Things That Really !&$%2 You Off

I can't advocate enough for spending a little bit more on a good chair and a good mattress. You'll spend a lot of your time sitting and sleeping, so make sure your body is being kept in the best state while doing so.

Trying to renegotiate Sky packages. We wanted to swap Sky Movies for the box sets - instead we now have both and are saving a grand total of 47p a month for the privilege.

Will try again tomorrow.

JayMoyles wrote:

I can't advocate enough for spending a little bit more on a good chair and a good mattress. You'll spend a lot of your time sitting and sleeping, so make sure your body is being kept in the best state while doing so.

It seems pretty good far, what you're saying is what I always think about TV's as we must spend most of our lives looking at them.

Isn't boxsets just an extra thing you get with Sky now as the on-demand stuff?

Last week we had lovely weather here in Somerset, and after I finished work on Wednesday I thought I'd drive to Bridgwater and go to the game shop as they've had a refit along with a move and since the move, they've been getting some good stuff in.

Due to the weather, I opened the windows in my car, the passenger one fall down and wouldn't come back up. This has happened before in another VAG I owned a few years ago that it might a common problem, anyway being 4 in the afternoon and not having anywhere to put the car with an open window.

I took it to the garage around the corner who I've used a few times and always been okay, anyway I was off on Thursday that I wasn't in a hurry to get the car back as it would be an issue to get to work as the buses don't go before 6 am or comeback after 9 pm which is a bit of problem when my early or late shift starts/ends at those times.

Anyway, I take it down and needs a new surround and with the labour etc came to £180 but had to be done as you can't just have a window open all the time.

The next day I go over to EofGiz to record the 5th gen podcast (in my sig), I go get us McDonald's when I come back to his with the food and lock the car up I noticed the passenger side door lock button hadn't gone down. I open the door see if it's locked and guess what it opens and sets my alarm off.

I did manage to lock the door by pressing the button from the inside and that's how I left the door due to work until last night when I took the took the car back to the garage and explain to them this was fine before you took the door apart to fix the window.

This morning the garage ring and bet you can all guess what they said, yep it wasn't them and everything inside is fine and it's the locking mechanism which would be a £260.

I just come back from picking up the car and spoke to the guy that did the window not just the guy on the desk and he was like it just happens to be a massive coincidence (It did sort of happen on yet another VAG, I owned) and he was like it might have been doing it before I took it but I didn't notice till now as I was looking at it due to that door having something done to it.

So I'm a little peed as to me it was fine before they had the car, but what can I do it's not like a broken game I just take back to the shop. I've just brought the car home and got the door locked as I'm not paying £260 to be able to open the door and spend what be in total £440 a few days for essentially to open and close a door.

If you want a ride with me you're going to have use one of the back doors instead.

Digital gaming on Sony prior to the PS4.

This is inspired by the saga I've experienced trying to copy a PS1 Classic from my PS3 to my PSP - this is the only way to play PS1 games on the PSP since the Store has shut down on the PSP. I purchased the game on my PS3 with little incident - beyond the store inexplicably crashing, buy hey ho - and got my PS3 to recognise the PSP with the USB cable I received with the console. I pressed copy... and up popped an error code. I tried unplugging the PSP, removing and replacing the Memory Stick and even went as far as to delete then redownload the game. Nothing was working.

A cursory Google search revealed the fix, and I cannot fathom why this caused the issue. Supposedly, if you've got 2-Step verification turned on for logging in, it blocks any copying from PS3 to PSP. I turned off 2-Step, and lo and behold... the game copied across with no further incident. Why would this even be a thing?!

Not really the same but I actually kind of despise modern digital gaming, but not for the reasons you might think.  

Aside from the fact the prices are often higher than buying in a store (which is crazy considering Australian prices are already inflated as heck) there's the issue of file sizes.  It's like developers saw they could bang a game on the modern bluray disc without compression and thought everything was all well and good.

Let me tell you something devs, if you're making 500GB HDD's look even less spacious than my old 8GB memory sticks on the PSP then you're doing something very wrong.

And this is coming from the guy who can't tolerate his music in anything below FLAC.

Especially when you see Wolfenstein 2 is only 14gb on Switch but then that's annoying as it's on a 8GB card meaning a download for the rest instead of putting on a 16gb card but then keeps the game retail cost down.

If I was in Australia, I'd be using a different region for my games downloads.

We should just strip modern gaming back to its roots. Let's get games small enough to fit on floppy discs again. I don't care if I have to play the new Smash Bros. in glorious Spectrumvision so long as I can fit 10 copies of it onto a pen drive.

Gaming peaked with the Amstrad quite frankly.

BRING BACK THE FUCKING MOLE

I concur.

This.

But not because of Amazon, frankly I reckon they're getting a bit of an inflated head and could do with some chopping of the heels.

But this is not how you make a tax. It's pure protectionism, and it's complete crap. How many other businesses that ship to Australia are going to simply not do so come July 1st? And all because whining crybaby businesses like Harvey Norman (known for selling meh expensive products, marking them up a bunch, then cutting off a fraction of the mark-up and claiming it as a sale to con the unsavvy consumer into buying from them) cried to a government long enough.

The issues facing the average Australian right now include ever-increasing costs of living, utilities are at an all-time high and we're facing an entire generation facing the real possibility they won't even own a home until their retirement. And yet all the Liberals seem to be able to do is give tax breaks to corrupt banks and other high-flying mega-corporations, all while shitting on the few areas of financial relief the average worker has.

I get the arguments here. Traders think they're hard-done by online retail. There are smarter answers than blocking Australians from exercising their rights as a consumer to buy where they want to. Like, oh I don't know, tax breaks to companies that actually need them so they have the wriggle-room to change their prices to more competitive ones.

And people wonder why Australians have one of the highest rates of piracy per person in the English speaking world.

Note: this is not to be interpreted as a complaint about taxes. I have absolutely zero issue with the GST, and in fact even think it should be raised on certain products such as junk food. This is entirely because this is a poorly thought-out policy by a inept government who only ever create policy for their lobbyists and bankrollers. In fact I cannot even remember the last time they actually did something for anyone else.

/rant. In the meantime I guess I'll have to buy as much as possible over the next month just in case. Just what I needed at a time when I'm preparing to move house.

Amazon and tax... sounds familiar!

Would there be no way around the block through a proxy? I suppose it's tricky in that it'd then be delivered to Australia, but would they be able to block your order if you access international Amazon sites by proxy?

I'm ill again, I don't know if I'm turning into a massive hypochondriac like Jimbob or I am just ill but last night I had two attacks where I couldn't breathe. I thought they were asthma attacks but not had any of those for years, after going work and ringing 111 whilst in work, I was told to go to the doctors right away.

Had tests etc and can't find much wrong with me apart from the breathing test where I could only do half of what I should for someone my size, I've been given an inhaler, going to the asthma nurse at some point, along with having more blood tests today to see if my iron levels are still okay etc

But did she think that because only my breathing was bad it might have been panic or anxiety attacks last night brought on through stress.

Might well be those.  Do you have stress issues?  Is seeing a therapist a feasible option?

She did ask about personal changes which there is two, one being work as I've changed departments which you know and how I can go to the meet and the other being my dad quit his job again but he does now have another one.

That it might be stress related or along those lines but don't where or what to do about that but is one of the reasons I post this here to have someone to talk about this with.

I'm looking forward to the meetup as a way to burn off some stress and enjoy myself - there's a lot to be said for taking some time away from your day-to-day life to relieve stress. Have you had a chance to do anything like that recently, Mas?

I did have my week off recently but only watched E3 and played games.

masofdas wrote:

I did have my week off recently but only watched E3 and played games.

You ought to try doing something totally different. Next time you have even just a day or two off, why not try going for a hike in the mendips or taking a day just to sit on the beach at Weston with an ice cream and a book?

He's not wrong Mas. You do that stuff all the time, and it's probably not terribly relaxing for you. Books are good, not particularly cerebral telly's good, music's good.

That said, different things work for different people - I for one will find the meet-up fun, but certainly not relaxing. Introvert, see? So whatever works for you. Just don't kid yourself into thinking things are relaxing when they might not be.

That also said, we're just people you know online. We're not trained in this stuff. It might still be a good idea to seek professional therapy if it keeps up.

Sure Balla but still as my friends I feel I can talk to you about these things and it does help.

Got my blood test results and everything is okay.

Oh yes, obviously! We're here for you to spill your heart out to, whether or not it should be only us.

Glad it seems to mostly be in your head. Although that doesn't make it any less painful than any other illness, natch.

Extreme Heat Two: Northern Hemisphere Boogaloo!

Yes, it's the time of year when someone who's not Athrun moans about the heat. I've chosen a bad day to remember that, since the last two days have been almost pleasant, but the ones before weren't and the ones after won't. This heatwave is bobbins and I hate it. Can't sleep, can't walk outside without burning, can't take the tube without sweating up a storm... None of this is any good for me.

It's cooled down nicely up here. There's still a bit of sunshine but it's nowhere near as hot as it was when we were down in Manchester.

It's been much, much better since I posted that.  I'd be annoyed, only I'm really really grateful.

"Really !&$% Me Off" is bit harsh for this, but: I've got to buy a new PC. It really can't copy with this generation's 3D graphics, so I can't play some games on Steam (meaning missing out on catching up with my sister and her fella) and I've also discovered that some of the poor results of my attempts to do things in Unity are due to the fact it can't work some shit out in realtime. The rest of the PC is still pretty good, for being 6 years old, but I can't just upgrade the graphics card, because it's a lower power card to suit the lower power unit, and I can't replace the power unit because it's a deliberately smaller than usual one, so a new PSU won't fit.
My actual two things that !&$% me off:
1) I don't really understand BitCoin and CryptoCurrencies, but the pressure they're putting on regular computer resources (and therefore the price increase of components) suggests they're not ready to exist yet.
2) Because of the high-end graphics requirement, I implied that I wanted a gaming PC. However, this is a gaming PC that will sit in the living room of a grown-up. Why are the default options a big window in the side, and rainbow-coloured LEDs all over the shop? My PS4 is also a gaming device; it has one narrow LED, subtle, but designed to let you know the machine is running.