Tony Sutton’s Blog!

The Halloween party last night was GREAT and everyone enjoyed the night. Much better than last year, which we are pleased.

Oh and here’s my kit… - please note; the photo made me look fat but it’s the black cloth that made me look fat.

We’re all set with our Halloween clothes on.

I was at the club earlier today, setting up all of the stuff, food, and other things. It loks good and I had to leave to go home to meet the missus and get changed.

And we’re going out soon.

Hope you all have a great evening!

At last, it’s Friday and tomorrow is the weekend. Hurrah!

Tomorrow morning, I’m off to the deaf club to help out with putting up Halloween stuff for the party in the evening. As mentioned earlier, I said I would put up a photo of my costume. And I will do that, after the party.

Tomorrow afternoon, hoping to find new pair of shoes as mine are getting worn out already - too much walking!

Sunday - hmm, not sure. If the weather is nice, I might wash my car. It’s dirty at the moment. :/ I was thinking about getting a mudflaps for my car… what do you think of it? Good? Ugly?

In the meantime, going to clean up some piles of paper in here…

Yep, we’ve sold the car and we had to walk back home.

We got up early this morning, gave the car a good hoover, washed, buffered dry and used T-Cut on some scratches, seems to have done very well.

Got to the garage, the man was interested and he offered £100 less than we wanted for the car. But it’s a good price for the age with some spot of scratches and no rust so we agreed and sold it to the guy at the garage.

Now that we’re back home, we’re going to have ut lunch before heading to the bank to put the cheque in the bank.

And my car is lonely now that it got no one to be with during the night. Going to give it some loving by washing the car somewhen this weekend or so, depending on the weather.

Thought I’d post some random links which I found for you to look at.

Trying to outrun the road block - in Manchester - some people tried to outrun the road block. But they’re unsuccessful. Watch the last bit (white van) - ouch!

A nice classic Ferrari car - shame about the last three photos. :/

Video of the Tornado jet which crashed in The Wash near Norfolk a few days ago. They are based in RAF Martham (near Gt Yarmouth). Heard the jet costs £30 million - yikes!

And we both have a day off tomorrow - yay! Going to wash the car, pretty it up and then try to sell it to the local garages for some money. Really hope the weather stays nice so we can wash the car. Wish us luck!

As mentioned earlier in my postings, I finally received the tickets for the weekend event at Santa Pod including the Grandstand entry too.

Yay!

So, I received Playstation 2 with 22 Classic Games in one CD & Eyetoy package today from the good old Play.com

As soon as we got hme, I ripped up the box and plugged the system in. Played some classic games like Street Fighter, Final Fight, 1942 and much more.

Then I plugged the Eyetoy camera and played some games. And I’m worn out, my arms hurts. But it was good fun. A good way to lose weight!

Sadly, it’s not for me as I was buying it for the local Deaf Youth Club, using their money. At least I can keep playing it till this Thursday where I have to install it there. They have a niffy projector so it would be cool to play it on a big screen on the wall!

Anyone know of a suitable games for the youth to play on the PS2? I was thinking something related to puzzle or driving game.

In other news… it’s Half Term this week, so there was less traffic when driving to work - bonus! Means I can now get to work on time and do my work.

Got this Thursday booked as day off, so we can clean the Punto car and sell it, hopefully on the same day for the garage to take it away from us for a good price. We’ve checke don eBay to see how much it goes for and it’s around £700 or so for same age & mileage, which is not bad. Hopefully if we do sell the car for that price, the money will go toward the double glazing door.

Well, time for me to have a quick game on PS2 before heading to bed.

Our garage has a room where I can use my computer in there. But the biggest problem I faced with was no internet/network access as the garage is not attached to the house. With the scary thoughts of having to wire up a very long network cable from the house to the garage including drilling, I decided there must be a easier way to do this.

Then it dawned on me - I remember seeing on the news about “Broadband Over Power” - if it can be done, then there must be someone out there who created a Network Over Power. And there’s one!

The company who made the HomePlug technology, InTellon, did this and made Network Over Power possible. Then soon enough, most networking companies have the technology.

In the case for me, I purchased the Netgear HDXB101 Starter Kit, which comes with two Netgear HDX101 devices, a CD-ROM with the software to change the Network ID. This can give you up to 200Mbps of network connection which is fast enough for me.

I have taken some photos of the Netgear HDXB101 in action, including the configuration page so you can see what it looks like.

And now my feedback on this - I’ve found it very good. The connection speed I am getting in the garage ranges between 90Mbps to 130Mbps, depending on how much interference ad it’s good enough for me.

So if you want to do a quick job of setting up a network without the hassle of laying out cables and drilling holes, this is the best way to do this!

As of Oct 2006, this cost me £135 inc VAT, however the price will drop as time passes by.

Hs anyone used this and what are your thoughts about this?

The weekend went too quick. Yesterday, we went sofa hunting. Spotted a few sofa we liked and we’re going back there next week to have another look and decide which one we want.

Sofa hunting is harder than we thought because we have to consider matching it with the current living room we have, the styles, the colours, the size, etc. Not a easy task. I even took some photos with my phone and bringing it home, photoshop’ed the photo with the living room photo so we could see what it would look like.

In the evening, we relaxed at home, watched The Da Vinci Code on DVD we rented. I thought it was boring, but the missus enjoyed it throughly.

This morning, we cleaned up the house a bit for my mum’s visit, so she and her hubby could see what we have done with the house since their last visit. Showed them around the house, the garden and the garage. They liked it.

Had a good chat for around 2 hours or so, before they headed out to see my mum’s mother in the afternoon.

We went shopping in the afternoon for our weekly food shopping. And the weather was crap - lots of rain and windy.

In the evening (and for the past 2 nights), there was lots of fireworks being set off around here - annoying.

This week, we’re going to try to sell the other car we have. Anyone want a Fiat Punto?

Here I am, the long lost Tony which you thought you managed to get rid of. Have not updated my blog since the start of Sept. My excuse? Nothing. Just lost interest in updating my blog ever since work got busy and house improvements got in the way.

The reason why I’m writing this is because I get a few emails from you (and other people outside LJ) asking me where I was and why was I not updating anything. So here I am, attempting to get back into this. As I haven’t posted for over a month, this may get a bit of a long post, so if I bore you, I don’t care - I’m not forcing you to read. But if you’re interested, read on…

House

Things are doing well for the house. Still have not done the bathroom improvements as we wanted, but never mind. But we have done the following:

* Garage cleanup and tables/cupboard in place
* Tidied up my study room (still got a few paperwork and boxes around, but much better than before)
* New wardrobe in our bedroom
* New mattress ordered for our bed, awaiting delivery
* Tidied up the back garden (still not done the front yet)
* New pond in our back garden
* Threw away old stuff, old carpet, old boxes, etc, so less crap for us!
* New lights for the living room - but haven’t put it up yet
* New lights for the kitchen - again haven’t put it up yet
* Currently looking around for new sofa
* Currently getting quotes for new double glazing door for the porch
* To do - get a quote for the bathroom improvements - possible next year
* Long term future - fix the doorway arch in the garden as the current one is falling apart
* Long term future - new fence around the front & a bit at the back garden - old one are ugly & broken

I might have missed out some other things, but that’s what I can think of so far.

We are hoping to have someone coming round to give us the house price just to see how much the house is worth now. I hear the house market is going up and up, so we’re interested.

Work

Work is still the samey, but with extra work as a workmate and myself has been temporarily bumped up to the next level of job to cover staff shortage. So we are getting the extra money, which is very useful for me, considering I am now starting to run out of money a bit due to spending on the house stuff. :/ We have been doing that for a month so far and it looks like we’re doing that for another month too. Bonus. Should now let me save up quicker & easier until they dropped us down to our normal job. Can’t wait for my payday which is due next Tuesday or so, then I can spend spend, sped (and save up to).

The overflow of stuff

I have decided to start cleaning up my piles of stuff (maybe this month or next month or never? lol) and sell them on eBay or other methods so I can get rid of the stuff and get the money back to my saving account, which will be used to buy some stuff for ourselves like holiday, bills, house improvements, etc. So if you want to own a piece of Tony’s stuff, keep your eyes peeled for my link to my eBay auction.

My life

Myself, I’m doing okay. Have been keeping myself busy around the house, at work, helping out at the local Deaf Club, organising events, keeping my websites updated - acquired two new sites which are Pet Advice and also Avian Flu Info - something to keep myself busy. Same with my Ford Focus ST170 website too.

7th Oct - we had a Boys Night Out - 14 of us going out for dinner, drinks, nightclubs and catch up with all of the news and we all enjoyed it. What a great night for us! Didn’t get home till 3am! Sadly, I had to get up very early in the morning to catch the 9am train. :/ By the time I got home I was wide awake, enough for me to start digging up the hole for the pond all day! It was worth it because as soon as we filled it up with the water, we had frogs living in there (not now, no idea where they are lol)

Next Sat (28th Oct) - we’re going to Halloween Fancy Dress Party - we got ourselves some clothes for this party and I got the best kit I found. I’ll take some photos and post it next week, don’t want to spoil the surprise for other people reading this, who are going to the same party. Should be a great night and we can’t wait to go!

Then two weeks time from now, we’re off to Santa Pod for the weekend event of Flame & Thunder - drag racing, fireworks, Freestyle Motorcross Show, Monster Trucks, Jet Truck, Stunt Displays, Drifts, and many more. Really can’t wait for this event and hoping for lovely weather. My digital camera is going to be so busy taking photos!

Anyone going to this event too?

My Car

I still have not sorted out the big stone chip on the bonnet yet. It has already formed rust and it looks ugly. Filling it up and respraying the whole bonnet and lacquer the whole bonnet costs around £180 to £200. And brand new bonnet costs £110 + VAT and then the costs of respraying & lacquer will cost an extra £50 or more. So I might go with the new bonnet method since there will be no filling up and sanding crap as it can lose the value of the car if I sell it. So something to think about. Maybe in Nov or after Xmas.

But apart from that, car is doing good. Need to have its major service and also cam belt change as it’s due. Going to cost me £££ but it will give the engine longer life.

Well, there you go - the long due update that you (or may not) wanted to read. That was 3 pages long in Word, so hopefully it won’t be too long for you to read when I post this!

Questions? Thoughts? Anything? Comment away…

And have a great weekend!