Bit of both right now. The good news is that we've been putting all of our AIS earnings into a savings account since late summer of last year and today we topped £1000. Of course there are still earnings in accounts around the web, but this is real cash. It may not be a great deal compared to what a lot of people earn from the web but £1000 is a lot of money and it's great to know we didn't do too much for it!nnBad news is my laptop died last week so I'm stuck with my spare basic old one which doesn't like running too many programs at the same time! Still on the upside of this, I've got a brand new Dell on the way and should be delivered in the next few days

We had a good innings, 4 and a half years of major usage, DVD watching etc. However yesterday morning my main business laptop gave up on me. At first it wouldn't boot up saying it couldn't find the hard drive. Then it would find it, show Windows XP for a good while and then reboot saying it couldn't find the hard drive. I took it apart, cleaned it out as much as I good, made sure the fans were clear and tried again. Eventually I got into windows but it was exceptionally slow and the heat coming out the fans wasn't good.

So I've been shopping on the Dell website today. My last laptop was a Dell Latitude C840 and I had no complaints, except it was pretty heavy and bulky. So this time round I've opted for the smallest laptop I could get! A Dell Latitude D420, 12.1" screen. However before you think that's a bit tiny for solid business use, I've also bought a 20.1" flat screen monitor, plus I already have a wireless keyboard and mouse. Along with a port replicator, and monitor stand, I'll be much more organised on my desk. The laptop only weighs 1.36kg too as there is no built in CD/DVD drive, but it comes with an external one. To be honest I rarely open a CD drive these days so it's not like it's a major issue to me.

The laptop itself has 1.5GB RAM, Intel Duo Core 1.2 GHz Processor, plus wireless and bluetooth built in. It should be delivered within 2 weeks.

This means for now I'm working on my old spare laptop. Pretty dire and slow, and not capable of running too many programs at the same time. Luckily I was already planning to take a week off work next week as my parents are up visiting! I will probably look into getting the other one looked at and perhaps repaired. If it's repairable that is. It'll be handy as the new spare laptop and I can finally dump this old piece of junk!

I just have to have patience now!

I made the easiest £50 going today. Dave gave in and finally opened a business account today, so I joined him to get a break from the house and pick a few bits up from the market. Whilst opening the account I looked through a leaflet that said £50 for referring a new business customer, so I got to complete a form and just need to wait for the £50 to be credited to my account!nnSo who's next?

Another week over, another week closer to hitting 30. You know I really don't feel like I'm about to turn 30. I don't consider myself 30 and I definitely don't act 30. I have friends younger than me who have children, that's quite scary. In fact my Mum had already had my brother by this age, and was about to have me too! I guess I don't feel as grown up as I don't go out to work. It's almost like a prolonged student life, even though I probably work harder than I would at a full time job! But it doesn't feel like work.

This week I've been nursing a lot of pain in the side of my head. At first I thought my back tooth had finally given up and was dreading having to see the dentist, however after a visit to the doctor he told me I had an inflammation in my ear. I'm not ill, which is quite strange as I've only had infections in my ear when I've got a cold or it brings on a cold/sore throat. But this is different. There's a small inflammation inside my ear but the pain has spread from my front teeth all around to the back teeth, along the right side of my jaw and all over my head. Must admit it's been agony at times. Even the strongest painkillers I could get didn't take it off. However I've got an antibiotic spray and even stronger prescribed painkillers now so it's slowly beginning to go. Still at least we've finally registered with a doctor up here that's about 5 minutes walk away.

So I've been just trying to get through the week this week, doing my best to concentrate on work and ignoring the pain. By Thursday I had stronger painkillers and was starting to feel better thankfully. However we didn't get to go out on the bikes this week as I didn't want to get my head too cold (and would feel daft wearing a woolly hat!). We were planning to go cycling this weekend as I've found a few more routes on the Cheshire Cycling section of the Council's site. There's a canal path route, no traffic whatsoever, going from the Boat Museum, about 20-30 minute ride away, all the way to Chester. However typically today, the rain came and it's only just stopped. So hopefully the weather will brighten up again next week and we may take a day off and go out, or at least do part of the trail one evening.

I did manage to get out in the garden yesterday however. I've started growing seeds under our little polytunnel and they seem much happier there, plus it saves the hassle of taking them from the seed tray and planting them in the ground. We've added some spinach, spicy salad mix and pak choi to our salad garden now, after grabbing some more packets from the supermarket. We also picked up a couple of Beef Tomato plants from the garden centre, with the possible weight of the Tomatoes at 1lb / 454g each!! I've managed to find space for two more grow bags so we're getting 4 tomato plants off my Dad and will have 2 Beef Tomato plants going too.

Otherwise that's about it for the week. I hope the good weather comes back soon. It's been a bit of a computer day today, stuck indoors with nothing on TV to watch!

Yes I know, another Amazon post! Dave happened to unearth a daft issue yesterday evening whilst buying some wireless headphones. He found the ones he liked, reasonable price and cheaper than sites like Argos. Instead of hitting the 'Add to Basket' he caught the 'Buy with One Click Ordering' instead. Not usually a problem as you can still go in and review the order, especially as I pointed out the One Click ordering method wouldn't give free postage and packaging. However he couldn't find the order to review and alter. Believing it hadn't gone through he started the process again but then finally got a confirmation email through. This was the point where he realised he'd ordered from a Marketplace seller and not Amazon direct.

What happened? Take a look at the product page. Here you can see Sony Headphones, yet despite Amazon having these in stock, and being on the Amazon site you'd expect they'd be the default seller, but no, the default seller is a marketplace seller. If you look at the page you'll see the default as

Availability: In stock. Dispatched from and sold by hughesdirect.

At this point I would assume Amazon didn't in fact sell these, but I'd be wrong. If you look on the right hand side you'll see the option to purchase these from Amazon. Okay, so you have to wait 1-2 weeks to get them from Amazon, but surely if you visit Amazon to purchase a product, by default the product should come from Amazon?!

Dave's now having to jump through hoops to get the seller to cancel the purchase before he gets charged. It'll be interesting what Amazon's reply on this is.