House hunting.

The worst time to look for a house is now.  I found one that was willing to take me, but I just could not afford the monthly rent.  The biggest problems I've been having is credit checks and inflated prices.  The prices here are so high because a landlord could rent a 2 bedroom apartment to 2 students for $500 a piece, so why should they take in any less than that.  It's been a thorn in my side this whole time.

Christmas in Magnetewan

There is just nothing like spending Christmas with someone you haven't seen in years.  In my case it was my grandmother.  She lives some 4 hours away up in Magnetewan Township, specifically in Ahmic Harbour, and I haven't been able to go and see her in about 8 or 9 years.  It was such a lovely time, with more food than there really should have been, and since we were up north for almost 3 days we had LOTS of leftovers.  I wouldn't have traded it for anything, although I wish I had taken more pictures.

Well stay frosty, and Happy Christmas!

Job Search and House Hunting

It's beginning to dawn on me that computer repair isn't the business it used to be.  People are more informed now, and it's easier to get the information.  Which means more people are fixing their own computers.  And then add to that the number of computer technicians in this city and now you've got problems finding a job.  I  may have to find a new career.  Maybe something without so much customer interaction.  Maybe I need to go to college too.  Well I don't have a lease anymore so I suppose that means I could go to another city for college.  That being said I would like to pursue a career in video games.  So since my beta testing days are now over what with public beta tests happening all the time, and now alpha tests are done by the artists and programmers that make the game, I'm going to have to find out what I'm good at.  3D modelling, texturing, or programming.

New motherboard

It's come to that time again, where I take apart my gaming computer and put new things in it.  I've been having some trouble with my computer restarting and my hard drive shutting off for a while now, and I've been wanting a new CPU/Motherboard for even longer.  This would be the first brand new motherboard I've installed in my own computer for the past 10 years.  Every one has been second hand or found in the trash since I started going out with C.  Now that we are getting married in August I'm pretty sure I will not be able to afford a new computer anytime soon.  Actually the computer I found in the trash was years ahead of the one I had been using, and someone had just thrown it out.

So here's what I bought: AMD FX-8120 8-core @ 3.1GHz and an MSi 970-g46 motherboard.  Now I'm quite aware that this setup will never be a hackintosh, and I'm ok with that.  I just spent 3 months fiddling with a hackintosh triple boot, and that's time enough to know I'd rather have a real apple computer than keep fiddling with it.  Now that I think about it, this started happening when I installed my new video card, but that can't be what's causing the problems since this power supply was driving 2 video cards in another computer only 1 year ago.

Well I'm going to run some tests with eXtreme Power Supply Calculator to see if i'm still off with my power calculations, but as I see I should only need a 450W supply for the mobo, CPU, RAM, vid card, hdd, and dvd drive I'm using.

Star Wars

Now I know that this is still a pretty well trending topic, what with the new star wars movie pencilled in for 2015.  Now I'm not sure how many of you have read the extended universe books, but there's a huge resource of material out there, but Disney has decided to not use any of it.  That means no Mara Jade or Winter, or any of the Organa-Solo children.  This also means that the extended universe could become innaccurate now that there's even more Star Wars canon coming out.  So yet even more ret-conned stuff is bound to happen, and still more fuel for the extended universe authors.  Seems like bad news and good news, but don't be too alarmed....  It's not like we WON'T go see this film.  It hasn't even been written and there is already almost a billion people who want to see it.

Life Update Time!!

So for now I am at my parent's house.  They have been gracious enough to let me back in, and in return I only have to move out soon.  Looking for a place to live is hard!  I forgot how hard it is.  It's especially hard because I am still going through credit counselling, so many places will not let me rent form them because I have "BAD CREDIT".  Which isn't completely true, what I have is "BAD DEBT", and credit counselling shows that I am trying to fix it.  But for some reason big corporations don't like to see that I'm trying to fix my debt and so I am not able to get into any of these big apartment buildings here in town.  I'm still trying though, and since I've lost my job I could try going through Niagara Regional Housing, which is a place for people with low income to get cheap houses.  My fiancee doesn't like the idea.  She thinks I don't need it even though I'm only getting $1000 from ODSP again.  I might have been able to do $800 on rent when I had the job, but now I'm sure I can't.  That severely limits the type of place I can afford.  One bedroom apartments and bachelor apartments are around $600 here.  2 bedroom apartments are around $800-$1000 and 3 bedrooms are way out of my price range at over $1200. At NRH I might be able to get a 3 bedroom townhouse for $400.  I've also been considering moving to another city.  I hear Niagara Falls, Thorold and Welland all have lower rent than St. Catharines, heck even Hamilton has lower rent.  What makes St. Catharines rent so high? Niagara College and Brock University.  Landlords here can rent a single room unfurnished for $400 or more, so why rent to a single renter when you can get so much more money for college students?

MOVING AGAIN!

Ok, so I got this new landlord, then a new job, and now I have to find a new home.  I had almost forgotten just how much of a discount my sister gave me.  Sorry i don't have more right now, but it's midnight and i've been at work all day.