I’ve been running around the banks all day. Went down to Halifax to transfer my student account over from HSBC to Halifax for the bigger credit limit. They turned me down. Apparently my credit score wasn’t high enough. I was told that there were no actual problems, there just wasn’t enough there.
That’s kind of strange given I have two credit cards, I’ve previously had another and I have a student overdraft as well. She told me to phone Halifax up as they don’t get much information in the branch. When I phoned them up they told me that basically what the employee in the branch had said didn’t make any sence and they couldn’t actually do anything but contact the credit reference agency (they claimed Halifax used Equifax, the branch earlier today claimed they use Experian).
So now I’m waiting for my PIN number to arrive so I can check my online credit report. Of course if that hasn’t arrived by the weekend it’s going to be the weekend after that I will be able to get hold of it.
I also tried to close my old current account down but they told me I couldn’t do that without my cheque book.
So it would have been a completely wasted trip if I hadn’t also have gone home to vote although frankly that doesn’t really make me feel any better.
I then headed over to HSBC to ask them to raise my interest free overdraft limit. They raised it to £1,250 which is close to half what Halifax is offering and stopped short of saying that should have automatically been done for me in September though it was reasonably obvious it should have been.
I also sent off my application for a Lloyds TSB credit card today which I’m assured by the letter is “guaranteed.” It will be interesting to see if they actually give me it as it comes with a minimum credit limit of £1,000. I already have two credit cards but I’ll be cancelling my existing second card down if I get this one.
As for the rest of the day, I went in to the ARC and Kay apparently isn’t going to be in until next week, I’ve lost the invoice for a product I need to return, my laptop is about to die and needs to go back leaving me with no way to do anything as all my applications are on there and can’t be re-installed and the circle may well be about to be plunged back into hell again. Perfect.
It took me 5 hours to get to sleep last night. 5 hours!
I realise that most of you are like full time insomniacs that take 5 hours to get to sleep every night but it normally takes me like 15 minutes so proportionally, based on it taking 5 hours to get to sleep normally, that’s like you lot not being able to sleep for 4 days (4 days and 4 hours to be exact).
The weekend saw another weekend of work (fun) especially as on Sunday night Gary had overspent on labour so Martin randomly picked a handful of people not to work and they all happened to be on the night sheet – we finished filtering at 1:30 in the morning (normally you know you’re behind when it isn’t done by 8pm). Got out at like 3:30, bit more money though I guess.
Went down to the banks on Monday to move money around and try and move my student account – I’ve got a meeting to sort that out on Thursday. Went to Sarann’s for dinner which was really nice, it ended up getting gatecrashed to twice the size of the original invite list though lol. Phil was there from the start then B was brought followed by Kieran turning up and finally Matt and Kat.
Then today we had a faith and culture assembly – or so I thought, turned out it had been cancelled (nobody told us, though what was I expecting from the union?). We tried to pull together a quick committee meeting and had a main A-Soc meeting too to sum up Rationalist Week. Finished as usual with a trip to The Old Bar.
Something strange is going on. My laptop thought it was May. This might be something to do with the time syncronisation as the same thing happened with my desktop. Strange.
Anyway, I last blogged on Thursday morning. Afterwards I went home and slept before getting up ready for my next all-nighter on SE24. In between getting up and coding I went down to a nice French restaurant in town which I haven’t a hope of spelling for dinner. I wore a shirt and everything, how fancy is that? It was well expensive although the food was fairly nice (not amazing though).
I then spent the night in Eniac and we finally got it finished about 8:30 or something and then headed off to lectures. I finally got to bed just after 3. That evening I crawled out of bed at about 10:30, went to the pub for a few hours and then crawled back into bed and slept some more. It was a facinating insight into what B’s life must be like :D. It’s a really good system to be honest, I might have to try it on a more regular basis.
It’s well past 8 am and I’m still in DEC-10. Myself, Gaz and Kieran have just spent all night working on GI21 coursework 2 which is due in, in about 37 minutes. Fortunately I’ve now submitted my coursework so I don’t have to worry about it anymore. Time to go home and get some sleep before tonight’s all nighter on SE24 I think.
Today (or rather yesterday by now) was the Atheist Society EGM in which we approved a number of constitutional changes. Nobody bothered to read the new constitution though so the change of aims to “world domination” went unnoticed even if I failed to push through a change of name to World Domination Soc.
On a serious note, we’ve made some important changes today. We’ve expanded the committee to a total of 7 people (4 of which places are actually filled lol) as well as making some other key changes, making sure we got nominated for a few Riley awards and planned out the events were are going to round off the year with.
Congratulations to Norm on his election as secretary and Sarann on her election as social sec. It’s been a long and hard race for election and all the candidates have been desperately battling it out to get the votes they need but in the end these two simply led the best campaign trail. It’s the little things like nominating yourself for election which really show through.
Since then I’ve been coding away in DEC-10 on my graphics coursework which is due in on Thursday. I’m finally getting somewhere with it though I think I am going to have to drag my ass out of bed tomorrow morning and go speak to my lecturer to get some issues I’m having with it, resolved. I have it down to a to do list though which is always a sign that you’ve reached the final stage. That said, “the final stage” in this coursework is the hard bit.
I had my 8 month performance review at work yesterday. It’s depressing to think I’ve worked there for 8 months already but on the plus side I scored another 5 (aka “outstanding”). Suck on that Neil. More importantly though Martin told me to start the application process to get promoted to Training Squad.
It’s ironic really that such a promotion is going to look fantastic on my CV especially when I word it as “I am responsible for staff training in the restaurant and upkeep of procedures” given that my CV is a document I hope never to have to use again. But at least on the short term it will result in a bit more money (providing they get it through before I hit 21, which is again depressing).
I’ve just compiled my exam timetable and it’s not nice. I have exams on the Tuesday and Friday of the first week and then the Tuesday, Thursday and Friday of the second week. 4 out of my 6 exams are in the morning and get this – I have an exam on 1 June, the very last day of the three week exam period. Nobody else I know in computing has any exams that late.
Even more annoying is the fact that I have an exam on the morning of Thursday 24th. Which is really bad timing given I have an all-night party to go to on the night before. I’m not amused.
4 days without blogging, you can tell I’ve been busy!
Thursday resulted in another day of the tent being packed out when the talks were on. Then in the evening was the debate with the Christian Union. As of course we were always going to, we lost of the vote, but most people seemed to be saying that if they weren’t voting just because they were CU and not A-Soc (of which we had around 5 members there lol) they thought we put the better debate forward.
Afterwards we headed down to The Old Bar till kick out time and discussed some more theology. Plus it was great to catch up with loads of CU members that I haven’t chatted to in ages.
Friday was a bit down because of the weather but we still got some people in for the talks and continued it throughout the day into the all night debate which went really well. We ended up serving well over 100 hotdogs as well as loads of drinks and biscuits and chatting to lots of people and shifting a lot of leaflets. It was a long day though. Having been up at 8 to finish off some coursework we stopped serving at about 3:30 then finished packing up at 6:30 and then went for breakfast and camped out HSS so we could return the generator. I ended up getting to bed at 9am – 25 hour day.
I slept most of Saturday and then got up in the evening to go to the pub for my dad’s pre-birthday drinks (old people can’t do mid-week drinking sessions so we had to move it to the weekend before). After that I headed to Wendy which was an interesting but short night (I gave up at 1 and went to get some sleep). B made a move on Sarann this time and Norm managed to get photographic evidence too.
All in all, Rationalist Week was a massive success and it’s all down to the amazing amount of work put in by Norm, Rich, Paul, Moz and Claire that the society will be forever indebted to. You guys will be going down in A-Soc history.
Rationalist Week is going so well! Today for our 2pm talk we had a full tent. A full tent! All the seats were taken, standing room only. It’s been getting steadily busier as the week has gone on and more and more people are coming down for some good old fashioned debate as well as some free biscuits of course :).
It’s doing a lot for the society too. We finished an entire membership booklet today! I had to run up to the Arc and pick up a new one just so we could continue to sign people up. We also have a lot of what has been done on camera so we will have able to make an excellent freshers intro video for next year, it’s amazing how it’s all clicking into place.
What is most amazing is how well it has pulled the society together. Norm has been absolutely indespensible and it’s safe to say the week couldn’t have happened without him. Rich, Paul, Moz and Claire have also invested lots of time too, not to mention everyone who has just come and sat round and joined in the debates.
After the week is over I look forward to building on the fantastic success that the week has brought to the society. Let’s just hope the success of the week continues for the remaining few days!