Student Loans

I rang Notts County Council about my application for student loan. I'd read in the application form that it is not possible to apply for an Income-assesed loan after the deadline for receiving the loan application form, and that it is therefore necessary to apply for a non income-assessed loan. These are vastly refuced loans, though. This had me very worried. I rang them and they told me it was a misprint.

Now maybe I'm expecting a lot here, but surely after years and years of producing these forms they could have ironed out all the problems by now? For fuck's sake, I couldn't sleep last night I was so worried about that.

Grrrr.

Now to get the form sent off to my parents to fill out their section ASAP so that I can get my loan late. Woo. I really need to get organised.

Seems like everything is against me at the moment. Even the weather. This morning it was bone dry outside until I stepped out of the door and then it pissed it down relentlessly while I walked across Aberystwyth to where my colleague lives to get a lift to work. It worked out just as far to his fucking flat as it is to work, I could have walked to work in the same amount of time. Of course, as soon as I got to his flat it stopped raining.

There may be problems with my student loan. I've got to get in touch with the Student Loans Company.

I'm still waiting to hear from both the mechanic and the council.

I've got paperwork coming out of my ears, and I don't understand why in this day and age they can't retrieve my details from some centrally maintained resource or something. Especially the student loans company. I have to fill out exactly the same piece of paperwork every year. Why can't they just remember my details from one year to the next? Is it really that hard to enter my details onto a database and not delete them? So they need to confirm whether I want to take my loan each year...so send me a letter asking me, or ring me, or something... *sigh*

Damage Report

I just spoke to the mechanic and he doesn't seem too purturbed by the car. He didn't say "It's a write-off" or "it's going to be expensive" while sucking air through his teeth or anything, so it doesn't sound too bad. He's looking into radiator prices for the car and will be getting back to me when he's got a price. The headlamp is knackered but he can make that safe so that I can get a second-hand one for him to fit before it needs its MOT or anything. He's not bothering with the dent in the bonnet as he doesn't deal with bodywork and because I can't afford it. The side-panel is buckled slightly, but he reckons he can winch that back to how it's supposed to be. It'll look a bit bent, but the car's a device for transporting me from A to B, it's not there to look pretty.

The exhaust is "bluing", which might indicate a problem. He's going to look at that. It might be nothing, but it could be a problem, we've yet to see.

He's unsure about the wheel being out of alignment. He can't say anything for sure until he's looked at the tracking etc. which he delegates to another garage, so we shall see. He thinks it's probably just the tracking, but it could very well be that the lower arm is bent, which will be quite expensive.

Still, all in all, a positive call.

I rang the council who are responsible for the road-sign I flattened this morning. They're going to get back to me with a price once they've had a look at it. I'm not looking forward to hearing about that.

Yes, I Crashed My Car...

Most of you will likely have heard by now that on Friday I crashed my car. But then a few of you won't. It happened while driving down to see Liz. I'd been following some great big HGV lorry doing 40 Mph for quite some time and had been waiting for an opportunity to overtake. Having driven the route so many times I have become very familiar with the roads and know all the safe places to overtake. We passed several such overtaking points without a chance to overtake as there was oncoming traffic.

Eventually we grew closer to one of the best overtaking points on that particular stretch of road. If you're ready for it you can drop down into a lower gear to give the car a chance to get its speed up quickly. Because of the angle of the road you can see for a long way, and it is downhill meaning that speed can be obtained quickly; which is essential with my car. I was ready for the overtake, we reached the point where it is possible to see if the road is clear and I pulled out. The car moved alongside the HGV, but I didn't seem to be making much progress past the lorry. Not good. At the time I was confused by this, but I've since come to realise that the only plausible reason was that the lorry was speding up too.

So there I was stuck on the wrong side of the road. By this point I was closer to the front of the lorry than the back, so I had no choice but to continue. Suddenly a car came around the corner that we were now approaching and I was faced with a split-second decision:

1. Carry on and hope I could get past in time, but risk a possibly fatal head on collision, or,

2. Slam the brakes on and try and minimise the amount of damage that was inevitably going to occur.

I chose the second option. My plan at the time was that if I could drop my speed quickly enough I could have slipped behind the lorry and all would have been okay. It didn't work that way.

The wheels locked up. Later I would discover that the small amount of rain that had fallen just before I got to that location was the first they had had for some time, and that the road was therefore like ice. I lifted off the brakes as much as I dared but the car kept skidding: it really was out of control. The slope of the hill won't have been helping. Now I was faced with a new split-second decision to make:

1. Carry on skidding out of control straight into the front of the on-coming car, risking injuries, extensive damage to two cars, a very angry insurance company and messing up someone else's weekend other than my own, or,

2. Do whatever it takes to get the car under control and swerve it off the road.

Again I took the second option. I stopped braking altogether to regain control of the car, swerved it off the road and then started braking while travelling along the verge. Then I saw the post and knew I was going to hit it. Somewhere deep down I knew that hitting it was not going to be a good thing.

Sure enough I hit the post and the car eventually came to a stop on top of the road sign that I had just flattened. It took me a moment to cut the engine; I couldn't think. I'd gone into some kind of instinctive defensive state of mind, freezing me. Eventually I remembered how to cut the engine. I'm not sure what made me do it, but I was later very glad of it.

When I got out of the car by way of the passenger side, as the driver's side was firmly stuck in the hedge, I saw that the engine coolant was gushing from the front of the car. Suddenly I felt relieved I'd cut the engine so quickly. That wasn't my first port of call though. First things first: I ran over to the car I had just nearly hit where the two female occupants were just getting out. They were okay. The guy in the car behind them had pulled over, he was fine. The HGV driver stopped further down the road - he was certainly fine, what with being in a 6 tonne lorry.

Safe in the knowledge that everyone was fine I took a look at the front of the car. It was a mess. I was shaking like a leaf, I felt weak, dizzy, sick... I looked at my hands. All the colour was gone from me, leaving me a sickly shade of yellow and they were shaking violently.

It wasn't helped by the HGV driver crossing the road. He walked over and went ballistic as if I'd just nearly mowed him down in the street or something. If anyone had right to be angry it was the two girls in the other car, but they had remained perfectly calm and were more concerned whether I was okay than anything else. "You bloody idiot! You could have killed someone. You kids, tearing around the countryside, overtaking when it's not clear-"

"It was clear when I pulled out" I said in a calm flat voice. If I'd not been so confused and disoriented I'd have been angry, but I wasn't able to think at all.

"How do you know it was clear? You couldn't even see!" I stayed quiet. I couldn't defend myself as my mind was too pumped full of adrenaline. If I'd had my wits about me I'd have explained that I could see, that it was clear, that he had not helped the matter by accelerating, and I would have asked how he knew what I could and couldn't see. But I didn't. I just carried on counting my shoe-laces. Satisfied that he'd yelled enough he eventually got back in his lorry and drove off. Leaving the scene of an accident, eh? That's not illegal or anything. Sanctimonious bastard. I'd admitted it was my fault. What more did he want?

Everything was confusing at this point. I wasn't sure what to do. I had it in my mind that I needed to ring my insurance company, but that wasn't the case as I am insured only for 3rd parties, fire and theft. So who did I ring? Did we need to exchange details? How could I get the car out of there? Was I allowed to move the car?

The girls in the car I had nearly hit didn't seem to know what to do either. The bloke in the car behind them told us we needed to contact the police, so the girls rang as they had a signal on their phone. While we waited for the police I used their phone to ring Liz and then we stood in the rain and waited.

It took me a while to notice, but I was was suddenly aware that the other car had a giant red bull can mounted on top of it. How this had escaped me for so long I do not know. I asked the girls why it was there.

"We work for Red Bull"

"Oh. What do you do?"

"We energise."

O...kay... It turns out they drive around the country and give Red Bull to people who look tired. Yes they did offer me some, and no I didn't take it as I was on edge enough as it was. I could have used some water though, I was dying of thirst by this point.

After 15 minutes of being frozen we all got back in our respective cars to wait. I sat in the passenger seat of my car, which was an odd experience.

When the police eventually arrived I admitted resonsibility. The policewoman asked the two girls if they wanted to take it to court. Part of me thought "Why would they take me to court? I didn't hit them!" but another part of me paniced and my stomach seemed to tie itself into an intricate knot. It unravelled with a snap again when the girls said without hesitation "NO!"

The policewoman took the girls' details, and then told them they could all leave. I got in the police car and she took my details, my car's details, and told me I had to take all my documents down to the police station in Aberystwyth for examination within the next 7 days. I asked what happens next.

Eventually I was given the phone number for a local garage who could tow my car. It cost me £130 to get it towed back to Aber. If I'd signed up for the RAC the week before when some woman randomly tried to get me to sign up then I could have saved £90. Still, everything is always much simpler in hind-sight.

We had to wait a while for the tow-truck to arrive and the policewoman waited too. We were talking about all-sorts of stuff to pass the time, and it turned out she was into diving. This opened up the discussion because, of course, Liz is into diving.

The pickup driver was friendly too. He winched the car out of the hedge and then the damage was a little easier to see. The bumper had a crack in it and was slightly detached, the driver's side light was pushed inwards, and the bonnet was dented. One wheel was out of alignment. Everyone up until this point had been telling me the car was a write-off. This hadn't even occurred to me, but in my confused state I thought that their opinion was more likely to be correct than my own. The pickup driver didn't say it, but he didn't seem optimistic. Once the car was off the road sign I picked it up to see what it was: It was a fucking Speed Cameras sign. Of all the things to hit...

We stopped off a little way down the road so that I could go to the loo. The van was empty when I got back. I found the driver looking at the car. He'd changed his mind about the damage. It didn't seem too bad after-all.

On the way back we talked about all kinds of stuff. I was really pleased to see that he pulled over every now and again to let the cars behind us pass. If only the HGV driver had done the same. We were discussing bad drivers in general. We both seemed to have the same pet-hates with regard to bad drivers on the road. Although it was a little strange talking to him as he sounded like Kryten from Red Dwarf crossed with Mrs Doubtfire. He even slapped his knee at one point. I didn't realise people actually did that, I thought that was just a movie cliche.

Anyway the car is at th garage in Clarach and I'm waiting to hear from the mechanic as to just how much it's going to cost, or if indeed it is going to be repairable. I've got to go to the police station some time this week with my insurance details etc - which I can't find. I may have to get another cover note sent to me. I'll also likely have to pay for the sign I knocked down. I'm going to be very, very skint. But, and this is the important bit, I didn't hurt anyone, and I only fucked my own car up.

Friday night I did not sleep well. It took me a long time to fall asleep, and when I did get to sleep I kept having dreams about all the things that inexplicably terrify me. I'm not going to go into them because they're silly and embarassing and inexplicable. During the night I woke up several times with my heart racing, and then couldn't sleep again for hours on end. It took me until half way through Saturday to stop shaking entirely. I went out for some drinks with Tom to try and calm down, which helped a lot. I slept well last night, but I'm still exhausted.

Now I am freezing cold, sitting outside B23 (because I don't have a library card and so can't get in) having just typed the longest blog ever. I'm going home to drink hot chocolate and try and warm up. Oh, and now it's started raining. Great.

Babbie Spiddies!

Spiddy the Spider Plant appears to also be producing some spiderettes! For all those of you who have no idea what a spiderette is, it's a baby spider plant that grows from an off-shoot of the plant.

It's miserable weather outside today. Oh and a completely random aside, Aberystwyth's Central server seems to have gone mental and so I can't log in as a student. Bah.

I've decided to get the Aberystwyth Robocode Tournament running again and so I'm building a new bot that will, all being well, clear up quite nicely when I put it into the arena. At the moment it's not great, but it's going to be good when it's finished. I've had to dredge up all kinds of maths from the depths of my memory in order to implement various features into the bot, some of which I've not even thought about since GCSE maths. It's good fun. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy writing Java, actually.

Now I'm off home to get ready to go to Newbury again. I've got a headache. How annoying. Liz reckons she'll be online this weekend with her wireless broadband access so the laptop shall be taking a trip to Newbury with me for much IRC'ing from different rooms and toilet-blogging. Nah, just kidding. Seriously. Kidding. Can't you take a joke? Jeeze.

Spiddy The Spider Plant

My Spider Plant that I have at work is doing very nicely. It was moved into my office earlier this year as the secretary was overly worried that the terrible radiation and ionisation caused by a running computer would microwave our brains, and she seemed to think that putting a plant in our room would prevent this from happening. I wasn't too bothered, it was nice to have some green in the room. I've been watering it since I got it and it's been looking pretty healthy and happy, but the other day I noticed it had grown two stems that were different to the other leaves.

A little research suggested it was flowering. The stems in question have grown huge now - one of them stretches almost all the way across the top of my monitor. Plus another two have grown. Today the first flowers have even appeared above my monitor. The only question now is, how the hell am I going to take this thing home with me when I leave? It's MASSIVE!

Dreaming Part II

I just remembered another dream I had last night where I was half way through shaving when I quite suddenly woke up for some reason. While I was lying awake in bed I remember having this odd sensation that half of my face was shaved and the other half wasn't. In the end I had to run my hand across my face to see. Sure enough my face was just as stubbly as it was when I went to bed. Funny how dreams can mess with your head.

I'm procrastinating again as I can't be bothered with work. At the moment I'm checking a collection of pages that are all extremely similar to make sure they are consistent, which is proving a very laborious task and quite difficult as it is so easy to lose track of where you are... Eurgh, my poor head.

We had thunder and lightning earlier. The power even went off for a split second sending my colleague's machine into a reboot. Mine withstood it though. Good computer, have a biscuit.

I've got no idea what I'm talking about any more.

Am I Only Dreaming?

What a lovely nightmare I had last night. You may recall I recently dreamt that my laptop was stolen Continuing in that trend my brain decided it was time for another scare, and so last night I had a dream that my car was stolen. Once again it was fucking scary. However, this morning when I had time to reflect on the dream from my usual cynical stand-point I realised it was actually quite hilarious. Why?

The car was found again. It was found just down the road from where it had been nicked, the door was open as if whoever had stolen it had just jumped out and legged it. There was nothing missing from it, no damage to it... Clearly whoever nicked it realised their mistake half way down the road and just dumped it.

My "Preparing For Emergencies" booklet arrived in the post this morning. I now know approximately nothing I didn't already know about what to do in an emergency. Good to see the tax-payers' money is being used so wisely.

Now for the first cup of tea of the day. Hurrah!

Busy busy busy...

Busy day today. My boss is nit-picking and disputing decisions that were made 6 months ago. Great. On top of that, a simple job has turned into a mammoth task. Arse.

Got an email from someone today to my staff account regarding his daughter. I've removed her full name and just included her initials:

It took me a while to realise what he was getting at until I suddenly realised that we have the same initials. He must have seen my email address (complete with my initials) on the DIS website and so thought he'd email me to tell me all about it. I replied:

I felt I had to reply, because as a member of staff it is sort of to be expected. He replied very quickly with this:

I told one of my colleagues and he really cracked me up with this impersonation of the sender talking to his daughter:

"I emailed this bloke on the Internet about you and, well, the long and short of it is, he wishes you good luck with your course."

Sexy Boy

This blog comes to you live from RiceyNet(TM). Ricey has a very similar laptop to me, which is somewhat confusing. Anyway, on with the important news:

I saw Air last night. They were great. We made sure we were there half an hour before they started playing to ensure we had a good place. We were right at the front, and right in front of them. I'm not sure what to write...they were fuckin' great, m'kay?

Yesterday started a little strangely though. I woke up feeling fine, if a little thirsty from the drinking on Saturday evening. However when I stood up all was quite clearly not fine. I was extremely dizzy and it took me a while to reach a state where I could just stand up. This lasted until around 3pm. I'm still not sure what caused it, originally I thought it might be dehydration but drinking masses of water didn't seem to make any difference. It couldn't have been a hangover as I'd not drank much the day before, and I didn't have any other hangover symptoms. Just diziness. Who knows.

Spaced

I have been initiated in the ways of Spaced. Utterly splendid comedy, although I think I still prefer Black Books although that said they're very different, and not particularly comparable.

Anyway, I've got to get ready for my nightmare 4 hour journey. *groan* Damn I'm hungry.