This time last year, for the first time ever for me, I actually made some New Year’s resolutions. The question is, did I stick to them? Let’s have a look and see how I did.

Stay in credit and even save up some money
A big yes. Despite having to pay out the odd £500 excess to Direct Line and some repairs on my car (the last one being £2,350) I’ve still managed to stay in credit.

Get a written apology from Royal & SunAlliance
Not so much success with this one. They did fix my car, and it has all been sorted, but I never had any kind of apology from them. Not sure it’s worth pursuing now as I have bigger and more important battles to fight.

Receive compensation to the tune of a few thousand pounds from Direct Line Insurance
No to this one as well I’m afraid. In truth I haven’t had time to chase it as much as I’d have liked, but rest assured they will be paying at some point, in some way!

Get a written apology from the CSA
Mixed success with this one. Yes I have had apologies from them, most people have, but they’re still taking money from me that I don’t owe. The problem is that you can’t actually appeal to anyone because it’s all handled internally. I’ll keep plugging away, and through CSA Hell I’ll keep promoting their mistakes.

Take WhatDVD to the next level
This I have finally done. It took the best part of a year, but it’s all live and ploughing away. It has support from PR companies and is doing very well for itself.

Those ideas for websites I’ve got… make them!
50/50 on this one. I have made several new sites this year that are getting traffic and earning income, but I’ve not done all of the ones on the list. This one might be ongoing into next year.

Don’t get married
Success! I managed to avoid getting married all year, yay me!

Crush my enemies
Another one that’s ongoing. I have crushed some enemies, have received apologies and compensation from people (such as Cwmbran Leisure Centre and Direct Line) but am still in the process of crushing others. It’s fun, but all winnable.

Make a living from Affiliates
To be honest this one has taken something of a back burner, as other interests have taken over.

Diversify
Absolutely yes. I used to be completely reliant on Adsense, but now I barely check the Adsense stats because it’s not so important. Other revenue streams have become much more important and lucrative.

So, as far as my resolutions for 2008 went, I’d chalk that off as a partial success. I’d say about 6/10, which isn’t bad. I’ll make some for 2009 and aim to hit all ten this time.

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A few weeks ago I tried to buy a house. I wasn’t particularly looking, I just so happened to notice that the one a few doors down was for sale, and as I’m renting it seemed like an idea. A mortgage would be cheaper than my rent currently, and the house was something of a bargain.

In fact the house was a serious bargain. I checked the land registry and found that the most expensive house in our close was over £180,000, sold in the last 18 months, and is the one I’m living in right now! The house for sale is identical, except that’s it the other end of the row, so it’s in reverse, if you get the drift. It last sold for around £146,000 18 months ago (quite a price difference).

Now, it was up for sale a few months ago for £120,000 – the housing market has caused a serious problem in prices, as you can see. However it was then reduced again, to £99,950.

Ruddy hell, that’s a loss of £46,000 for the vendor. As it turns out though, they sold it to the housing builder, in exchange for a larger property, so they probably did OK as the larger property would have come down in price too, probably by more than this one. No doubt they did OK, whoever buys this house would also do OK, the only loser would be the house builders… a plan with no drawbacks then!

To be cheeky, I offered £89,950 – some £56,000 less than it sold for 18 months ago. It wasn’t accepted, but they did accept my next offer of £91,500. Great I thought, that’s a real bargain. Then I heard someone had bid more than me and they’d accepted that offer too, could I increase my bid? No, I couldn’t. I was sure they were having me on and trying to get some more cash out of me.

I stood my ground, and now, some five weeks later, the house still has ‘for sale’ on it, even though it says ‘under offer’ on Right Move.

So has the house sold? Has the new seller pulled out? Did the new seller exist in the first place?

I wonder, but I’ll try the estate agent again in a week or so and see how things are progressing. It’s a good buy, if you can get a mortgage, so I wouldn’t mind owning it… We’ll see what happens. As I didn’t have any problems with the mortgage when I spoke to my mortgage advisor, who’d completed his CeMAP training years ago, I could go higher in price, I just didn’t want to.

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It’s my birthday today, and I’m 32… dammit. I’m also in Dublin, so this post was prepared earlier 😉

This is something I’ve discovered from using Facebook. I recently added one of my old School photos from Primary School, where I would have been in the 1st year, so probably around 7 years old. When I added this picture to Facebook, and having just one of the people on it on my friends list, I found that other people on the photo found it, or in some cases their friends did, and tagged them. The picture is now probably 25% tagged and increasing.

It’s proven a great way of finding people you haven’t heard from in years. Of course, I’m not actually interested in hearing from any of them, but the option is there you understand!

Right, that’s enough of that. I’m probably smashed out of my head right now, even at this early hour. If I make it back I’ll bring photos. If I don’t, it’s been an adventure.

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Sorry I haven’t posted as much this month, I’ve been very busy with a lot of projects and haven’t had chance to get on here. Rest assured though, there’s still loads of things pissing me off for me to blog about, so normal service will be resumed shortly.

In fact, this Friday I’m off to Dublin for the weekend, so will no doubt have some pictures and tales about the trip when I get back.

I’ll also be visiting the Guinness factory, obviously… I can’t wait.

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I’m pretty sure this is what is meant by taking something too far. You watch one too many war movies, then end up in a jungle battling the locals for land. This is what happened to Paulie this weekend when he armed himself up and took on a small village in Borneo.

I received these photos this morning, I presume he won his ‘mini war’ though I can’t be sure. At least he looks like he’s enjoying himself and he’s out of the house.

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I recently went to play squash again. The reason for this madness is that my intense routine of drinking copious quantities of alcohol every week is catching up with my fitness.

I’m not very fit right now.

Considering how fit I used to be, going to the gym at least five times a week and taking Wing Chun Kung Fu twice a week, I felt it was about time I got back into the fitness saddle.

We used to play squash regularly last year, before I twisted my knee making an over vigorous serve, so it’s not like I didn’t know what I’d be getting myself in for. However, 12 months with little or no exercise really wasn’t a good idea.

You can tell which one of these is the before and after shot.

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I am so glad I took today off. Last night we went to the Stockport Beer Festival at Edgley Park, and I feel ever so slightly rough today. I woke up at 9:30 and realised that at this time last year I’d been in work for an hour after walking home the night before.

Day off, excellent idea.

One thing I think we did wrong, but we’ll do the same next year I’m sure, is to start with the high percentage drinks first, then work our way down. We went straight for the 8% Old Tom, whereas most people were working their way up to the stronger beers. Consequently we were twatted after just a few drinks.

One tip I picked up from a guy in work known as ‘The Bear’; when selecting your glass go for a pint glass and ask for half a pint. They always over fill it. I reckon we each had an extra half pint easily, if not more. The woman in the photo was blind as a bat and Paulie had two thirds of one drink.

Top tip Bear.

I’m going for a lie down now, so I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

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