From the Brain of Matty

bleeding (18.02.05 10:15 am)

We got our bedframe in. It's a groovy solid oak frame, with cast iron grilly bits. The problem is, it's solid oak. Every time the allen key slipped or a bit got dropped, it smashed, bashed, and ripped great gashes in my flesh. It's reassuring, in a very disturbing kind of way, to have to wipe off skin and blood after assembling something. I guess it makes it feel like you've accomplished something. I used to go through it every weekend as a kid, building stuff in the back yard. But now I have a sore thumb and my middle finer *stings* whenever you so much as breathe near it.

Oh, and because it's solid oak, we can't screw the slats down to the frame by hand. We're going to have to borrow Shell's father's drill this afternoon to do it.

The computer parts arrived! :o)
I assembled it all the day before yesterday, and then yesterday I stayed home (I was feeling a little under the weather in the morning), so I played around with it a bit. I can play Combat Flight Sim 2 at full resolution, full settings, in a dogfight with 14 planes zipping through the air exploding, and it doesn't slow down at all! I love it! Now I have to get all the other games I enjoy (like Flashpoint and Joint Ops), and I'll be set.

Now I have to do a bunch of stuff (but I can't remember what), then this arve I'm leaving early to get to Centrelink and drop in my form (so I get payed on Monday). I'm also leaving early to avoid the traffic. Our car radiator fan has stopped spinning, so when we're idling in traffic the engine gets very, very hot. The radiator boiled on Wedensday afternoon, and we had to sit on the side of the road for almost an hour waiting for it to cool down, and for the traffic to clear up a bit. We're reluctant to get it fixed, because.. well, here's the list of problems with the car at the moment:

radiator fan don't go
windscreen is spanned half way by cracks, vertically and horizontally
front passenger side tyre is flat, still running on the spare
gear box is worn
gear box mounting is so rusted, it's only not falling through onto the road because the drive train is holding it in place
there are rust holes in the doors, near the windscreen, and around the boot

That's about it for now. But fixing that will involve getting a new chassis, drive train and body.. which means all we'd be keeping would be the engine itself. Why bother? Might as well buy a new one, that gets better fuel economy and will have a warranty. But that's where we hit the catch: until I'm earning money other than government handouts, Shell's income is the only one that'll be used to calculate our credit.. Shell had a good idea, of asking her parents to add a small car loan to their mortgage, so let us pay that off, instead of us having the whole loan to face when we're not yet established (plus the mortgage has a lower interest rate -- and houses increase in value with age, cars don't, so extending the home loan is able to pay itself off in the long term while a car loan isn't), and we'd take care of all the rego and insurance and that, but I doubt that they'd go for it. Her parents have no real concept of financial planning, and would much rather keep repairing the car even though they've spent more on fixing it than they initially spent on buying it, and what they've spent since I've been around could have gone a long way towards buying a brand new car. (Which would come under a warranty, and after the initial capital expense would have much lower ongoing costs).

So I don't know what's going to happen. I'm almost tempted to drive it into a ditch so they have no choice.

Anyway, I better make it look like I'm doing some work. Ciao tutti!
Matty /<

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