Tony Sutton’s Blog!

Not sure if you can see in this photo… Its saying that the copy of Windows XP is not geniune… And thats at a computer shop! Heh.

Hot air balloon - cancelled!

While we did have a nice sun with no rain, there was a big cloud looming and wind on the way and with the launch time of 6:30pm, it has already started with strong wind and it’s half five here. So a wise decision from them

Nevermind! They have asked us to pick another date… so maybe in July where the weather will be hopefully warm!

It’s starting to look like tomorrow’s ride on the hot air balloon will be cancelled. the rain hasn’t stopped all week and according to the weather tomorrow, it will deffo rain tomorrow.

Shame really as we were looking forward to it for the past two months!

Nevermind.

Best of luck to the people living in Sheffield because of the Ulley dam at a brick of bursting the dam’s wall (news link) - must be terrible…

Simon, keep us updated and hope your house won’t be affected at all!

You gotta love Freecycle - we’ve just made a lone father with 3 kids happy by giving away our old tumble dryer on Freecycle - posted about it yesterday, he collected it today. And he has the big smile.

Good way to get rid of stuff quickly. And one thing less from our garage. The clean up continues…

Well, we’ve had a busy weekend. Shopping, catching up some TV shows on my new HDD recorder, doing up the shelf and also the carpet in the porch. It’s starting to look good!

The carpet laying was very interesting… and I think I’ve done well as a first timer of laying the carpet.

Check it out…

Carpet fitted  - toward the porch’s new wall

Toward the front door

Big thanks to my mum who donated the “left over” carpet from her house.

So whatdoyouthinkofitthen?

Received the new Humax HDD Recorder - PVR-9200TB - yesterday and has been busy setting it up with loads of TV shows to record. It’s awesome piece of kit!

Very easy to set it up. I just need to buy a better SCART cable for improved TV quality and a short loopback aerial cable, so I can keep watching the Freeview TV while the twin tuner records the show and store on the big 160GB HDD.

And it’s black, matches my Samsung TV.

In other news… the driveway work is going to be put back a few weeks time because the council who was supposed to remove the old light last week hasn’t done it yet and has been rescheduled to 3rd July! Grrr…

Exactly one week time from now, we’re going on Hot Air Balloon and we are hoping the weather will be OK as there has been lots of rain, thunderstorm and wind this week… :/

Hope you lot are doing well?

Today, we went out to Lowestoft to check out Africa Alive and it was enjoyable. Nice weather too. Shame that on our way back home, it was pouring down with rain and flooded the roads a bit. And getting stuck in front of slow moving lorry wasn’t nice too.

Africa Alive photos

Anyway, back to work tomorrow - booo.

But new HDD recorder arriving tomorrow - yay!

Hey all, hope you all enjoyed the (rainy) weekend! Not much happening for us, just relaxing, did a bit of work in the porch, repaired a dodgy PC (XP fux0red), installed TomTom on my phone (at last!) and activated the free Tom Tom Traffic (Plus services) and it’s pretty cool.

And today, ordered a new HDD Recorder - which is an Humax PVR-9200TB (160GB HDD version) - should be getting it tomorrow if the order goes through okay.

I can’t wait to get it since I got so fed up with missing too much TV shows. This HDD recorder allows me to copy the TV show over USB 2.0 and it will even include the subtitles stream, which make viewing on my computer painless and easier. Yay!

Today is my last day of my day off and I go back to work tomorrow - booo! Quickly checking my work e-mail, there are some jobs waiting for me to do it when I return. So looks like I’ll be busy tomorrow.

Time for brekkie - I’m hungry!

Some photos uploaded… including door frame painted, wallpapering and then painted.

http://www.hypergallery.co.uk/ownedhouse?page=43

Think we’re all done with it (unless we missed some spot from the paint) - carpet is next.

Got up this morning to carry on with paining the door frame in the porch - it’s starting to look like a real wall now.

This afternoon, we wallpapered the partition wall and are waiting for it to dry before we start painting it so it will match with the rest of the wall.

This morning, I received an email from my boss to my home e-mail, saying that my temporary job (to cover someone else’s job as the person is on long term sickness) is now permanent as of Monday 18th June, which is a great news! That means I do not need to worry about the pay cut when the temporary job is no longer needed/ended.

The funny thing is, this is the same job that I applied for an interview a few months ago at the same workplace and after a few competition with the other guy, I didn’t get it. But now I have this, so it’s looking good. Kinda like being promoted but in a different way… if this make sense.

Right better go back and check to see if the wallpaper is dry yet!

On my day off, I did the following…

* Woke up & had breakfast

* Started some work in the porch - sanding and painting the door frame

* Had a nice lunch and watched TV

* Cleared out the left overs in the garage

* Hovered and tidied up the garage

* Fixing something on the laptop (still not fixed, grr)

* Waiting for the door frame to dry before doing the 2nd coat (it’s still not dry yet!)

Now I need a shower, have a dinner and maybe go out tonight to the club and pick up some stuff I need and then head home to relax in front of the TV with my free can of Coors beer.

Remember my earlier post about the weather being warm?
Well, we have heavy thunder and lightings here. And the fricking router has gone offline! Hope it hasn’t fried it…

Some progress regarding the new street light - EDF has linked the new light with power and at the moment, there are two street lights lighting up and it has brighten up the area! Too bright, I must say.

So it looks like they will be removing the old one by tomorrow or Friday which is on schedule.

Once it’s all done, then we are on the track to have the new driveway done by next week or so. Can’t wait!

Pretty warm today, compared with the past few days where we had plenty of rain so that’s a change.

I’m looking forward to have the porch done this week and then it’s checked off from our listing of ‘to do’ project of the house improvements.

Still to go:

* Improve the garden - front & rear

* Save up for bathroom change project

* Make some changes in garage so it will have some shelf, move round stuff and that sort of things

* Maybe re-do the rear garden’s wall and gate arch - it’s crumbling away at the moment and doesn’t look safe

Hmm, we have lots to do then…

Hurrah, the council has started the work of relocating the electricity cable to the new street light.

Strangely they dung up THREE holes! Not sure what is going on but as long as they do the job OK, then I’m happy. I am sure the neighbors won’t be happy because one of the holes are in the middle of the road! And made the road smaller which means they couldn’t be able to park their car.

However I am hoping they will finish it by tomorrow to keep everyone happy. Will find out soon…

You gotta love how the company works!

Received an renewal paperwork from Direct Line for house insurance and it’s almost £100 more than last year!

Did the online quote with Direct Line and it’s much cheaper with the extra thrown in (no excess, accidental damage, etc) so decided to call them tos ee if they could drop it down without canceling the policy.

And guess what they said? “We can’t pricematch it” even that they are the same company! Just that over the telephone and Internet sales are totally different.

So I went with the best way - do not renew with the current policy and start a new policy on the same day. The price is great… it’s even about £40 cheaper than last year but I got more things extra with it!