Spending money I haven’t got

We live in a world that thrives on credit; we almost force our children to get into debt before they’ve even had a chance to go out and earn any money; people get into dire straits with their finances and end up losing their homes; families are wrecked forever because people can’t deal with money anymore. But at the same time, we seem to be hellbent on consuming everything in sight - “Greed is good” as someone once said! - and if you haven’t got the latest trainers, or MP3 player, or flash car then you’re a nobody. So we borrow.

As a past employee of one of the four big UK banks, I’ve seen how financial institutions play both sides of the equation - offering you as much money as you want one day, and then getting all legal on you when you can’t afford to pay it back the next day.

I’ve also experienced it myself; when I stopped working for that bank the overdraft that I had, and a loan that my partner at the time had, all got a lot more expensive. I went into a commission-only job that I wasn’t ready for and over the next few months ran up huge debts. When I did finally get a job that paid a weekly wage it took over six years to get back to a point where I was actually solvent. Then another six years to get to the point where I had a healthy credit rating.

Which is all the long way of saying that I had made a vow to myself a few years ago that I wasn’t going to get to the point where I was borrowing money anymore. Until I saw this and just had to have one:

So now I’m up to my ears in debt again and I’m wondering if I’ve done the right thing. But sitting here, typing this on a huge 24in screen I’m realising that I should have got one ages ago - my knackered old PC laptop has needed replacing for some time. So what if I’ve got to go without food for a couple of years? At least I’ll lose weight!

Alexa for Firefox… but not

Saw this post on the Calacanis weblog (yes, I know, I read the Calacanis weblog. I can’t help it. It’s road-accident blogging; you just gotta stop and look) and thought “Yay! Now I can see what all the fuss is about with Alexa“.

Downloaded the toolbar, installed it, worked fine. Gives you a bunch of related links to sites you visit, gives you an Alexa ranking for the site, adds another search option. Bunch of good stuff.

Five minutes after installing it, Firefox tells me that its updated to version 2.0.0.5 and needs to restart. After restarting, it tells me that the Alexa plug-in is not compatible with this version of Firefox so will be disabled. Damn!

So, will it be another five year wait before it’s working again?

20/7 UPDATE: No, we don’t have to wait five years. Just check out this entry and follow the instructions, or go straight to this site to download the extension you need. I’ve tried it and it’s working fine on my system. Take the usual care, though, if you load it on to yours because it has the potential to break everything the next time something gets updated.

Up the Borough!!

Football* has never really been my game, probably because I was never any good at it at school (anyway, we were a rugby school really), but I’ve caught the odd game over the years.

I’ve always thought that the local, non-league game is a much better example of the genre than the big league sides because the guys who play locally really want to play. The best match that I ever saw was in around 1987 / 1988 when Newhaven’s local side played host to an Allstar XI captained by the legend that was Georgie Best. Of course, George played everyone else off the field (even at that stage of his career and health), but the Newhaven guys really gave it all they could - for the love of the game.

And it’s that same love of the game that drives the players of Eastbourne Borough FC - many of whom come from many miles away for training and matches. Which is why I’m so proud to be part of the company that is this season sponsoring the away kit for the team. As part of an effort to put something back into our local community, Health Plus is supporting the team not only with a cash sponsorship, but also with free supplements for all the first team players.

And to show their thanks for this help, the boys done good in their first pre-season friendly, by beating Sussex County Division One side St. Francis Rangers 3-2! Excellent result and well done to all the guys.

If you’re local to Eastbourne, why not come along to Priory Lane on Thursday 2nd August when the first XI will again be in action - wearing their new, Health Plus sponsored away strip - against Hastings United. It’s sure to be a great match - kick-off’s at 7.30pm. See you there!

*or soccer if you’re American. How you can call rugby for pansies (what’s with all the padding and constant stopping?) football is really beyond me.

Wolfie’s July Project 2

Well, here we are at day 8 of the July Project, which began slightly later than planned on 3 July. The Konjac Fibre seems to be working OK; I’ve managed to remember to take it every breakfast, lunch and dinner (except for Saturday 7, when it wasn’t possible) and I have to say that it does seem to be helping me to eat less.

The way it works, it’s supposed to absorb water and swell up in the digestive system. This is then supposed to make you feel like you’ve already eaten, so you don’t eat as much at each meal. This then - over time - helps you to re-educate yourself to want less to eat so that when you stop “dieting” you don’t backslide. So far, seems to be working in this regard.

The other way that it’s supposed to work is that it helps to balance blood-sugar levels, so reducing feelings of hunger. This effect is taking longer to kick in, but I’m not feeling any more hungry than I would if I wasn’t taking it, so it’s not really a problem. Also, I find that if I drink some water, it helps to stave off the hunger pangs until it’s officially time to eat.

A side-effect of using this product is that my diet is now much higher in fibre than it was previously. This is good, because fibre in the diet helps to keep the digestive system clean and healthy but I think I’m going to buy shares in Andrex soon!

Throughout the June Project (see this post, this post and this post for more info) and so far through the July Project I had not weighed myself. I had an idea of how much I weighed, based on the last measurement sometime last year; I didn’t weigh myself, though, because I wanted to see whether my clothes started to feel looser, etc, rather than being a slave to pounds.

I had the opportunity, though, on Saturday to see what my current weight is and I am rather badly shocked. The last time I weighed myself, I was 18 stone. I was expecting to come out around that figure again, maybe a pound or two lighter thanks to the June Project. But instead, I was 19 stone 1 pound. If I have lost any weight due to the June Project - and I feel like I have - then that means that in the last year I put on well over a stone without even noticing! Scary.

So, I’ve made another change to the diet (small changes at first, hoping that they’ll be easier to stick to), to go with changing breakfast cereal to one that has less sugar (see this post); no more sugar in the morning coffee; that’ll save me another 0.5kg of sugar across the month, bringing the total up to 2kg!

I’ll give that a couple of weeks to see how it affects how I feel and then I’ll weigh myself again and see if I’ve lost any weight at all.

Since weighing myself on Saturday, it’s become clear that the July Project is going to have to last for longer than I had originally planned, so it looks like I’ll be doing this until the New Year at least.

You never know, I might even start to exercise!

Twice the Howl

During last week, you may have noticed that for a little while The Wolf’s Howl was unavailable, due to a violation of the WordPress Terms of Service. Turned out that the “Review My Post” links that I had to PayPerPost were not allowed. You’ll notice that they are now all gone!

What the situation highlighted for me was that I didn’t have an effective back up of The Wolf’s Howl - I had most of the posts but not the links or the pages. While I was trying to sort out the violation and get wolfieb.wordpress.com back up and running, I also set up The Wolf’s Howl over at Blogspot.

The situation with WordPress is now resolved, but I’ve decided that I’m going to keep the Blogspot Howl going; there will now be two Wolf’s Howls - one here at WordPress and one at Blogspot - which will be identical from now on. If nothing else, they’ll provide me with an effective back up!