Author: Lunnainn

So, as I mentioned in the last post, my kids and I moved out to a new apartment. We’ve been living here now for about a month and a half and it’s actually pretty great so far.

We’ve established a couple of good routines, their mom comes visiting for a few hours a day and sleep, while almost rare and broken up for me, seems to have found its way to the kids routines as well.

For now, the boys have been home from kindergarten or over a month now, in the middle of December and a couple of weeks, they were sick. They probably had a regular cold – we didnt get tested since they weren’t all that sick, and tests aren’t administered here that much – and then Christmas hit and the municipality shut down all 15h/week-kids for kindergarten to limit the spread of the disease. They’re allowed back after the 22nd, which effectively means the 25th. And OH BOY will they be happy to get back to play with their friends!

Meanwhile, the oldest started school again last week. She’s been having a blast from what I can tell, but she keeps avoiding to give me a copy of her schedule. First she tried to push an old schedule of hers and pretend it’s the current one, and since she’s been trying to get a schedule from the teachers to give me, but so far it hasn’t gone too well. I pretend I’m more annoyed by this than I am, mostly for fun, but also to show her that, while it’s not the end of the world, she shouldn’t just brush this aside. I mean, it’s mostly so that I can keep track of her starting time and end time and the days she has P.E., and just having a regular routine where she goes to school the same time every day and I trust she comes home directly after school and be honest about which days are P.E.-days..it’s not exactly reliable, to be frank. Not that it’s super important, she goes to a school that is merely 10 minute walk from home, so if anything is up, I can easily just go there to clear it up – or she can be sent home to fetch her gymclothes by the P.E. teacher.

I’ve been looking into the whole economic situation of mine and there’s just a bunch of papers I need to fill in every month for the government to get my money. There’s all these laws to look up, forms to fill, certificates to get a copy of and send, copies of rent bill to send, etc. For some reason I also have to send proof that my kids actually lives with me, which were a main reason some of my money were late with 4 weeks at one time. It’s a mess, but a mess I hope will clear up in time. Hopefully this will get pretty much automated soon. It just steals way too much energy to deal with every month, for something I shouldn’t even have to deal with since it should be automated. It’s money I’m guaranteed as long as I fullfill the requirements, which I do, so… But, it’s covering all the bills I have – rent, electrical, insurance, internet, the luxuries such as my cellphone plan, netflix, Disney+, etc – as well as food and my monthly payments for debts, even upgrading stuff at home, such as buying more clothes to the kids, toys, etc. I hope that in the end I’ll be able to put aside some for savings as well.

Enough of that, though. Meanwhile I want to tell you guys of the apartment itself! It’s a bit on the smaller side, for what I – we – need as a family of four. There’s two bedrooms, one larger and one smaller, that probably were supposed to be a sort of guestroom. My young boys share the large bedroom between them, and it’s actually pretty decently sized for two boys that age. They have a chest of drawers, a book case and boxes and drawers for their toys, as well as a small table to play on and their two, identical beds. They really dont seem to mind sharing a room, not for sleeping nor for playing. They’re almost inseparable. As for the older kid, she got to chose her room herself. I told her two possible layouts of how we could arrange the rooms and one being she got the large bedroom and we remade the livingroom into a bedroom for the boys, and as for a livingroom/where I sleep, we used the little guestroom or we let her have the small bedroom and the boys the large bedroom. She chose the small bedroom for herself, because that room had the balcony. Yep, she sacrificed room area in favour for a balcony. She has room enough for a bed, a chest of drawers, a bookcase and her desk, with still enough floorspace to clutter with clothes, but not much else. However, when spring and summer comes along, I bet that balcony is going to get so much use it more than enough compensates for the smaller room.

As for me, I’m yet again stuck at sleeping on the livingroom. Not that I mind, the size of my sleeping area isn’t that important to me, I could just as well sleep in a cupboard as well as in a gym-hall for all I care. But as it stands now, my bed is basically being used as a couch during daytime, which isn’t exactly my favourite thing though. But I manage.

At the moment, I’m in rehab – I guess you could call it a medical rehab, not an addiction problem rehab – and I hope this disease thing get over soon. Every step of this rehab is closed though, so for now I have to keep waiting something out. It’s basically the story of my life. Hopefully this thing gets over with and I can go to something similar to work training, and it’s supposed to be something easy to do for 8h each day. I’ve been a stay-at-home dad for way too long to get thrown into a fullblown work schedule for 8-9h every day, so we’re going to ease it in a bit. At first, I might just go for ~3h, one day a week, but I hope that it’ll increase to something easier for a full workday every day of the week. Partially because that will prove that I’m capable of keeping up a full work week, but also because if I’m occupied with work training for a full work week, my boys kindergarten times will go up from 3h a day, 15h a week, to full days at kindergarten, including the actual time I spend at work, but also the time I have to spend on travel between my work training and kindergarten to drop them off/pick them up.

They really need the time spent with other kids.

So, all in all, things really are looking up from here. I actually feel great.

So, it’s really been a while. Lots have happened since last, one of the main thing being me and the kids moved out to a new apartment. I’m not going to touch on it too much, but let’s leave it by mentioning that years of crumbs finally filled up a bucket that tipped over.

It’s a good home. The small boys share a bedroom and it seems to suit them pretty well. The oldest got the short straw and the smallest room, only able to fit a bed, the desk, a shelf and a chest-of-drawers, leaving a bit of spare floorspace. Fortunately, the balcony is connected to that room, so the decision to have the room was my kids own. As for myself, I’m sleeping in the corner of the new livingroom. I cleared out the kitchen from any furnitures, only stacking shelves in the kitchen for candy, food, pots and such. I dont want the kitchen to be any kind of room to hang out in, so to compensate for it, we now have a dining table in the living room – which in turn have a french balcony. There’s so many cool features in this apartment, it almost weighs up for the bad parts, like a loose doorhandle to the bathroom, the toiletseat being of the smaller version – and too close to the wall – and such things.

Their mom and I are still on relatively good terms. She still hangs out with the kids, she comes around every day, and we agreed upon her having the kids over every other weekend. Next “weekend” she’s going to have them isnt a weekend per se, as it should have been between 25th and 27th, but rather between the 24th and 26th. We agreed upon shifting the days one day earlier, because of Christmas. I typically dont celebrate it, but she does.

Kids just woke up from afternoon nap, so I’ll be back later.

It’s been a while since I typed here. Seems to be a habit of mine..

It’s soon mid-october. Which means it’s almost a month left before PS5 comes out, and with it, Demon’s Souls remake. Also, it’s not long after that, that Cyberpunk 2077 comes out! I believe that it’s the same day, for Europe, that is.

And I have no idea when New World November beta comes out, but the name says “November” so I’m holding on to that hope!

I’ve been off from here for a bit (almost two weeks, now that I look it up), mostly because I’ve spent most of my free time playing the New World Preview. And let me tell you, I’ve had a BLAST! I’m not going to delve too much into it in this blog – I highly suggest you look at my YouTube where I uploaded most of what I streamed. If you catch me live on Twitch I might not notice you though, but if you want to you’re welcome there as well!

There was one stream I added some text in the beginning, explaining that I had played a bit off-stream. It wasnt anything much, I walked a bit, traded, crafted and got my big bags I had been trying to get my hands on. You didnt miss much, however, right after that part of the stream where I added text on stream, my stream crashed without me knowing, so I lost 1h50min of actual gameplay. That sucked a bit. So beside those things, everything I played is there on YouTube.

I got the new phone since last time, the Note 20. It took a bit of work, but eventually I also got the Buds-voucher working and I got those yesterday. I’m still getting used to having earbuds, wireless at that, so it chafes a bit. I’m still trying out the padding though, it came in 3 sizes and there’s two pieces of padding for each bud. One sort of a “wing” that sits in the outer ear to kind of hold it in place, and I believe the smallest one fits me best. As for the padding in ear, so far I’ve gone with the medium size.

It also has “Ambient sound” which is as awesome as it is creepy. First of all – I hear my own voice as from a recording. You know how your own voice doesnt sound the same to you as a recording of your voice does? Yeah, the recording voice is what I can hear when I talk. Second of all, it’s got a weird mix of boosting lower sounds – bass sounds clearer – and a boost in discants which just sounds louder. It was disorienting at first, but I’m growing used to it. Honestly, in the end it makes some things just easier to hear. Granted, it seems like it’s filtering out other stuff I’m used to hear, which in turn just make it partly harder to hear because I’m unused to it.

On the whole, I’m liking the “setup”. I really loved the Note 2 when it came out way back, and I would’ve still used it if it wasnt for the banking ID app I really needed stopped supporting the version of Android I had on the Note 2. I had to make due with a cheap(-ish) phone since, a ~$200 phone that was good enough for what I was using it for. But the Note-series is probably where my “cellphone love” lies. Either way – Samsung is probably the best I’ve had. Even the Lady upgraded her plan to include the “new” Samsung S20, and she seems to love it as well. The only gripe I have is the lack of cases. There’s these official cases that doesnt include a front flap, and the two that do have a front apparently dont “lock in place”. Then there’s this whole bunch of unofficial cases that is bulky as all hell. At the moment I’m using a magnetic backcover that sticks to a super thick wallet for ~$30. I’m assuming that when this phone gets a bit older there’ll be more cases, and as soon as I find a case with back and front and magnetic shut, I’m grabbing that. I dont need the fancy stuff Samsung had on their two more exclusive ones with front cover, the LED stuff and see-through panel. All I need out of it is something to properly safeguard the phone, especially the glass front. I DONT want that to be cracked.

Also, Playstation 5 news – seems like the PS5 is going to be released in mid-November! Still no price though, but rumors has it that since there’ll be two versions, one with a disc-reader and one fully digital without disc-reader, there’s going to be two prices to look out for. The digital one most likely cheaper, and – again, rumors – will probably go for around $400, while the more expensive one with a disc-reader will go for around $500. I’m aiming for the digital version. I mean, a disc-reader would be nice to have if you need it, I really dont need it. I’ve had a disc-reader in my PS4, and I’ve used it for one game. A game that had its disc misplaced so in the end I ended up buying the digital version of the game anyway (although we did find the disc in the end, but that’s a different matter – I gave that to the eldest, since she loves the game as well). Also, if I want to watch movies, I could just as easily do that digitally, or if I want to use discs, I can just NOT do that on the PS5, since the Lady has one of the latest Xboxes and we could use that to play movies on discs. Which reminds me.. I think it’s time to rewatch Stargate Atlantis soon.

I had this wonderful idea to build – or more accurate, assemble – a home cinema in the livingroom. I fixed an old computer to be the media center and all, all I needed was to connect everything together. However, seeing as I’ve got a three year old that I’m quite frankly not going to trust anywhere near loose cables, the projector itself cant be perched on the large cupboard, since the powercables I have isn’t long enough. I cant hide them the way I need for them to be safe from him. Which means I have no place to put it.

So, for now, I packaged everything down into a box, projector, speakers, bass box, wireless keyboard and mouse and all the powercables and the long HDMI cable… Right next to the Ubuntu media PC I just fixed for this very purpose. It stings a bit, not going to lie, because I had planned for us all to watch movies and such come winter. But unless I can find a way to draw all those cables in a way that safeguards them from my very hyperactive and curious 3 year old, and one of those platforms specifically designed to make sure a projector stays in place, that’s not going to happen. Bracket, I believe they’re called?

Atleast I know everything WORKS, flawlessly, because I’ve tested it out, and since it’s all packed down in one box, it’s a complete set – everything needed to make a home cinema (provided you have the wall space to project upon) is in there. There’s no ethernet cable packed though, but it’s not really MEANT to connect to the internet, but it CAN.

To stream netflix on that thing is technically possible, I just haven’t downloaded the data necessary, but it still has that DVD player, as well as those two 2TB harddrives filled with music, anime and such. Sucks too, because I dont want to get rid of those things either – I’ve spent YEARS hunting parts for precisely something like this in my budget range, and quite frankly, the amount of money needed to get me to part with all this.. The parts simply isn’t worth that much sold separately. Honestly, it’s borderline NOT worth the money for the convenience of getting a media center home cinema with DVD player, speakers, 4TB+ storage and internet connectivity and versatility of an actual Ubuntu PC.

As a package “all you need to get started” that convenience with the quality of the parts there is, probably isn’t worth half of what I would want to part with them. And the convenience of “all in the package” is the majority of that sum. That’s how much WORK compared to bought quality I put into this, and all those hours of work put into finding cheap parts good enough to make this happen, and the work to fix the PC itself doesn’t show. I mean, I know it’s there – noone else.

That said, would someone walk up to me with $1700 and ask me to hand it over, it’d sting, seeing as how close I was to finally have my Home Cinema Media Center, but I’d sell it. Hell, the parts are almost guaranteed not worth half that, but I’d sell it for no less because of the work I put into finding a complete set.

I am.

According to the tracking of the package with the cellphone in it – which shipped yesterday early morning – the package should be delivered today.

Correction – according to the phrasing, the package shall be delivered today, to me. But so far, I havent gotten any info about it, neither through one of those postal slips, text or through the app. So, since I was going to go to the store today anyway for batteries and some things for dinner, I thought I’d try my luck with the postal delivery in the same building. And they’ve got their postal shipment for today, and it’s not there. I mean, I believe them, it’s not like I think they’ve stolen it before they registered it came in or anything, but it means that the national postal service hasnt delivered. Yet again.

And it’s annoying, because I had planned to sort through the cellphone and set it up this weekend and then fix my current one so that the eldest could take over it before school on monday. That’s not happening now.

Atleast I have one of the tasks I was planning for this weekend going. I got an extention cord in the store a couple of days ago, I found a powercable for the media PC and now I got batteries for the wireless mouse and keyboard. All I need to do now, is to actually put it all together and set up the “home cinema”. I’ve got everything at home that I need now, I just need to do the work to put it all together.

That’s like, 2 hours of work? I had really hoped that the new cellphone came today. In it, there’s that voucher I want to use to get the Buds+. The sooner I use it, the sooner I get the buds.

…for the kids, that is. So far, the morning has been pretty good, a small tantrum from the oldest lad, but that was easily dispersed. As far as I understood, the Lady were taking both boys to kindergarten, and had the oldest tagging along to keep the youngest company while she goes to drop off the older lad. Then they’re going to walk to school to drop off the eldest. As far as I understood, the Lady is going to come back home, I’ll take care of the youngest lad for a while, while she then goes down to the storage to find the old PC. I asked her to do that, because…well.. with my luck, I’m sure there’s going to be spiders all over that thing. And I’m not dealing with that.

I’m going to nick the power cable from the Lady’s PC while I work on it, easier than to search for the real one at first. She’s not going to use it anyway, and if I stop to try to find the cable first I’m probably going to end up not even starting. The first thing I’m going to do, is to scour the harddrives for any files I want to save, like old documents, pictures, moviefiles or anything of the likes. Then I’m going to completely wipe it. I’m going to lose the Win10 copy of it though, which sucks a bit, but I wasnt planning on using Windows on it. I’m semi-certain that that old PC is too rusty for something as fancy as that, so I’m going to install some Linux. I want to look around for some fun things, maybe Pop!_OS, Elementary OS, or Linux Mint. My go to usually is Ubuntu, but I want to try something else for a change. I love Ubuntu, but I’ve used that linux for a decade or so now, and I haven’t really looked into any of the others, so I might take that for a swing today.

Speaking of computers, I saw a custom made PC on twitter yesterday. It was gorgeous, specs pretty much greater than mine, included a wireless charging pad for both mice and smartphone, and there were some pretty neat aestetics on it. It had a walnut shell, custom made plates with engravings, a medieval looking metal enclosed torch lit up by red LEDs, as well as an integrated 12 inch statue of a medieval looking knight at the front. To access the insides, there was even a hook-lock on a hinged sidepanel, and to view the insides the other panel was tempered glass! It was SWEET! It was also in a giveaway, and entering gave you a change to win it. I’m unsure what timezone the giveaway ended, but it ended 1s before midnight to my birthday. It would be a REAL sweet birthday present if I won that thing. It’s only me and 25’687 others in that giveaway right now….

If I ever get enough time and money on hand, delving into the whole Custom PC making would be great fun. Imagine building a decked out PC, latest CPU, GPU, lots of RAM, large SSD, adding things like wireless charging pads, and other fun things, and then build it all straight into a computer case that is modelled after something awesome, like a game, toys, or something else entirely odd. I mean, you can build a computer straight into a desk – a legitimate desk. I once saw a computer case that looked like a wooden podium with a bust. The wooden podium held the power supply and motherboard, and the bust itself contained the water cooling and graphics card and SSD’s through extensions. It was just beautiful.

Although, to get started with something like that takes a lot more than I have. I dont have the tools – and they’re expensive – nor the material or skill to do it. I mean, not counting the expensive computer parts themselves, custom making the frame to mount it all, or getting the extension cables are also a lot of money involved. Not to mention the hardware to build the case itself. I think we can easily expect hundreds and hundreds of dollars – not to get started, but each case.

On the other hand… it would be so awesome to be able to make a custom PC for someone like that – someone might want to have an inconspicious PC mounted onto their monitor, someone might want it integrated into their desk, someone might want a piece of art like the one I talked about earlier with the medieval stuff, and someone might want a PC that looks like something else, like a large model car. I once saw a PC case that looked like the skull from Hellraiser! Oh, to have that as a line of work..

Update: It boots!

Granted, I had to go scour my storage for a graphics card since that was missing. I think that we used my old graphics card from my PC for the Lady’s PC, during the time we had to send back a graphics card that was damaged. Her original one broke, so we bought a new one, but that one didnt work, so in order for her PC to have a graphics card at all, we used mine from my PC. When the good one finally arrived, we just never put my old one back in place, but put it in the box the new one arrived in and just forgot about it completely. The newest files in this thing is from 2013. EARLY 2013. It’s THAT old. The fact that it boots at all is a wonder. Oh – it was also a Windows 7 Ultimate, not a Win10. I never updated it during the whole upgrade offer!

It also had an SSD for system drive, which is impressive in its own right, since it’s so old. It also had 2TB HDDs filled with stuff, so now I know where all my music went.. oh iTunes, you fickle little bitch. No joke, for some reason I never got clear on, once in a time I had an iTunes library filled with music, that, after like 2 years of not using it got completely wiped. Apple never told me why. Atleast I found the drives I saved the music to.

So.. now to the fun part. To wipe this thing and install some linux. I think I’m going to start with Ubuntu. It’s easier for me, since it’s more familiar, and I’ve got a bootdrive for it already.

Update:

Well, it’s up and running Ubuntu now. It seems pretty good for its age, most likely due to it running Ubuntu and not Windows. It doesnt overheat so far, despite it being so old and it being so hot in the apartment. So long as I find the actual powercable to it, all I need is to assemble the PC with the projector I have, plug in the wireless keyboard and mouse and we’ve got ourselves a working media center! Just goes to show how great old PC parts and a (very) little bit of know-how is! We’ve got us an actual home cinema – with dedicated parts – for the winter now.

It doesnt even need a LAN cable, since it do have a DVD-player as well, and with the two 2TB HDD’s, I can download stuff to a USB drive and move it over, or even connect something through one of the USB ports, like casting to the PC from a cellphone or such. Ofcourse I could use an ethernet cable to it, just to connect it to the rest of the home network, but I dont need to.

And while I’ve been enjoying the summer with them – I have, even thought they’ve been driving me bonkers at times – it’s going to be great to have them back in routines.

The oldest because she’s starting her new school tomorrow, and I’m actually looking forward to her making new friends and having kids to hang out with. And the 3 year old will start his kindergarten again, which means he’ll have kids to play with, activities that he’ll enjoy a whole lot more than the activities we’ve been able to provide here at home. We’re still in lockdown, basically, so in order to avoid getting sick we’ve been staying at home a lot, and the few times we have been out, we havent done much that means interaction with others. That’s been a huge bummer for the lad, so getting back in with other kindergarten kids will be fun for him. Especially the kids he was friends with before summer.

Then it’s only a few weeks before our youngest lad will start going to kindergarten too, the same as the older lad, only a different section. It’s going to be quite empty here at home, so it’ll be good for me to get out in any activity as well. Not sure how long I’ll have to wait though, but I’ll manage. If nothing else, I’ve got a couple of computer parts I can assemble to give the oldest an actual computer for school work. Or perhaps I’ll make it into a HTPC, not sure. All depending on how well that stuff has been holding up in the storage..

A while ago, we moved our furnitures around, and had the AC in the corner of the bedroom. It felt like it didnt do much there in the end, so I decided to do one last change – in the living room we had a small table, and I put that next to our bed and put the AC tower on that table. That way, we raised the exhaust fan well above the bed, so it didnt get blocked off. The Lady didnt mind it before, but then again – all the chill reached her, but noone else. The other thing I did was that I took a vacuum to it. For the entire year we’ve had it (it feels like we’ve had it for two years, but I just looked it up – it’s only one year and two weeks), not once have we cleaned it.

It was making weird noises and you could hear the fans were working hard to cool the air. I filled up almost the entire plastic can on the vacuum of dust from all over that AC, and I think I need to remove the dust screen to vacuum inside of it eventually. While I was at it, I also emptied the condensation tanks (where the AC stores the condensation that occurs when you actively chill and dehumidify the air, so it doesnt leak water everwhere), and while it wasn’t as much as I expected, I dont know the size of the tanks. Maybe they were full?

In any case, it’s comparatively silent now, the fans blow a lot more even now and you cant hear it reving up as hard as it did before. It’s more of white noise now, compared to the garage revving it sounded like before. And since it’s placed higher up, the bedroom is actually great now, compared to the rest of the apartment – while it’s a sweltering 85 degrees outside and not too far off in the rest of the apartment, it’s a cool 64 degrees in the bedroom now. AND, if I get to bed earlier than the Lady now, I can even direct the blow to go directly over the bed and blow on me, so if I get to bed early, I can fall asleep in the cold breeze!

And they were ENORMOUS! I’m used to strawberries that, from the tip to the stem, is about an inch in size, but these..?

So, we got a bunch of frozen berries the other day, my youngest sons birthday were coming up. In order to have berries for a berry-filling on a homemade birthday cake for the little guy, the Lady and I agreed on blueberries, strawberries grapes and raspberry. However, we bought more than for the cake, since I like to sometimes fill up a bowl of frozen berries with a bit of milk to eat as is, and in one of those bags I expected a lot of normal size strawberries, 20-25 or so of them, but what I got was a bag of.. I dont know, 10 supersized ones? They were basically 3*3*3 inches monsters, and when I poured the first one out of the bag I didnt know what to say. I’ve legit never seen a strawberry that size before.

It was the size of like, half my fist!

To top it off, I started to pour the blueberry bag, and those were like 3 times the size of normal blue berries as well. What the hell is going on?

Moving on.

I’ve looked over some of our..lets say, communication options. Phone and internet. September is coming up soon, and with it the cost of our internet will spike a bit. When we moved here, I signed up for a 500/500 internet for a specific price that would hold for a year, and then it would cost the same as the usual after that.

We’re also changing school for our oldest, so she’ll go to the school in the same area we live in now, instead of the same school she was in before we moved. That means she’ll live in the same area as her new classmates, and that in itself means that she’ll be able to visit her friends more often than before. She was in kindergarten with some kids, and had the same school as them for always, so we were kind of hesitant to change school for her when we moved. We let her commute to and from school instead, we bought the busfair for her to do so and learned her how to navigate the buses herself. It turned out pretty well, but it also had the side-effect that she rarely visited friends at all. Before we moved, she had a couple of friends she visited on regular basis, but that rarely ever happened after we moved. The thinking is, that after we change her school, she’ll make friends and will be able to visit them regularly now, meaning she wont be stuck at home as much.

That in turn, means we need to have a more reliable way to communicate with her as well, and vice versa. And as my paternity leave will end soon, I hope to go from stay-at-home dad to be able to actually do something. Anything. Which means that I also need to be reliably able to communicate with the rest of the family. So far, me and our oldest have been using pre-paids, but that’s not going to last. So, looking into the whole thing, I realized something very strange..

First, we needed to change the internet speed to a lower one to save some money. The same speed would have cost almost double what it costs now. I’ve grown used to a 500/500, as well as the rest of the family, but the new price would be pretty hefty. Going from $43 to $80 is.. well, I think it’s not too bad, but compared to what we pay now, it’s steep. And I looked around for cellphone plans and they were pretty steep too, ranging from $30-80, depending on what we chose. So coming from a 2 pre-paid/500 internet costing us ~$65/month, to something like $140-240/month depending on the cellphone plan… yeah.. And sure, we could probably make due with a smaller speed, 100/100, but the price change would still kick in, to $50/month. Add what we usually pay for pre-paids now, that’s still $75/month. And considering we’re going to need more reliability on our communications, since I will be away from home more often and our oldest will – hopefully – visit more friends more often (on top of her aunt coming up with the idea to let her visit them every other weekend), we’re probably going to see costs of upwards $116+/month.

And honestly, for a fifth of the same internet speed, as well as two pre-paids, that’s just too expensive. Since it’s pre-paids, we’re probably looking a bit more.. I had to work something through here.

Anyway, what I found out is that my current internet provider had an offer that if I had a cellphone plan with them as well as the internet, they could bump my speed one step without it costing any extra. The steps are going from 100, 250, 500 and 1’000. I also checked up with my current operator for the cellphone if we could work something out, since I’ve had the same number with them for 15+ years. There was, but; a cellphone plan alone apparently costs more than a cellphone coupled with a phone does, just looking at the plans, I mean. A single plan cost ~$30, but the cellphone plan coupled with a phone costs ~$10 (not counting the cost of the phone, ofcourse). And voila, this is probably the best deal I could’ve gotten away with;

Starting next month, when my internet deal would’ve been over anyway, our current cost of ~$65/month for internet and prepaids, will jump to $140/month. It’s a bit more than double the montly cost, but, our costs currently wont be the costs we have in September anyway. The minimum cost for just having the lowest internet speed as well as active prepaids will be at $75/month, and to be able to use our cellphones as we need come autumn, it’ll be more like ~$116+/month anyway. The difference is only $24/month, but it’s what we get out of those $24 that I like.

Officially, we get the lowest speed, 100, but coupled with one plan it’ll be 250. We only halve our internet speed, but in turn we get 2 cellphone plans as well as a brand new phone for me. My current one will be taken over, along with the plan coupled with the internet, by our oldest, so she can have a better phone (storage and spec-wise) and a cellphone plan to start hang out with her friends more. Her old phone will be used by our oldest son, so he have something to play with and watch in car-rides or if his tablet needs a battery charge. What that means for me, is that I suddenly have a phone and cellphone plan so that I can hopefully be more active on the jobmarket.

So, again, compared to current cost, $65/month, going to $140/month is a lot. The current cost will not be the cost come September anyway, the minimum cost of September and forward will be $75, just to have active prepaids. Come September, cost will therefore just be slightly less than twice than if I didnt take these deals. To actually use our phones the amount we will need to, on prepaids it’ll costs us a great deal more, close to $120/month. And compared to that, the $140-deal now will actually give us some pretty neat quality of life stuff; 100 internet, old phones and prepaids that runs out almost half a month already during Covid summer times, compared to 250 internet, brand new phone for me, upgraded phone for the oldest and a play-phone for my oldest son, as well as cellphone plans? That’s worth the extra $24 if you ask me.

Oh, and that’s still not counting the “extra package” that comes with the new phone for free, either a true-wireless headphones (Samsung Galaxy Buds+) in the music package, or a bluetooth Xbox controller for playing on the phone (as well as being able to be used with both PC and XBox), a wireless charging stand and 3 months of Xbox Game Pass. I’m leaning towards the music package, the wireless headphones, since I have a clock radio next to my bed with integrated wireless charging anyway, and truth be told, I dont need the controller.

..not that I would use it paired with the phone anyway. Only way I would use a cellphone xbox controller, is with Diablo Immortal anyway, and I’m not sure that game will support such a controller – if the game even was available.