes.
This is the first week that I’ve officially been out of work since I moved out. It’s really scary.
I’m signing on tomorrow, and I’ll be getting in touch with Portsmouth City Council to find out about getting housing benefit. I’ve also got a job interview, and I’m signing up with yet another agency and I’ll be trawling through the job centre website to see if there’s anything there.

I’m also going to try and quit smoking with Beca, so we’ll see how that goes. I’ve not lost any weight for a little while now but then, to be fair I’ve not really been trying. I think that I might use some of this unexpected “free time” to get some more exercise.

I miss working at Queensbury already, I had a really good time working there and I’d grown quite fond of a lot of the guys that I worked with. C’est la vie.

That’s about it now.

I like orange soda…

Is it true?

Uh huh. I do I do I do I do-ooh

So, I’m trying out wp2go on my android phone so I can see if posting from my phone is usable. So far it seems to be going well. I honestly don’t understand why people have this thing against on screen keyboards. my old Samsung F-700 “smartphone” had a proper slide out qwerty keyboard and I’m here to tell you that that keyboard was a pain in the arse, it was cramped, the keys swung from unresponsive to hyper responsive, with no happy medium, and getting to unusual characters, say square brackets or less than signs required going through several layers of menues, heaven forbid you want to use a european character say ñ or ø. The android keyboard on the other hand is fast, obviously not as fast as a full sized keyboard, but it’s only 3 inches across, and accuracy is definitely a strong point. I’ve got nice big fat thumbs (easily covering a quarter of the screen) and yet it just works™, with just the occasional typo, and thanks to the T9esque word prediction, even they are caught. Long live the android platform and long live well implemented on screen keyboards.

(Typed on on screen keyboard on HTC Magic)

(Taken verbatim from my post on Facebook)

There’re a lot of us out there, armchair politicians who put the world to rights over a cup of tea. I’d like to have a stab at the real thing – to try and make it as an MP and maybe *actually* represent what the people want rather than claiming expenses “within the rules”. There’s never been a better time for someone outside of the political class to actually try to make a difference for the better for the people of this country.

So if you would be interested in voting for me (especially if you live in Portsmouth South) when the next general elections are called, join this group.

Read more…

As promised earlier, I’m gonna give you a quick run down on what’s been happening since the new year…

Read more…

Haven’t updated this in fooking ages. I’ll do a proper season opener when I get home hahaha

Moved in with Annie, Bec and Lee the other day which is awesome. However, it’s f-ing freezing. My timing sucks! I’ve moved into a house where the central heating is dodgy at best on one of the coldest weeks I can remember. I mean seriously, it’s been hitting -7c…IN PORTSMOUTH. I wouldn’t mind so much if it was at least snowing.

Oh well.

In other news I’m only halfway through my next TMA for my IT course and that’s due in day after tomorrow. w00t.
I had a great Christmas and new years though it was sans-Christmas dinner, so Me, Flange, Darren, Tracey, Ella, Terry and Vanessa all went to the Fawcett for our own liquid dinner! hehe.
New years was brilliant, got to see Helen again which is always a blast, and her delinquent little sister made these cocktails that…where slightly more cock than tail.

Onwards and upwards though, got a 2009 to be getting on with!

In the summer of 2007 the Beeb released iPlayer into the wild for those souls (un)lucky enough to be using a Windows OS, this caused quite a stir amongst those people who use a different OS (i.e. Mac or Linux) and so around this time last year auntie gave the rest of us the iPlayer website. Whilst this was a step in the right direction, and a very polished and extremely usable step at that, it always felt as though we (non windows users) were being fobbed off with the web 2.0 equivalent of a hand me down. Read more…