A weekly trip which me and my friends indulge in now that we actually have a way of getting around, is a trip to Macdonalds on a Monday. Naturally 4 lads and fast food go together incredibly well, and this has formed a sort of tradition within our friednship group to a point where occassionally we have to take 2 or 3 cars.
Upon our visit today to said fast food resturant, we discovered that MacDonalds Monopoly is back on. We spent a great amount of time ripping the little stickers and sticking them on our now numerous monopoly boards. In doing this, we decided we would have a kind of monopoly syndicate between the 4 of us.
The other people in their must have thought we were on day release from the lunatic asylum. We went mental looking at all the prizes and making sure all of the stickers were stuck on, and claiming our macdonalds instant prizes of apple pies and free cokes. It was brilliant.
We decided between us that we would take the prizes, and split them between the 4 of us. now this will be quite difficult with the x-box and the 3D TV, but I presume we will work a way round it!
This lead me to think though, what would we do with a quarter of £50K? It is quite a lot of money when you think about it. I mean 12.5K could buy a nice litltle car and pay for the insurance for a year. It could be the deposit on a house. It could be so many things. Which lead me on to think about what you would do with more. Another syndicate that some of the lads indulg in is a lottery syndicate and thinking towards tomorrow's Jackpot of £94 million, I have started thinking what I would do with that money.
It is such a huge sum you just wouldn't know where to start. I mean I am sure you could quite confortably retire (or just not work in my case) and live a very confortable life in a big house, nce cars etc. But would you really want to? The attention you would get for having so much money would be outrageous. I went to the new St. Georges Park England training ground the other day to play for a gig that was happening in one of the function rooms. It was nothing big or anything, but as you walked through even the lobby of the hotel, you could have fitted about 3 of my houses just into the reception desk area.
Not just the size, the finish on it was really posh. the sort of suited and booted dress code. and I am not sure if I would want to live like that. It has really highlighted the kind of different life people talk about when they say "How the other half live." There is being confortable and there is being loaded. I don't know if I would ever want to cross that bridge. And I don't really think anyone does. Wealth to me isn't happiness, because you can be incredibly rich and still have no family, friends or those kind of social interactions which ake us human and ultimately fill us with the greatest happiness.
And for that reason, I hope none of my friends ever win the lottery. Not because I would be jealous, but because it would ruin them. People shouldn't dream of material wealth, they should dream of wealth in friendship and support from their friends and family. That is where real happiness is.
Monday, 25 March 2013
Sunday, 24 March 2013
My Favourite Cake List
As a member of the male species I am mainly driven by food. If there is one thing which I going to make me get of my lazy arse it is food. And for me the best motivation food is cake. Naturally I have a lot of cake eating experience, this I cannot deny, I have given too much away by my slightly rotund tummy...
My cake expertise goes from the very most basic of Victoria sponges, classic school canteen pear or apple sponges, to the more exotic flavours of the lime and coconut cake (just no), raspberry and white chocolate cake (at first I thought the white chocolate chunks were lumps of butter that hadn't mixed in properly. Noob) alongside many other weird combinations of ingredients.
The cake that I would always go for though is by far a lemon drizzle cake. I know this is not always the most popular choice but it really appeals to me. I sometimes find that chocolate cakes or Victoria Sponges with lots of butter icing are far far too rich. I think it is the acid in the lemon that breaks up that buttery richness and creates a really really nice cake. Also, the tradition way to serve a lemon drizzle cake is in only 1 teir, as apposed to the normal 2 on a sponge cake, thus making it much easier to eat without having to start messing about cutting it up with a fork, and also you get the full range of cake and icing all the way through, as apposed to having to eat you cake in 3 stages: The sponge, the jam and cream in the middle and then the icing. So the spread of taste is much more evenly distributed.
So those 2 things, the refreshing tang of the lemons, and the sponge: icing distribution ratio, make a lemon drizzle is the recipe, in my opinion, to the perfect cake.
For more ways to get to a man's heart, follow me on twitter: @peachy146
Can Somebody Turn The Snow Off?
Waking up this morning and seeing yet more snow did not put me in a great mood. In England, snow is not a regularity and the infrastructure of the country can just not handle it. So when there is so much as a sprinkling of snow, the whole country grinds to a halt. Buses stop running, planes stop flying, motorways come to standstill. and it is so frustrating. It dominates the headlines of the news and media, so all we ever here about when it snows is that it is snowing, and it is causing so much disruption. Which is the last thing I want to here about when I can see out of my window that it is indeed snowing.
Although it is starting to slow up now, it is still infuriating. The fact I drive a 45 year old rear wheel drive 1.1 litre car is also annoying. I basically can't drive it on grass, let alone when the weather is like this. I can't even get off the drive.
So in essence: It is not right for there to be this amount of snow in March. I mean I have been camping at Easter and woke up with a few flakes of snow on my tent, but not a foot in some part of the country after the first day of spring. This is my plea to the weather maker: Will you please just turn the snow off. Thank you.
Follow me on Twitter: @peachy146
Although it is starting to slow up now, it is still infuriating. The fact I drive a 45 year old rear wheel drive 1.1 litre car is also annoying. I basically can't drive it on grass, let alone when the weather is like this. I can't even get off the drive.
So in essence: It is not right for there to be this amount of snow in March. I mean I have been camping at Easter and woke up with a few flakes of snow on my tent, but not a foot in some part of the country after the first day of spring. This is my plea to the weather maker: Will you please just turn the snow off. Thank you.
Follow me on Twitter: @peachy146
Saturday, 23 March 2013
Highlights Of The Day 23/03/2013
As the same as pretty much everyone in the country, I woke up this morning to a complete white over. Now snow is great, don't get me wrong. But not at the end of March. The first day of spring was technically 2 days ago and yet still, I can see the reflection of snow falling in the reflection of my computer screen.
I was out the house at 5.30 this morning and I could just tell from the minute I walked out the door that today was not going to be a good day. When I arrived at the paper shop, fully expecting the papers to be late, I set about drying off all the parcels of supplements which had gotten damp from the leaking roof under the stairs, and made them ready for when the papers finally arrived. I went and stood out in the shop and had a chat with the owner and a few customers about who is dead, who is nearly dead, who is sleeping with who, that kind of thing that goes on at 6 'o' clock on a Saturday morning.
Still by 7 the papers hadn't arrived. And when they finally did arrive and I got out on my paper round, trying to pull my trolley out was a nightmare! The wheels soon turned to snowballs and I was incredibly frustrated when I got back to the shop.
When I got in, I made a round of coffees, and the owner presented me with a bundle of letters. Now to get you up to date, the newsagents in which I work is closing down in 2 weeks. It is being bought out by a well known large supermarket chain, as an expansion to an already existing shop next door. This is something which has a mixed reception among customers and staff alike. The main worry amongst staff was that untill this morning, we hadn't found out anything about being transferred as employees next door (Under Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations, of which I have become an expert on in the last few weeks) and so are getting understandably anxious. Not that this becomes too much of an issue for me, with my livelihood not depending on my job, but for some of the other staff this is an altogether more serious issue.
But nonetheless, I have been presented with a Payroll Form, a form to check I am not an asylum Seeker (which I am not, just for the record) and a sheet to fill in about what size uniform I need. So from that I can only assume they are taking me on as an employee, but I have still not had anybody actually tell me that for certain. Nevertheless, it is steps in the right direction.
In a lot of ways I will miss working in the newsagents where I currently work. The manager and his wife run the business on a very flexible basis. If there is ever any issue about getting to work, or you need time off for something they are more than accommodating. The interactions with other staff and the boss himself is very enjoyable and it will be missed by all. Not only that, but I have felt like I have had a very big part to play in the delivery of the newspapers in the village, holding a paper round for over 5 years now, and progressing up the ranks to take on more and more of the responsibility. Upon the takeover, the newspaper deliveries will stop being sent out from the shop and it will be somebody else's responsibility to do it, from his own house. And those responsibilities will be lost.
I have always said to myself I want to feel as if I am actually doing something productive in a job, not just standing at a till and scanning peoples loaves of bread. However, the money I have earned has lead me to maintain, insure and run my pride Morris Minor Traveller, and many other things along the way, all of which I am grateful for, because they are things which I wouldn't have had if I hadn't have had a part time job.
Also there is an added bonus of the possibility of a transfer to a store near where I end up at uni, which will definitely be very useful and would be something I didn't get if I was still working where I do currently.
I think the paper shop is a hub of the village and will be sorely missed by everyone, but it is something which has got to happen. Change happens, and seeing as that paper shop has stood for 50 years under the same name and management, and by the age of the tills and fittings, probably the same technology, so it is well overdue it's time for change. It will just be a great shame. I might do a sit-in, and use the money I have stashed away from my paper rounds to make a better bid that the supermarket chain and rename it as "Tom Peach Newsagents." Somehow I don't think £16 a week will quite be enough to pay a mortgage even if I could get one.
Friday, 22 March 2013
Oh Dear Cyprus
Obviously as a paper boy I manage to keep up to date with current affairs, one of those being the issue with the Cypriot banks. Just to fill you in, Angela Merkel has offered Cyrus a few billion so long as The Cyriot government take 6.75% out of everybody's bank accounts. And to top it all, the guy in charge of all of this is called Panicos.
On many levels this is wrong. And I have got quite angry and very involved in it. Not only are they taking money out of people's bank accounts, but they have closed all the banks so that people can't withdraw their money and gide underneath their matress.
To me it strikes to be just as bad if not worse, as 3rd world countries being denied aid and support where it is needs because there is a load of african prime ministers driving about in Rolls Royces with fancy palaces. But it is worse because ths is happenng in the Eurozone, our own continent is robbing innocent people of their money. And all because of the overuling German economy.
I can understand the uproar. People are being told they can't access their money and the government are going to pinch some of it while they can't even touch it. And not only that but people who have moved out their from other countries, and not only that but people serving for British forces have their money seized as well.
I think this is just another prime example of how big powers such as Germany bully little and vulnerable countries in the EU. And I think it is a very good reason for the UK to have out.
On many levels this is wrong. And I have got quite angry and very involved in it. Not only are they taking money out of people's bank accounts, but they have closed all the banks so that people can't withdraw their money and gide underneath their matress.
To me it strikes to be just as bad if not worse, as 3rd world countries being denied aid and support where it is needs because there is a load of african prime ministers driving about in Rolls Royces with fancy palaces. But it is worse because ths is happenng in the Eurozone, our own continent is robbing innocent people of their money. And all because of the overuling German economy.
I can understand the uproar. People are being told they can't access their money and the government are going to pinch some of it while they can't even touch it. And not only that but people who have moved out their from other countries, and not only that but people serving for British forces have their money seized as well.
I think this is just another prime example of how big powers such as Germany bully little and vulnerable countries in the EU. And I think it is a very good reason for the UK to have out.
Spam Emails
Recently I have had a spate of spam email sent from my account. And this has lead me to get very angry about it. So much I have decided I need to write a blog about it. I just want to explain to everyone about them and ho best to avoid them.
Basically spam emails work on athe prinicipal that they will spread in a chain reaction. People we send them, people will click on the links, which will then make emails send from their accounts and it will spread like so. The way the virus is able to use your acount to send emails is because upon clicking on a link or sometimes even just viewing the email it is able to track your email address and password and automatically log into your account with the use of a 'bot.' These viruses are called botnets because they spread in this automatic way.
So here is the best thing to do if you find out you are sending these emails. Change your password. The botnet relies on being able to access your account using the login details and as soon as you change them then you can stop it getting in. I would suggest changing your email password reguarly anyway. I doesn't have to be anything vastly complicated or unfathomable because the virus tracks what you type in, so it will be able to get it no matterhow complicated it is.
There are also things you should do to prevent these things happening to you. Don't open any emails unless you know what they are about, and do not ever click on any links unless you are 100% sure what they are for. If you do get a dodgy link and want to investigate, don't be tempted as it will most likely be a virus. Also make sure you let the person who has sent the email know that you sent it. They will never find out unless someone tells them they are sending them because they don't appear in any folders. The way I first came to know about it was because I got 10 failure notices that came through and a load of out of office replies, but a few people also sent me an email just to let me know I was sending out spam.
There has been a similar virus on twitter, being able to hack twitter accounts. And the same ideas apply here. Be careful with what you click on because you can never tell whether it is safe or not.
Follow me on twitter (but don't send me spam): @peachy146
Basically spam emails work on athe prinicipal that they will spread in a chain reaction. People we send them, people will click on the links, which will then make emails send from their accounts and it will spread like so. The way the virus is able to use your acount to send emails is because upon clicking on a link or sometimes even just viewing the email it is able to track your email address and password and automatically log into your account with the use of a 'bot.' These viruses are called botnets because they spread in this automatic way.
So here is the best thing to do if you find out you are sending these emails. Change your password. The botnet relies on being able to access your account using the login details and as soon as you change them then you can stop it getting in. I would suggest changing your email password reguarly anyway. I doesn't have to be anything vastly complicated or unfathomable because the virus tracks what you type in, so it will be able to get it no matterhow complicated it is.
There are also things you should do to prevent these things happening to you. Don't open any emails unless you know what they are about, and do not ever click on any links unless you are 100% sure what they are for. If you do get a dodgy link and want to investigate, don't be tempted as it will most likely be a virus. Also make sure you let the person who has sent the email know that you sent it. They will never find out unless someone tells them they are sending them because they don't appear in any folders. The way I first came to know about it was because I got 10 failure notices that came through and a load of out of office replies, but a few people also sent me an email just to let me know I was sending out spam.
There has been a similar virus on twitter, being able to hack twitter accounts. And the same ideas apply here. Be careful with what you click on because you can never tell whether it is safe or not.
Follow me on twitter (but don't send me spam): @peachy146
Wednesday, 20 March 2013
A Day In My Life 20/03/2013
Wednesday's really are a bore. Not only does it start with an early morning meeting at 8.15, but it then proceeds to further maths, more further maths and music theory. And of course today would be the day coming back after missing 2 lessons of further maths that my teacher decides to as me whether or not I copied my friend's homework. How do you say, "Well sir, yes I did" in the best possible way to a retired headteacher? "Oh and by the way Tom, I am not sure about the commitment you are showing to this subject." Yet another tricky question. How to explain politely a sickness virus.
So after my little run in I was asked by my welsh music teacher to go and fetch a drum kit from the church in the village in which the school is situated. As you do. And one thing I know is you can't say no to a welsh person. So I grab my ginger friend and off we went in Lucy, my 1968 morris minor. Plenty more to come about Lucy in the future.
The next challenge of the day was fitting a drum kit into the back of a morris minor traveller. For those who don't know, my car is basically an old fashioned Hurse. But for dwarfs. So after retrieving said drum kit from the vestry of this very nice church we jammed it all in the boot. Then came the shopping. So my friend had asked casually in the 6th form common room if anyone wanted anything from the shop. It came out to be a list on A4 paper which we needed a basket for and in the end came to the grand sum of £17.65. For a bunch of snacks for teenagers. The manager of the local supermarket must have been rubbing his hands together.
My friend made an outstanding job of settling everyone's bills though with a colour co-ordinated highlighting system on the receipt to show who had had what. He really did not hold back with making sure everyone had paid up either! It is quite difficult shopping for other people though. Someone asked us, "Can you get me something that is reduced?" To which we responded by buying them a broken Easter egg. Well what do you expect when you send 2 lads shopping in a morris minor?
With drum it safely retrieved from the God's Holy House and the hungry 6th form room fed and watered, it was time for my lunch time to be filled with yet again more monotonous drivel about matrices and second order differential equations and implicit differentiation. And if that wasn't bad enough, how about a musical history lesson of composers from the 20th Century. And trust me, there were some awful composers in the 20th Century!
Finally home, relaxing with a cuppa and enjoying a quiet evening in... Not. Working and then teaching some poor kid the clarinet. But on the bright side, one of my friends has got a part time job working at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, as in the one that does all the Shakespeare plays. I mean that beats cycling round the village delivering people's newspapers or serving up fish a chips to a load of builders!
Follow me on twitter: @peachy146
So after my little run in I was asked by my welsh music teacher to go and fetch a drum kit from the church in the village in which the school is situated. As you do. And one thing I know is you can't say no to a welsh person. So I grab my ginger friend and off we went in Lucy, my 1968 morris minor. Plenty more to come about Lucy in the future.
The next challenge of the day was fitting a drum kit into the back of a morris minor traveller. For those who don't know, my car is basically an old fashioned Hurse. But for dwarfs. So after retrieving said drum kit from the vestry of this very nice church we jammed it all in the boot. Then came the shopping. So my friend had asked casually in the 6th form common room if anyone wanted anything from the shop. It came out to be a list on A4 paper which we needed a basket for and in the end came to the grand sum of £17.65. For a bunch of snacks for teenagers. The manager of the local supermarket must have been rubbing his hands together.
My friend made an outstanding job of settling everyone's bills though with a colour co-ordinated highlighting system on the receipt to show who had had what. He really did not hold back with making sure everyone had paid up either! It is quite difficult shopping for other people though. Someone asked us, "Can you get me something that is reduced?" To which we responded by buying them a broken Easter egg. Well what do you expect when you send 2 lads shopping in a morris minor?
With drum it safely retrieved from the God's Holy House and the hungry 6th form room fed and watered, it was time for my lunch time to be filled with yet again more monotonous drivel about matrices and second order differential equations and implicit differentiation. And if that wasn't bad enough, how about a musical history lesson of composers from the 20th Century. And trust me, there were some awful composers in the 20th Century!
Finally home, relaxing with a cuppa and enjoying a quiet evening in... Not. Working and then teaching some poor kid the clarinet. But on the bright side, one of my friends has got a part time job working at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, as in the one that does all the Shakespeare plays. I mean that beats cycling round the village delivering people's newspapers or serving up fish a chips to a load of builders!
Follow me on twitter: @peachy146
Monday, 18 March 2013
Recently I've Been...
So me and my friend enjoy watching a certain YouTube gaming channel by the name of YogsCast. Some of you may have heard of them. Well if you haven't then you should have.
Every now and again we have a bit of a chat about it and get all too excited. This instance happened to be on a walk down to the local shop to get a drink. As it usually is to be honest with you. We were chatting and it inspired me to write a post about it. I have to say it is one of my real enjoyments, guiltily, to play Minecraft A little 8 bit game, with no goals apart from to dig up dirt and other resources and build stuff out of it. It's that simple. But because it is that simple the possibilities are endless.
Now I am a mega-fan of the whole gaining wealth and dreaming about money, as you may have found out from my other blog: http://tomstopmoneytips.blogspot.co.uk/. Subsequently these kind of games that involve building your riches really appeal to me. So Minecraft is a big tick. Now one of the other games which they have just started playing based on it's latest release is Sim City.
Now this game is amazing. In my personal opinion, I may go as far as to say the best game in the world! It just appeals to me so much. Now upon telling this to my other friend, not the one I went to the shop with, but a different one, he said the only the aliens and zombies are good in SimCity. That's to say he is no longer my friend (joking of course).
I disagree with that strongly. I don't really know what it is about it that I enjoy so much. I think it is the excitement of building such great wealth and power maybe? I really do feel the thrill as you start to imagine all the things you can do and build and buy and go absolutely mental with it.
That kind of thing really fires me up I suppose. Like the idea of a growing business empire. So there I have said it. I have told the internet. I am a materialist pig.
Apart from it's not the thought of what I could spend the money on. The lottery really doesn't fuss me. You could put £1 million in front of me and tell me to go and by myself I really nice house and car. Obviously I would take it and do it, but it would be nowhere near as exciting as if you said here is £1 million pounds. Go and turn it into 10. I think it is the creativity and thought which you have to put into little entrepreneurial things that are really exciting. It's almost as if it is the challenge of making money that is what is exciting.
Every now and again we have a bit of a chat about it and get all too excited. This instance happened to be on a walk down to the local shop to get a drink. As it usually is to be honest with you. We were chatting and it inspired me to write a post about it. I have to say it is one of my real enjoyments, guiltily, to play Minecraft A little 8 bit game, with no goals apart from to dig up dirt and other resources and build stuff out of it. It's that simple. But because it is that simple the possibilities are endless.
Now I am a mega-fan of the whole gaining wealth and dreaming about money, as you may have found out from my other blog: http://tomstopmoneytips.blogspot.co.uk/. Subsequently these kind of games that involve building your riches really appeal to me. So Minecraft is a big tick. Now one of the other games which they have just started playing based on it's latest release is Sim City.
Now this game is amazing. In my personal opinion, I may go as far as to say the best game in the world! It just appeals to me so much. Now upon telling this to my other friend, not the one I went to the shop with, but a different one, he said the only the aliens and zombies are good in SimCity. That's to say he is no longer my friend (joking of course).
I disagree with that strongly. I don't really know what it is about it that I enjoy so much. I think it is the excitement of building such great wealth and power maybe? I really do feel the thrill as you start to imagine all the things you can do and build and buy and go absolutely mental with it.
That kind of thing really fires me up I suppose. Like the idea of a growing business empire. So there I have said it. I have told the internet. I am a materialist pig.
Apart from it's not the thought of what I could spend the money on. The lottery really doesn't fuss me. You could put £1 million in front of me and tell me to go and by myself I really nice house and car. Obviously I would take it and do it, but it would be nowhere near as exciting as if you said here is £1 million pounds. Go and turn it into 10. I think it is the creativity and thought which you have to put into little entrepreneurial things that are really exciting. It's almost as if it is the challenge of making money that is what is exciting.
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