Latest news from Camp Scarsdale:

I’ve signed up with a new broadband provider. Tiscali put their foot in the mouth yet another time when they sent out a letter to me the other day which stated that we are too far from the exchange to receive their broadband service.
Who the heck moved the exchange since a couple of months ago I have no clue…but obviously we cannot get anything but dial-up from them now. So we told them to take a hike.

The provider I signed up with the other day might not be any better…but we don’t know that until we tried. No matter what, I will receive a new wifi router on October 6 and the connection should be activated on October 8. So I hope that means it’s all taken care of.

In the meantime we’re spending more money and effort in getting this place more livable since we probably won’t be able to get out of here. Not that I have resigned when it comes to find another place to live, but it probably won’t be on this side of the new year and winter. And in the meantime the prices on gas and power has gone up, which means that it’s getting very expensive when every ounce of heat you pay for literally is going out the window.
So yesterday we bought some insulation boards and some damp sheets, put it down on the kitchen floor and today Robin will finally put down the tiling on that floor. I’m also trying to improve the windows a bit…and the front door. There’s no double glazing here ya know :p

And I’m happy to say that my pancreas was most likely sending out false signals for some silly reason. Before they removed the gallbladder I had to drink pro-biotic stuff to keep my tummy going, and I haven’t had to do that since the surgeries. However, the other day I bought a bunch of these tiny bottles since my tummy has been a bit of a mess…and I think that it all simply became a bit too active. Because of the neuropathic pain disorder I think it triggered an old pain memory and nothing else. Since I stopped drinking that stuff I haven’t had any problems at all.
So that change was very welcome

Business wise it’s moving forward as well. Because Jobcentre is involved in this it takes a bit of time but at least we have an appointment with that Business Adviser on Oct 22 and as soon as we are done with the floors here I will sit down and make a list of what’s needed. I also need to call the bank and open that bank account with them.

Oh and we are fixing the floors in the dining area, the entrance and the living room too btw. We have enough insulation and damp sheets for it and we really need to get rid of that old carpet in the living room. It’s horrible. I bet if we remove all the furnitures in that room the carpet will walk outta here by itself :p

And that’s about it for now, folks.
I’m trying to buy Robin’s youngest son a bike computer over ebay today and I will probably need all the luck I can get to do that using this connection :p Worth a try though

Be good and I will stop by as soon as I get a decent connection again

C.

Not sure why faith is playing hooky with me, but it seems that the pancreatitis is blowing up again. I am in the middle of setting up a web developing business, got clients waiting and both me and Robin are already doing these kinda jobs for a local business who doesn’t have their own programmer or graphic designer.

So we are getting work from them too.
Right now we’re both at The Hobby Horse…one of our favorite pubs in Chesterfield. They have free wifi here so we decided to go here and connect before we take off to meet up with Jobcentre today.
Money to get me a new desktop is coming from something called New Deal at Jobcentre. They will hand over £1,000 for the setup, which means that I don’t have to mess around with the bank to get a loan or anything, which will be a big relief.

Then we will test drive the biz for 6 months to see if it’s profitable enough.
And if the pace we have right now continues I’d say that we’re safe.
In the meantime we will also have help from a Business Adviser at The Chambers of Commerce in Chesterfield etc. Another plus.

So that’s what we’re upto right now.
Unless my pancreas is blowing up of course. Then I will end up in hospital for a week or two again so that can heal.

But…I hope this is nothing but indigenstion or similar.

Hope you’re all doing good

Last night I had a pretty good connection here so I uploaded some new things in my store.
I even got a chance to edit my mistakes in ebay that I made when I added the egg and the keyring to my auction over there. It’s been impossible for me to login at ebay and revise anything over dial-up.

Anyway…yesterday I uploaded the rings below. I sell them as a pair since they are nearly identical. Rings between two friends used to be very popular at least and I don’t know if that is still a fashion, but that’s mainly what these would work like. Or between siblings maybe.

These rings are adjustable and they fit both sexes really. Maybe one of them are a bit more girlie than the other with that flower pattern around the watch movement.
Since I’ve picked these watches apart once and put them back together again with Epoxy there’s no way they will show the time….but other than that they work as decoration

Except from that not a lot of things happens today. It’s Sunday and I will be alone and unsupervised. I won’t have a connection since Robin is taking his laptop, and that’s the only laptop here that’s got a working modem inside it. My laptop doesn’t even know it’s got a modem. The last security update from Microcrap ensured that it won’t work. They’re fun that way :p

So I will do something else today.
But with a bit of luck everything will be back to normal next week.
I’ve got more new stuff in the store but it’s a nightmare to upload piccies in here right now, so that will have to wait.

Now it’s time to disconnect and hand this over to Robin.

Hope you’re Sunday will be a good one

The only defense I have for missing this in the past is that I’ve been in the “wrong” country :p
However…since a couple of weeks back I’ve been terribly hooked to “Gilmore Girls”…you know…the mom/daughter couple who must have some sort of record in speed talk :p

It all started on a Sunday. Obviously one of the TV channels here are showing one episode every day during week days, and then they do a rerun of them all during Sundays. So I OD’d on “Gilmore Girls” one Sunday. Back to back episodes for an entire afternoon and I was lost.

Not sure yet if it’s the pace of the way the stories around this couple and their family is told…or if it’s the humor that I fancy…or both…but it makes me giggle and laugh. And it’s one of the few times during the day when I put away whatever else I’m doing, make a cup of coffee or tea and give all my devoted focus to this whimsical duo.
I have no clue how many episodes that’s been made, how many they will show here or how well/bad this show have been received elsewhere…and it doesn’t really matter either. It’s fun here and now

Oh…and I’ve met the most charming doggie today
A Labrador who was very affectionate and needed lotsa scratching :p

Me and Robin is doing some work together with a local web developer and it was in his office this afternoon that I made this new furry friend Kinda cramped with a big dog relaxing on the floor in the manner that only an old Lab can do when he/she decides to get all the attention
In any case, it was a nice “meeting”

Now it’s time to get away from this annoying thing called Internet for a while.

I finally managed to get the Steampunk Egg below up on ebay. Was a painful story that didn’t work at all from the dial-up back home. So I had to wait until we got to the pub here and could use their broadband.

Anyways…if anyone’s interested the linky to the auction is here…and it can also be bought direct.

And if you need or want a different kind of keyring that is easy to recognize, I’ve listed one out of two keyrings that I’ve made lately. Also available at ebay (or buy direct from me for the BuyNow price).
Auction for that is available here.

Other than that there’s a bunch of stuff below that I haven’t had a chance to put up for sale yet. Will do as soon as I get the broadband back.

I will stop by your blogs as soon as I’ve got my real connection back again. Browsing is no fun using 33kb/sec and here at the pub I’m limited to whatever time the laptop battery decides to live. Nuttin’ is ever easy.

I hope yer all good though
Now…that egg is a very nice Christmas gift ya know

Today we managed to connect at home…on a dial-up…and I’m swishing around the web in the amazing speed of 33kb/sec :p Now that we finally got the right phone number back and a decent phone bill coming in, Tiscali is messing around with our broadband account instead.
Nothing is ever easy.

So…with a bit of luck we should have our broadband back this evening or tomorrow. After nearly a month without anything. And to reply to Seamus comment below, yes…it’s very frustrating since I’ve paid for the connection and everything. They owe me two months by now.

However, the lack of internet hasn’t crippled my creativity much. I haven’t been able to put up anything new for sale since this happened, but I’ve made a lot of new things. The egg above is only one of them. I’ve got two eggs ala Carl Faberge’, a decorative bottle, cigarette cases, a small flask, finger rings, keyrings and much more that I’ve made during these past few weeks. It will all be available in the store and some at ebay when I get a chance to upload it. Unfortunately, to upload any size of picture larger than a stamp when you are on dial-up makes everything time out…so what you see in this post is based on pure luck.

These eggs will be on ebay as soon as my broadband is back up again, and the starting bid will be around £50. The reason for the high price is that it’s incredibly fiddly to make. The egg is the shell from a regular hen egg and they are very fragile before you get a chance to make them stronger with glue and paint.

During these last couple of weeks I’ve been breathing more Epoxy glue than air I think :p

So it’s fiddly to make.

Anyway…I’m paying by the minute here and time is ticking fast.
I’ll be back

Our connection died a while back…about a week ago or so. I’m online for the second time since then checking email and make sure that the world is still there.

BT is still messing about with my phone line, which is why we don’t have a connection right now. The internet went down when they decided to “fix” the problem with that extra line they tried to charge us for…and when they reactivated the phone in the end of last week we had a completely different phone number.

So right now we’re waiting for them to give us the old number back, which “should” happen today. And after that the connection “should” be back too. But you never know. They haven’t done one thing right so far, so there’s no guarantees at all.

Today we’re online from the Hobby Horse, our fav pub in Chesterfield. I’ve sold more steampunk jewellery so I had to grab the addresses and get the items in the mail. Other than that I’ve been drowning in email and spam…of course.

But I’m alive anyway.

During the past 3 years or so I’ve had a Siemens MC60 cellphone, and I guess you could say that it served it’s purpose. It was made before mp3 players began to show up in every cellphone, but it’s fancy enough to have a camera. A bad camera and I’ve used it as often as I would use an mp3 player if I had one in my phone :p

But…since most things are plastic and since accidents happen, the lid on the back that seems to hold the battery in place, is broken. it won’t lock and it makes the power come and go. So I’ve been in the need for a new phone for some time now.

I’m not much for gadgets that I have no use for. Other than that I love em all. But if I spend money on something like this I also want to make sure that I’m using it, and the Siemens had features that I looked at when I bought it and never again.

So…this time I bought a phone that is a phone and not much more than that.

A completely different brand, and instead of O2 I decided to go with Orange since their call charges are much cheaper.

Motorola F3, or Motofon, is as simple as a cellphone can be today. No camera, no mp3 player and it doesn’t even have a fancy display. But it’s a working phone and that’s exactly what I want and need

Besides, this phone was £4.25 (+£5 prepaid call charges on the card), which means that if I for any silly reason would want music in my cellphone in the future…or go back to a color screen, I haven’t spent a fortune for nothing.

The only downside with this is that I will have a new phone number. During the +3 years I’ve had my Siemens and the O2 service I’ve never managed to memorize that darn phone number :p Robin remembers it and I guess that’s what counts really. That other people know my number. If I have to look for it when I hand it over to someone else every darn time is high age :p

Luckily Robin is using O2 as well, so to get my old phone book off my O2 card I can pop it into his cellphone and get the info off it that way

>> This post has content refering to private body parts :p <<

If you are sensitive to that kinda thing, scroll down and read a science rant or something instead

Otherwise…
The other evening there was one of many I’m-Having-A-Plastic-Surgery show on TV here in the UK. It seems that everyone has to change something, but this was not just ridicules. It was stupid.

Women are having plastic surgery to change the look of their…vagina.
Can you believe that??
Why would you want to change the look of your vagina? Do they sit around with a mirror between their legs staring at themselves all day, worrying what their hubby’s/boyfriends think?
To me that kinda improvement would be like having plastic surgery to change the look of what my nose looks like on the inside.

Any surgery that isn’t necessary is just silly to me since I’m so terribly messed up from surgeries in the past that were necessary. I don’t think that none of these women every heard of pelvic pain and how it happens. Neither have they ever had a surgery that actually saved their lives.

Vanity has reached a level where I simply don’t follow any more. Who is coming up with all this and make so many people believe that it is a good idea? That it’s actually necessary because you look horrible.
Neither of us are good enough the way we were born…at least not if you listen to messages that these shows are sending out.

The older I get, and the more depending I am on makeup and creams to keep up my appearance, the less I care about changing what nature handed over. And that is while 14 year olds want bigger boobs and 25 year olds see wrinkles that aren’t even there.

What I was wondering when I realized that there are women out there having their vaginas sliced’n'dices…what exactly are they trying to change? And who cares what they look like? Certainly not their men.

Just wait and see…at some point there will be too much nerve damage, too many side effects and the whole artificial beauty bubble will burst.

Now it’s time to have some lunch. Miso soup today

The Collider, or the Large Hadron Collider, will start swirling particles around underground on Wednesday.
How do you feel about that, folks?
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a science project which has been so discussed and so very much in the line of fire with judges, organizations and protesters before. Bet that neither of the scientists involved could even imagine The Collider when they showed their science projects in school :p

So…they claim that it’s harmless and that there’s a lot of things that cannot happen, and I trust they know what they’re talking about.
Fine. Go and play.
But…what really bugs me is that so much money is being shoved into this circus while there are problems above ground that will always be there no matter if the results from The Collider will tell us all where we’re from, where space is ending, what color the sky will have in another 200 million years etc. etc.
Why they literally put billions of pennies into a black hole for the sake of finding out more about space when there are more important issues on this planet is above my understanding.

There has to be other more important things they could use this huge group of intelligent minds for. And other black holes to put that money into.

Priorities are tough I guess. Hurricanes and flooding is killing people and ruin what’s on the surface of this planet. Poverty and the need of help is greater than ever in some countries. People are suffering after effects from wars….and some don’t even have fresh water. We are running out of the resources that this planet has been so generous with for millions of years, and instead of spending money on alternative ways of surviving they put it into a huge experiment that doesn’t even have anything to do with us.

The government here in England has spent £500 million on this science project. Do you have any clue how much £500 million is and how much good you could do with that? Maybe solve something above ground?

If it wasn’t for the sake of all innocent people (mankind in general really) who would also be terribly affected, it wouldn’t be more than fair if karma took over on Wednesday and began to wipe things out when they turn on that monster underground.
A bit too late to change priorities by then, but just maybe they would realize that the money spent would have been useful elsewhere.

And not even Dr Who could save them from that one :p