More or Less the same

Well as the mornings brighten up almost enough to drive to work without headlights what's been happening?

Since we last spoke I took my last trip of the season down to my caravan just to make sure it was all OK. The site is only closed in February so we like to get down around the end of January to check that it's survived the worst ravages of winter and will be ready when the site opens again in March. Why do they shut at all? Well it's to do with tax. Basically it proves that it is a leisure home and not a main residence.

Car

Anyway I was beginning to wonder if there was some sort of mysterious fate trying to keep us away from the van. As you read in January's blog we had a mystery breakdown half way down when we went to go at New Year. This time I wasn't even at the end of my street when I drove over a nail and lost the back tyre. I put on the spare however and continued with the rest of the journey. Of course this meant no spare at a time when the roads have so many pot holes that they look like they've been bombed after Decembers heavy snow. In the last blog on tyres I used C Tyres at 73.50per tyre saving me about £40 per tyre on the next cheapest quote. This time I used Camskill. The tyre cost £60 and there was a £10 charge for fitting so just a further three pound saving. In order to keep track overall of savings since I started this quest though I've got to count it.

Saving on one new Tyre against the next cheapest at £113 is £43.00

Whilst we're on that as well I got the tyre fitter to take the one remaining rear tyre that hadn't been replaced so far and fit it to the spare using the spare on the rear wheel. That's another saving of at least £113.

Using spare tyre on rear wheel and old tyre on spare. Saving at least £113.00

I also discovered at the end of that weekend (when my car wouldn't start) that I had a dry cell in my battery. I love my car. It has so many ways to cost me I lose track. Now surprisingly here I'm not going to list a saving. I found plenty of decently priced batteries on the Internet but all had high delivery costs. It ended up that a shop just across the road had a battery around £10 dearer than the Internet price but it worked out the same without the delivery. In fact it worked out a lot better because the first battery was millimeters to big for the tray, although by measurement it shouldn't have been. so we went back and got it changed for another type. I also now know how to change a car battery. So I can change a wheel, a battery and a headlight. Mummy I'm a mechanic now don't you know.

Computer

OK so regular readers probably haven't been by as much as they used to be. Why? Well because I haven't been updating with any regularity so it gets a bit dull reading the old blog pages all the time.

Part of the reason for not updating has been that I'm lazy and living the quiet life hasn't given me a whole load of stuff to write about. Partly it's been because, much as I love my little net book and have had it hooked up to my 32 inch screen, I hate the blurry poor quality display I've been getting from my net book since the computer died. Now a few times I've looked online at bargain basement PC options and it has to be said that you could do reasonably OK for as little as £100 (although you're getting a low spec old system with no guarantees that it will survive any upgrades you do to it). The problem has been that I don't have £100. Also the reason that the net books graphics transfer so poorly to my flat screen is that I bought one that doesn't have a socket for the PC. You can only transfer your display via HD or via the old analogue video cable. HD is great but cheap PCs and laptops haven't got that far yet. Almost half the price of my dead PC went on a graphics card with it's own memory and an HD output and it was this that I hoped I could save and use in a newer cheap model.

Completely unconnected to my computer woes my brother came round to ask me if I could help him figure out how to use his new HTC phone (I'm so jealous, on first impressions it seemed so much better than the dreadful iPhone). Anyway I think he was just showing off because it seemed that he had the damned thing working perfectly. It's not called the desire for nothing. Thing is when he came round (my wife was away for a few days, more on that in a mo) and I was surfing amazon looking at cheap shit PCs and wondering whether they would handle my graphics card. Turns out that my brother has a broken PC of his own that he's consigned to a cupboard. I asked if I could have a go at creating a hybrid between mine and his.

First thing is that I took his, connected it to a projector as I don't have a standard monitor and... It worked straight away. I found myself staring at wallpaper of an F15 fighter launching from an aircraft carrier. After a few minutes wrestling with my conscience I texted him to say his PC worked and that he could have it back if he wanted. I seriously considered claiming dishonestly that it was some magic that I had performed and that he hadn't just given me a working PC. I'm glad I was honest though because he told me to do what I could with it and, if it worked it was mine.

So, I took a working PC and set about breaking it in the pursuit of better graphics, memory etc. I opened the box intent on installing my hard drive only to discover that it was a SATA model and all of my peripherals were ATA. Boo. I installed my graphics card and sound card. I hooked it up to the 32" TV and... It still worked. I spent most of that night and the following night installing and uninstalling programmes in order to truly make it my own. After several hours it looked and behaved not unlike my beloved dead PC. The wallpaper was mine, my photos, my music and a host of software that I like. Unfortunately it started to behave a bit too much like the old PC. After two days it crashed completely. Because the first thing to go was the sound I removed my sound card and reverted to the motherboards inbuilt sound. This seemed to work. The free virus checker that I've been using for nearly ten years, AVG, was using masses of system resource so I uninstalled it and tried another Avira. This made a big difference and the thing seemed to start to act like a stable PC. My old PC also turned out to have a card in it that seemed to extend the motherboards capacity for hard drives, DVDs etc. I reasoned that, although this was ATA technology, it was attached to a PCI slot so might work in a SATA PC. I now have a second drive in the PC and an external drive attached to a USB. It seems good. A little further research has shown that I can buy a SATA/ATA converter that may allow me to use my old DVD drive and even my old floppy drive. Yep I seem to have a working desktop PC again. This is great has almost certainly saved me about £100.

Building a PC out of two broken models. Total saving approx £100

Smoking

I mentioned that my wife was away for a week didn't I? Well I'm ashamed to admit that whilst she was gone I bought a packet of Cafe Creme cigars (small ten pack cigars) and smoked the lot. I thoroughly enjoyed them too. I'm ashamed to admit this when I'm also at a point where I've completed one full year as a non-smoker. It's even more shameful when I know that at least one follower of this blog has recently been re-reading the story of my triumph against smoking using Champix. In fairness though it was only for a week, it was only ten cigars and I haven't slipped any since or, surprisingly enough, even wanted to.

Finally can I also say a big hello to Jo.Kennedy who has joined the merry band of supporters on the site. I know a Jo Kennedy although that's actual Joe Kennedy so probably unconnected but a big welcome anyway.

So I think that brings you about up to date.

Hopefully more savings to come next month.

Till next time

T